Hopr You Know Im by Your Side
Introducing HOPR: Your Side by side-Generation Information Privacy and Protection Platform
Imagine a list of everything you lot've done online this calendar week, and when. Everyone you messaged or video called. Every social media interaction, takeout order, doctors appointment, dating app match. Every website y'all visited (aye, all of them). Everywhere your phone has been. Every time you were and weren't at domicile.
Would yous be happy for your neighbours to run across this listing? Your boss? Your banking concern? Everyone on the internet? Now brand it the past decade, not calendar week. At present brand information technology forever.
That's the reality of using the cyberspace today. While the information we send is usually encrypted, the metadata — the data about what you're sending, when, and who to — is all bachelor to be hacked and tracked.
It shouldn't be this style. Users deserve privacy. Companies deserve tools to protect the privacy of their employees and customers. Enter HOPR: a solution for decentralized information substitution that provides the privacy and security nosotros badly need for the cyberspace of today and the future.
What is HOPR?
HOPR is a decentralized and metadata-private signal-to-point data exchange protocol based on an incentivized mixnet. HOPR will provide layer-0 security, allowing existing applications, services and novel decentralized applications (dApps) to communicate in complete privacy.
Which is… certainly a lot of words! If that'due south cleared things up for you already, nosotros'd dear for you to cheque out the early work by our team of talented developers on GitHub or take a look at i of our task openings!
In plain English language, HOPR is a fashion for people, companies and devices to exchange information online with consummate privacy. People who communicate and transact using HOPR — or apps and services which run on top of the HOPR platform — tin be completely confident that no-one can find out what information is existence shared, who is sending or receiving it, or even how much data is being sent.
Best of all, HOPR is fully decentralized. This means at that place'southward no centralized entity collecting fees and calling the shots, like in the 'freemium' approach which rules our electric current online interactions. That's known every bit the Web 2.0 model, where huge companies similar Facebook and Google offer "free" services in substitution for controlling your information and locking you lot into their platforms.
Admittedly anyone tin can help to maintain the HOPR network past acting equally a relayer, and everyone who does and so can earn HOPR tokens in exchange for their efforts. It'southward completely transparent and trustless, which means you never have to rely on a third-party and you're never locked into a service or have to give up command of your information.
HOPR, and the decentralized applications which can exist built on height of it, marks a fundamental step in upgrading our current internet and moving towards a more than individual, open and accountable future. This is the Web3 model: shifting control back to users, where it belongs.
Why does metadata matter?
HOPR is designed to protect your metadata. Merely what is that and why is it important?
Although we all know to be careful nigh who nosotros give our information to, information technology's easy to assume that the procedure of actually sending that data is condom. After all, information technology arrives at its destination almost instantly, and nearly everything we do online nowadays is ostentatiously protected past different types of encryption, from our online banking to simple WhatsApp messages.
The issue is that this encryption only protects your data — the actual content that nosotros're sending. It does nothing to protect your metadata: all the information most the data y'all're sending. This is stuff like:
- who you lot are
- who you're communicating with
- when you're doing it
- where you're both located
- how much information y'all're sending.
Even without seeing the details about what you're really sending, this metadata is extremely revealing. Practise you actually want people to exist able to tell when, where, and how often you're communicating with your depository financial institution, your dating app, or your proctologist, even if they can't meet the full details of what's being shared?
And this isn't only an individual problem: metadata privacy is a nightmare for businesses, who are ofttimes legally required not to expose their customers' personally identifying information. This trouble has become acutely apparent during the pandemic, with many companies realizing in that location is no easy way to permit employees work remotely while maintaining corporate privacy standards.
Unfortunately, metadata is extremely hard to shield. The internet just wasn't built with this in heed. Computers happily broadcast their location and requests virtually where to route data for anyone to come across. Then the electric current approach is to rather not bother and promise it's not a problem. But that's obviously not good enough. We need a whole new arroyo.
How does HOPR work?
You can head to our GitHub now to check out our code or caput to our documentation portal to learn how to set upwards a test node), just hither'south a basic overview of how HOPR will piece of work.
HOPR has two layers:
- the message layer and
- the payment layer.
The message layer is what ensures that data gets from A to B quickly, securely and privately. The payment layer is used to make sure the people who run the message layer are properly rewarded for their efforts.
