San Francisco-based Orchid Labs has unveiled the private alpha of its Orchid network, a blockchain system that enables internet access without censorship, restrictions, or surveillance. The network op
San Francisco-based Orchid Labs has unveiled the private alpha of its Orchid network, a blockchain system that enables internet access without censorship, restrictions, or surveillance. The network operates as an overlay on the existing internet. Users access bandwidth from people with spare capacity in exchange for Orchid tokens, an ERC20-compatible cryptocurrency. They bypass internet service providers and VPN services, which authorities in China have made increasingly hard to access.
Stephen Bell, Orchid's co-founder, conceived the project after years living and investing in China, where he backed seed-stage startups. He told Axios the experience drove his effort to solve the censorship problem. Bell pulled together a team including Steve Waterhouse, a former partner at Pantera Capital; Gustav Simmonson, an engineer who contributed to Ethereum's 2015 launch; and Jay Freeman, creator of the Cydia software distribution platform.
Waterhouse described the vision: "Our focus is reimagining the Internet as decentralized, censorship and surveillance-free and using blockchain to achieve this vision." He characterized Orchid as "a new anonymous VPN or a much better TOR with cryptocurrency incentives."
The protocol distributes traffic across a blockchain of nodes instead of routing through central points of control. Contributors sign up to share their bandwidth, activating their devices as nodes on the network. Users pay bandwidth contributors in Orchid tokens through peer-to-peer transactions. No central authority can monitor the traffic or the payments.
The concept attracted backing from major investors. Orchid Labs closed a seed round of $4.7 million through a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens last month. Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, PolyChain Capital, Metastable, Blockchain Capital, Crunchfund, Struck Capital, and Compound VC all participated, as did investor Richard Muirhead and other funds and angel investors.
Matt Huang, a partner at Sequoia, explained his firm's interest. "There's lots of exploration right now around what are the interesting or useful applications beyond bitcoin," he told Business Insider. "Orchid struck us as one of the first killer apps that we can see getting broad appeal. It also has an important mission that we think is very timely in the world today."
The public beta arrives in early 2018.
