SafeNet: CHAINMESH

[psecdocumentary]

To keep this post as short as possible, I’m going to make the following two assumptions:

#1: you are already well aware of what problems are inherent in blockchain technology
#2: you’re about to go to the maidsafe website, download the primer PDF file, and become aware

I’m not a programmer or a math wizard so please forgive me if the way I’m about to describe this isn’t “syntax compliant” or “mathematically accurate”. I’m a very concept-oriented person so please view this as a rough draft of an idea, not an API

I was thinking that to resolve the issues with blockchain technology, why not use a variation of PARSEC itself to do this? I refer to this variant as “CHAINMESH” and you might want to engage your imagination and get visual with that label.

Imagine taking a blockchain such as Steemit, Bitcoin or whatever (it doesn’t matter which blockchain we use for this hypothetical example) and resolve the problem by shattering the blockchain into mini-blockchains that are limited and finite. Then you use PARSEC to negotiate all of those pieces in the same way that it already shatters a file and manages those chunks? This way, instead of adding to a blockchain that becomes too large, too slow, too bulky, and prone to all of the errors described about it in the SafeNetwork Primer PDF – micro-blockchains that NEVER exceed a certain size are managed together in a CHAINMESH capable of expanding in the same way as SafeNet itself.

I know what some of you might be tempted to think:

"Now wait a second Dave, are you suggesting that SafeNet become blockchain based?

NO. I’d NEVER suggest that.

What I am suggesting however is a means for existing blockchain technology to be able to exist on top of and inside of SafeNet. This would give blockchain enthusiasts a REASON and INCENTIVE to begin using SafeNet. It would also help to make CryptoCurrency more stable, the more those currencies started to migrate over to using SafeNet technologies.

So, this is merely a transitional phase to provide people incentive to shift over from what has been, into what is better.

Allowing them a panama canal of sort, so they can gracefully move through those proverbial locks with ease and flow – instead of expecting them to strap on a jet pack and jump over the canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Metaphorically speaking. Like I said, I’m concept-oriented.

So maybe I just came up with a great idea, and perhaps I am unknowingly talking straight out of my butt. You be the judge.

I can’t tell you HOW to code such a system, I am only intending to inspire an idea that such a system might be possible, maybe. And that if so, it can act as a mechanism to allow people more ease and flow for migrating TO SafeNet.

Thanks!

-Dave

[drehb]

It sounded like you were proposing developing a sharded blockchain, but then you lost me when you said the chains would stop when they reached a certain length. So what would happen to those dead shards? The state of the last block somehow starts a new genesis block for a new shard? How can that new genesis block be trusted without seeing the history of the dead shard? In that case, what is the purpose of killing the old shard?

[psecdocumentary]

Each limited blockchain becomes a piece of the chainmesh. Instead of a single blockchain expanding until it dies under its own weight, I am suggesting that the PARSEC algorithm might be able to essentially turn the mesh into the thing that expands. I have this thought based on what I’ve read about how SafeNet / PARSEC handle data. Your question implies that the blockchain is still “the whole” because as it stands thats exactly what they are. I am suggesting that a blockchain become “a part” of a new “whole”. That a blockchain becomes a cell in a greater organism and that greater organism is what expands. So the chainmesh operates exactly how SafeNet ITSELF operates. How does SafeNet sort information? How does it share information? How does it process information? How does it do or keep track of anything? If you have the answers to those questions, then you can understand exactly what I’m proposing. I’m suggesting a hybrid of blockchain and safenet technology. I’m suggesting if these two technologies are “mated with each other” to create something entirely new – that this would resolve the problem that blockchains currently have. I’m neither a coder nor a math wizard, so I don’t know how else to explain it.

[benshurts]

This is an interesting idea. What about blockchains like monero that use ring signatures?

[psecdocumentary]

@benshurts

This is an interesting idea. What about blockchains like monero that use ring signatures?

I’ve never heard of monero and I don’t know what a ring signature is.

[freedbird]

From the Monero site: A low-level explanation of the mechanics of Monero vs Bitcoin in plain English

We don’t want the sender of a transaction to notice when the recipient of the transaction then spends the funds in a new transaction. Monero solves this problem through the use of ‘ring signatures’.

