
Mercury Protocol: Communication Platform Built on the Ethereum Blockchain - claudiulodro
https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/
======
dmitrygr
I read the paper. Still not sure how this solves anything besides transferring
wealth from the gullible to the authors:

* Noted are the transactions-per-second limits, but solution is missing behind some handwaving

* Lots of talk of fees for doing things like sending messages and lots of mentions of "premium" offerings. This is not a free messaging app (which means likely nobody will use it and the network effect will not happen. Will you pay anything over $0.00 to send messages?)

* Talk of incentivization of "reading posts" meaning "there will be ads"

* Literally mentions farming user data "users generating behavioural data for large scale analysis"

* A completely ridiculous claim that pseudonymity == privacy

* No talk at all about actual message encryption (you would not want your 1-to-1 messages publicly readable in the blockchain, would you?)

.

And then finally, by the last page it is suddenly clear...they are selling
their tokens...

The world makes sense again..

~~~
atomical
I don't know about messaging, but paying per comment would be a really
interesting idea. There are a lot of people out there who are very aggressive
about posting in tabloid and newspaper comment sections. The comments are
usually so argumentative, angry, and spiteful that I have to think that just
having the comment itself appear on the page is worth quite a lot to those
people.

~~~
dmitrygr
But _YOU_ wouldn’t pay to participate in a place where they can do that :)

~~~
atomical
My scenario is just me thinking out loud. Most people don't participate in
online discussions. It's a very small part of the population that logs onto
the internet to critique news articles and spread their agenda.

I don't participate in that sort of thing at all.

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cwkoss
This seems like it will do a mediocre job trying to solve many problems rather
than solving one problem well.

Don't understand why I need it. Lots of complexity to replicate features in
centralized services that I don't have a strong need to be decentralized.

Am I missing something?

~~~
davidgerard
... but with Blockchain!!

'cos everyone wants a gameable social network where someone could earn pennies
from making your experience worse.

~~~
computerphage
I still don't understand. Everyone already has a social network where someone
earns pennies by making the experience worse.

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jondubois
I doubt that's going to scale if messages have to pass through the Ethereum
blockchain.

Most cryptocurrencies today are limited by their transaction volume capacity
because every transaction needs to be distributed to every other node in the
network - In other words, the Blockchain workload is serial (limited by
processing speed not concurrency) and cannot be parallelized (distributed is
not the same as parallelized). It's not possible to have a single blockchain
handling more than a limited number of transactions/messages per second - This
is a hard mathematical law, not a hardware resource limitation.

Sure, they can batch messages together to reduce transaction count (assuming
they'd be willing to do that) but that only buys a bit of extra time. Looking
at this I get the feeling that the Ethereum blockchain is doomed - It will be
death by spam.

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hackerboos
How is this different than Bitmessage?

[https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page)

~~~
drewmol
Mark Cuban integration?

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indescions_2017
Implementation issues around Mecury aside, a "fee-based" Reddit is a worthy
experiment. Justin Kan had a similar idea with his Whale App. Get experts to
answer serious questions regarding entrepreneurship and be compensated for
their time. The market for this exists.

I also like the idea of reputation managed via distributed ledger. Hard coding
trust is a raison d'etre for smart contracts to exist and although a personal
"integrity score" acting akin to your "credit score" may sound dystopian it
also is an interesting experiment.

Anyone recall "Whuffie" from Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom?"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie)

~~~
brndnmtthws
Check out Steemit: [https://steemit.com/](https://steemit.com/)

It's pretty much a "fee-based" Reddit, where people who post content are
rewarded for doing so.

~~~
ricardobeat
Argh. The top post is so full of BS it completely kills any excitement about
the platform: [https://steemit.com/joy/@teamsteem/on-the-path-to-a-
fairer-f...](https://steemit.com/joy/@teamsteem/on-the-path-to-a-fairer-
furture)

~~~
sliken
Dunno, people getting paid by who valued the content sounds pretty good to me.
Sure there's hype/BS in promotional type messages... but don't pay for that
one.

I'd certainly put more into my posts if I thought that some modest popularity
resulted in a few $100.

Seems like micro-transactions were mostly a non-starter because the credit
card companies want high transaction fees. Fortunately these days there are
alternatives.

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zero-x
I think this is the antithesis of the blockchain. I think a much better idea
is: "Uncensorable Twitter". With how much twitter and Google censor users they
find offensive I think a product like that would take off and not be too
difficult to build.

