From China, a blockchain-powered, decentralized Content Delivery Network

BlockCDN is a Chinese startup that enables users to share their excess bandwidth in return for digital currency.

We recently wrote about this Australian company that allows homes to sell their extra Wi-Fi data to those who want it. Now BlockCDN is using blockchain to create a decentralized Content Delivery Network (CDN).

The further a website visitor is from the server that website is hosted on, the slower that website will load. Traditional CDNs resolve this issue by creating a network that is capable of serving content from different locations across the globe. Now, BlockCDN has created a decentralized CDN, which securely distributes the load across a blockchain powered network.

Historically, websites pay a CDN provider to ensure their content reaches users reliably, whereas BlockCDN’s new decentralized network is hosted by an open global community. Users can setup their routers, PCs and phones as CDN data cache nodes, and then sell their unused bandwidth for Bitcoin at market rates. BlockCDN will take a 5 percent transaction fee before passing the remainder to miners. BlockCDN claim that their network costs 10 percent of what a company could expect to outlay on a traditional CDN.

CDN global market size is expected to grow from roughly USD 3.7 billion in 2014 to 12.2 billion in 2019. What other technologies could benefit from a blockchain-powered decentralized model?