For the 2017 TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon, Devin and I made a marketplace for sharing Internet access. Using your router, you as a host can open a special WiFi hotspot and earn cryptocurrency when people use it.
When demand is high, hosts lease unused bandwidth to clients and thereby “mine” Wificoin (WIFI). When demand is low, they verify the integrity of other hosts’ packets, using a blockchain to reach consensus. Clients can join any Wificoin hotspot to start using the Internet, paying (with fiat currency or with WIFI) per byte transferred instead of paying for every minute.
Finishing this project involves building a centralized RADIUS-compliant server to authenticate clients to the network as they hop from hotspot to hotspot. The ISPs who work with us are then rewarded by the growing value of the WIFI token on their connected routers.
Here’s TechCrunch’s writeup of the project: