Orchid is a VPN powered by cryptocurrency that offers a decentralized market for anonymous communication and network routing. Its customers may purchase bandwidth from a worldwide pool of service providers, and they avoid leaving a data trail since the Orchid VPN is dispersed throughout an Ethereum blockchain network of users. Orchid is the first incentivized peer-to-peer privacy network, using its native money OXT to give incentives against harmful behaviour.

Unlike other VPN services, Orchid users may move between providers quickly and cheaply if one is prohibited. Orchid further distinguishes itself from existing peer-to-peer systems such as Tor by enhancing performance and quality through crypto economic incentives, while assuring that bandwidth supply can increase elastically with demand growth. Furthermore, by utilizing the revolutionary probabilistic nanopayment technology, Orchid can grow payment throughput while lowering transaction fees for tiny payments.

History

Dr. Steven Waterhouse, Jay Freeman, Brian J Fox, and Gustav Simonsson created Orchid in 2017. Waterhouse holds a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Cambridge and has previously worked as a partner at digital currency investment firm Pantera Capital and as a board member at Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp. Orchid was created to address various fundamental problems, such as traffic analysis, sybil assaults, and the random selection problem. Consensys and Certora, two external third parties, audited the OXT smart contract.

The Orchid team has subsequently expanded to more than a dozen members, with offices in San Francisco and Berlin, and the Orchid network was launched in December 2019.

How does it work

The Orchid program employs a proprietary VPN protocol that operates on top of the widely used web standard WebRTC. The Orchid protocol, like other systems such as OpenVPN or WireGuard, is designed for high-speed networking and allows users to pay in crypto for remote network resources to which they want access. Bandwidth merchants register their nodes in an Ethereum blockchain provider directory, which maintains metadata such as geolocation and any other services offered. Their registration information is also stored in a stake registry, allowing the Orchid app to locate random servers in the decentralized network automatically.

How probabilistic nanopyments work

OXT can be used to pay for bandwidth. Orchid's unique Ethereum Layer 2 scaling architecture, which employs probabilistic nanopayments, powers the bandwidth marketplace. In the case of probabilistic payments, instead of submitting a 1 transaction USD, the buyer may send a ticket indicating a 1% chance of winning 100 USD. However, with nanopayments, these tickets represent fractions of a penny. A sender can deposit OXT into an Ethereum smart contract to create a nanopayment account, then issue nanopayments secured by the deposit to service providers. When a sender produces a winning nanopayment ticket, the provider can redeem it for on-chain payment. The value represented by the probabilistic nanopayments is supposed to match the value sent on-chain over time.

Total supply and circulation

At launch, 1 billion OXT were generated, signifying the maximum number of tokens that can ever exist. Orchid has a circulating supply of 591,544,729 OXT.