And it's crucial to understand that "message" here doesn't just hateful conversation. Messaging in this context means literally any kind of information, from your dating app matches to your ride-hailing destination to your sensitive fiscal data and medical records. The metadata for all of these services are currently exposed and available to everyone from Google to your net service provider.
When you send data via HOPR, information technology's sent to its destination via a number of intermediate "hops". At each hop, the data is mixed with other information beingness sent through the network in what's known every bit a mixnet, and so anyone observing from the exterior can't tell what is beingness sent or who the senders and recipients are. We use the Sphinx parcel format to ensure that every piece of data sent via HOPR is indistinguishable from every other, fifty-fifty downward to existence the exact same size.
Users have full control of the route their data takes. Information technology might seem foreign to send your data via so many unknown parties, but every bit long as they aren't all secretly colluding, the entire series of hops is provably secure and individual. Dissimilar the standard centralized approaches we're used to, with a mixnet there'south enormous strength in numbers. And like all the best decentralized systems, people are compelled to work together in spite of human self-interest: in that location'southward no reward to be gained past doing anything other than following the rules.
That incentivization function is cardinal: the people who back up these hops by mixing and relaying data to the next stage of its journey are straight rewarded for their services in HOPR tokens. This is handled by the payment layer, without placing whatsoever restrictions on who can bring together, and information technology'south this fact that makes HOPR the first of its kind: information technology was previously thought it was impossible to add incentives to a free and open mixnet similar HOPR's message layer without compromising the metadata privacy the mixnet establishes. HOPR'south proof-of-relay machinery proves it can be done.
At that place'due south a lot more than to learn about how these individual parts of HOPR are implemented, but hopefully this overview has given you a good sense of the nuts.
Of course, the best style to learn nearly HOPR is to attempt it for yourself. We're still building many of HOPR's components, but you can already try out the nuts. Our documentation portal explains how to set up a node and communicate with other users via hops, and we'll exist running a minor incentivized testnet in July. Visit our Telegram and Twitter for more announcements about when that will get-go, and bring together the movement to bring privacy to the internet of today and tomorrow.
But what is HOPR really for?
Talking about messaging infrastructure is very abstract, and it can exist hard to immediately run across why this is so different and vital. Yep, HOPR lets people privately transport familiar kinds of letters (think email, WhatsApp) and financial transactions (think PayPal, Bitcoin). That's already a huge deal: we all deserve to be able to communicate and transact privately, and a decentralized model which treats these every bit a public good is much better for all existing internet users, also as opening up the web to the hundreds of millions of people around the globe who are locked out of our current system, which but cares about monetizing personal data.
Simply instead of just thinking about personal calibration interactions, or even the platforms which support those personal scale interactions, it'southward of import to dream bigger: literally every industry needs a way to securely and safely transmit data, and daily reports of hacks and data breaches show how bad nosotros are at achieving this with current methods. In 2022 in the US lone, there were over ane,000 recorded data breaches exposing more than 400 million personal records.
Don't we already take that? Why do we demand HOPR?
Y'all may be thinking: "That certainly sounds useful, just don't nosotros already accept all of that? Isn't the problem just companies beingness greedy or lazy? Can't we just make them alter? Practise we really need a whole new kind of internet?"
Yes, we do.
The economic science of Web two.0 only benefit the big platforms. Innovation is being stifled in favour of a data-centric model based on dubious ideals. And fifty-fifty the big platforms are increasingly finding the monster they created to be more than trouble than it's worth! When was the last time Marker Zuckerberg looked happy?
Increasingly strict privacy legislation is (rightly) increasing responsibility and liability around handling user information, particularly in medical and financial services, just there's just no practical mode to meet these responsibilities in the Web 2.0 model. It'southward baked into the platform design to maximize data gathering and dump it all in centralized databases. We all demand to work together to be smarter and more accountable. And that starts at the very foundations of the engineering science stack, with data exchange.
So it'due south merely the current internet, but more than private?
Non past a long shot! Yeah, HOPR lets companies provide familiar services from our modern digital lives with perfect privacy, just at that place's also all kinds of possibilities on the horizon which tin't get off the ground without engineering science similar HOPR.
For example, over the past decade, people in industry have become rightfully excited well-nigh the Internet of Things (IoT). All kinds of devices — medical equipment, watches, appliances, lights, sensors, fifty-fifty clothes — all generating, transmitting and receiving data to help improve our lives. These are more often than not low-powered devices that need to transmit their information somewhere else, perhaps for resources-intensive analysis or to initiate a buy, then receive the results back to implement them. This is a privacy minefield, almost exclusively based around sensitive medical or financial metadata.
