SuperNET Newsletter #5

Welcome to another edition of the SuperNET newsletter!

TOPICS

Website
Beyond Bitcoin
SuperNET Cards
Chancecoin
VRC
Marketing
SuperNET Radio Network
UNITY price
BlockNET
Development update
Kademlia DHT’s role
SuperNET related links

Website

Lootz is currently building supernet.org.

Email addresses info@supernet.org and coins@supernet.org are working now. We are moving from thesupernet.org to supernet.org step by step…

Beyond Bitcoin

BTCD and SuperNET will feature on the Beyond Bitcoin podcast this Tuesday/Wednesday!

[UPDATE]:

https://soundcloud.com/legendface66/beyond-bitcoin-19-supernet

SuperNET cards

The SuperNET cards (Nxt asset ID: 7110939398145553585) have been ordered!

SuperNET cards will be a way to bridge crypto into fiat. These cards are normal MasterCards and will have a $1,000 per day limit. At the moment these are ‘half anon’ cards: A photo ID card is required for but no banking information.

James comments,

half anon means that there is no requirement to link a bank acct/personal financial number to the card. however to get the bigger limits, the requirement for ID scan and utility bill could not be removed.

I expect a secondary market to form for these halfanon cards once issued. They have no risk to the one that signed up for it as it can be kept empty.

We continue to work toward full anon, but need to find a reliable vendor with acceptable limits and while we have candidates, the process is very slow. also, I think there is a good chance that there will be some independent vendors who can help, but this is all still being developed.

We will keep you informed and let you know when these ‘half anon’ cards are ready to ship.

Chancecoin

James’ funding request has been APPROVED.

We hereby welcome CHA as the newest SuperNET CORE coin.

Its features are described in greater detail in the last SuperNET Newsletter and on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=528023.0. CHA official website: http://chancecoin.com

### whale has negotiated 25000 CHA for 11.25 BTC, there are only 516,530 CHA total from its burn period.

chancecoin is a microcap, but with interesting tech and we plan to integrate CHA betting into the SuperNET GUI
###

VRC

VRC will be implementing the GUI and billing for the decentralised cloud storage enabled by the Telepathy network. The VRC devs will also be providing the ‘public face’ of SuperNET (since James has known to be a little cautious about that sort of thing). VRC’s Patrick, Doug and David are well known as some of the first crypto devs to reveal their identities publicly. In the future there will likely be many interviews, live events and other media where SuperNET will need a real-life representative.

James has also committed to developing new technological features with VRC in a previous deal, arranged before SuperNET was announced. These will offer new functionality to SuperNET when they are implemented, so inclusion at this point makes sense in any case. Read more here.

Marketing

BTCD is engaging a professional marketing company to help communicate the coin’s unique features and use-cases. SuperNET will inevitably benefit from this since it is one of the major ways in which users will be able to access different services with BTCD.

BTCD will have widespread appeal as a complete platform for secure, anonymous communication and transactions. Just some of the groups that we anticipate will be interested, plus potential applications, include:

Bloggers and journalists in ‘closed’ countries
Political activists in hostile regimes
Whistleblowers
Truly anonymous reviews and tip-offs
Anonymous donations to Wikileaks and mainstream charities
Secure business-to-business communications to prevent industrial espionage
Online gambling
Libertarians
Anyone concerned about intrusive state and corporate surveillance

SuperNET Radio Network (SNRN)

http://supernetradio.com has launched.

This is an initiative by kevondo and lootz. Kevondo writes:

### SNRN will provide each SuperNET coin and entity (Affiliates) with a Website, uniquely “Branded” to them individually. All sites will have radio broadcasting enabled, access to “On Demand” archived SNRN programming, an “Anon Unity Chat” IRC window, and Crowd Funding capability. By reducing the budgetary pressures of building and maintaining an array of promotional tools members can concentrate on creating content and actively promoting. SNRN basically provides all the tools needed to “Get the Word Out” by jump starting the promotion process. Any other services such as Forums can be implemented upon request.

Affilate productions will be scheduled into the 24/7 stream of “Flagship” Station supernetradio.com producing, for SuperNet/UNITY, the consistency of around the clock exposue while alleviating affilates from having to produce the volume of content to be effective in promotional ventures.

Particulars, Fee Schedules, Revenue Streams and Dividend Sharing details will be provided on http://supernetradio.net. Direct inquires can be sent to supernetradionetwork@gmail.com.
###

For the time being, Kevondo will be doing a live broadcast at 10 AM EST Monday to Friday, and past shows, interviews, and music will be streaming 24/7.

UNITY price

The recent bear market in Bitcoin has badly affected the alts, and there have been heavy sell-offs – including NXT and BTCD, as well as many NXT assets. This has opened the door to criticism about the tech, even though the same trend has affected almost all coins. James writes:

As the software gets more and more complete and it becomes clear to even the skeptics that it is just a matter of time before SuperNET is completed and working, the price will more fully reflect the value. Since I am doing something that hasn’t been done before, it is hard to accurately estimate time to completion, especially as I continue to improve things daily.

