Welcome to another awesome week in crypto. This week we’ll be looking at something a bit older that recently underwent a ride on the Portnoy hype train. Naturally, we all want to know if the potential is still there after the dust has settled. So this week we’ll be taking a look at the privacy-focused Orchid Protocol.
Introduction
Orchid Protocol (OXT) is building a decentralized, open-source technology to provide anonymous internet access to people across the globe. In particular Orchid wants to focus on providing services to individuals who live in countries with excessive government oversight of their browsing. Orchid Protocols solution to current privacy software that is commercially available and centralized, or peer to peer without proper incentives is to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN) marketplace using the Ethereum blockchain. This bandwidth marketplace allows users to stake tokens and become node providers on the network. Clients of the network construct single or multi-hop onion circuits by selecting nodes randomly weighted on stake and filtered using secondary criteria like price and location. Orchid uses a probabilistic payment system which can scale to millions of transactions per second, enabling a highly liquid bandwidth market without a trusted central party. By using the Orchid VPN services, users are paying computers in a marketplace that are routing traffic, enabling anyone to become an internet provider. Whereas in most VPNs you have a series of VPN servers that are either in one location or many locations. In Orchid you can route traffic between different VPN servers in a network or between multiple VPN service providers to make for a more flexible system with added security and increased privacy.
Orchid is essentially seeking to build an alternative to Tor, the anonymous browser software. While many trust Tor as a safe and anonymous way to route traffic across the internet. The truth as seen with the fallout of Silk Road is that Tor can be compromised due to a lack of network nodes. Orchid is instead designed to give internet users an incentive to share their bandwidth with other users. By doing so, the protocol can break up traffic and route it through various nodes on the network, making it extremely difficult for a third party to determine who is visiting the website. Unlike how the Tor system currently works with exposure to data. By using this multi-layer encryption the more hops you use, the more secure your connection becomes. In this ecosystem you have the contributors who provide services by staking OXT tokens to create relay and bridge nodes to earn fees relative to their stake size. Their stake keeps contributors honest by serving as a decentralized reputation system. Allowing users to switch between providers depending on speed, price, location, and availability.
Orchid VPN services are available on Android, iOS, and macOS. Giving users the option to create a new account with node lists generated from the current smart contract or link an existing OpenVPN or WireGuard account. Have a DApp enabled wallet such as Metamask or Trust Wallet and visit the Web3 website page to choose from the current available account options. Here you can create an account using ETH and OXT, add funds, withdraw funds to another Ethereum wallet, move funds from your balance to your token deposit, lock…
Hi! My name is Lark Davis!
I’m a cryptocurrency investor with years of experience and I’ve been making consistent profits in the crypto space.
I’m passionate about helping others do the same, so I run multiple educational channels on crypto investing.
