What is a Launcher Network? I have mentioned it a few times here and there, but for the most part I kept it away. The idea to make it started quite a few years ago, but I knew I wouldn't have time to make it so I didn't bother to introduce it, not because it's some kind of top secret project . Launcher Network is a combined name for a group of functionalities that will work on the same custom network - Launcher Network, hence the name. Let me firstly introduce you to planned functionality of Launcher Network and then we will move to how it operates and its discoverability.
ID. To identify yourself in the network everyone will need and ID. This ID will consist of Name, Password and Key Number, all of this combined will provide a rather unique ID, which will be extremely difficult to guess and make a fake-impersonation. This ID will not be tied to Launcher or any specific device, so you'll be able to login from any other Launcher client, as well as throw away your ID and use a new one.
Local encryption. Name and Password of your ID, apart of identification, will be used to encrypt data locally. This data includes, and is not limited to: Key Number, other passwords, AOTPs (already introduced in Launcher, but is currently unencrypted) and some other data that you would like to hold in encrypted state. At start I will not make it changeable, so if you'll decide to throw away your previous ID you'll firstly have to pull out all of the important data and input it to the new one.
Please note that I don't plan to make it a fully-featured-ultra-secure password manager, at least at start. While it will have some functionality for this I would not recommend to hold there passwords for your bank or things of that nature.
Messenger. It will be a very basic, yet secure messenger, which will operate over Launcher Network. You'll be able to communicate with other on-line Launcher Network members. I haven't decided yet how I'll restrict handshaking to prevent spam and things of that nature, but there will be some need to approve each other before you'll be able to text. In the future I might add file sharing and other things, but it's not in plans for now. Security will be granted by the network itself (more on that later below) and encryption. There will be 2 encryptions, not really sure how to call them, basically there will be the default Launcher Network encryption, which will be used by default (this is in order to prevent clear texting between unfamiliar newly-met people and those that find such things difficult to understand) + you'll have an option to configure custom encryption, which only you and your addressee will know.
Signing. You'll be able to sign any text and files with your ID, which will prove to your recipient that it's you who wrote text or made the file, and they'll be able to verify that, without knowing your Password or Key.
Cryptocurrencies. For now the plan is to roll out Launcher's currency, which for now is called Invo (name might change in the future), and after it will work and operate as expected I'll add the ability to operate your own currencies over the network. Unlike other blockchains with "similar" functionality - other currencies will be a fully-fledged and independently-operational currencies (no tokens, no gases, no contracts and other crap). Since they will be independent you'll need to make other people accept your currency, which they might decide not to, thus saving their bandwidth and computational powers, no one will be forced to operate with your custom currency.
Now regarding Invo - it (and other currencies for that matter) will use previously mentioned ID to identify users. Invo will use "infinite data structure", which is either unique in cryptocurrencies or at least I have never hear of anything like that. Infinite data structure resolves the issue of future-proofing the "messages and blocks" by allowing infinitely big data, thus it will never overflow and reach "the end" of possible transactions or any part of those. It might be difficult to understand for average user so I'll try to simplify the explanation a bit - imagine that you have a limited length of possible number combinations, at some point you'll reach the end and it will make that field unusable (the good examples are y2000, y2038, y9999 problems), most of the current cryptocurrencies have this problem, it's not currently a problem simply due to small amount of operations, but when the usage will increase enormously developers will need to intrude by expanding the length of the data and every user will be forced to update and rely on developers in order to continue using their cryptocurrency. Basically there will be no such problems in Invo as it will be infinitely-scalable, that will of course increase the storage and bandwidth use over time, but so will any other "updated currency".
