[tugdual]

Do you think that this could be linked to a decentralized system for paying people to do this ? Similar to bitcoin, when a node goes down technicians arrive and are payed after the node has been fixed. (I see a lot of potential problems of "measuring" how much the node is repaired, who pays for it etc though)

[woah]

A big problem that comes up a lot when trying to think of ways to replace a centralized business is that the friction inherent in a decentralized system costs more than the profit margin of a centralized business.

An end user wants to pay a steady monthly fee for internet that never goes down. A property owner wants to get a steady monthly check for leasing a site. A technician wants to get a steady salary for fixing nodes.

A decentralized repair network is likely to reduce reliability for end users, predictability for property owners, and job security for technicians. All three of these parties may find it more optimal to have an ISP business which can finance and coordinate things, even if the business is taking profit which could have gone to the other participants.

[sfink]

Apologies for the cynicism, but that immediately makes me think of a node owner dropping a tinfoil hat over their node, waiting for an ACK from the technician, then taking it off again and splitting the "repair" money with the technician. Lather rinse repeat. It could even be automated.

You'd just need one crooked technician who can recruit some number of node owners. (If the tech did it via remote-controlled power interruption and only did it on scattered nodes in areas with lots of redundancy, they wouldn't even need to recruit node owners and split the cash. But they'd also be leaving evidence that could easily get them in trouble once someone started getting wise to it.)

[werzum]

how about reversing it and paying users for a mixture of uptime and quality of service?