By
Kseniia Klichova
June 21st, 2019
A new cryptocurrency and blockchain innovator SkyCoin has recently launched its Testnet Service of SkyWire, a new completely decentralized internet.
A decentralized internet that operates on consensus has long been tech futurists’ dream. But, the tech was mostly termed as a figment of people’s imaginations and just a good script of tech TV shows like Silicon Valley. But, with the extraordinary power of Blockchain Technology, a true fully decentralized environment could be set for realization as several cutting-edge startups are working on it.
SkyCoin, a new cryptocurrency and Blockchain innovator has recently disclosed the details of its launching a Testnet Service of SkyWire, a new completely decentralized internet.
SkyWire represents itself a stellar technology designed to make the internet transparent and easily accessible for people around the world. It is restructuring how people connect to each other on the World Wide Web to start a decentralized revolution.
The current system that SkyWire is going to replace is the centralized TCP/IP protocol that handles data packets on the internet. TCP handles speed and IP routes the data between connected entities. These protocols are around 40 years old and are insecure, inefficient and heavily controlled by government around the world.
SkyWire aims to overhaul the aging protocols in the internet of today. It uses a mesh network that consists of thousands and thousands of nodes connected with each other and used for forwarding and routing all the traffic. This web or mesh-like connection is more stable, safer and faster than the current TCP/IP protocol used in the World Wide Web. It is essentially a decentralized distributed network.
The updated protocol is called Multi-Protocol Label Switching or MLPS. With this new protocol, routes are predetermined and thus allow for higher scalability and speeds. With MLPS comes increased privacy as each node can only see the previous and next node for the data packet only. This is more private than IP V4 and IP V6 that can be used to trace the origin and destination of each data packet being sent on the internet.
SkyWire is also overall cheaper than the current system as it utilizes the latest Blockchain Technology. It is an internet built by the people and will take the world away from legacy ISPs who are dominating the internet services and charging more for less and have complete monopoly. Where Net Neutrality failed, SkyWire will succeed.
Users will have the freedom to connect to the node of their choice and pay only the bandwidth they are using. This will help drive down the internet costs put the data usage control back in the hands of the user. Overall, the price of connectivity will be significantly lower than traditional ISPs.
SkyWire Testnet was officially released on 22 May 2018. The software allows the users to test the capability of the new protocol proposed by SkyWire. Skyminers, who are the hardware telecom part of the SkyCoin network are awarded SkyCoins in return for their participation in keeping the hardware side of things working. Self-built Skyminers are also eligible for participation.
