Orthodox Blockchain technology?

I like your logo. First of all, thank you for the invitation. Secondly. Yes, there is a lot to do. How? A plan has to come. People reach the faith in themselves. God is the heart of the whole mission.

Blockchain technology is used for cryptography, so it would be good for security of databases or other areas that you would use other cryptographic protocols. I have added a link to the bottom of this post in order to explain this technology in more detail. There is a lot that will need to go into it, and there would need to be a substantial number of people involved in its creation and maintenance. This would be more of a long term goal for the organization that you are wanting to build.

As for the other areas that you asked about, again, I would have to say that those are goals once you have some technical infrastructure in place and a way to pay for it. While you could piggyback on other organizations hardware, i think that in order to be in line with the overall goal of this project, you would want to have this created and developed by others as part of this project.

Honestly, I think that a banking system would be a more tangible outlet for bringing our groups together. This would be similar to the way the Muslims do things for their members. We could get MasterCard or Visa to sponsor a card, and a certain percentage is given back to this project in order to be used on various projects (website creation, hosting fees, other specified expenses), or given to a designated non-profit organization such as IOCC.

Blockchain

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/blockchain/2017/12/blockchain-security-what-keeps-your-transaction-data-safe/

I am not an expert in this by any means so correct me if I'm wrong, but you would need to arrange for a web of bots on non-member as well as member computers to properly conceal whose IP addresses initiated & ultimately responded to a given chain of transactions, or at the very least you would need a lot of volunteers or members from diverse, non-allied/non-cooperating countries.

If that's what you want, we would need members not just from western alliance countries, but from the opposite side(s)

Right now, I don't think we have that, but could seek out such friends.There is of course a risk of mistaking some foe for a friend or their being made by someone else to become a foe.

The extant TOR network and BitCoin are claimed to be compromised as of a few years ago, and people talk about alternatives like ''Monero'' or others. My impression is the old network was compromised through a key anonymous 'person of interest' accidentally posting his gmail account that used his real name to a monitored dark web hacker forum with his project advice request, from which outsiders could then begin to target his known associates, communications, business site,and home. Others say its possible to track and map out and deduce by process of elimination who the actual start&end point are, &you concentrate on getting control of their computer to be able to capture all traffic and weed out bots from real members&roll them up.

Something more immediate and simpler might be the Swiss ProtonMail professional/corporate account and/or the ''clean gmail'' account method. ProtonMail would be all ''internal business'' encrypted emails members of a common account on a private server in Switerland. Correspondence never exits the server, so its not tracked by external entities, nor recorded like gmail, google, Twitter, et alia are.

'Clean Gmail'' aims at something similar by having multiple persons use one gmail account and simply write in draft form only in one draft their back&forth discussion, which is then erased, it only being accessible for short time, when one notifies the other to look at it. People also arrange for additional/ live phone talk by buying cheap anonymous 'burner phones' from a store that don't require personal information to put money/minutes on&then dispose of the phones after brief discussions, so they aren't trackable in any meaningful sense. Discussions by internet phone rely on Viber or some other US or Israel based services. Typically it can be recorded or accessed by the gov't in whose jurisdiction the service is based, and therefore also potentially by anonymous skilled hackers.

As for money transactions, I am also not a banker, but so far as I understand it banking jurisdictions exist in various small countries or in a few large ones that make it a rule not to cooperate with or reveal account info to hostile entities. Some make exception for certain internationally illegal activity that involves large transaction amounts. Some of these banks or jurisdictions if their country's gov't is radically changed or economy collapses may end up confiscating accounts or embezzling&disappearing,....but certain are so long established and stable over the course of decades or centuries that that seems unlikely unless WWIII overtakes their country.

Of course any system has its potential to break down if people turn on each other for whatever reason, so mutual trust and guaranteeing trust is essential to success in such projects. While methods exist to limit degrees of knowledge and hence of ability to betray trust to others, or to compensate with incentives to never betray trust, yet there is always a risk. Has to be considered if one is thinking about crypto-projects.

I assumed the conversation was about general distrust of gov'ts or certain gov'ts and the future of Orthodoxy now and in possibly worse times to come and how to function as traditional Orthodox communities in full &help each other&other Orthodox under such circumstances. If so, things I discussed may be useful to consider&work on developing systematically.

