In this episode of Blockchain Beyond Hype, we interview the founder and CEO of SmartMesh, Henry Wang. We discussed topics such as the decentralization of the Internet, the space race between tech giants around the globe, MeshBox and how it works, and more.
Can the Internet be decentralized? How?
Yes. You know, our founding father for the Internet is called Licklider. Actually, he graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, the same school I pursued my computer science Ph.D. degree there. At the time, he proposed the Internet, and he named it an intergalactic network that is mesh-network-based, but gradually the Internet became centralized, and also with TCP/IP. So it’s not the fault of TCP/IP, but because of this kind of procedure we call The Evolution because, without blockchain, the Internet will have to be centralized because TCP/IP and other protocols are very thin. So they need a very thick application layer to do the ledger and the payment easier. That’s why carriers come out with a billing solution. That’s why Internet carriers are centralized.
What problems will arise due to all the giants being in a space race, and what would your solution be?
So, you know, the Internet is centralized, and now blockchain comes out with a solution that can incentivize every mesh node to build a really distributed Internet. So, this distributed Internet has some problems because it cannot support the wide-area network. It is good for the last mile mesh network. So we still need the wide-area network, the satellites and the Internet because they’re the best way to solve the problem. Therefore, we have Musk, also Blue Origin, and a lot of companies want to launch satellites. In the starting plan, there are 42,000 satellites. I believe there’s a lot of other companies, like in China, they will launch the same amount of satellites. Then Earth will be orbited by all the satellites. That is like garbage that will cause a lot of problems for Earth. Therefore, the Space Ground Integration network can solve the problem of the Internet, but we don’t need so many satellites because that would be a problem. So the best way is to optimize on the ground. So we use as little as possible satellites to give a good user experience to all the people who want to be connected. So, SmartMesh and the Meshbox focus on optimizing the Space Ground Integration network on the ground. We can share bandwidth, share storage, and share computing power. We call this HyperMesh because we distribute blockchain technology – to distribute our IP infrastructure.
What are the benefits of using MeshBox?
So I think that MeshBox has blockchain technology inside, so it is very powerful. It’s not only connecting people, but it’s also the basic element for our future value Internet. They have the second layer called a photo network, which can support machine-to-machine payment. That is the basis for the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything. Also, because every MeshBox has storage inside, all our contents, the human being contents, SmartCity contents can be distributed in the MeshBox. And the crypto, you know, cryptography and all the content would be safe and also, it’s kind of like fault-tolerant and also the disaster-tolerant.
How is this technology securing user data?
So, personal data, privacy, and security are the most important, right? For example, nowadays, all the applications like Facebook, WeChat, they store all the data on their servers. So that means their admins and hackers can easily access it. So that’s a problem with Facebook. In the future, all this data will not be stored on the servers. They are going to be distributed to the MeshBoxes and, we are now working with a Tahoe and also IPFS for the solution. So, you know, the things for the government are released like SmartMesh into the government blockchain landscape, and also the government launched blockchain interoperability challenge upon the living lab, we build with the SUSS together. The Tahoe is a distributed storage solution, but without blockchain, and now we provide a blockchain and hardware. So in our solution, we’re combining together to provide everybody with personal data and security, and we call it disaster recovery. So that is the future of our storage, and also can be used to the SmartCity solution. For example, a lot of cameras, the cameras will store all the videos in the cloud. It’s expensive. It causes a lot of bandwidth, and also there’s no privacy. It’s stored locally on the MeshBox, and after distributed computing, only a necessary part will be delivered to the cloud, and most of that part will be steady locally. So that’s our future solution.
What is the future of HyperMesh technology?
I think the HyperMesh is an architecture for the whole world. So, talking about scalability, when there’s like ten thousand satellites around Earth, and half of the population today without Internet, they will be connected. But somewhere they don’t even have power. So even though there are satellites, they still cannot get connected. Right? Therefore, for this kind of scalability, we also have one solution. We call it Transactive Energy. So we are working with NTU Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and working on the microgrid. The microgrid doesn’t have to connect to the national grid, the state grid. So a macro grid will have some solar power, and among the families within the village, people can trade energy. So some houses will have a solar panel, some houses will not have a solar panel, but it doesn’t matter. So far, they are connected with what we call a Universal Power Hub, and then with a blockchain solution, they can do the energy transactions. That means, we can easily deliver power or generate power for those villages currently without power. Plus the satellites, then everywhere on Earth, can easily have connectivity. So, this solution actually scales very well and also because everywhere you have a MeshBox, you don’t need servers anymore. So the storage and the computing can be distributed among those MeshBoxes. That means we have the best scalability in the world, and also it is very important for artificial intelligence because of A.I., the most important thing is the data. So they didn’t need big data, but big data is terrible because when A.I. has all the data, then it can be against a human being. So we have to make these big data distributed. So we call the distributed data Market. That can guarantee that A.I. is helping human beings instead of killing.
How does HyperMesh work, and how can it revolutionize space?
With one MeshBox and the use of Wi-Fi, we can connect to another MeshBox, and another MeshBox can connect to another, and form a Mesh network. So even without the Internet, these MeshBoxes connected with each other and can still form a Mesh network, but with one uplink and then all the MeshBoxes and users will be connected into the whole Internet. OK, so the difference between the classical Mesh network and SmartMesh is that we have blockchain technology inside. This blockchain and the second layer photo network, they can count all the traffic, and then make a payment between the nodes, guarantee that every node owner can be incentivized by this SMT token, and the distributed storage can be incentivized by the MeshToken. So with these two tokens, people can get connectivity and storage and security. Their data would be secured and stored here in the distributed way. If one MeshBox malfunctions, its data can be recovered from other MeshBoxes. So this will be a foundation for our value Internet.
How do you envision blockchain changing the world?
I think that is the most important technology that will help human beings to protect themselves because we are on the verge of a space war. The United States will launch at least 50,000 satellites into space, and China, Russia, and France will probably altogether launch more than 50,000 satellites into space. A lot of countries now are developing anti-satellite weapons. OK. So it’s so different from warships and other armies on the ground. So the satellites are over everybody’s head. We don’t want space to be a battleground. We want peace. Because a space war can destroy Earth. It’s so different from the traditional war. So we want every satellite to be for peaceful purposes and to connect our world. Only blockchain technology can generate consensus. So blockchain technology is not limited by nations, but by our territories. So with the blockchain token community in every country, people can join. So that means with blockchain technology, we will have a global consensus that’s for peaceful use. The satellites will not be used as weapons. They will be used to connect everybody’s consensus.
How do you think the market for blockchain-based solutions will evolve?
Blockchain will become more and more important. You know, the president of China, Xi Jinping, for the first time as a leader of one country mentioned blockchain. So, because he has the consensus in mind, I hope the leaders of other countries will stand for blockchain. Do you know why this is important? I would take an example as a SmartCity. So nowadays, every country is developing SmartCity solutions, but it can be very dangerous because all the data is stored in the data center, and all the SmartCity data, it’s just so critical. But it can be easily hacked. That means the hacker could control all the data, and the A.I. can control our data. It can be a very dangerous approach to our world. So blockchain is helping to guarantee the security of data and privacy, and also the ownership of data. So that means blockchain in the long run, will be the most important technology in the world. When blockchain technology evolves, it’ll actually help influence every industry, and every industry would be protected by the blockchain technology. So that’s why I think blockchain is the most important technology in the world. It’s more important than A.I.
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