A better Internet with IPv6 and Bitcoin

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Bitcoin is far from being digital gold, as many have made it out to be. It’s a communication protocol capable of radically transforming the internet as we know it today, and when integrated with a few associated technologies like IPv6 and Simplified Payment Verification (SPV), it can scale unboundedly.

In this article, we will look at how Bitcoin and IPv6 can create a better internet.

Peer-to-peer communication

Those of us who are old enough to remember the early days of the internet also remember the promise it held. Here was a network outside the grip of tyrannical governments and transnational corporations. It was a new world we could all be a part of, and it was going to be peer-to-peer.

Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way. Fast forward to 2023, and every piece of data on the web, be it a private message or an email attachment, flows through data centers controlled by the world’s largest companies, who also own the networks themselves (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

While massive investment was required to get the internet off the ground, and there’s nothing wrong with making a profit, these Silicon Valley giants definitely put a dampener on the original dream of the web in which all humans would have access to the collective body of wisdom and could communicate privately and create the world anew.

With Bitcoin and IPv6, we’re getting a second shot at that dream. With the almost infinite IP addresses made available by IPv6 and with the micropayments made possible by Bitcoin, true peer-to-peer networks are possible.

The internet ended up in a mess it’s in today precisely because the ad-based model was the only way to make it commercially viable, and that naturally fell into the hands of a few dominant players. However, with micropayments and miners willing to process data in exchange for them, everything changes.

In the internet of the future, Alice will communicate with Bob directly via a peer-to-peer messaging app. Her IPv6 address will communicate with his directly, and she’ll pay fractions of a penny per message. Yet, this doesn’t stop at humans connecting and communicating; machines will do the same as the Internet of Things (IoT) takes off.

The original dream of the internet was stamped out by the centralization of traffic through a few corporate-controlled networks. With that came unchecked power to censor, delete, snoop, and control. Bitcoin and IPv6 will disrupt that, returning the power to users and cutting out the self-appointed monarchs of the web.

A more secure and robust network

Another major problem with the internet as we know it is the many security vulnerabilities. Most of these have to do with the centralized nature of data storage and the fact that protocols and entire networks are owned and operated by private entities like Meta.

In a Bitcoin/IPv6-powered world, data will be stored in a distributed manner on multiple nodes, and any alteration of it will be impossible without consensus. Not only is this a more secure way of storing data, but the huge data silos that attract hackers like bees to honey will largely cease to exist as data is stored on the blockchain in a distributed manner with private keys controlling access to it.

With the honeypots eliminated and the middlemen servers cut out of the equation, there are still a few potential vulnerabilities, such as hackers attacking private networks owned by companies and organizations. However, tools like Sentinel Node are being built to use the Bitcoin blockchain to make it easier to detect and deal with network breaches before any major damage is done.

Ask any cybersecurity expert, and they’ll tell you that hackers rely on deleting logs to do what they do. However, with network access time-stamped on a public blockchain and any alterations of files also logged on the immutable ledger, it becomes impossible for even the best hackers to delete the evidence trail. At the very least, this will disincentivize hacking, and where it does not, it will make it much easier to track and trace guilty parties.

In a peer-to-peer world where total traceability is enabled thanks to the massively scalable Bitcoin blockchain, the internet itself becomes more robust. As we move away from centralized private networks to open, distributed ones on Bitcoin, the entire internet becomes more secure. In the words of Bitcoin’s inventor Dr. Craig Wright, “When people communicate directly, the level of security goes up.”

A better user experience with blockchain-based identity

Ask anyone from the early ’90s what the internet might look like in 30 years, and the last thing they would have imagined is the barrage of pop-ups, ads, logins, annoying cookie permissions, and endless nonsense the average internet user has to deal with today. It really has become somewhat of a digital dystopia.

Bitcoin and IPv6 can fix many of the problems with the terrible user experience of the internet today. How so? In a few ways.

First, micropayments disrupt the ad-based model that is behind much of the data harvesting and annoyance on the internet today. Webmasters and content creators have few other options to monetize their work, but with micropayments, that all changes. There are very few internet users today who would mind paying a penny to read a web page with no pop-ups or ads on it. Likewise, very few webmasters would object to being paid an endless stream of pennies in real-time as users access their content and tip them for their creative work.

Second, we can build a secure identity on the Bitcoin blockchain, enabling us to prove who we are and various attributes about ourselves (e.g., our age or creditworthiness) without having to upload a bunch of documents and trust that the parties we’re giving them to won’t misuse them. Want to sign up for a new financial trading platform? Connect your wallet, which is linked to your identity, and voila, you’re in. Want to apply for a loan? Same deal; connect your Bitcoin wallet, which is connected to your identity and all of its attributes, and get an answer in seconds. This could also eliminate the need for passwords and traditional logins as we know them today.

Finally, with data harvesting middlemen like Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Meta (NASDAQ: META) out of the way, the internet would become much more private. Webmasters and content creators may still want to use analytics to learn about our behavior on their sites, but agreeing to pages of terms and conditions of legal jargon and signing over the rights to all of our data will become a thing of the past. We may agree to allow a blogger to track our on-site behavior so she can see what content we engage with and create more of it, but we won’t be signing over our wedding photos and the right to watch us wherever we go to Mark Zuckerberg and friends.

Join us in creating a better internet at the London Blockchain Conference

These are just some ways Bitcoin and IPv6 can create a better, more secure internet. If you share our enthusiasm for such a network, we’d love to hear from you and know more about what you’re building, and we invite you to join us at the London Blockchain Conference between May 31 and June 2.

We welcome thinkers, builders, and entrepreneurs from all walks of life, and you don’t have to be building on BSV to be welcome. While we don’t want any touting of unregistered securities at the conference, we invite speakers, developers, and curious minds of all kinds to attend.

Secure your free ticket for the biggest blockchain conference in the world today. We hope to see you there!

Watch: Dr. Craig Wright’s keynote speech titled ‘A Better Internet with IPv6 and BSV Blockchain’