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770 points ananddtyagi | 6 comments | | HN request time: 1.558s | source | bottom
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moneywaters ◴[] No.44487086[source]
I’ve been toying with a concept inspired by Apple’s Find My network: Imagine a decentralized, delay-tolerant messaging system where messages hop device-to-device (e.g., via Bluetooth, UWB, Wi-Fi Direct), similar to how “Find My” relays location via nearby iPhones.

Now add a twist: • Senders pay a small fee to send a message. • Relaying devices earn a micro-payment (could be tokens, sats, etc.) for carrying the message one hop further. • End-to-end encrypted, fully decentralized, optionally anonymous.

Basically, a “postal network” built on people’s phones, without needing a traditional internet connection. Works best in areas with patchy or no internet, or under censorship.

Obvious challenges: • Latency and reliability (it’s not real-time). • Abuse/spam prevention. • Power consumption and user opt-in. • Viable incentive structures.

What do you think? Is this viable? Any real-world use cases where this might be actually useful — or is it just a neat academic toy?

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yetihehe ◴[] No.44487219[source]
Who would you pay for sending messages? That's your centralization point. Alternatively if you allow "starting balance", how would you prevent from making a lot of accounts for spam sending?
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1. jakeinsdca ◴[] No.44487328[source]
imagine building a lightning client into this.
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2. rlt ◴[] No.44487432[source]
Lightning network depends on… the internet… so if both clients are on the internet why not just send messages over that?
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3. teiferer ◴[] No.44491074[source]
Privacy?

"Just encrypt things" might be your reply. TOR folks have been fighting an uphill battle for ages with that as their main weapon.

replies(1): >>44525072 #
4. webXL ◴[] No.44491082[source]
eCash would be better, but someone needs to be connected to the mint.
5. sparkie ◴[] No.44525072{3}[source]
LN is an onion routed network, and has some privacy - notably, sender privacy, as the sender does not need to be known to the recipient. The recipient however is not private, but there have been proposals for rendevouz routing which could also anonymize them.

LN payments are based on Sphinx[1], but they don't leverage the full capabilities of it. Sphinx only allows for single-use replies.

The proposals for bidirectional anonymity involve using HORNET[2], which builds on Sphinx (specifically, it uses Sphinx's single-reply message to establish a HORNET connection), and enables sender-receiver anonymity and bidirectional transfer beyond single-reply messages.

It has also been proposed to include the use of TARANET[3] to prevent deanymization via traffic analysis.

[1]:https://cypherpunks.ca/~iang/pubs/Sphinx_Oakland09.pdf

[2]:https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.05724v1

[3]:https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/1802.08415

6. kinakomochidayo ◴[] No.44525615[source]
Yeah, it’d be horrible UX