- What I'd like to know is how will it be usable?
(By that I mean, will you need a special browser that connects to the MN network? Or will you just use your normal browser with it pointing at some sort of "DarkTor" proxy client installed on your system?)
- If you do use your current browser, what are the ramifications of that same browser then connecting to websites directly without going through DarkTor? (i.e. cookies, history, cache, etc)
- If you need to use a special browser, what are the development and maintenance ramifications of this?
- Will you be able to browse to any current website anonymously and will everything work like it currently does?
If MasterNet functions as a distributed VPN, then you buy credit on it in-wallet, are issued some kind of numeric token and then point your existing browser at whatever the designated proxy is (a MN presumeably) specifying your credit token and do everything as normal, except securely and privately.
- Is it likely there will be websites that sit exclusively within the DarkTor network? What special advantages might they have? What would be a high level domain associated with this and what are the technical ramifications of this?
- What about bandwidth issues if the user wants to stream video, share desktops, etc?
- What about protocols other than HTTP(S)? Will we open it to all sorts of things or restrict it?
.dark, .private, .anything you like, the MNs could run their own DNS service. (Another revenue stream - DarkGoDaddy
)
Bandwidth would be capped depending on what you've paid for.
As to protocols, everything currently existing will work, it depends what 'we' choose to allow, and new protocols such as mnp could be implemented if/as needed.
And with regards to the name, I have a few ideas too, but firstly:
- Who will use this service?
- What would we expect the demographic to be (which is important in terms of pricing)?
- Who is offering the service? (obviously, it's the collective MNs, but is that "DarkCoin")
- If it's "DarkCoin" offering the service, what are the risks to the value of DRK if the service is compromised?
- Is it likely we'll travel along unscathed or will DarkTor likely become a magnet for guv hackers everywhere to break or takedown?
- Will the risk we're exposing DRK to via this service be worth it?
- Will DarkTor (or whatever it will be called) being associated with DarkCoin impact the wider adoption and take-up of DRK as a payment option?
There are different schools of though about the target demographic. I think the easiest solution is to make it as cheap as possible and let people decide for themselves what they want to use it for, if they want to use it at all.
DS+ gives users a sliding scale of transactional anonymity, although 2 rounds is probably enough for anyone, nobody has traced a 2 round transaction yet - maybe any future MasterNet pricing and structure could also be mutable to different needs.
edit: I've stated before that I think Evan and team should just facilitate all this by making it easy for anyone to use the MN network via some sort of API, but I don't really see any reason why the core team shouldn't be producing their own stuff to run on it too, legailities permitting.
Can you see where I'm going with this? A whole lot more discussion is needed on what this is, how it meshes (DarkMesh?) into the rest of DarkCoin's plan and strategy and what the long term potential is. There needs to be a lot more clarity and then I think a name will be chosen that's likely to be more accurate for the service's ultimate goal. It's very easy to get all hyped up early on, pick a name that ultimately doesn't make sense (anyone remember Apple's Lisa?). Iris sounds good and all but when you look at the definition of iris (from wikipedia)...
"The iris (plural: irides or irises) is a thin, circular structure in the eye, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil and thus the amount of light reaching the retina"
...that concept "the amount of light reaching the retina" isn't really a metaphor for what this service is about. We're not "restricting the amount of light reaching the retina" I would think, we're opening everything up but making the light invisible (DarkInvis perhaps?)
Anyway, some things to consider.
You're right this all needs a lot of thought!
Just thinking out loud
