Jacob Gadikian on Tachyon Protocol’s decentralized internet

0:01I'm Ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have Jacob got a key in the founder of tachyon Protocol Jacob welcome to the show it's a pleasure to have you here today hey Thank You ash it's really great to be on your show today yeah likewise great having you I'd love if you could kick off the interview

0:21by explaining a little bit of the background issues that you saw throughout the blockchain industry and the security industry and how that led to you starting the Tachyon protocol sure so it's kind of interesting that tachyon itself does not actually solve any blockchain problems that's kind of been abstracted out it does introduce a novel high speed payments feature the

0:49payments in tachyon are actually streamed in real time and that you know initially was not possible in fact we built a prototype in salinity for tachyon and found that it just wasn't going to work on a theorem it wasn't going to be fast enough we ended up partnering with these systems and what be systems did has actually created a new payment channel mechanism called

1:15portal which enables instant payments from stores of value that are kept on chain that can be claimed by the recipient at any time so most of our you know blockchain engineering actually comes from the v-system side and was really enhanced by the portal product now on the side of security tachyon probably the biggest single problem that

1:48we're solving is the fact that most VPNs at present actually have a threat model of the VPN provider versus the user so the VPN provider is a company right a VPN provider can be compelled into giving up information on its users and we basically eliminate that piece of the

2:17threat tachyon itself does not operate any tachyon notes and instead you know thousands of note operators all currently it's more like about 50 note operators run the infrastructure for the network so there's there's a lower threat to the user and then on the business side of things tachyon is also more competitive because

2:46of its decentralized nature Note operators build relationships with users and can establish you know their own brand in the ecosystem and basically you know what we have is this payment technology that makes it very very easy for them to accept payments in real time mm-hmm that's great so we've touched on a few different things here there's the VPN there's payments and then we're

3:13talking about you know data of users of the Internet in the way that they're experiencing the internet having to go through VPNs and having their data or their you know information with regards to their use of the Internet sort of at the mercy of central more centralized VPNs you know and it can get very technical with all these little different pieces so I want to just take

3:37a step back real quick and talk about you know what this whole thing is and it seems that it's almost like a decentralized Internet Protocol as you say you know VPNs right now they seem to be for they're getting very popular but for the most part it's for power users of the Internet and people who really cared about their personal privacy can you talk about as tachyon continues to

4:03grow and you know what this decent decentralized Internet as that continues to grow how will that change the way that people browse the Internet and you know put out their information on the Internet as well sure so there's this kind of ties into something that I wanted to discuss in a later point as well but I'll kind of bring it up now so the Tachyon net

4:27is building a distributed computer that you know for all intents and purposes is currently being fueled by the vast demand for VPN services so what no des operator puts up a provider node that sells services to users it also joins what's called a DHT a distributed hash table and this DHT coupled with the

4:56encryption parts of the Tachyon protocol allow machines on the Tachyon network to actually talk to one another and provide coordinated services so in terms of how this is going to change the way that people you know use the internet well in the very near term right they might be installing an app on their phone or their computer we've had huge success

5:20with that we've had 300,000 downloads so far which keeps their traffic private ok in the longer term the same nodes that fuel that app are also going to fuel other services distributed compute is one of those another one would be distributed storage so for a user who is publishing in the future you know the

5:49Tachyon network will be actually an option for their content storage needs so that that's that's part of how it is going to affect user experience maybe another thing is that we increase privacy not only on the user level you know we have a very very strong encryption protocol that keeps communications secure between users and

6:20also between nodes so nodes on the Tachyon network that are running the tachyon software can effectively collaborate in complete privacy and they're also anonymous note operators can choose to reveal themselves or not you know that the branding is really up to them and what that means is that you

6:49know kind of a byproduct of what we're doing is this massive distributed computation grid Newark our current strategy is just to fuel that with as many VPN customers as possible mm-hmm that's great and with this tachyon Network you know to use the tachyon VPN services do do those customers need to be run out or do they have to have any technical experience to be able to

7:16utilize the benefits of the tachyon VPN that's a great question so users do not need to be running a node in fact right now in our say like alpha stage tachyon is free anybody can go to the Google Play Store or the iPhone App Store and they can download tachyon to their device and use it and in in terms of running a node I should

7:45touch on that just a little bit we actually have a piece of software called the node manager that runs on Mac computers and the way you join the node network is you load up the node manager run a script on a linux server of your choice and then that machine is then enrolled in the network but certainly you know end users do not need to run a node it off that's that's great to know

8:10and that obviously is going to lower the barriers to entry and show that shows why you have so much growth so far now you touched on you know the node part and the the fact that you can do staking on these nodes can you talk a little bit about you know the network its consensus mechanism and then how people can stake and contribute to the network absolutely

8:33so staking is gonna go live later this month and one thing that I should actually let you know it since tachyon does not actually have its own blockchain while we do use proof of stake for security reasons right there is no consensus mechanism in tachyon the nodes do not actually have to come to agreement on any set of facts what the stinking is therefore is to ensure

9:01that entrance into the network are honest and also to get access to the services of the the app and marketplace so once a user has staked on a node they are able to earn session fees so they're earned from staking but the session fees are really well it's a and maybe I'll

9:32include a little anecdote here I've been testing placing nodes in different places and learning about the ideal strategy for that right like so at which hosting provider what should the bandwidth levels be like what type of computer do you need and I was able to optimize that by 20x I started on very cheap BBS's and

