Proposal “DASH-Satellites-Demonstration“ (Closed)Back

Title:DASH Satellites Demonstration
Owner:gilemon
Monthly amount: 46 DASH (1571 USD)
Completed payments: no payments occurred yet (12 month remaining)
Payment start/end: 2017-11-18 / 2018-11-10 (added on 2017-11-13)
Final voting deadline: in passed
Votes: 102 Yes / 552 No / 125 Abstain

Proposal description

IMPORTANT: the proposal was modified on 21/11/17 to double the bandwidth from 512 Kbps to 1 Mbps. This represents a 25 DASH discount on total price. See full details on the latest forum post.

Our proposal to the network is to increase the influence of DASH by transmitting the live chain from satellites around the world providing free access to the DASH network. It has the potential to open up a world of new opportunities for the use of DASH. There are vast areas of the world where the financial infrastructures are in their infancy, and this proposal is a step forward to create a globally accessible cryptocurrency.
The proposal contains significant research and development efforts that will lead to innovative solution in the distribution of DASH. No matter whether it is using other wireless infrastructure or means of telecommunication, the work involved in this proposal is a leap forward in reducing the cost of transmitting DASH chain data all over the world.
This demonstration provides 12 months broadcasting at 1024 kbps over Asia (equal to 105 GO per month). You can find the fully detailed pdf version of this proposal here:
http://nthinking.net/vrak/dash/proposals/Dash_Satellites_Demonstration_Proposal-v1.21.pdf
And the pre-proposal discussion on the forum is here:
https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/streaming-the-dash-blockchain-to-the-whole-planet-from-geosynchronous-satellites.17279/

DASH long-term benefits
  1. Transmitting the live DASH chain from satellites all over the globe
  2. Providing free access to the DASH network
  3. Serving potential DASH users all over the world in places beyond the reach of the usual internet
  4. Enable off-grid DASH applications (outdoor events, Air-gap, ATM, crypto-communities)
  5. Increasing network resiliency in case of localized catastrophic events (disaster, war, censorship)
  6. DASH leading Research and Development in Telecommunication Infrastructure founded by the governance
  7. Public Relations and Marketing benefits from Media exposure
  8. Countering political intervention
  9. Countless future applications that yet to be discovered (see some examples in Appendix D in the full proposal)

Who are we
nThinking has extensive experience dealing with engineering projects and corporations. We currently work in railway, logistics and telecom industries. We would be very interested to work on such project.
Founded in 2007, nThinking is headquartered in Hong Kong. Our team of 5 engineers traverse the globe, with local presence in France, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. You can find the full list of our customers here: https://nthinking.net/#customers

About me
Being an advocate for freedom of information since the beginning of the 2000s, I've been involved in various open projects: SourceForge, Wikipedia, Tor, GitHub.
In Hong Kong 2014, Tungfa introduced me to Darkcoin, since then I have been following the incredible development of the DASH ecosystem. I attended the first conference in London this September and I really enjoyed the crowd of people I physically met there. This made me realize like Chuck Williams said on his presentation that my morals and principles can align with the work I can be doing for DASH.
Also on my spare time I like to make YouTube videos, here are some examples that will help you know who I am:

Thank you for reading this description and again the full proposal is here.
I hope you're as interested in this journey as I am.

Gilemon

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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?

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0 points,6 years ago
If you did a little more reading-up, you would have presented a proposal for 3 months or less, shown something(anything) and then asked for more. That is how decentralized trust works.

Even then it would be a stretch but it would have an even chance of passing. My guess is that the vote tally would have been reversed.

A 12 month proposal will not likely pass, nor should it.

This is a good technology demo project, much better than the guy with MNO buddies and a plane or the edibles people who want their whole trip sponsored.

People like you are a credit to the ecosystem, but this project has paid the price for lack of research. I truly wanted to vote yes but was forced to abstain. I really hope you resubmit, you will have my votes to begin with.

Wixam
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0 points,6 years ago
Thanks for the good words and advice Wixam.
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1 point,6 years ago
Seems a bit early, and the price of Dash will almost definitely overcome the 46 Dash per month requested/needed, I think. A 12 month commitment for anything is hard to assess appropriately.

Interestingly, it's possible that the price of dash would scale with the bandwidth requirements here. That would be an interesting thing to track.

Also, I'm glad you're planning ahead for the 300MB blocks in your pdf. I didn't know satellite speeds could accommodate that kind of bandwidth.

