My fellow retards,
About a month ago phon/ongod had a stroke of genius while melting in the hot tub, staring at the stars. He imagined a world where phonon-based payments were ubiquitous. He played through the interactions between two parties to make a payment. It went something like this.
Phren Peebo, well-to-do, well-hung, exceedingly successful American decides to take his family on a vacation to eastern Europe. They rent a quaint cottage amongst the rolling hillsides, with no light pollution, beautiful farms, and phrenly people. On the way to the market to satisfy his morning caffeine fix, Mr. Peebo comes across phon/ongod’s goat meat stand. The two hit it off after Peebo sees the Phonon logo listed as an accepted mode of payment.
In this part of town, cell reception is spotty, especially before the mountain mist is burned off by the rising sun. While Peebo’s calm demeanor inspires phon/ongod’s trust, your humble narrator is less willing to trust phonons that he cannot verify. Goat meat is his income, he needs to ensure payment is fairly made. Mr. Peebo swears that the phonons in his wallet are legitimate, but phon/ongod is a scrutinizing deviant who always opts to verify, not trust—a survival skill from the bitoin years.
The issue is that when two parties agree to a phonon transaction, it *can* be fully completed with zero internet connection. Peebo could created a direct, encrypted tunnel to phon/ongod’s phone. They could do this over NFC or Bluetooth, the transport protocol matters naught. Phon/ongod can even see the phonons Peebo wants to send over, the trouble is that there is no way to *verify* the authenticity of those phonons. Let’s dive in:
Mr. Peebo is no scammer. He says he has 10 phonons in his wallet that represent different amounts of ETH and stablecoins. Phon/ongod can look at his phone even and confirm. Though Mr. Peebo lacks the technical capacity to fork the Ethereum network, spin up his own chain, and make the ETH and USDC deposits to various addresses that were derived from private keys generated within the secure enclave of his e-Sim, some nefarious agent certainly could. Herein lies the problem for fully off-chain payments:
Without the ability to query the appropriate chain there is a level of subjectivity. There is no efficient, fully objective method to determine that these assets are on the real ethereum. It may be possible to also pass along a proof with the phonon where that proof shows certain amount of work has been done after the deposit (which would only take place on the real chain) but these proofs of cumbersome and we should always opt for simplicity in design. There are better ways.
While phon/ongod could see that the phonons on Peebo’s phone are ETH and USDC at some address, without the internet he *cannot* verify that they correspond to the real Ethereum. They could be testnet Ethereum, or some forked version masquerading as the real.
The reason why you want internet access is so that your client can ping the *real* Ethereum and request the balance of some account to verify that the ETH or USDC Peebo wants to send exist on the same network that the world recognizes as Ethereum.
Honestly, this isn’t a heavy lift. There are nodes you can hit and get the response fast. This is a low latency interaction. There’s no heavy math or calculations needed. So long as you have a stable internet connection your client can check that the balance exist in the account of which Peebo can prove he has the corresponding private keys.
But in our story, and across a large chunk of our present day earth, internet connection isn’t as readily available. Or perhaps it is, but for various reasons you don’t want to broadcast a signal that shows your attempt to read the balance of a crypto-chain. Here is where the brilliance/madness/insanity of phon/ongod kicked into high gear.
Phon/ongod remembers 2008. Phon/ongod remembers how the trusted third party rating agencies sold their soul and listed whatever rating the banks paid them for. This is not how they were supposed to operate. Time and time again we learned that if someone funds them, they bend the fucking knee.
Don’t believe? Go look at the health studies funded by big tobacco in the 70s or 80s, go look at climate change funding for the past two decades, go look at nutrition funding by corn and soy producers, go look at fact checkers paid for by tech oligarchs. It’s quite logical really; when you want a narrative you pay an *expert* to craft a message to agree with that narrative. If the independent expert chooses to go against your desired narrative, you no longer fund them. They have an economic incentive to deliver what you want under the guise of independence.
Anyway, fuck all that. In phonon land we don’t run into that problem with our implementation of attestations. This is because there is no global banking, pharma or Ag cartel who funds the Attester. The way this service works is as follows.
Phren Peebo knows his destination is naturally beautiful but lacks connectivity. Ahead of his trip, he adds an attestation to each of his Phonons. The way this works is that Peebo hits up a third party provider and pays them to verify the claim of his phonons. The third party attester looks on chain for the location of Peebo's claimed phonon, verifies that the phonon is in fact pointing to the chain we all call Ethereum, verifies the balance and then adds a signature in an Attestation metadata field corresponding to the phonon. The attester sends this signed attestation to Peebo. This is not sensitive data and can be stored in insecure locations including in the general storage of Peebos new iPhone. Whenever Peebo wants to prove that his phonon is legit he can include this signed attestation which adds another layer of guarantee to the receiving party.
Now Peebo has the same phonon, but with one additional signature. That signature is provably from one of the top Phonon Attestation Providers. Now when Peebo heads to market to buy that goatmeat, phon/ongod fears not about any nefarious natures on part of Peebo. When phon/ongod looks at the phonons to see if he will accept, he sees they carry the attestation signature. Now phon/ongod doesn’t need internet connection, he has no need to pull up chain data or use the internet at all. Now the purchase of goat meat can be 100% peer to peer. Nothing is broadcast, nothing is remotely verified. Peebo and phon/ongod engage in direct commerce and there is zero fear of any scam taking place. The attestation signature act as a stamp of approval that phon/ongod knows to mean that a trusted third party has looked at this phonon and agrees it is related to the real chain it claims.
Keep in mind, third party attestations are NOT NEEDED for phonon to work. They are a value-add service that will be built to help facilitate commerce. Similar to changemakers, they are just another suggestion for the ecosystem to fund. The function of an attester is clear, and their cost is next to zero.
Imagine a service where you pay $5 a month for unlimited attestations. Sometimes you may not want this service, since the additional signature adds to the overall data storage which has real limitation within the cards, but don’t be worried about that in this moment. If you have your phonon on an eSIM in your phone it’s a non-issue. Over time the chips used in phonon smart cards will get more and more storage and there will be ways to do off-card storage in a reliable and safe manner.
All this and more is being invented as we speak on the Phonon DAO discord.
Tips to phonongod.eth will be invested in bounties that advance the Phonon project.
Hatemail to phonongod@protonmail.com will be scathingly considered.
Targets for the marketcap of PHONON DAO remain:
$1b by Q2 2022, $12b by EOY.
On the high end, $300b marketcap in 3 years.