Petr Zaika

Waldemar Scherer, a seasoned executive and entrepreneur, with a background in business informatics, has managed global programs and digital transformation projects in the financial services sector. He was an integral part of the team to establish EY’s Blockchain footprint in Switzerland. As a co-founder and former Head of Enterprise Blockchain at Swisscom, he built blockchain solutions and services for internationally renowned companies in the finance, insurance and pharma industries.

Bastyon is an innovative social network and video sharing platform. Unlike the mainstream social networks, there is no corporation behind it, it is based on the Bitcoin model. Bastyon is an open source project run by a team of developers and experts, and its goal is to provide a community moderated platform where the freedom of speech is seriously respected.

The project was originally created by Daniel Satchkov, but now encompasses over 25 developers and many volunteers across the globe. Bastyon is more of a protocol than a platform, since any developer can build its own app on it. The platform does not run on a single server but on a network of user nodes that are located all throughout the world.

This means that users are always able to get information and communicate, see the content and post as long as they have an internet connection and only a handful of nodes somewhere in the world are operational.

This overcomes the limitations that censors put in place to block or limit communication and spread of information. Information wants to move freely. While, for example, in China some social networks can be used only behind a VPN, there is no need for that with Bastyon.

In addition,Bastyon does not collect personal information: users register without any email or phone number and no personal data like the IP or MAC address are stored in any way. Note, that while Bastyon does not collect any IPs (as can be seen in open code), it is not possible to hide your IP completely when using the internet, unless you are using a VPN.

By doing so,Bastyon enables users to discuss issues freely. Today, anonymity is a requirement for security and privacy and Bastyon is able to guarantee it.

Furthermore, in order to deliver completely private and anonymous communication, Bastyon provides an encrypted chat system, not associated to any phone number or personal data, protected with peer-to-peer encryption model (note, that group chats are not encrypted, only 1-on-1 chats). No one except the two users involved in the chat session can access the messages. All the claims are easy to verify, since Bastyon app and Pocketnet blockchain are both completely open-source, with code visible to everyone. Moreover, all the chat messages are automatically deleted after 7 day.

Bastyon is a censorship-resistant pseudonymous social platform where people can chat, communicate and share contents with others transparent rules that are the same for every user and developer.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pocketnet.app

Google Play Market

Bastyon is pretty simple to use: you just have to create an account and you can immediately start posting contents, follow other users and chat.

During the registration you just need to create a username (it must be unique!) and upload a picture or a photo (not necessarily your own photo!). No email (you can leave an email for the mailing list, but it is not connected to your account on Bastyon), no phone number, no verifications. Not even a password: the system will generate a passphrase that you have to use to login, this passprhase is your private key which replaces both the login and password, it is the only thing you need to login. If you lose the private key, nobody can recover it, even developers don't have access to users' accounts.

The first time you use Bastyon you need to create an account, composed only of your unique username.

There is no password.

Instead, you will be given a unique 12-words key (passphrase). Alternatively, you can use a private key, which is a long number (those two are equivalent). Keep this data safe and NEVER reveal it to anyone.

Then, when you need to log in, you just need to input your passphrase (or scan the QR from the app).

Remember: if you lose your passphrase, your account is locked forever. There is no way to restore the password, there is no way for Bastyon to let you log in again. Your passphrase or private key code are the only ways to access your account, plase write it down on a piece of paper somewhere. You can find it in your profile under Accounts (click the symbol of a key).

Bastyon is modeled on decentralized a cryptocurrency Bitcoin, because it has no central authority and uses the blockchain to make transactions and ensure security.

There is no central server: instead, the platform relies on a network of nodes, located all over the world. Every person in the world with a computer can actually run a node (and be rewarded to do so by using coinstaking with Pocketcoin).

Hash of each post, each comment, each interaction (except chat messages!) is stored on the blockchain. The posts and comments themselves are not in the blockchain, but in a companion database tied to a blockchain.

Bastyon uses a dedicated blockchain, derived directly from the Bitcoin chain.

Nothing.

You would still be able to use Bastyon as if nothing happened if you use a desktop app, because the Bastyon desktop app speaks directly to the nodes and does not use websites.

This is the power of censorship resistance.

You can verify this yourself by simulating a disappearance of the domain name bastyon.com.

On Windows:

just open this file:

Windows/System32/hosts

On Linux/Ubuntu:

Open this file

/etc/hosts

Then add this row:

127.0.0.1 bastyon.com

This would ensure that bastyon.com is pointing to your local machine, which means that it is not pointing to any outside IP address.

Then launch the desktop app and you will be able to continue using Bastyon has if nothing happened.

Cool huh?