10:02eventually I reached a level where I was breaking one terabyte per month on those VPSs which was my limit there were five dollar-a-month PBS's and I only use a terabyte per month and then I moved to a data center that I'd done a lot of research on there called hetzer and they have very good internet peering that means they're highly connected to the

10:32rest of the internet they've spent a lot of money bringing in fiber-optic cables and really optimizing their networks and I went from serving a terabyte in a month to about a terabyte in a day so when when touching on the issue of session fees it is not you know in stinking right it's like a level payment right if we if you look at say the

11:01cosmos network or even the V systems network itself right you you you would get a fixed amount for your staking for providing security on that level tachyon is exactly the same on the level of session fees our session rewards where you're being paid for Internet traffic okay actually get paid in five mega byte blocks in real time by

11:29the user on that level you know running a note is a little bit more like a service provider and nodes that are well-placed will do extremely well it's mostly about optimizing to be able to cover as many customers as possible that's great and that leads me to the next question about now this again this difference between the decentralized

11:56internet protocol of the future and the way that ISPs and centralized servers sort of control the internet right now you know as tachyon continues to grow and people use this as a method of accessing the Internet is it true that you know certain you know ISPs will not be able to stop you from accessing the Internet and free flowing you know to whatever part of the Internet you would

12:20like that's that's absolutely correct your internet server service provider would not be able to block content because they can't actually see what's in your traffic when you're using tech yet tachyon has you know first of all encryption to shield your traffic but then also the ability to shape your traffic as other protocols so for example if you wanted to visit a web

12:49site using the HTTP protocol on tachyon can make that look like it's SMTP email and there there are a number of tools built into tachyon to make it very difficult for your ISP to to block your access to anything and also to surveil it Wow and so and you also you know as you mentioned there's many tools in

13:17there and there's also an IP X wallet and you touched on this at the very beginning but I do want to get to it before the interview is over about the payment solution payment systems you know integrated into this decentralized internet protocol you have a full payment network in identification network can you touch on the IPX wallet the IP x token of the currencies and how

13:37that functions throughout the network as well yeah absolutely so integrating that wallet was was kind of one of the key pieces of building tachyon and that'll go live when the portal payment channel system goes live on V systems enabling the streaming real-time payments and what it does right is when you open up

14:04the tachyon app and begin to use bandwidth those payments occur instantly so that you only pay for what you use as a user and as a node operator you're always getting paid for traffic that's been used so it is a you know really interesting and novel solution to

14:33payments I far as I know we're gonna be the first live product featuring high-volume streaming real-time payments you know there there have been some other attempts for example on the Lightning Network however the portal system is actually much simpler the Lightning Network requires a lot of additional infrastructure and users sometimes even need to run nodes

15:00whereas portal actually just exists in smart contracts on the v-system blockchain so yeah that that's a bit about the wallet in the app and additionally just you know kind of while we're on this topic anybody with IP X on their wallet is actually going to be able to very shortly sign up for staking at tachyon bout Eco and actually begin sponsoring

15:28node operators immediately yeah yeah that's great and I was just gonna ask you you know you have so many updates that are coming out in the near future here with the development you know what are the milestones that users have to look forward to okay so milestones all right probably the first and current largest is the launch of staking about the end

15:55of this month what that's gonna do is it's gonna bring the incentive system online for the node operators and you know we we expect that given that one user growth has been far larger than we expected actually like we've been amazed since we launched the software first it was a couple hundred then it was thousands and now it's three hundred

16:25thousand downloads of the app and if the current growth rate content continues we're on track for a million sometime in June and as it kind of as that's going right the next technical milestone is actually going to be the launch of portal on the main systems platform and the ability of users to begin paying node operators so that will happen late

16:59summer and what that's gonna do is just further enhance the ecosystem and of course you know the folks who begun staking now are gonna be really well positioned kind of to be service providers later on they're going to be a few performance and security enhancements so currently when a tachyon user connects to a tachyon node they are

17:30you know one to one relationship with them meaning that the traffic is just moving from user to node and you know we always thought that it would be more ideal to add kind of like a multipath routing so that will be coming online later this year and and what that will actually do is ensure that as a user your traffic does not

18:00always come out of the same end point basically makes you harder to track you know makes makes it a lot more private mm-hmm well it sounds like you have a lot of great updates coming I'm looking forward to seeing the staking and the portal released for the viewers what's the best way for them to follow along with tachyons updates and get involved with the community so you know our

18:22website is techy and eco and they can go there but actually you know probably the best way that they can begin to get involved is to download the app on their phone or their desktop computer and try it out and you know then if they go to the website there are also links to telegram and medium and Twitter and you know they can check it out and engage

18:48with us if they're interested in running an ode and I should say we're definitely you know looking for node operators who I would say these are generally people with at least a little Linux experience they're looking to actually run a note they can also contact me at gatok ian on twitter and i'm personally you know helping people to set up notes that's at

19:16ga di ki and and lastly if they are looking to sponsor nodes and capture session rewards they should head on over to the website and look for details on dee staking which will be out shortly great I'm very exciting I will leave those links in the description box below for the viewers Jacob thank you so much

19:44for taking the time to go through Tachyon with us the growth is been great so far and you know I wish you all the best and moving forward with this project and let's follow up in the near future wonderful thank you so much