Hi Hacker News!

We're Ronald and Arthur. Co-Founders of PacketStream (https://packetstream.io)

We've created the world's first marketplace for residential proxy bandwidth.

Our residential proxy marketplace allows our customers to anonymize web activity and appear to endpoints as if their traffic is coming directly from residential ISPs. Our proxy tunnel and Packeter matching system routes customer traffic through our network of Packeters before relaying requests to endpoints. HTTP endpoints see a very normal request coming from a residential IP address.

Typical use-cases for consumers include: - Anonymizing browsing behavior and location data while surfing - Accessing global content like streaming services - Preventing unfair blocks/bans/recaptchas - Getting paid to share your bandwidth with the PacketStream network!

Typical use-cases for businesses include: - Web scraping - Ad fraud identification - Competitive intelligence research - Price comparison - Internal product testing

With PacketStream, endpoints can't see that traffic is being relayed through a middleman. We're big fans of privacy products like Tor and VPNs but we've experienced the pains of trying to use them on a day-to-day basis. Constant captchas & access restrictions make current anonymization products very inconvenient. We believe users shouldn't be punished for trying to anonymize their browsing and opt out of data-collection.

Our competitors resell bandwidth from questionable sources. Packeters on our platform are fully opt-in and understand the business model. We've tested similar offerings from competitors in the past and felt very uncomfortable about indirectly purchasing blackhat botnets and using household internet connections without the knowledge of their owners.

Residential relays are fascinating to us and we've built a model that's ethical and benefits both sides.

We'd love to hear what HackerNews thinks about our service & this industry as a whole.