Althea, a system that lets routers pay each other for bandwidth, is launching its first network in Africa in early November 2019. An initial pilot network will start with about 15 participants. A
Since our last update I’ve encountered a couple of bugs where the problem had been hiding in plain sight. In one case for weeks and another for a year or more. Discovering root causes long term subtle bugs is both satisfying and important to create a better product.
The difference between Althea and most networks is that Althea is decentralized and so different members of the public can perform different roles.
Now we're exploring that we can do with multihomed users and connections
Researching market potential is an important part of starting an Althea network. While adding more links to an existing Althea network is relatively easy, setting up that network is similar to starting a
We apply latency control judiciously throughout at every Althea node in the network, with the ultimate goal of fairly allocating bandwidth at any given bottleneck.
A few weeks ago, we started a governance proposal on altheazone4 to vote on the next hard fork. This time, it will be scripted. Read my summary about it here. The proposal passed
what we’ve done in this release is design a fully automated a bridge, the user merely has to deposit ETH and the router takes care of the rest. The money will be exchanged for DAI, then transferred across the cross-blockchain bridge to become Xdai.
On Tuesday, the Althea validators finished a hard fork from altheatest3 to altheatest4.
A minute later when the gateway tried to validate that same payment again it chose the same failed node at random. It wouldn't get a third chance.
We launched the altheatest3 test blockchain. We'll be having a series of collaborative challenges for the validators.
For this development cycle I've focused on building a more advanced and easier to run series of integration tests. As Althea matures the complexity of the average bug to track down, identify and
Up to now, we've been running our networks on the Ethereum blockchain. The reality is that Ethereum simply isn't suitable for our use case. Ethereum's great for manual, medium or high value, sophisticated transactions...
What is a validator and what do I need?We're currently in the process of spinning up the Althea blockchain. We are using Cosmos, a proof of stake blockchain framework. This post is
Networks are made out of more than antennas and ethernet cables. They are homes and business - neighbors - connected to one another. These neighbors can also become relays, forwarding bandwidth to nearby
Over the last month, Althea organizers have been working to develop local partnerships and gain traction in their communities. Several organizers have chosen the “Altheahoods” approach to starting their networks, and have begun
As I slapped this solution together I got a bad feeling. What if the full node lied to us? I really couldn’t think of a situation in which it would but I just couldn’t shake it.
There's an amazing wireless technology that lets you download a high definition movie to your phone or computer in seconds. This technology can send gigabits of data over tens of miles in a
The novelty of the Althea system is how it incentivizes a diverse group of partners within the network and automates their collaboration. Local organizers work together with home and business owners to host
It's June 2019 and today I'm going to install a new subscriber of our cooperative ISP in rural Oregon. This family had previously only access to 1Mbps wireless or an expensive 4Mbps DSL