Let’s start with some basic information first, what is Orbis and what does it aim to do?

Taken directly from the whitepaper, the Orbis platform aims to establish a platform for both consumer and commercial developments in Bluetooth mesh by establishing pre-existing infrastructure and network for developers to deploy onto. The Orbis Token (OBT) will also be used initially to reward developers for successful releases as well as consumers for simply participating.

Orbis’ proposed infrastructure, source: whitepaper

Alright, cool, but why NEO?

Why NEO over say ETH? Well, 15 vs 10k transactions per second, commitment to government compliance, stability against hardforks, and the superb community make a fair argument for me. Of course the next step for NEO is further decentralization — but perhaps Orbis can be a part of that and run a node.

Aside from their technology, just the NEO team’s foundational goal of a smart economy aligns quite well with mesh networking and its IoT and automation implementations.

The Orbis team has chosen to develop on the NEO: Smart Economy. NEO’s integration of common compilers and IDEs including C#, Java, C, C++, JavaScript, and Python for coding smart contracts allow for a much lower barrier to entry to Orbis’ repository.

The NEO team’s commitment to government compliance, anti-quantum cryptography NeoQS, and community-based governance as well as the fundamental alignment in the goal of a smart, connected, and digital economy are why Orbis will be developed on the NEO platform.

How is mesh networking relevant to the average consumer?

Our goal is to bring mesh to the average consumer — perhaps more so now with US net neutrality repealed. Mesh is a truly revolutionary technology with a multitude of commercial uses as released in Bluetooth SIG’s specification released this July but they focus on smart lighting, automated manufacturing, endless IoT opportunities.

Mesh also opens the door to possibilities that developers may now utilize. Where I actually got the first ideas for Orbis was while browsing Amazon — tech section of course — and chanced upon a Bluetooth tracker. Just a little chip basically. It utilized something more generally called crowd-GPS which remains one of the a very interesting implementation.

I saw three problems with that. Competition and bundled with that — a low userbase — which is of course critical for a peer to peer network. And when browsing the reviews of these app battery usage was a recurring criticism.

Which is why I wanted to tackle all three of those issues in order to bring mass consumer availability and usage. First an open ended mesh platform would allow developers to create all kinds of apps on it thus allowing each developer to still compete as to which apps bring the most utility but share a unified — larger — userbase. Then tackling the app battery usage it’s very hard for you to convince any stranger to give up something out of goodwill. Which is why inflation is credited partially to people who are active on the platform.

Another utilization more prevalent to blockchain that we’ve been exploring is the possibility of created a core app to allow transactions to occur on what is perhaps the next frontier for blockchain — offline. The main idea is that transaction ID and data is transferred between users and only when both users upload matching transaction data to the blockchain within a specified time period either through our mesh network or they themselves directly connecting to wifi the transaction will go through.

How is mesh different from the internet?

Mesh is different first of all is a more decentralized approach. An interesting point is that the way we’re connected right now with wifi is inefficient and frankly perhaps not the way it was designed to be. All of your devices right now are broadcasting, sending out their data until the intended recipient device picks up on it. The way data routing is structured right now is designed for an era of wired connectivity where end to end was the only option. I’m reminded of the slogan I sometimes see on tee-shirts — “There is no cloud! Only someone else’s computer.” And then of course as touched upon earlier mesh will allow developers to play with it’s unique capabilities.

The Orbis team consisting of 4 core members: Jason Chao, Stephan Yang, David Ni and Cici Wei.

How is this different from other BLE Mesh libraries?

The mesh working group at SIG included Qualcomm, Intel, Google, Silvair, STM, Nordic, and Motorola have either released first edition libraries or I expect them to do so in the near future. However I spoke with a SIG member and was advised that to develop this my best path would be to start a Bluetooth working group for mobile mesh development. Thus, I believe mobile mesh as opposed to commercial infrastructure is a new development. One interesting fact actually is that for android devices only Bluetooth can transmit without interaction while only wifi can discover without interaction. Released libraries currently require a provisioning process, which is fine for fix infrastructure.

What partnerships do you have and will be pursuing?

As briefly touched upon in our first Reddit announcement post we are partnered with RITECH Technology in Shenzhen China. They are investors and manufacture logic boards and computer chips. We will be doing some R&D with native products. So right now that would include a mesh node hub if you will. Basically just another node that is connected to internet and acts as a permanent relay. That is something we will likely be deploying in a partner municipality — testing a smart IoT city like Bill Gates is doing in Arizona but we also may sell them and pay their maintainers with OBT — kind of like our version of mining I suppose. A second idea we are exploring are just general multipurpose chips connected to our network. These could be deployed as the wallet tracker chips I mentioned earlier or perhaps have a few at like a museum’s front entrance and exhibit entrance to provide live data as to how long wait lines might be at that location. But as I said, these chips would be multipurpose.

I’m sure everyone is wondering if we’re connected with NEO and OnChain. I did reach out to OnChain a few months ago with an earlier version of our basic whitepaper and they wanted more info. So, I will contact them once again with the technical whitepaper and demo app once they are completed.

I’d like to thank Jason Chao for his time, beneath I will post links and information regarding the Orbis token sale.

The OBT presale begins Jan 21 with a 40% bonus and min/max contribution of $6,000/$50,000 USD. Tokens will be distributed within a week of the crowdsale.

The OBT crowdsale will take place on February 10th 2018 lasting until Feb 28. OBT will be minted until the hardcap funding goal of $12,000,000 USD is reached, any unsold tokens will be burned. XRT will be determined as follows with the goal of achieving a starting supply of 100,000,000 and raising $12 million USD. Bonus details on whitepaper.

$12,000,000 USD = 40,000,000 OBT * (NEO PRICE USD/XRT)

Orbis Web

Orbis Twitter

Collection of NEO twitter