Chuck's $0.02.
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0 points,6 years ago
Thanks Chuck! That would be very interesting indeed.
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0 points,6 years ago
I would rather wait to support a proposal like this until there is a clear need. Right now this mainly would serve as PR; the few super-remote users today who need to use a blockchain can use a satellite phone and an SPV wallet.
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0 points,6 years ago
@hu-man, a satellite phone with Internet access and SPV wallet solution would only allow the most common applications. And you need to consider that even if they probably look cheap to you (USD 1,000 to 2,000 for the device + USD 70 per month subscription), they represent an investment that most of people can’t afford.
If you push your logic, you could also argue that if anybody needs to connect remotely and download the whole chain, he could be using a bidirectional broadband Internet satellite plan. Again, they are not cheap for an average consumer and they come with complicated binding contracts, KYC, data caps, FUPs, expensive proprietary terminal, etc.
To make an analogy with the entertainment industry, it would be like advising someone who have little access to Internet but who still want to see some HD movies, to get an Internet Satellite plan for Netflix. He would kill his data cap in an hour. That’s the reason why he would rather have an HDTV satellite subscriptions with tones of channels.

The good news it the chain is synchronized, so it is the main financial advantage of this proposal, to mutualize the expense of a broadcast and allow anyone to get the expensive download link for free everywhere on ground, for not so much more than a single broadband internet satellite plan.

Also, I’d like to reiterate that it’s very doable, in a second phase, to have a bidirectional connection that would allow sending transactions from the satellite dish without any significant increase in the lease price (see details in my answers to @moonknight and @A_node_to_a_Master below).
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0 points,6 years ago
For the scaling concern and as the proposal submission platform doesn’t allow me to change the payment terms without resubmitting the whole thing, I’m willing to demonstrate my commitment to this project by proposing 2 times more bit-rate for the same total price (from 512 Kbps to 1 Mbps). This is adding a 20% cost increase on the lease that we will absorb. At proposal submission date market price this is equivalent to a 25 DASH discount on total price. I have updated the description and the pdf accordingly. I hope it also helps demonstrating that this concern can be addressed by allocating more bandwidth accordingly. The updated bit-rate allows 105 GO of Data per month. At current network requirement, this will be plenty enough to rebroadcast the whole chain at least 4 times per week. We don’t need to change this solution until we reached a full transponder capacity. For long term scaling, we have many options. The software optimization described in the forum by Stan can be implemented on ground at the terminal hub servers. And there is already some hardware solution to accommodate such requirements: launching a dedicated Satellite or leasing on a 100 Gbps link on an already existing high-throughput satellite (HTS).

A critic coming a lot, is that this is a waste of money as it will not be used. I’ll not go again over the examples in the appendix of the proposal; some are indeed far-fetched, but please do the exercise of going back in time when there was no Internet access available to the common people and imagine what kind of use cases we could have been thinking about. As you all know, the first civilians who used it were a bunch of techies reaching out to each other’s. Who could have guess that 30 years later, we would have been using it for crypto currency applications?

Going back to earth, we are getting in touch with the local community in countries having economic instability. Internet penetration is a key metric to consider when starting a project there. The applications in places beyond the reach of the usual internet, that this proposal enables, are definitely something they are willing to explore further.
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-1 point,6 years ago
Gilemon,

I’ve been following your proposal for the past days. Witnessing such a struggle to defend your project, I can’t help writing this… Whatch out it contains vitriol!!!

I’ll stay anonymous – isn’t what DASH is about? – But I go by the name of “hillibilliflayer” at least today.
I’ve been actively participating in Outernet project and crowdfunding.
My background is technical so I deeply understand the whys and wherefores of your proposal, its innovation potential and what it can accomplish in a close future.

I don’t know your team, neither your company. However, your proposal is clear, professional and you defend it with such humility on this forum that you know for sure what you are projecting and fully able to implement it. At least that’s the impression you gave me after exhaustively reading the pdf.

You’re just dealing with the wrong people here… Did they even read it? One says no, the rest follows? Are they like a herd of slugs sharing their slime?

Let’s face it, DASH MNO are a bunch of Quakers and hilly-billies limping arrogantly in the crypto world with their shoes full of dirt and this shitty smell from small US farms.
These are the one saying no to your project! Feed a swine with foie-gras…

Programmer’s team didn’t do much more than replicating BTC code with small adjustments – for pseudo anonymous marketing BS – and have no sense of innovation, perspicacity, vision of the future of cryptoz. They’re just busy moving air around and waiting to see what BTC will do to follow… Herd of slugs I’m telling you…

DASH community just sees DASH as lottery ticket that made them “cheaply” rich… Just one more way of speculating, could have been gold, could have been Monsanto stock…

Crypto are something else! You’re putting it in front of their face and they can see. Too much c@ke? Too many h&&kers? Too much boredom in the biased value of their money?

