Intro
Lets have a little break from my little series called Alt coins on the Internet and lets introduce some interesting coins or block chain technologies. I intend to make it as a series too, when I will find something interesting I would like to share it with you in here and maybe to make a little discussion about it. OK, so lets start with first episode.
In recent time I was reading about messaging systems based on block chain technologies. I found interesting project called Status, which aims to bring Ethereum DApps into smart phones and it would provide uncensorable messaging system, to chat with other people without possibility to be censored by governments (somewhere were mentioned China and WeChat) or providers of the system (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). But more about that later, maybe in one of the next episodes.
Another interesting article I found is about US military which want to develop secure platform for communication. In short ITAMCO (Indiana Technology and Manufacturing Companies) got a grant from DRAPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ) to create crypto-chat application on block chain technology.
I am sure there are some other interesting technologies I do not know, but today I would like to talk a little bit about one which got my attention.
Obsidian
Obsidian platform wants to focus on privacy and secrecy of communication on decentralized network. The aim of the project is to get rid of centralized entity, which may collect data or meta-data about users, and host its service on multiple nodes, to make it decentralized. Well, that's what the block chain is about. It should be possible with using Obsidian coin, which will paid as be reward for nodes securing the network.
Obsidian coin is based on Stratis, which means it is Proof of Stake coin, and will have Bitcoin features as the SegWit scaling solution. Obsidian Secure Messenger is in alpha, and you can find even introduction videos on youtube. But it is based on unpublished work so far, so we have to wait how it will works. It should also support file transport as images and documents.
In the case when the recipient would be offline and messages or files will not be able to reach the destination, they will be hold encrypted on nodes of the network till the recipient will not be online and will be able to get message or file. After that messages will be deleted from nodes. Messages should be encrypted by 256-bit symetric encryption, which should protect your messages enough.
There should be 3 types of nodes, light nodes, full nodes and masternodes, similar for example to PIVX.
Light nodes will not need to download whole block chain, therefore they will be dependent on full nodes to get info form them and to get synchronized with block chain. They will allow to send or receive payment of Obsidian coin and of course sending messages. For example Obsidian messenger is good example of the light node.
Full nodes will be validating blocks for reward, as I mentioned it is Proof of Stake, so they will secure the network. And as was written above, they will produce services for light nodes and will cache messages for offline users. These full nodes do not have such a strict rules like master nodes, and staking should be possible in shorter time period then initialization time for master node.
Master nodes have more strict rules but also should get higher rewards for securing the network, usually it means you have to lock some amount of coins for validation of blocks and to be 24/7 online. Conditions and requirement for masternodes are still ambiguous, but first estimate talks about need of 10,000 Obsidian coins to lock, which is again similar to PIVX, but still it is not decided and it will be corrected after testing phase.
Pre-sale is still going on, you can find it here. More info you may find in the whitepaper, which is a little shorter than other whitepapers I saw, it has only 7 pages, so you do not need to be scared to read it.
Well, this was just introduction, not advise to invest. I just wanted to share something what seems like an interesting idea, maybe you know any (or many) better alternatives. The truth is that for me it is still a ambiguous but I like the idea of private and secured messenger. Please leave comments with your thoughts to share it with us. Thanks.