Topic: Making BitMessage into a BitPostage alt-coin + Distributed Longterm Storage - page 2. (Read 4298 times)

I suggested something similar on the Bitmessage subreddit a while ago, but people weren't enthusiastic about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessage/comments/1csmxr/pros_and_cons_of_using_btc_postage_instead_of_pow/

I'm no expert, but this sounds like an interesting concept. I've been using Bitmessage with no desire for any changes, but who knows, maybe this "BitPostage" can find a niche too.

*gasp*
An "alt-coin" with a purpose? 

BitMessage is great because it allows anonymous communication while preventing spam.  What it suffers from is an 'inability' to store proof of work.  So I was thinking of ways to make it 'profitable' to participate in the network and enable the creation of an interesting 'postage' chain.  Given 'postage' you would be able to send messages from devices without CPU power and without any delay.  The ability to send messages without delay is actually critical for may 'real-time' interactive uses.

Start with a normal 'blockchain' that mines BitPostage and allows it to be traded on the chain.   Then allow messages to be sent for a fee proportional to their size.   The challenge is in making sure there is motive and requirement to send the ENTIRE message broadcast through the network.    If it simply operated like BitCoin then there would be no motive for forwarding a large message, after all only the miner can profit.    To solve this problem we have the BitPostage network pay dividends from transaction fees.    The second challenge is preventing nodes from cheating and 'only sending the hash' of the message so they could collect the dividends without actually including the message.   This could be done by making the mining reward dependent upon hashing the coinbase transaction as a prefix to the entire message and thus prove that the entire message was present at the time the coinbase was generated.

Then there is the challenge of ensuring that the message is 'held' on the network for a certain length of time before being deleted.   This can be solved by allowing the same message to pay out fees over many blocks where the miner must *prove* they still hold the entire message.  Every other node in the network would also need to store the entire message in order to 'validate' the blocks.    The result will be that users could select how long they want a message 'stored' in the network based on the fee they pay.   All data would be on all nodes and all nodes benefit from keeping the data available and forwarding it on.  

Once the message runs out of postage miners no longer need to keep it around to earn fees so they can delete it.