Marconi Protocol

Overview: Blockchain technology has often been proposed as a solution to the problems inherent with centralized systems. Blockchain projects are being developed to provide decentralized computing, storage, and a suite of applications to realize a decentralized future. However, these projects all continue to build atop the same underlying network infrastructure consisting of switches and routers connected by Ethernet, a foundation which remains fragile due to being insecure, difficult to manage, and centrally controlled. In this paper we describe a new protocol designed to address these challenges. Marconi is a networking and blockchain protocol that allows smart contracts for network packets. The protocol has been designed down to layer 2 of the OSI model and works with wired and wireless standards. Contributions covered in this paper include systems and methods for processing network packets using smart contracts, forming secure mesh networks with decentralized traffic auditing and metering, programmatically jump starting branch chains connected to a global blockchain, virtualizing and binding OSI layer 2 connections, ranking peer nodes, and performing decentralized distributed network routing.