Meet Skycoin, The Real Silicon Valley

Who needs fiction when Skycoin is making the decentralized internet a reality today?

Television shows have been predicting the future and drawing parallels with reality for as long as the medium has existed. The Simpsons pinned Donald J. Trump as president 16 years before he ran for office and Parks and Recreations celebrated a Cubs World Series win more than a year before the historic victory took place.

The most recent show to catch the eye of many is “Silicon Valley”, a comedy focusing on a group of five men who found a startup company amongst the tech giants in Silicon Valley. The team is led by the main protagonist Richard Hendricks and they are collectively known as the Pied Piper team, named after their flagship data compression algorithm they developed. The show displays many innovations; however, it is not until season 4 that Richard sets his sights on accomplishing his ultimate goal: a decentralized internet.

While their portrayal of the technology is purely fictitious, they are closer to the truth than perhaps they know as the Skycoin Project has been diligently working on a decentralized internet known as Skywire for over six years.

The Skycoin Project has been diligently working on a decentralized internet known as Skywire for over six years.

Let’s look at the similarities between Skywire and Richard’s decentralized internet…

How Does It Work?

In the show, Richard’s idea revolves around the wasted computing power everyone carries around in their pockets: mobile phones. These mobile phones could theoretically come together to provide the infrastructure for a peer-to-peer network in which everyone’s phone would act as their internet service provider (ISP).

The concept of you being your own ISP is incredibly similar to what Skycoin are offering in the form of Skyminers. Skyminers provide the computing power, networking capability, and storage capacity to power the Skywire worldwide mesh network. What this means is anyone will be able to become a part of the first telecom company owned and operated by and for the people. Every Skyminer node that comes online forms the basis of a mesh network to provide internet access to everyone for free, and it pays you to do it.

Both Richard and Skycoin want to create a future in which Internet Service Providers are obsolete by giving the power of internet access back to the people.

The Benefits Of Decentralized Internet

Richard’s dream is to create an internet which has “no firewalls, no tolls, no government regulation, no spying” and “information would be totally free in every sense of the word.” He wants an internet which has no third parties interfering in how it is run or accessed and wants consumer data to be completely private and untrackable. Skycoin shares this ethos and is already making it a reality.

Complete End-To-End Encryption

Skycoin offers complete end-to-end encryption — even from other Skyminers — means no third-party or participant in the network can identify data packets or connect them to individuals or IP addresses.

Your Data Remains Yours

In Silicon Valley, Richard wants his decentralized internet to defeat Hooli, the evil tech giant who have made millions selling customer data. In the real world, we have Facebook, Google, Amazon, Comcast and countless other companies as well as governments who collect all of our browsing data to profit from. These are the real-world Hoolis which Skycoin battles by not allowing consumer data to be stored, tracked or sold when using Skywire.

The P2P nature of Richard’s mobile phone network means censorship and manipulation could never take place as no third-party would be able to interfere or block internet traffic. Skycoin’s Skyminers emulate this P2P nature: no government or company can ever intercept or re-route traffic which runs through the Skyminer nodes.

Network Resiliency

“The more users that join our network, the more powerful it grows, and the better our world becomes” is a quote from the fictional Pied Piper website. As more mobile phones join Richard’s network, the more resilient and reliable the system becomes. Likewise with Skywire, as more Skyminers connect to the mesh network, the higher the resilience to attacks and the less affected the network is by individual Skyminers going offline. Richard’s internet and Skywire both break the norm for internet usage: more participants won’t worsen the internet access, it will improve it.

The New Internet For The New World

Even if Richard’s dream of a decentralized internet seems distant in Silicon Valley, Skycoin is making it happen today. Meet Skywire, the new internet which prioritizes speed, privacy, security and is free from third-party censorship that will revolutionize our lives. Everyone will be able to browse freely knowing their data is safe and their connection is secure.

This is the decentralized internet that Skycoin is making a reality today. Learn more about Skywire here and join the revolution at www.Skycoin.com.