But the upshot is likewise economic. These devices volition all be generating hundreds of data events a minute, transmitting them across unlike political and legal jurisdictions, supported and accounted for by paying tiny microtransactions each time. Information technology's a beguiling dream, and one which industry has invested trillions of dollars in grooming for. But information technology simply isn't possible in a centralized arrangement. Any bottleneck or increased costs multiplied beyond all those tiny transactions and suddenly the whole endeavour is too expensive to become off the footing. A lot of industry effort has been focused on the end products, only little progress has been fabricated on the decentralized infrastructure needed to make them viable.
Why is HOPR unique?
HOPR employs tried and tested techniques, such every bit an onion encryption mixnet and a modified version of the Sphinx packet format, to ensure that all data sent via HOPR is completely indistinguishable for anyone looking from the outside, and that it's incommunicable to link senders with recipients. This is great, but it's not exactly new. Versions of these technologies have been in utilize for many years.
What makes HOPR special is that people are rewarded for helping to relay information: when your node acts every bit a "hop" on the route data takes through the network, y'all're rewarded via the HOPR token.
This is of import, considering until now it was causeless that you can't take incentives and full privacy at the same fourth dimension: privacy requires anonymity, but with anonymity comes a lot of opportunity to try and crook the arrangement. HOPR'southward payment layer solves this problem with what we call proof of relay.
Every hop tin generate a payment. Crucially, though, relayers only receive half the information they demand to try and merits a reward when they receive data. They go the other one-half when they've sent the information to the next hop on its journey. The two halves of each payment key are useless on their own. There are no loopholes: the merely way to go rewarded is to properly forward data to the next hop. This means no-one can claim a advantage without fulfilling their relay responsibility, and failures elsewhere in the network don't touch on on your ain reward. There'due south literally nothing to be gained from trying to crook the system. The self-interested way to behave is to cooperate.
Who is HOPR for?
HOPR is for you, for me, for everyone. We all deserve a gratis, open and private internet, where data is endemic by the people who create it.
Whether it's wearable medical devices transmitting crucial patient records, dating apps connecting two people for the first time, sensitive fiscal data pinging around the world or only your refrigerator at home ordering more than milk because you lot ran out, whenever a person or device exchanges data, metadata privacy adds essential value.
More than specifically, dissimilar people are going to be interested in dissimilar parts of HOPR. Simply we want to hear from all of you!
HOPR for Techies
If you lot're already edifice something in the Web3 space, information technology may exist that HOPR can provide an important piece of your puzzle. Nosotros'd love to hear from you.
HOPR for Entrepreneurs
If you lot accept a product or service that involves frequently transmitting customer data, then HOPR may be the most effective way to meet your privacy responsibilities and minimize liability. Go in touch on and nosotros can explain more than nigh how HOPR can help your business concern.
HOPR for Miners and Stakers
If you're into earning tokens, why not get a relayer? Running a HOPR mix node isn't like mining Bitcoin or Ethereum. It's non as computationally intensive, and doesn't require special hardware. Our mainnet isn't due to launch for several months, but nosotros're going to exist running several incentivized testnets to stress-test our system, hunt for bugs and mostly gather feedback. We'd love your assist and you lot can earn bounties for doing then.
HOPR for Privacy Lovers
If you're just generally interested in privacy, distributed technology, decentralized values and governance and the whole Web3 scene, we're going to exist sharing a lot of content about our quest to run HOPR via what we're calling decentralized, community-enabled governance (DecenGov), a more practical version of the DAO.
HOPR for Cryptographers
If y'all've got serious cryptographic chops, then nosotros'd beloved to hear from you: exam our our code, try and hack our protocols, earn development bounties and possibly even utilize for a permanent job.
Whatever your interest, we'd love for yous to join our movement to build the earth's commencement open and incentivized platform providing network-level privacy. Keep post-obit this blog, visit our website, follow our Twitter, join our Telegram group. Together, nosotros can lay the foundations for the free and private internet of today and tomorrow.
Dr Sebastian Bürgel, HOPR Founder
Website: https://www.hoprnet.org
Telegram: https://t.me/hoprnet
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hoprnet
Github: https://github.com/hoprnet
Source: https://medium.com/hoprnet/introducing-hopr-your-next-generation-data-privacy-and-protection-platform-d4c8ef634fdc
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