IPv6 adoption and its killer app

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This post originally appeared on ZeMing M. Gao’s website, and we republished with permission from the author. Read the full piece here.

In this video, Dr. Craig S. Wright and Prof. Latif Ladid talk about Integrating IPv6 and blockchain at the TCP/IP layer.

Being the president of the global IPv6 Forum, chairman of the IEEE COMSOC IoT subcommittee, and chairman of IEEE COMSOC 5G subcommittee, Prof. Ladid knows about this from inside out.

In this brief interview, Prof. Ladid didn’t talk about the tech. The most important info from Latif’s comments is the fact that in both India and the Philippines, the top people on the IPv6 Council are the same group of people who are pushing blockchain for enterprise.

He should know, because he is at the center of that world.

It is indeed a very good combination.

This isn’t coincidental. In the long term, especially, such combination is going to become inevitable in most countries, because there is just such a perfect match between the two technologies.

It is only people’s ignorance that has prevented this from happening earlier.

To give you an idea of how shallow people’s understanding about this matter is, here is one of the comments someone made below the video about the interview: “Wow – what a load of nonsense. This is word drivel. Did Craig just discover IPv6? It’s been around for ages.”

It is hard to characterize how ignorant this comment is. IPv6 alone is not the subject that’s been discussed here. Integrating IPv6 with blockchain at the TCP/IP layer is, and it is fundamentally different from slapping a blockchain app on top of the Internet at the application layer.

Satoshi himself has been working on the integration for two decades, and designed Bitcoin with a clear view of integrating with the IPv6. In the last seven years especially, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested and hundreds of researchers and developers have devoted the time onto this major tech revolution. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s probably because you have tuned your ears to the crypto world’s ‘number go up’ noise exclusively.

Therefore, commenting that ‘IPv6 is not new’ regarding this deep subject is like sneering at Vint Cerf or Tim Bernard-Lee by saying ‘connecting two computers is not new’ when you heard them talking about the Internet in the 80s last century.

I don’t know if the person who made the comment understands anything about IPv6, but it is clear that he has absolutely no inkling of what is happening at the TCP/IP layer where IPv6 and the Bitcoin blockchain can be, and is being, integrated. That in itself may be also understandable, because very few people have any understanding at this point. But this even after one has watched the video? A better occasion cannot be found where the suitable answer is, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Ignorance is one thing, ignorance multiplied by arrogance is another.

Interestingly though, this is quite typical of the kind of ‘rebuttals’ people throw at Craig Wright, a.k.a. Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of Bitcoin. But this is by a long shot not even the worst. There is a whole category of purely vile personal attacks that surpass comments like this. But that is a whole different layer of the story (for more on this, see Why is the real Satoshi so feared and hated?).

The killer app of IPv6

Bitcoin blockchain integrated with IPv6 at TCP/IP to support on-chain automated micropayment, payment streaming and payment channels is the killer app for IPv6.

Although the integration has vast significance to the entire Internet and the world, Satoshi’s direct goal has been delivering IP-to-IP micropayment over the Internet embedded at the TCP/IP level. The title of the Bitcoin white paper reveals that.

Currently, IPv6 adoption indicates only the IPv6 address adoption, not the actual IPv6-driven applications. So seeing 60% IP addresses being IPv6 is like seeing most buggies having moved to a newly built freeway. It doesn’t mean the real adoption has already happened and there’s only 40% left to do. Quite the opposite is true.

When it comes to the real applications that are only possible with IPv6, the global adoption of IPv6 at this point is close to zero, and the potential room for growth unlimited.

The IPv6 integration with Bitcoin blockchain at TCP/IP layer is going to bring in a true New Internet, but the embedded micropayment is going to be the first killer app.

Dr. Craig Wright keynote speech: A Better Internet with IPv6 and BSV Blockchain