What is the Metanet?

The Metanet can be used to refer to either of:

• The concept of value-based internet built on Bitcoin SV.
• The Metanet Protocol.

The motivation for the Metanet is the creation of a public ledger based internet that functions as an efficient value network, which has improved properties and capabilities compared to the existing infrastructure of the Internet. 

The Metanet as a concept has since been widely adopted by the Bitcoin SV ecosystem and many protocols and applications have been built to implement the vision of a highly-connected internet for peer-to-peer content creation and monetization.

The motivations for the Metanet are linked to well-known problems with the existing Internet and e-commerce, which include the following:

• Reliance on intermediaries for payments.
• Lack of a granular micropayment layer.
• Walled-garden applications and data silos.
• Concerns over data privacy and ownership for users.
• Prevalence of spam, trolling and bots in online social platforms.

The first two issues, relating to payment intermediaries and lack of micropayments, are addressed by the use of the Bitcoin SV network for simple payments. The Metanet aims to solve the remaining issues by combining online payments with immutable data stored on the Bitcoin SV public ledger.

The combination of payments and data both using the Bitcoin SV ledger as a universal source of truth theoretically allow for a more equitable internet ecosystem in which:

• Information is attributed value.
• Quality is incentivised over quantity.
• The cost of dishonest behaviour (e.g. trolling) is increased.
• Users own their data.