MetaBlox Network demonstrates decentralised connection to Wi-Fi OpenRoaming at WGC
Vancouver, Canada – MetaBlox Network, a web3 project building a global OpenRoaming Wi-Fi network in a decentralised way, presented at the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s (WBA’s) Wireless Global Congress (WGC) in Amsterdam on October 19th, 2022. WGC is Europe’s Wi-Fi conference, where new developments in wireless networking technologies are presented and discussed by industry leaders. This year, a main focus of the event was accelerating Wi-Fi OpenRoaming adoption towards building one global Wi-Fi network.
By generating a decentralised ID (DID) on the MetaBlox Network app, the presentation team established OpenRoaming between two different networks, both adhering to WBA standards. MetaBlox Network users can switch between MetaBlox Wi-Fi nodes and any of the other million+ nodes in WBA’s OpenRoaming alliance. The presentation also introduced the project’s advanced decentralised deployment model, which uses rewards-based incentivisation to grow the MetaBlox Network.
“The explosion of Web3 in recent years has created a revolutionary opportunity to decentralise wireless networking”, says Jeffrey Manner, project lead for MetaBlox Network. “To do this, we are decentrally deploying a free, global, hotspot 2.0-based OpenRoaming network.”
The Wireless Broadband Alliance, which hosts the Wireless Global Congress, is an association of wireless networking and telecom companies dedicated to addressing issues and opportunities related to new Wi-Fi technologies. WBA’s key programs include interoperability, policy and regulatory affairs, 5G, IoT, and next generation Wi-Fi standards that will enable the creation of one global OpenRoaming network.
Decentralised authentication
OpenRoaming Wi-Fi is achieved on the MetaBlox Network via a passwordless authentication mechanism based on W3C’s DIDs and verifiable credentials (VCs) standards. The implementation of DID and VC standards also enables self-sovereign, privacy-protected authentication where users maintain full custody of their internet credentials and do not need to provide any personal information or enter login info to access the OpenRoaming network.
Other decentralised trust solutions the MetaBlox Network integrates include confidential computing, zero-knowledge proof protocol, and the trust-over-IP technology stack (per Linux Foundation).
Rewards-based growth model
The new approach to OpenRoaming Wi-Fi expansion being implemented by MetaBlox Network uses decentralissed infrastructure and a rewards-based incentivisation model: individuals can invest in MetaBlox miners which function as routers at host locations, and collect the ongoing mining rewards from them that accrue from supporting the network. This model provides a mining opportunity that is more secure and lucrative than other proof-of-work crypto projects. MetaBlox Network users can also attain rewards by validating the performance of miner-provided network access points (APs) on their personal devices.
Overall, this rewards-based incentivisation technique motivates internet users everywhere to grow the global Wi-Fi OpenRoaming network through miner deployment.
Cloud mining
One of the solutions provided by MetaBlox Network is its collection of miner-pegged NFTs. Each NFT is connected to a MetaBlox mining rig deployed at a high-traffic host site, and these rigs are maintained by the MetaBlox Network team. All $MBLX tokens produced by a rig are sent to the NFT holders as ongoing rewards. This utility is known as cloud mining, and it’s just one of the MetaBlox NFT’s features. The collection sold out on Binance NFT within a week, and is currently also on sale on OpenSea.
5G offloading
With automatic and ubiquitous OpenRoaming Wi-Fi, cellular users will be able to offload their 5G connections to Wi-Fi, and switch between the two network types. Through offloading to Wi-Fi, cellular users can save on 5G data costs.This feature is especially convenient for travelers because cellular roaming costs are high and public Wi-Fi is often password-protected. Passwordless OpenRoaming Wi-Fi lets users depend less on cellular roaming and avoid obstacles to traditional Wi-Fi connections.
MetaBlox Network’s role in this OpenRoaming expansion is also to connect smaller host sites with the appropriate infrastructure, as current network projects are focusing on bigger host enterprises. MetaBlox will attract smaller hosts with its decentralised incentivisation model.
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