Most of the cryptocurrencies are centralized in one way or another, apart of maybe Holochain (don't know any other truly-decentralized), which is a beast of its own and I won't be explaining here why, and why it's not really a currency as such. I want to make Invo truly-decentralized by operating it over Launcher Network (more on that later in Discoverability section below). At the same time I don't want to support operations of mining farms, wasting resources and computational powers, thus for now I plan to make it operate in some form of Proof-of-Stake Blockchain. I was looking into DAGs, Block-Lattices and other available technologies, which do increase through-output, making operations faster, but they do that at a cost of less secure integrity, and I'm not happy with that, hence the reason why I opted for Blockchain (at least for now, who knows what future will bring us and what I'll end up with, but be sure that security and integrity is my priority). Few more words regarding Proof-of-Stake - many people have valid concerns about it, since PoS cryptos have network operation fees, which leads to some form of centralization as the more money entity has on hands the more control over the network it has and it earns even higher and higher parts of fees, thus inevitably leading to concentration of money in "single hands" making rich richer and leading to 51% capital holding, thus inevitably making someone to fully-control the network. This will not be that much of a concern for Invo as there will be NO FEES, surely someone can still buy-out all of the Invo in the network, but at that point people might simply jump to next Invo2 currency (which will perfectly operate on the same network) and abandon super-holder with his money. At the start though it will be somewhat centralized by me, to prevent early attacks on the Invo and for the reason that I'll own all of the Invo at start (I still haven't decided on the max number, most likely I'll end up with max unsigned int or something like that). There will be no mining involved, as I don't want Invo to become a speculation or holding assets, like most of the crypto in the world is, but rather an daily-use currency. Initial money will be used to:
- Cover the development costs. If it'll succeed I'll be able to afford hiring people, thus making the development faster and better, with more functionality, etc.
- Hold the value from deflation. Most people won't like to hear this, but for some time I plan to hold the Invo value from increasing over initial value by selling them at a set price. You'll be able to buy it cheaper from other users (exchanges, etc.) and in this way it should spread more and more to a certain operation level, at which point I'll rise the selling price further, and so on and so forth. So I'll not be holding the value down until I'll be out of Invo, I'll just make it gradually increase (of course if it will) rather than make it a roller-coaster.
- Reward initial investors. Everyone who will have forum gold before Invo will go live - will be able to exchange it for Invo at least with double (x2) profit, possibly even more (depends on the total number, with smaller amount of initial investors the profit will be higher). Basically reward for early investment into the project.
- Various puzzles, tournaments and other events. I'll be giving out Invo here and there after it'll go live. I'll be sure to make some interesting challenges to get yourself some Invo without any investments.
- Paying to moderators, content creators and other helping people. Basically I'll give it for those that will help me with this project and not only it, for example popular Black Desert guides authors will also be able to claim some. LithStud is also the first one in the line for it, of course if he'll want it.
- Incentive for 24/7-operating nodes. Since there will be no fees and no mining - there isn't a whole lot of reasons to run a node 24/7, thus possibly putting Invo down for periods of time and/or making it less resilient and prone to attacks. This will not last forever, but for the first year or even few I plan to pay some sort of salary to 24/7-operational nodes. In the future this will not be an issue, as super-holders, exchanges, banks, and other big entities, that will (possibly) use Invo will be interested in keeping their stakes operational online, to make sure that no one will be able to take control over the network and steal their Invo, until that day I'll pay for Invo operation stability.
- Possibly something else.
Brands. I'll be selling branding names. Some brands will be able to get it for free (for example Pearl Abyss or Microsoft can just email me from their corporate tld email and I'll gladly assigns their brand to their ID). Brands info will be hardcoded into the client. Initially I wanted to add it to the blockchain, but that would mean that I'll centralize branding, and when I'll disappear no further branding would be available, or if someone would steal my ID he would be able to rebrand/steal brand/add new brand/etc., of course I could also sell the rights for branding to some other entities, thus making a hierarchy similar to what we have with ICANN, but that would still lead to some form of centralization as when I'll disappear only those brand-sellers will be able to assign new brand-sellers and why would they. Anyway, in the way I plan to implement it any "wallet-creator" will be able to be the brand-seller, so I expect to see scam-wallets in the future that would impersonate brands to their own ID.
