Network Structure, Domain Names, and Email Addresses

EarthBucks has a radically different peer-to-peer network than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin used a custom protocol on port 8333, which did not include a notion of names or authenticated communications, EarthBucks is based on domain names (DNS) and the web (HTTPS). EarthBucks miners and wallets have a domain name, and all communications are authenticated and encrypted using HTTPS.

Let’s consider three examples: a mine, a wallet, and a user.

The very first mine will be hosted at earthbucks.com. Users will be able to visit the website, sign up, save their master private key, and start mining, all from inside the browser. The user will have an address which can be their name, say, name@earthbucks.com, exactly like email addresses. Users can send money to each other using these addresses, exactly like email.

Now consider a wallet. Wallets don’t mine, but they otherwise work exactly the same as mines. Users can visit the website, say, ebxpay.com, sign up, and create a wallet. The wallet will have an address which can be their name, say, name@ebxpay.com. Users can send money to each other using these addresses, exactly like email.

Finally, consider an independent user. Most users will not want to bother running a web service to host either a mine or a wallet. They will simply sign in as a user at an existing mine or wallet. Ordinary users will most likely not have to pay any fees in order to use simple services like sending money, but sophisticated services like high volume transactions and smart contracts may cost fees. If the user doesn’t want to pay these fees, or they don’t trust any of the existing mines or wallets, they can run their own mine or wallet.

Anybody can run a wallet. However, mines are limited in number to 2016. Why is that? Because blocks occur every ten minutes, and there are 2016 blocks in a two week target adjustment period. In order to poll mines about the validity of new blocks and transactions, we must have a limit on the number of mines we poll. It is extremely unlikely that any mine that doesn’t produce a block in a target adjustment period will be able to mine a block in the next target adjustment period, because the target is likely to get harder every period. So there is no reason to track mines that do not produce blocks in this period, placing a practical upper limit of 2016 mines. Wallets, however, can be as numerous as the number of users. This is not just true for EarthBucks, but for any proof-of-work blockchain.

The network structure is thus expected to be as follows: A small number of mines, as few as three and as numerous as 2016, will all directly connect to each other. Wallets will connect to mines. Users will connect to wallets. Some enthusiast users will run their own wallet, but by and large, mines and wallets are expected to be professional businesses, not enthusiasts.