~~~
jjawssd
The main problem with uncensorable platforms is the proliferation of illegal
content especially illegal images.

~~~
zero-x
Totally, solving that issue is the most challenging thing. A middle ground
could be democratized voting where users can vote to keep or remove messages.

~~~
tylersmith
That invalidates the need for a blockchain. Censorship resistance isn't for
popular content.

~~~
zero-x
Yeah good point.

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4010dell
Do blockchain people have any other arguments other than decentralization,
security, probable future monetary incentive. These arguments although sound
have become cliched, every whitepaper has the same arguments, same
methodology, same roadmaps, substitute noun and you have got a whole new
whitepaper. It's the lack of ideas of use of blockchain.

Ohh that business is centralized, ohh that guy is making so much money off it,
ohh they sell user data, ohh they got hacked !! lets decentralize that
business, lets make some crypto money while we can ( and unload it on suckers
when crypto hits high ). we got hacked (oops) ...it wasn't us it's the
underlying layer under the layer on which our "smart" contracts are based.

I don't care if zuck or anyone is making millions for a centralized product
..he should be he made that product. It was needed that's why people use it.
Data isn't safe with centralized network, they misuse it ..heck i have got a
choice to share what i want, i can control it. Maybe educating yourself on
what and what not to share is better. Networks get hacked ..use 2FA, go MI6.
Not everything comes with lifetime guarantee.

what if I don't want to make money off your blockchain protocol or ICO or
early adopter incentive or what not.

I am curious to know reason other than mentioned above on why should anyone
care about blockchain based protocols/networks etc.

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arielm
Do we really need another Twitter like platform that’s based around the idea
of “rewards”? Wasn’t app.net enough?

Oh, but blockchain...

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shp0ngle
Is there an ICO? If it is an ethereum app, there has to be an ICO. It's the
only way

Edit: color me surprised, there is not an ICO. They even want to have working
app first. Well that's new. Mostly those apps just write a whitepaper, accept
money and then do nothing.

>According to Ryan Ozonian, the CEO of Dust and a leader of the Mercury
Protocol, the only way for people to earn tokens at the outset will be through
participation. In the future, though, he says there will be an opportunity to
purchase them.

Edit2: oh there will be an ICO of course though

>Roadmap

>Phase 1: Dust (Q3 2017)

>We will build version 1.0.0 of the Mercury Protocol, conduct the token sale,
and integrate GMT into Dust. The Mercury Protocol will remain closed-source at
this stage.

Ummm ok. Good for them I guess. Let's throw more money at broken blockchain
protocols!

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itschekkers
This post made me remember that I had muted "blockchain" on twitter, and my
life was much better because of it. Classic example of adding "blockchain" or
"token" to something for pure hype.

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pascalxus
So, the headline doesn't present the value prop very clearly. It should say
something like: "Never, meet another troll again" or "Message, with absolute
privacy.."

From what i understand based on the article, the value proposition is: 1\.
Privacy 2\. No Trolls

I know the above two have been mentioned quite a bit as detractors for
twitter. But, personally, I've never had a problem with either one of those.

The question is, How many people would be willing to switch to a new platform,
if it meant never meeting another troll again?

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chi17
Blockchains provide false security, and there're big players in the game that
either don't understand that or are driving the fad train to the bank.

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wolco
A platform where you pay to send a message become a platfork where only few
speak but many just listen

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jasonlaramburu
What is the difference between an 'oracle' and a server?

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primeblue
Has Ethereum been fixed since all those DAO hacks?

~~~
xj9
the problem isn't actually Ethereum, but the tools they provide for writing
smart contracts. the exploits are in contracts, not EVM.

that doesn't actually make it better, but it _does_ highlight the problem of
using code as an absolute arbiter b/c it can be hard to tell if it describes
your intent accurately or not.

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joshu
Blogspam, please replace URL with
[https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/](https://www.mercuryprotocol.com/)

~~~
claudiulodro
Didn't realize reporting on things is blogspam . . .

There's a clear link to both the site and the whitepaper in the article.

~~~
flunhat
Obviously your effort is appreciated, but in this case it really does seem
that the story is the site itself and not your article (which is just 3
paragraphs and contains no new information).

~~~
claudiulodro
That makes sense. Thanks for the feedback.

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brndnmtthws
I know that HN loves to crap on anything blockchain related, but we live in a
time where the POTUS is a Nazi sympathizer living in an alternate universe, so
this couldn't come at a better time.