I let you conclude…

Open up the windows DASH!!! Start smelling rotten inside your community… Continue funding T-shirts and credit card projects. You’ll give other cryptos a great future.

Don’t give up, find another community.
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0 points,6 years ago
From the tone of your comment we can beleive your'e not involved with dash one way or another, but from your own admission is involved in the outernet project. Your insulting diatribe dont help gilemon or your project. You make the right decision to stay anonymous, not for dash but for the outernet project. Toxics members of any community are a cancer. We have our own. You are damaging your project and gilemon efforts thinking you can come here and burn bridges.

Its the burden of the proposal owner to show the community the pertinence of his project. Gilemon have been very professional and open to commentary about his proposal. Theres still time for him to convince the community that his project add value to the network. What you did is just egocentrical and childish. For your own sake stay anonymous because your reputation will be forever tarnished by this hatefull rant.
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0 points,6 years ago
I'm sorry OP, but after reading the comments on the pre-discussion thread and also on this thread i decided to vote against it.

I think the technical difficulties that Dash on-chain route will bring to this budget proposal, the very limited users that this budget proposal can target
and the 12 month period that is included in this budget proposal, are currently my main reasons to vote no.
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0 points,6 years ago
Thanks for your time considering this proposal @qwizzie. You are helping me a lot.

I hope you will still have time to read this.
Would you vote yes if the lease is reduced to 6 months and with 3 x 163 DASH payments under escrow arrangement (total 489 DASH)?
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0 points,6 years ago
It would make me re-evaluate your (new) budget proposal, but i would still need to be convinced its is technically doable with Dash current roadmap and can target enough users...
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0 points,6 years ago
It is some kind of advertising, but in the end, no one will using it (now)
In the end it's the same thing Blockstream did and that's the reason i vote no.
(note: i would be interested in off-grid DASH applications)
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0 points,6 years ago
@solala, there will be indeed some advertising benefits and I agree that it can’t be limited to this alone. PR stunts based on bad ideas tend to backfire with time.
To go further than the GPS analogy, please consider that ARPA was launched as a reaction of Sputnik success. You could argue that this is past and that space telecommunication does not matter anymore, but then why are all these giant consortium (Airbus, Qualcomm, Virgin, Coca-Cola, Tesla, HSBC…) still investing so much time and money in satellite projects? I just can’t believe that all the past current and future projects involving space just exist for getting media attention.
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0 points,6 years ago
Interesting proposal. Didn't Blockstream test something similar? Would be curious if you are in touch with them about that project went and how this one will build on their experience rather than making making the same mistakes or facing challenges that have already been solved. I read the forum and agree - this is something like GPS, where the use cases aren't necessarily known until the system is in place and others can build applications on it.
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1 point,6 years ago
Yes Blockstream has implemented this type of project for BTC. I actually met the guy who came out with this idea at a BTC conference this September.
They are releasing the code necessary for the terminal on GitHub and we are planning to work closely with this. As well as the Outernet project, which is more mature (first public satellite signal in 2014).
We have been testing both ground terminal solutions and yes we are planning to also get closer connection with these two communities; especially Outernet as they have already helped us a lot.
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0 points,6 years ago
Doesn't it require special hardware to connect to a satellite?

And does this let people broadcast messages through the satellite, or can they only listen to the satellite?
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0 points,6 years ago
To connect to the satellite, you need a dish antenna and a Software Defined Radio (SDR) interface with your computer. It's a US$50 USB dongle that can scan the frequency received by the antenna and allow your computer to handle the signal processing. This kind of application would have required special hardware and would have cost hundreds of dollars just a few years ago.

This proposal only allows broadcasting. In order to let people broadcast messages through the satellite (Bidirectional communication), we'll need to lease some additional up-link frequency (see my answer to @A_node_to_a_Master for cost). This would be the next step described as Worldwide deployment in Global Project Roadmap on the pdf version.
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0 points,6 years ago
I really can't visualize real world use cases for read-only access to the blockchain apart from a media stunt... yes, some remote POS would be able to verify that a payment has took place, but in order to execute that payment and actually do anything bi-directional access is required. Unless there is a clear plan on the implementation of bi-directional access, I do not think that proposal is worth the cost.
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1 point,6 years ago
There are some examples in the pdf version (http://nthinking.net/vrak/dash/proposals/Dash_Satellites_Demonstration_Proposal-v1.20.pdf Appendix D – Use Cases ).

Read-only access is already helping a lot with all applications that require to download GB of data-caps Internet access. I personally experienced this when trying to develop on various blockchain applications from home (I have a satellite Internet access). Some people say I should just move somewhere else... well...