Ring signatures enable ‘transaction mixing’ to occur. Transaction mixing means that when funds are sent, the sender randomly chooses several other users’ funds to also appear in the transaction as a possible source of the funds being sent. The cryptographical nature of the ring signature means that no one can tell which of the funds were really the source of the transaction – not even the person that gave the funds to the sender in the first place. A system of ‘key images’ associated with each ring signature ensures that although no one can tell the true source of the funds, it can be easily detected if the sender attempts to anonymously send their funds twice.

[psecdocumentary]

Thanks! Seeing as I’m not a coder I couldn’t tell you how ring signatures could be adapted to the chainmesh idea, but I can tell you that I also can’t see why such a thing wouldn’t be able to be adapted.

The exact specifics are for programmers to work out (if any desire to do so).

[urrtag]

Why would you try to replicate the blockchain on safenet? but you could “convert” blockchains to safenet.

Hardfork bitcoin to the SafeNetwork

As I see it, this would be on a strictly-PR-caper basis. The nuts and bolts underlying Bitcoin are not compatible with the SAFE network structure, and vice-a-versa. Not that both might not benefit from interfacing what the other offers, but I don’t see the angle of “importing” bitcoin to SAFE. Now using SAFE as a layer for transacting bitcoin value, like Lightning network, etc., might have advantages, wherein bitcoins are tied up in a SAFEBTC token that can later be settled back to the blockc…

Hardfork bitcoin to the SafeNetwork

The angle is manifold. When a new hardfork is created, particularly with something as valuable as bitcoin, people research it and learn about Safenet. Owners of BTC will want to extract value from their copied accounts on the new hardfork coin so they will have to install and use Safenet. General publicity will also result from doing this that could really benefit Safenet. A hardfork does not need to have a blockchain at all if we can maintain the all the core features of bicoin in safenet - in…

Hardfork bitcoin to the SafeNetwork

In an airdrop, it’s new funds being given to some set of people Typically funds reserved to holders of an older coin, who can claim a corresponding amount in the new coin, by proving they hold the old coin. Pretty much what you described. There are other types of airdrops, but what you describe is the most common type. In this context, the history of previous transactions of the old coin would be irrelevant, unless you want to keep it for archival/historical reasons. Like you said, the actu…

[TylerAbeoJordan]

I’m not sure how relevant this is with the Safe Network. Given how SN works, where data is already sharded and distributed over the network and the network itself maintains the data availability and security … then one just needs to create a Dapp wallet that can access and add to that data (and pay the put cost) … the network takes care of everything else … if more people use the Dapp wallet (and hence access the data), then the network will automatically shift the data around the network to adjust to the load.

[psecdocumentary]

I think you’re starting to better understand my idea. Chainmesh is meant as a transitional phase from one thing to another. One common setback I’ve seen in the paradigms of people looking to innovate into new things away from things that are no longer able to serve their intended function, is that people tend to forget about the idea of transitional phases. They expect that folks will just take a wild sudden quantum leap from an old system they are comfortable with and know well, into this new foreign alien environment that though this new environment is superior to the old one, does require a learning curve for people to get un-used to the old and learn to become used to the new.

Take for example, the idea of moving humanity from the old money-based economy into a futuristic resource based economy model. Is the RBE model superior? Yes. But a tool is only as good as those using that tool. Humanity has to mature into being capable of handling better and more powerful tools, and in order for that maturity to happen, there needs to be transitional phases.

One transitional phase which I think SafeNet itself is going to be a prime example of, is an equity-based economy. Right now we’re existing in a debt-based economy. A game of musical chairs in which in order for one person to succeed, another must fail. SafeNet is the antithesis of this. An equity based economy in which the success of the whole is determined by the success of the individuals that make up the whole. SafeNet is most surely a gateway into a potential future Resource Based Economy through its equity-based structure.

So to that end, this is all I am suggesting with the Chainmesh idea. It would use SafeNet / Parsec to stabilize existing blockchain technology using SafeNet to do so. Once people switch over to that stabilization, they will inevitably see that SafeCoin is superior and now that they are running SafeNet ANYWAYS, they may as well switch all of the currencies purely over to the SafeNet structure and abandon the old structure entirely. A process of evolution over time. A transitional phase.

One might also think of transitional phase technologies as exit / entrance ramps. If you’re driving on the express way and you want to get off at a particular town, you don’t drive off the viaduct and come smashing down into the street below. You safely use an exit ramp.

[psecdocumentary]

Refer to what I said about transitional phases.