There is a technical meeting in a poorly lit bar in New York City, in many ways a common occurrence.

But what is particular about this particular meetup, is that other places in the East Village are connected to the Wi-Fi node of the bar, allowing all those who are in the region not only to capture all the other signals on the network – the mesh network.

This is a decades old technology that allows users to surf the Internet without resorting to a traditional Internet access provider and who could find new life among the passionate people of blockchain. net neutrality "Thursday.

Net neutrality, or the rules that guarantee equal access to the Internet, have historically barred ISPs from charging more for better service, and its repeal, in the eyes of many, would result in lower quality service for the average internet user. .

But, according to participants in the event, the FCC decision could indirectly act as a tipping point that revives a new wave of innovation for mesh networks.

Karl Floersch, an ethereal developer and researcher at Casper, told CoinDesk:

"If we get a crazy regulation of net neutrality, then they can expect a crazy backtracking of the mesh network."

And it's already started.

After years of grassroots efforts, the donor-backed NYC Mesh Network experienced organic growth of 70 knots. But a significant number of the 50 participants at the meeting were new to the scene and brought with them new ideas on how to encourage network growth.

Ethereum to the rescue

Example, Floersch thinks that the Ethereum, the second largest blockchain in the world by market size, might be useful.

Floersch supports the idea that if net neutrality is abolished, blockchain technology could be used to disrupt the middlemen that currently provide the service – Verizon, AT & T and Comcast, and tastes.

He described an ethereum-based system that works "in the background" of any mobile device. Using a series of interconnected smart contracts, the mobile device could theoretically be transformed into a Wi-Fi-compatible "node", helping to extend the range of the mesh network.

And all of this could be encouraged with a "meshcoin" based on blockchain.

"The Ethereum and mesh networks are a fantastic combination," said Floersch, adding:

"Ethereum will allow the kind of back-end payment that makes a scalable mesh network."

While Floersch's interest remains more theoretical, Hayden Adams, programmer of the Ethereum, also at the event, said that he is actively studying how the meshcoin concept would work. .

Founder of Ethereum Programming Services LLC, Mr. Adams told CoinDesk that the timing was ideal for the concept to take off, as off-line scale solutions for Ethereum are about to achieve significant breakthroughs.

While Floersch mentioned the state channels, Adams added the recently announced plasma ultrasound solution to the list of technologies that could help reinvent the NYC Mesh incentive system, as well than mesh networks in the world.

Among the countless mesh networks that are growing in the world, the largest of them, in Catalonia, now lists more than 37,000 active nodes. Most of these are funded by donors, and some have created foundations.

For example, NYC Mesh is funded largely by donations, including a $ 30,000 grant from the nonprofit Internet Society. But in the future, Adams thinks that either an etheric token – or ether itself – could be used to allow users on the mesh network to pay peers for bandwidth.

"If you wanted to extend it to a larger scale, you would need to add some durability, and I think it could go through a blockchain system," Adams said.

The challenges ahead

Despite all the promises however, one of NYC Mesh's most influential advocates remains skeptical about the blockchain's usefulness.

Since 2015, software engineer Brian Hall has been helping his neighbors install the hardware required to become a mesh knot, and even though he's read a handful of white papers detailing the promise of blockchain mesh, he has not yet seen any hardware running on blockchain.

In a blog post earlier this month, Hall detailed a number of reasons why he thinks the concept of meshcoin and seven other projects that try to mix blockchain and mesh are wrong.

He argues that all of these projects fail to properly understand two things: First, mesh nodes must be geographically close to one another, unlike blockchain nodes, and secondly, the growth of these networks requires that the two nodes must be geographically close to one another. huge amounts of social capital.

"Ninety percent of work is a social problem," he said. "And it's a bit out of all those meshcoin ideas."

Still, Floersch and Adams argue that the social component is exactly where crypto-token incentives might help.

Mesh networks date back to the late 1990s, when the Internet began to be widely adopted. And since then, small committed communities have formed around the principles of decentralization and privacy mesh network, and have even proven their ability to innovate in the face of competition.

His emergence and rise seem to him to be definitely similar to those of cryptocurrency, and Hall agrees, even if skepticism persists.

"Virtually all technology people interested in mesh are interested in cryptocurrencies, and I do it," he said, concluding with a fiery council:

"Forget the white papers, make a prototype, take three routers and make something work, we are at the end of the white paper phase."

Image by Brian Hall, Hayden Adams and Karl Floersch via Michael del Castillo for CoinDesk

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