- The idea is technically hard and may face up to obstacles in implementation for global Internet
- non-public development and there is no way to track the progress
- too much funds attracted (also, gossips indicate even more funds contributed, up to 130 M USD)
The idea of TOR-like decentralized network is highly strong and it may be considered as one of the best use cases for blockchain. Being quite hard for the development and design it is still the goal for teams around the globe: LOKI, NYM, NKN, Elastos, Substratum, Brave, Blockstack, nOS. The strong point of Orchid is that it is built on the current Internet and does not try to build up a new Internet.
Orchid was founded in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, Orchid successfully raised more than $48 million. The project has strong support both from the community and institutional investors and it is considered one of the strongest projects in the field.
Orchid protocol appears as the decentralized TOR with the tokenized financial incentive. The protocol conceptually works as the marketplace where suppliers of idle bandwidth are connected with consumers who desire their traffic to be passed securely through multiple computers worldwide.
Unfortunately, the development is closed for public, so it is hard to find the information about the current progress (only private alpha was mentioned in 2017). By the way, the whitepaper is very detailed and includes lots of math behind the arguments.
Token is a means of payment in the network. Users pay with tokens to those who provide idle bandwidth to pass the traffic. The per-packet data price is expected to be about 0.0000001 USD. Also, it means that the network may be used for low-fee transactions that are far lower than fees on current popular blockchains.
The project has attracted 40.8 M USD. Investors are distinguished: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Blockchain Capital, Polychain, DHVC and many others. Also, it's unusual (and professional) to see SEC filling available.
Unfortunately, a public round seems to be not planned.
Orchid's team has strong experience working in BASH Shell, GNU Finger, RPX, Bitstamp, Pantera Capital, Cydia, Wells Fargo, Ethereum.
Steve Waterhouse - well-known influencer in the blockchain industry, was a partner at Pantera Capital, was a board member of Bitstamp and co-founded RPX (patent security network).
Brian Fox - worked on GNU Finger and developed online banking software for Wells Fargo.
Nathan Handler - internships in Facebook and Microsoft, 3 years in Yelp (software engineer), 11 years on Linux Ubuntu (developer).
ru