George, thank you. I don't think Nick read what you and Basil were discussing. I see little benefit to talking about cryptographic technology if there is no concern with the powerful of this world monitoring our communications. Or talking about knightly orders for Christian defense or brotherhoods of similar character. What a brotherhood is that needs cryptography and what people typically discuss on Facebook are obviously different. They can overlap, yes, but then why not just form a chat group on Facebook or similar platforms? If what's to be discussed is valuable enough to worry about others seeing it, then this is more serious&impactful than social media on the public web. Of course, people are being imprisoned these days for being merely ''divisive'' on social media, especially if they happen to be of a disapproved foreign ethnic group or religion.RIP Free Speech&Bill of Rights. So there's also that to worry about.

Even though the group is not in anywise aiming at something so immense as a political revolution, which would be impracticable anyway as you say, my impression is that this is to be as you say a brotherhood and mini-patriarchy in the sense of a mutually supportive&protective, genuinely autonomous/self-governing traditional Orthodox ways-ruled society of sorts,so far as each is willing to solemnly commit to the rest and is practicable. A circle of people around the world you can rely upon and call upon to help in troubles. And with whom you can freely and confidently discuss & dream anything, no matter how politically incorrect without fear of being persecuted or betrayed to others. Responsible to our pledged true Sovereign God's laws&to each other, and living by Orthodox Biblical-Patristic Tradition as our ancestors did but in this age&circumstances carving out a sacred place of our own in some form to do whats right in God's sight irrespective of human opinions. Sharing information, educating others, sharing burdens, helping heal the infirm&redeem the captives, defending the poor helpless believers when persecuted however needed,& organizing with other orthodox brothers to be what an Orthodox society historically was&is supposed to be.

Which is why I agree St. George is a good patron of such a society or network, which people would actually earnestly desire to join and be active in, much more so than mundane church chit chat could. I realize that in modern parishes there are also brotherhoods that mostly plan festivities &fundraisers and share church cleaning or painting work or facilitate names day greetings&fasting calendar mailers. But there have been and are other larger, more impactful brotherhoods that actually are devoted to the struggle for Orthodoxy in times&places of its subversion&persecution.

Patriarch Tikhon of saintly martyr memory soon after the Revolution blessed St Maxim of Serpukhov while still a layman and doctor to start building such a network in case the Bolsheviks made the idea of a Catacomb Church necessary. In fact before even the 1905 Revolution, St John of Kronstadt, Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky, and other saints such as the Optina fathers blessed the formation of the Union of the Russian People also called Orthodox Banner-Bearers, after the Roman soldier who called together the rest into proper formation and directed their movements en masse effectively. It provided a counter to the societies of the old&new enemies of Russia in propaganda, organization , and aid of every kind.

A subgroup within it was the missionary Brotherhood of St. Job of Pochaev, that struggled for Orthodox Little Russians in western Ukraine&eastern Austria-Hungary where the State persecuted them and coerced them to Unia.It was named for a leader of a 17th century similar brotherhood. The brothers founded Holy Trinity Monastery&Seminary Jordanville which carried on the struggle against the subversives in the Diaspora(Sophianists,Crypto-Uniates,Freemasons,pro-Communists,etc) and formed societies like the Brotherhood of Russian Truth that fully trained the youth to prepare for surviving in case communism prevailed&for assisting in restoring Orthodox life in case of the expected liberation of Russia/Orthodox homelands & sent aid &established safe lines of communication with their likeminded brothers&sisters in the homeland. The organization was founded with the blessing of prominent sainted bishops and priests and lay noble patrons first in the Russian emigre community in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and continued activities throughout the Cold War after which part of the members returned to Russia to help with the revitalization of traditional Orthodoxy, and the old members who remained here dwindled to a handful of old men.

Times being what they are, the world being what its like, there would be a great benefit to Orthodox people in reviving and knitting together such brotherhoods now, as already has been begun in Russia.

I phrase it poorly, forgive me, but that is more like what another kind of Orthodox brotherhood is in other parts of the world. If its not that, but a dating service startup or a job opening board plus Facebook small talk place, that's nice but hardly something worth creating a new separate startup for or calling it a brotherhood. Brotherhoods like what I described were how Orthodox survived and eventually got free of the interference of heterodox to carve out a free way of Orthodox living.They were institutions established originally by holy Patriarchs and priests and lay patrons during times of harassment&oppression by heterodox, which were like our times.

Forgive the extended discourse but I hope the proposal seems clearer for our worthy brothers. By much patience, steady steps and partnerships and brave, believing persistence &sacrifice, we might build something of great use to ourselves and all the Church of Christ, which at present suffers and in future likely will suffer so much more for fidelity to Christ&His sovereignty.

If this is undesirable in the eyes of the other brothers, then let them put forward more clearly what they think this brotherhood must be, so we don't come to mutual disappointments with the results of our labors.

With you my brothers in Christ our King,

John