So what exactly is brand? A short and easy to remember name that can be used by other users instead of ID. For example I plan to reserve "KAMIKADzE", "KAMI", "InvoKAMI", "Launcher", "DoTA" names for myself, and all of that will point to my ID or IDs (still haven't decided if I should split InvoKAMI/Launcher from myself or not, possibly might do that in the future as well, if it'll become and big enough entity of its own).
You'll be able to re-sell your brands, as you'll be in their control, of course for some fee (haven't even though of how much yet), as I'll need to apply those changes in the code. Maybe some wallet-creator will do it for free, but I wouldn't advice to use other wallets.
Extra Functions field(s). Haven't thought about the name to this field or fields yet, but it will be used for extra functionality. The main and primary example will be an escrow. One of the advantages and yet a big disadvantage is the unreversal of transactions. With escrow functionality you'll be able to assign 3rd party ID as a temporary holder of your assets. That 3rd party ID will only be able to cancel your transaction if it will know that your deal has failed. So for example you want to sell your Invo to someone, you find 3rd party escrow (I'll be available for some escrow deals) and one of you sends X amount of Invo to 3rd party (in this instance seller would send X amount of Invo to buyer through escrow ID) for agreed fee (totally configurable, from 0 to any possible), after that all 3 of you would need to send a confirmation of deal (haven't decided yet, but probably it'll be 0.0......1 Invo, which will be returned back after the deal), after which the Invo will be transferred to buyer and 3rd party will receive its fee without doing anything, now if the deal doesn't happen (buyer didn't give you cash) 3rd party can cancel the deal (still haven't decided how exactly, but probably by sending 0.0......2 Invo or something like that), 1st party would also be able to cancel a deal by sending certain amount of Invo, albeit with a delay, to prevent scams. Still haven't decided on how it will all work, to prevent network overuse from people DDoSing it by sending Invo themselves, etc. Might also add a deal option without 3rd party escrow, where Invo will be temporarily held on receiver side and only sender will need to either confirm or deny the transfer (will be useful for IRL stuff). Maybe I'll think of some other extra functionality in the future, but for now it's planned for deals only.
Discoverability. Finally to how it will all work without centralization. I plan to start with discoverability over Tor network (in the future might add other options, like I2P, etc.). One of the issue with discoverability is that you need to know IPs and ports of other users to connect to them and discover them. Launcher will store a hardcoded Tor address that I'll use to broadcast my ID and Tor IP/port + there will be a certain hardcoded partial-address, which will be used to generate addresses for other users (e.g.: Launcher1, Launcher2, Launcher3, etc.). When connecting to the Launcher Network your Launcher will firstly check if I'm live, get all discovered users from me and also do the same for first 100 addresses by default, while giving away your ID and Tor IP/port to them and assigning yourself address 101 (although I still haven't decided on this 101, maybe I should make it some other, like 0, also it'll let you to set any other address manually). This will happen on every connection/reconnection. Regarding first 100 addresses it will be configurable (you'll be able to set for instance to start from Launcher77777 and check until Launcher88888), so it'll be possible to avoid the case where 100 bad actors took first 100 addresses and broadcast only selected handful of users to take control over the network. It'll be also possible to manually input custom addresses to connect to, so other trusted users can serve as a server, without the need to hard-code anything like most of the cryptos do.
On top of all of that Tor also provides IP anonymity, so no one will know from what real IP you've connected to the network.
Privacy. While Tor will give a certain level of privacy - your ID, Invo usage, etc. can still be tied to your real identity, if you'll tie it yourself in one way or another (for example providing your Passport detail to exchanges, etc.). All traffic will also be encrypted with certain Launcher's encryption, but anyone who knows that it's a Launcher Network traffic will be able to decrypt it, since the encryption will have to be the same (will not be an issue for Messenger with custom set encryption) in order for network to operate. Invo will not be a privacy-private crypto, and will tie to the general network usage, albeit it's still undecided and I might make it in a similar way as Monero for example, who knows.
Feel free to ask, discuss and suggest whatever you'll feel like. I've also created a separate forum section specifically dedicated to Launcher Network related topics. This thread will be locked and used as source of general info.
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