Remember that anybody can make any sort of crazy claim against me. I don’t have time to spend refuting all the silly FUD. For a while I was supposed to be some sort of pump and dumper, but it is hard to make any claim like that stick when I am not pumping nor am I dumping. I just keep coding and know that it is just a matter of time before the market catches up to what I am building. And now other coders are building on top of what I am building. GUI are being created. Websites and even new assets are being created and managed, etc.

For all the claims that I am dumping SuperNET, I can state affirmatively that I am only buying and have not sold any SuperNET/TOKEN. This reminds me of when I was buying BTCD at .00015 to .001, seems almost like I have an unfair advantage as I know the dev will deliver, while everybody else has some doubts… Considering the bear market everything has been in, including BTC, UNITY price is holding up pretty well.

BlockNET

Many of you will have noticed certain similarities between SuperNET and a new organisation called BlockNET. Whilst the latter is a constantly-evolving undertaking, it seems that there are several key differences. We would encourage you to visit the thread, ask questions and find out more for yourself about the relative approaches, if you are considering investing in one or both ventures. There has been much misunderstanding about both BlockNET and SuperNET and greater clarity will benefit everyone.

A key difference is the business approach. BlockNET is collecting money through their ITO to pay developers for their new software, whereas the SuperNET ICO funds are being held to provide stable value, reflected in the NAV (the value of SuperNET should not fall below the value of the currencies held). James is doing all the coding in return for an equity stake in SuperNET, and is also adding a large number of revenue-generating assets of his own (these total far more than the value of his own shares).

SuperNET ICO funds will also be used to purchase shares in coins and revenue-generating services. SuperNET is also entering into revenue-share agreements, without taking an equity stake in these. BlockNET will make money from the services it offers but the ITO money will not be used to purchase a stake in promising companies. SuperNET will also be returning income to coin communities, to stakers and for further tech development.

The philosophy of SuperNET is to align interests between SuperNET holders, coin communities and devs, and the companies that provide services. The money flow provides shared incentives for success, strengthening all of them and working for their mutual benefit. This business model was a conscious decision taken by James and offers a strong platform for future expansion.

Development update

James:

around 1000 new builds in last month. very busy coding

Development of the peer-to-peer network that will underpin BTCD and SuperNET has moved fast, with some fantastic advances. James writes, ‘I just finished rewriting Teleport using Telepathy and DB and now it’s 800 lines instead of 3,000. Once this is debugged, then all the other apps will come pretty fast as its just application level code without worries about system level, anon leaks, etc… getting close to code complete.’

As a brief overview/reminder:

Telepathy is a system of secure peer-to-peer communication
It is based on the Kademlia DHT, the same protocol used by BitTorrent
Teleport will also use this for anon crypto transactions
Telepathy is so secure that no one, including the sender, needs to know the recipient’s IP address. This offers a fundamental advance in privacy.
Telepathy uses ‘dead drop’ addresses that belong to no one. Messages are routed to these, and are handled by dozens of different nodes – but delivered to none of them.

There has been some misinformation spread about Teleport recently. To clarify, Teleport offers a completely trustless and decentralised off-blockchain exchange mechanism that is truly anonymous and private.

A white paper for Telepathy is available in draft form and will be published for review in due course.

Kademlia DHT’s role

DHT is the technology that enables Telepathy.

A Distributed Hash Table (DHT) is a kind of super-efficient look-up table that allows any node in the network to find the information it needs to route a packet to another node quickly.

The Kademlia DHT offers a couple of very interesting properties. Aside from being very efficient, it guarantees a packet will reach its destination due to the way it routes them (the ‘XOR’ metric).

Additionally, like other DHTs, the ‘map’ that shows where each node lies in network space is completely abstracted from the physical location of those nodes and their IP addresses. This is a little like the London Underground tube map: The map of stations bears little resemblance to the above-ground geography. It is simply a convenience to allow passengers to work out which line to use quickly and easily. So each node in the P2P network simply forwards a packet to nodes closer to the destination than itself – until the distance is zero, which means the packet has arrived.

In the case of Telepathy, since nodes are trying to deliver a packet to a dead drop address owned by no one, this will never happen. This does not matter though, since so long as the intended recipient gets to handle the packet, they will be able to decrypt and read the contents.

Close to the dead drop address, many other nodes are also being sent the packet – creating great uncertainty about which node it was meant for. An attacker cannot find out the IP address of the intended recipient, let alone read the content of the packet.

Unlike some detractors have claimed, this network is completely decentralised and peer-to-peer – like BitTorrent. IP addresses for nodes are known to others, of course (otherwise any routing would be impossible), but there is no correlation between a destination address and a node’s IP address. Users have a public account and a private one for secure communication – these private accounts are completely unlinked to your IP address.

A new feature will be group ‘mining’ of dead drop addresses which are close to many nodes, to create maximum uncertainty in the eyes of the attacker about who the packet was meant for.

Since these addresses are best found by brute-force calculation, the process is actually very like Proof-of-Work mining. Once a good location has been found, it can be shared amongst many nodes that are close to each other. Rewards may be paid for this useful mining activity. Of course, no node using these shared addresses will be able to read the contents of a packet unless it has been encrypted specifically for them.