Coming Soon: Get BST in Exchange for Renting Out Your IP Address with Hprox, BlockStamp’s First Partner Project

You probably knew that the “information-industrial complex” has an interest in what you see or don’t see on the web.

On the one hand, there are high-level discussions about — if not outright implementation of — internet censorship all around the world. Even in some of the supposedly most free of nations.

And on the other hand, information about your web browsing is a key ingredient in the business models of some of today’s biggest and most powerful technology companies and the other companies they sell it to.

But what about your interest in having free choices about the ideas you explore on the web? And about whether you stay private as you make these choices?

We’re happy to announce that BlockStamp’s first partner project, a peer-to-peer online proxy service provider called hprox, will soon help you not only to protect these interests but also to make some profits along the way!

More detailed information will be available when hprox formally launches in coming weeks. But just to provide you with some key facts in the meantime:

The online proxy market is bigger than you might have thought.

If you have more than a passing interest in cryptocurrencies and other liberty-friendly technologies, then you have probably used a proxy server from time to time — if you aren’t using one every day. Essentially, they let you bypass network restrictions (usually imposed by governments or employers) by masking the origin of your data traffic.

The demand for proxy services isn’t just from privacy enthusiasts or people streaming content from other countries, though. Businesses use proxy services to test that their online initiatives are working like they should. For example, a business might want to verify that its online ads are actually appearing correctly to viewers with IP addresses in certain geographical areas.

But that business can’t just use any old proxy IP address. It needs to be one that is not flagged as a proxy. Otherwise, it’s back to square one.

Ensuring that proxy IP addresses are not flagged as proxies can be a challenge. One way to overcome it is to use a so-called residential proxy service with thousands of IP addresses from private residences.

Hprox provides such a residential proxy service. Unlike other solutions, though, it does so through peer-to-peer network of proxy buyers and sellers. Therefore:

With hprox you can participate on both sides of the proxy market — and earn a tidy sum in the process.

As a proxy buyer, you will be able to use hprox to access a network of residential proxy IP addresses (which are far superior to single-IP address Virtual Private Networks, usually from data centers) at the market’s most competitive pricing, according the hprox team’s plans.

But you can also use hprox to rent out your IP address to other proxy buyers who might also happen to be interested in the proxy market’s best offering at its most competitive pricing.

Hprox will share the overwhelming majority of its income with IP address providers. Preliminary estimates suggest that you will be able to earn upwards of $500 per month providing your IP address this way.

And that’s where BlockStamp comes in.

Hprox will use the BST coin to settle payments to IP address providers for practical and philosophical reasons.

In principle, a cryptocurrency was the obvious choice for making payments to a network of IP address providers located in jurisdictions all around the world. Transactions in cryptocurrencies, which are are not subject to regulatory oversight, are faster and usually far cheaper than transactions in fiat currencies.

Out of all the cryptocurrencies available today, the hprox team chose to work with the BST coin for two reasons:

1. Practically, the transaction costs of paying IP address providers in BST are negligible. BlockStamp is a relatively new blockchain, and miners’ fees are quite low.
2. Philosophically, the hprox team aligns closely with the BlockStamp team. We both believe in delivering — not just promising to deliver — technology that supports fairness, liberty, and transparency to specific problem areas of the digital economy. A specific example of this alignment is that hprox’s peer-to-peer proxy network and BlockStamp’s peer-to-peer Domain Naming System (estimated launch: Q2 2019) will complement each other nicely. Users may choose to stack both applications together for near-bulletproof protection against online surveillance and censorship.

You can learn more about BlockStamp here. When hprox formally launches, you can learn more about the project at its website.

About BlockStamp:

BlockStamp is a multipurpose Bitcoin blockchain fork developed by the BlockStamp Foundation, a not-for-profit organization. Designed to promote liberty, transparency, and sovereignty in areas of the digital economy where these fundamental values are most at risk, BlockStamp is built in to a radically fair gambling platform, a digital tool for transparently sealing data, and a censorship-proof internet Domain Naming System.