Could Mesh Networks Replace The Internet?
https://coincentral.com/is-mesh-networking-the-future-of-online-connectivity/
Everyone wants a decentralized Internet, or at least everyone should. Decentralization takes the power from a few and gives it to many; a modern day technological Robin Hood. A decentralized Internet would bring more free markets and make control and censorship impossible to achieve. The Race To The Bottom would be put into full swing. Everyone would be undercutting everyone until equilibrium was reached instead of the system of artificial scarcity that we have today. Resources are abundant but our economy does not reflect that fact. Soon™, it will. However, how do we incentivize individuals to boot up their own mesh network nodes?
You guessed it: cryptocurrency. This is why I think the term "shitcoin" shows a major lack of understanding the economy. A lot of coins out there "only" create a coin to monetize the system. They don't really do anything. They are simply a placeholder for the value of the project. It doesn't look like much, but this is huge. The coin is used to pay the developers. The coin is used to pay everyone offering a service within the bounds of the project. The coin is used to pick up investors. The coin is used to buy the service. Claiming that he coin was never needed in the first place seems shortsighted, at best.
Perhaps if the Ethereum DAO hadn't been hacked we wouldn't be here. The DAO would be funding a lot of these projects directly with Ethereum. However, here we are. ICOs are trading ERC-20 tokens for Ether in addition to keeping like 10% of the ERC-20 tokens for themselves. This is the Beginning of the Race To The Bottom.
Race To The Bottom
New projects are going to start coming out that are going to do exactly the same thing as the old projects. The difference? Higher levels of decentralization and lower levels of greed. Whenever you see an ICO (take EOS and Block.One for example) take four billion dollars worth of Ether on top of 10% of all EOS coins, you know that isn't going to last. These projects are open source. Any group in the world can come along and fork it for the greater good. The true long-term winners will be the ones who start projects at the bottom. Ultimate blockchains will start out as universal basic income for ultimate decentralization and then pivot to something else. However, this is a long way off. Sometimes it's better to focus on the now.
Smart Mesh Token (SMT)
Not to be confused with Smart Media Token (SMT), SunMoney Token (SMT), or Smart Media-Market Token (SMT), Smart Mesh Network is an ERC-20 token whose sole focus is to monetize a mesh network decentralized internet.
Along with IOTA, it seeks to connect devices to the Internet Of Things. Imagine being able to buy a self driving car and making money off of it as a taxi service like Lift or Uber with no middle man. Imagine being able to go in on an investment like this with 10 other people, being enforced by smart contracts. Soon™, these will be real possibilities.
The main goal of SMT is to create the mesh networks through smart phones. Using the Wifi capabilities that everyone is running around with anyway, we can create a peer to peer network.
Let's say your in a place that has bad or no service. If you're connected to a mesh network and any of the nodes do have service you can buy service from that node. Even if no node has service all the nodes still effectively create their own local internet. The implications of this service could have amazing worldwide use cases, and it would even incentivize more wealthy individuals to set up strong nodes in areas that need it the most; spreading internet access to more people around the globe than ever before. This would even apply to driving through a tunnel or a bad stretch of freeway, in addition to developing nations.
Dent
Dent is another project that reminds me of mesh network technology. It's not as flashy or ambitious as SMT, but maybe it's simplicity will allow development and mainstream adoption to come faster. Dent simply attempts to allow users to sell their unused mobile data for Dent coins. To me, it feels like this requires the same type of technology as mesh network nodes.
Sure thing?
Who knows! Both of these projects could fail miserably! However, I believe that the idea is immortal. Decentralized Mesh Internet will be a crucial cog of this incoming Industrial Revolution.