The Concept:
1. Decentralized Courier Network
- A blockchain-based database connects people willing to act as couriers, enabling them to earn Bitcoin by transporting packages from point A to point B.
- If no direct route exists, the system dynamically calculates alternative paths (e.g., A → C → B), chaining multiple couriers together.
- Couriers lock Bitcoin as collateral equal to the package’s value for the duration of their leg of the journey, ensuring accountability.
Hello. Your idea closely aligns with what we are currently developing under the name
Bitpost (
https://bitpost.cc). Over the past two years, we’ve worked extensively on designing the entire system’s logic, overcoming many challenges and uncertainties during the planning phase. Now, we’re in the final stretch toward delivering a finished product. We’ll be eagerly following all the interesting concepts and insights shared in this discussion. Great to see new initiatives in this field after so many years of stagnation.
Couriers don’t know whether the recipient is another courier or the final destination, ensuring anonymity and preventing tampering.
Interesting, but if it’s not possible to distinguish between a subsequent courier and the final recipient, what logic would ensure that:
- the final recipient doesn’t have to lock collateral for their own package
- the package has reached its destination and is not still in the hands of a courier in case of a claim from the sender
3. Decentralized Marketplace (Future Goal)
Coincidentally, this is also on our roadmap. Once Bitpost is up and running, we plan to launch a truly decentralized marketplace where users can list goods, with smart contracts handling transactions, a peer-to-peer network for real-time communication, and IPFS for storing product metadata and images.
Announcements and listings would operate via an app running directly on Bitcoin’s network—no websites, no centralized servers.
- How can we best implement the decentralized database for couriers? Ordinals might be too expensive.
Why are you so determined to implement this on the Bitcoin blockchain, which, let’s face it, was created solely as a currency and isn’t particularly suited for data storage?
Are you aware that in your system, it will take at least 10 minutes to get a block confirmation for any event? For example, a courier arrives, hands you the package, and then has to wait 10 minutes to make sure you’ve released their collateral and paid them for the delivery. It's still the most optimistic scenario; sometimes you’ll have to wait much longer, or pay hundreds of dollars in fees.
This is why we’ve opted for our own blockchain.
- How can we ensure the recipient doesn't mark the item as damaged? Can we implement some sort of slashing system? Like nodes that verify the contract and decide how much damage there is to the package, if it matches description...?
Let me tell you how we handle this in Bitpost:
- Each member of the logistics network, when taking over a package from another, should verify its condition and refuse to accept any damaged packages.
- If the package is truly damaged, it will never be handed off to another member of the Bitpost network. It will simply remain "on the record" of the person who damaged it.
- However, if a dispute arises and the package was unfairly rejected, it should easily be accepted by another member of the logistics network.
- If there is no further movement of the package for a specified period (e.g., 30 days), the client has the option to withdraw the security deposit from the balance of its current posessor.
- If someone accepts a damaged package, they take full responsibility for the damage and will bear the financial consequences themselves.
EDIT: Just to be transparent I saw that a company called BitPost already is doing something like this, but they are not opensource
That's
NOT true! Bitpost will be a fully open-source and community-driven project. A small portion of the code is already available on GitHub.
and they are selling a token
Yes, but we only sell governance tokens, which allow you to have a say in the project's future and earn passive profits. The token used for paying for shipments and settling payments with couriers, etc., is
mined on physical hardware (BTW in a very innovative and eco-friendly way).
I see that on your diagram, you’ve referred to your platform as
BitMarket, but that’s the name we’ve chosen for ours. To be clear, details about our platform and the final logo have been published on the Bitpost website since
December 2022:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221204123002/https://bitpost.cc/And they had a huge premined tokens on their newly forked centralized blockchain.
Why are you calling our
BPX Chain centralized? Anyone can mine it on physical hardware. We created this blockchain specifically to avoid relying on centralized Proof of Stake chains.