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770 points ananddtyagi | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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jacobgkau ◴[] No.44487126[source]
> Works best in areas with patchy or no internet, or under censorship.

The biggest problem I immediately foresee is that this sounds backwards. It doesn't work best in areas with patchy or no internet, it works best in areas with lots of participating devices. It's most needed in areas with patchy or no internet, but those areas are likely to be the opposite of the areas with lots of participating devices.

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Dr4kn ◴[] No.44487298[source]
If your country shuts off Internet access for demonstrations this would work great.
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xyzzy123 ◴[] No.44487588[source]
I guess it depends on the authoritarian government, but a sufficiently powerful one will get the app taken down or get the bluetooth features it relies on disabled (like for airdrop in China) :/

I would say that the underlying issue is that people do not really "own" their devices and the corporations that do are vulnerable to (or complicit in) state coercion.

You cannot truly have freedom on a non-free device, you can just be small enough to not be worth taking action against yet.

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1. synctext ◴[] No.44488885{4}[source]
Indeed! Advanced countries will and have blocked apps.

For a more extensive discussion on censorship resilient mesh networking, see IETF Internet Standard draft from 2012 [1]. After the Arab Spring there was global hope. Great to see revival of this topic today. Mesh networking is 1990s. The lesson from decades ago was that mesh networking can't be the killer use-case. Users need a reason to install this and allow it to drain the battery while looking for nearby nodes. Mesh networking never broke through the glass ceiling.

Blocking apps is real. Even Amazon killed a side-loaded app [2].

[1] https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-pouwelse-censorfree-sc...

[2] https://torrentfreak.com/amazon-remote-disables-piracy-apps-...