The promise of this project looks great. But I'm wondering how the BlockCDN protocol proves to the demand side that the supplying node actually served real content to real end users? If the data about how much bandwidth was used comes from the CDN nodes themselves, then the supplying node could report false data about how much bandwidth they provided.
In a centralized solution, like Akamai, if their bill didn't match up with your expectations based on analytics, and you thought they were defrauding you, then you'd just switch providers or withhold payment or do an investigation. But in a decentralized solution like BlockCDN, you basically pay in advance, and your tokens will be transferred to a node who reports that they used X amount of bandwidth on your content. Is there some sort of "proof of bandwidth" baked into the protocol? Thanks!
The answer lies in the trading platform that sits at the core of BlockCDN. It uses smart contract technology to match orders automatically - Orders are inputted to the platform by the demander who pays per gb of data - the trading platform them matches that request to a sharer who can take the acceleration task on. The blockchain is used to record the workload undertaken by the sharer in order to pay them accordingly so that part of the system is how BlockCDN quantifies workloads - 'proof of bandwidth'. It is open and transparent of course - being blockchain - and so If there were any strange activity it would be possible to see -
Thank you. I could see how this would help prevent fraud if there was a reputation system contained within the market, and demanders had some ability to only match with sharers who had positive reputation. But if this doesn't exist what prevents a sharer from indicating that they have capacity to fulfill an order...and reporting that they did fulfill it...when really just dumping the bytes to /dev/null or a fake connection? Since the orders are matched by the smart contracts and the demander pays in advance, they don't have the ability to prevent their order from getting routed to a sharer who isn't providing good service. Or hopefully they do or the protocol accounts for this?
The fact that orders + value transfers are transparent on the blockchain are great! But what does the protocol do if a demander says "Hey, I just paid X into this platform to 10GB of bandwidth, and sharers claimed that they fullfilled this order, but I KNOW that there's no way real users consumed anywhere near 10GB of data yet, based on my traffic numbers."
Thanks again for your thoughts.
