TOP Network: Decentralized Communication — Part 1
Freedom means a lot to me. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve hated oppression, and growing up, it only grew stronger. And I doubt I am the first one in history. For ages, humanity has lived under the yoke of more than one centralized power structure. Let it be the Catholic Church in the medieval, the Shogunate in Edo Japan or whatever dictator sitting on his fat ass ordering atrocities like we order pizzas — accumulated power corrupts as it grows. So, I am rather lucky to grow up in this time and place(West-Europe, 1984–2019) and plan to remain free for the rest of my life as well.
Before we get to why decentralized communication services are a matter of survival and how TOP Network is going to do that, I am going to write a bit about history and how we got here.
The First Industrial Revolution(1760–1800’s) brought a shift from manual labor to machine labor. The Agricultural Age came to an end and the human population grew in numbers unlike we ever seen before. Roads, canals and overall food production saw great improvement. Literacy increased among many things, but the standard of living did not. At least, not for those on the lowest steps on the social ladder. Profit and power mostly centralized to the owners of the newly invented technologies.
The Second Industrial revolution (also known as the Technological revolution — late 19th century until the first World War), introduced the greatest economic growth is such a short amount of time. Sewage, communication lines, railroads, steamships and more improved the standard of living significantly. Many laborers lost jobs over the invention of machines and factories. The British Empire and the United States flourished the most and became superpowers. Electrification was among the most important inventions of the later and early 20th century.
The Third Industrial Revolution (also known as The Digital Revolution — late 20th century), left analog electronic and mechanical technology behind and lead us into the Information Age. Digital messaging (TCP/IP), digital camera’s, operating systems, digital data storage… the impossible became possible by computing binary (machine)code. From the Mark I to the Personal home computer (PC), cassette to CD, floppy disk to USB-stick every decade, Walkie-Talkie’s and PDA’s to Smart Phones, new wonders are introduced and our lives became a lot more convenient but significantly more complicated. Information could now be passed on in previous unseen speed. It is this digital revolution that made it possible to protect us from regimes, terrorist threats and bring atrocities to light, but also, introduces new dangers, such as data leaks (sensitive information shared to parties that can harm you or your organization) or system corruption by a computer virus or other attacks(e.g. Sybil, Denial of Service, Physical).
The Digital Revolution connected humanity in an unprecedented way by the thing we now know as the internet (a collection of different communication protocols) that bombards our brain daily with different all kinds of data feeds and media. It really made us reconsider our priorities(one could argue there’s being fought over) and are nearing a point where people have easier access to the internet than they have to clean drinking water.
All three revolutions have three things in common:
- People were fearful of new technology.
- All three really altered the course of humanity.
- All three connected humankind even more
The Fourth Industrial Revolution started and it will connect us even more. Not only with other people but as well more with devices — IoT (Internet of Things), 5G wireless tech, decentralized consensus (blockchain), Artificial Intelligence, 3d printing, nanotechnology, quantum computing.
So what’s next?
In this ever connecting world, where everything will go faster and with more possibilities, we are starting to rely on new things to keep up or keep working. These faster connections rely on algorithms. Very expensive algorithms. If those algorithms are developed by centralized parties such as major companies, those development costs need to be earned back. Usually what is the case, is that the valuable data accumulated from the users who users these algorithms pays for the development costs, but there is a thin line between the privacy of a person and a person becoming a means of production.
The problem can be found in the development of Artificial Intelligence, 5th generation mobile networks and other new technologies.
This is the danger of relying on a centralized party.- being dependent for connection or protection and thus open to the possibility of getting hacked and having sensitive data exposed can harm you in many ways.
Right now, there isn’t really a solution. There are some apps that provide end-to-end but rely on a centralized system for storage. This means that although the application itself is secure, the means of storage still can be accessed. Other applications are just accessible or are accessed because the governing entity simply allows it. Facebook messenger can be accessed by police, WhatsApp presumably so (being owned by Facebook) and WeChat is already forbidden for Australian soldiers because of serious security breaches. One can only imagine communication is not available or as leak as a sieve in countries like Iran or North-Korea.
Bottom line, our daily communication apps are not secure at all. One could argue that it’s a necessary evil, to counter terrorist attacks and so on, but it’s not the communication apps that plot attacks, it’s because of dissatisfied people. Personally, I am more worried about a dystopian totalitarian world where everything is monitored than a world where a dissatisfied lot finds the insanity to commit terrorist attacks. Besides that, it’s a fact more people commit suicide than are actually killed in war or by terrorist attacks.
Communication is not safe and in many cases, your location details are not either. If you are using most functions of your Android telephone, Google can see where you have been for the last years. Whether you are merely desiring some private time alone, or because your location is preventing you to join the world stage on equal terms, to obfuscate your connection to the internet might need to become a human right.
And my concerns are real. In a not so distant future, everything will be connected through IoT and there will be data streams everywhere. Placing a Smart Speaker in your home is prone to lead to security issues, as is the case with Samsung already.
Going completely off the grid might seems more and more appealing, but how to move forward in a reality where everyone else is connected? We need solutions and one remedy might be TOP Network.
The pioneering project is TOP Network. It’s an upcoming project that values decentralization and secure communication of paramount importance.
Being decentralized by nature, it can’t be altered that easily. Any malevolent party would need to control at least half of the nodes to do so.
TOP Network is providing some solutions to these delicate matters. TOP Network is coming up with BitVPN and TOP Messenger and these two dapps alone will be a much-needed shield and platform for freedom. Compared to existing messengers and VPN’s these dapps are exponentially more difficult to crack, if possible at all. Besides that, even if TOP would get a subpoena for messages from the FBI or the like, TOP would be unable to provide them, or present user information such as IP address.
Another thing about this project’s decentralized technology is that it will open-source a lot of the programming and provide full-stack solutions (means it will be much easier to develop on the network because the coding need not be done from scratch). Developers can easily build on TOP, and check if the coding has no backdoor or flaws that can be exploited.
TOP Network is designed to have multiple layers for transaction speed and security. In the next part, I am going do address these.
At the moment, TOP Network just released its second testnet (third will follow in April) and is tried as we speak.
END OF PART 1 (Part 2 can be found here)
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