For bi-directional communication, we can't propose to implement this as a first step as they is already both technical and management challenges to overcome for this demonstration. We are proposing to move one step at a time as you can't rush the space industry. Also for this next step we'll need approval from the regulatory authority in the teleports countries (ground hub-link station where the servers are). This will be easier to get if we have established trust with a live project.
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2 points,6 years ago
Without looking at the preproposal thread do you believe you have garnered enough support to spend 5 dash and publish a proposal? Were all the inquiries answered? All raised issues addressed?

Was the 12-month period acceptable in the preproposal?

Why isn't there a small demo showing us an MVP first?

An escrow service is a must from this point forward and I don't see one yet.

These are partly my thought at the moment. I might have more later.
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0 points,6 years ago
I’m currently organizing escrow service and thank you for your concern about the 5 DASH for proposal submission. You may additionally consider that we have already been 4 people working for 2 months on this to assess technical feasibility and costs.

A physical demo of satellite broadcasting simply require too much upfront investment for the size of my company. As you can see on the YouTube links, I have tested the terminal solutions from other similar satellite projects (Outernet and Blockstream). Still I’d be happy to a add a visual demo as an extra to the proposal deliverables (at the end of Design milestone). Some short professional animation based on the conceptual graphic of the pdf cover page that would explain how the communication works and can help different people all over the world.

For the 12 months format concern, please see my answer to @ctafti.
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0 points,6 years ago
This proposal can be very good marketing "Dash in Space", it sounds very attractive, maybe it has little use, but it can be a great marketing for Dash!
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2 points,6 years ago
This should have stayed in the pre-proposal forum a bit longer... What other equipment would someone need to make use of this signal?
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1 point,6 years ago
They did have a fairly lengthy and productive pre-proposal discussion on dash.org for a solid month. Well, productive except for the places Demo contributed.
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1 point,6 years ago
You'll need a US$50 SDR USB dongle (http://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/nesdr-smart-xtr.html) and a widely available 80cm satellite dish with LNB (can get in DIY shop or online) .
Also, sorry to hear that you feel this is too early. I was in touch with @tungfa and I decided that this project needed to get started to cope with the inertia.
Additionally I'm discussing with @coingun for escrowing the funds.
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2 points,6 years ago
UdjinM6 and codablock have asked some great questions. Because of this is an easy no vote
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0 points,6 years ago
It was not my understanding that they were against this proposal. They actually seem to be very interested in the details of this proposal as they had concern about the market cost involved with leasing the necessary satellite bandwidth.
This helpful discussion on the forum led me to propose a larger bandwidth than the assumed 64kbps. At current market price, the revised bandwidth is 10x larger (512kbps) for 10 DASH per month with a third of the world coverage.
Going global by adding two more geostationary satellites would push the cost per month to 30 DASH. Adding bidirectional communication with a 64/128kbps would only add 30% increase to the total cost. With such an infrastructure in place all the limitations raised by UdjinM6 and codablock are addressed.
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0 points,6 years ago
I have no aptitude to judge a proposal like this. I hope that people from core or comptent masternodes will comment on the feasability and practicality of this project. I think that it can have a value from a marketing standpoint but I'm not sure what kind of user needs it. I remember a project from collin cantrel and his nexus cryptocurrency to broadcast from cubesats, dont know how advanced their project is but its a new kind of space race. Will monitor the comments closely before voting.
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0 points,6 years ago
I am not willing to fund something this experimental for a full year without any results, from someone who has never done business with the network before.

If you shorten the time span for the proposal to three months I would consider it.
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0 points,6 years ago
I understand the 12 months format can be a concern. The last version of this proposal was for 6 months for a total of 489 DASH. But adding 6 more months of broadcasting only adds 63 extra DASH and it is not changing the completion milestones for integration and demonstration. In 2 months, we'll be sharing our factory testing results and in 3 months our Test & Commissioning report. The broadcasting will be live in 4 months.
I'm confident the project can reach completion with successful Demonstration & Marketing Milestones in 6 months. There is a lot of inertia working with communications satellite operators, hardware providers and media agencies. That’s the reason why I have decided to add 6 more months of broadcasting. This will allow more room to interconnect all the relevant parties, especially for interfacing with other projects like DASH Meetups and integration in countries having economic instability.
After the first 6 months and the early demonstration phase, you will be able to decide if you want to go for Worldwide deployment, by adding two more satellites to cover the remaining 2/3 of the world; especially Africa. You can read my answer to @A_node_to_a_Master to have a figure of the costs involved.
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0 points,6 years ago
Absolutely NO.
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0 points,6 years ago
Sorry to hear that @dashcentral. Is there anything I could do that would help change your mind?
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