The internet has become a vital part of daily life, similar to utilities such as water, gas and electricity. Reliance on internet connectivity has transformed the ways in which people communicate with one another, as well as how businesses and economies interact worldwide. As of the year end 2021, nearly 2/3rds of the world’s population is connected to the internet, totalling 4.9 billion people. However, despite the increasing need for bandwidth, many internet customers do not use 100% of their bandwidth 24/7. Meanwhile, internet service providers (ISPs) steadily increased the cost of internet access by ~4% year over year. A new technology software called PKT introduces a way for global internet customers to turn their unused bandwidth into cash.
How Does PKT Work?
Launched in 2019, PKT is a free to use software that monetizes unused bandwidth. Anyone with internet connectivity can easily install PKT’s PacketCrypt software on nearly any computer or compatible mobile device. The PacketCrypt software performs a mining function called announcement mining, which requires hardware processing power and upload bandwidth. Each announcement miner continuously transmits small packets of data called announcements into the PKT Network. The announcements are then received and used by PKT mining pools to win PKT Cash ($PKT) mining rewards. PKT Cash is paid to miners in the PKT Network every 60 seconds. When a PKT pool wins a reward, the pool pays each miner a share of the reward based on the contributed bandwidth and processing power. The more compute power and bandwidth allocated, the higher the rewards. While the announcements do not contain any sensitive data, this proof of work (PoW) builds a robust, high speed data network called the PKT Network.
How Is The Bandwidth Used?
The PKT Network is formed as a result of miners connecting their compute power and bandwidth to the network from around the world. Announcement miners are paid in PKT Cash to expend CPU effort and upload speed to prove they have high quality connections. The CPU effort used in PacketCrypt is the same encryption algorithm for VPN, which provides end-to-end encrypted infrastructure for unlimited real world network use cases. Initially, the bandwidth is not directly used by the network, so there are no privacy risks. As the PKT Network scales, miners will eventually have the option to transmit real world data with end-to-end encryption. In this way, there will be opportunities to earn additional revenue streams for sharing bandwidth, permissioning VPN connections, and securely and privately selling WiFi access to local neighbors.
Why Connect To The PKT Network?
PKT is designed to build a high speed network that is powered by the people. This helps get new people connected to the internet without relying on monopolistic ISPs. The PKT Network is an edge network that empowers people in their homes and businesses to repurpose their unused bandwidth. Currently, the way to get on the internet is to pay a monthly subscription to a centralized ISP. The PKT Network is scaling to enable people to share local internet connectivity via mesh networking. This can bring forth a new opportunity for people to have greater choice and competition to get on the internet peer to peer, instead of only through a traditional ISP.
Is PKT Safe?
When ISPs sell internet access, the bandwidth is “use it, or lose it.” With PKT, the bandwidth being utilized would normally go unused. PKT enables people to convert their unused bandwidth into passive income. Since mining PKT uses available bandwidth, internet customers must be aware of data caps or any limitations imposed by their ISP. Some unlimited data plans are not truly unlimited. It is important to determine the value of PKT earnings in relation to internet costs.
Since announcement mining does not transmit any sensitive data and the bandwidth is not initially being used by a third party, there is no risk to the miner. In the near future, real world data will move through the PKT Network. Since PKT uses end-to-end encryption, this makes the network more secure than the current internet, which is vulnerable to surveillance and other privacy concerns. PKT provides a safe and secure solution to mitigate against common vulnerabilities. Internet subscribers often enjoy a false sense of security from their current ISP.
What Is The Future of PKT?
PKT is a completely decentralized and open-sourced project, with no company, no investors, and no-premined coins. The project’s focus is to economically incentivize people to connect their bandwidth and provide low cost, high speed connectivity to people around the world.
ISPs have to continuously raise their customer access costs because of the increasing infrastructure costs and the requirement to remain profitable for their shareholders. PKT mitigates this by decoupling the cost of maintaining internet infrastructure from the administrative and networking roles of an ISP. This shift is intended to drive down the cost of bandwidth and empower people from their homes and offices to improve internet access availability worldwide. The vast use cases for the PKT Network shape a future where consumers are paying for the bandwidth they use at a fair market price, instead of overpaying for a service plan that is under-used, insufficient, or unavailable when needed.
The next phase of the high speed PKT Network is providing baseline VPN for free, peer to peer local Wi-Fi sharing so people can get internet access without a traditional ISP, and enabling people to easily tokenize their bandwidth and sell bandwidth leases into a decentralized bandwidth trading market. Decentralized bandwidth trading will give everyday people access to the multi-trillion dollar annual global bandwidth markets that are solely dominated by ISPs. The collective goal of PKT is helping get the next 1 billion people online.