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P2P Matrix

matrix.org

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Re: P2P Matrix

#11

Post by kick »

sedatk wrote: post #6
kick wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me wonder: isn't this basically the perfect thing to bootstrap a decentralized DNS with? In a messaging system there's no reason you'd ever want to revoke control of a domain, and the idea of genuinely-anonymizable communication should be appealing to just about anyone. I might not be thinking broadly enough here though.

It may not be satisfactory in terms of performance though. Decentralization comes with its own baggage.

Current decentralized DNS projects have many problems that revolve almost entirely around UX, but performance isn't really one of them.

Especially given in an environment like this it'd be used mostly to get the initial connection, performance probably wouldn't be too big a problem.

Re: P2P Matrix

#12

Post by jandrese »

jagger27 wrote: post #5
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #2

>"P2P Matrix is about more than just letting users store their own conversations: it can also avoid dependencies on the Internet itself by working over local networks, mesh networks, or situations where the Internet has been cut off." Which makes it interesting, and worth learning about.

I’ve been interested in adhoc mesh networking for a while but I don’t really know where to get started software or hardware wise. I have lots of OpenWRT compatible equipment lying around and want to experiment. I feel like internet blackouts are not a distant idea or all that improbable and I want to have some knowledge in my back pocket just in case.

Distributed mobile ad-hoc routing is an area of research where I feel there has never been a satisfactory answer to "how do I deliver data efficiently?" Typical schemes will cut your bandwidth to a quarter of its nominal rate.

Fixed ad-hoc routing is a little better, but tends to be kind of fragile since nodes can appear and disappear at random. I've never found a system that worked as well as I would like, although I think there could be value in a network that separates the high bandwidth user data from the low bandwidth routing data. Like it uses 802.11 for the data, and LoRa for the routing decisions.

Re: P2P Matrix

#13

Post by myu701 »

Original comment below but I decided instead to go for the following:

I am extremely proud of what work is being done online today to secure communications.

While we have companies telemetrying our native stacks[1], web browsers[2], and messaging platforms[3], we also have people working on software that doesn't do those things and still tries to empower the user to get what they need done without being a double agent for a 3rd party.

1 (windows 10, chrome OS, GMS android)

2 (cookies, pixels, fingerprinting, CDNs, chrome itself)

3 (whatsapp, FB messenger, telegram)

From OS[4] to browser[5] to messaging platform[6].

4 (debian, qubes)

5 (...maybe not? konqueror probably doesn't do telemetry?)

6 (irc probably, matrix, delta chat)

Matrix is IMHO in competition for mindshare not (directly) with WhatsApp, but with Signal.

Matrix | Signal

Increasingly decentralizable | Centralized

E2EE but not quite for metadata | E2EE and metadata-free mostly except recently requiring PINs and server-side storage

Federated with its costs (slower development etc) | Nonfederated with its costs (outages etc)

Temptingly close to P2P or CS | only CS

No voice comms | Voice and video comms

No built-in social graph | social graph via phone (being worked on?)

OSS in practice | OSS in law but hard to contribute to

Re: P2P Matrix

#14

Post by vertex-four »

rglullis wrote: post #10

Hi @Arathorn, any work on using IPFS as the media store? It seems like this would be also a really good project for Matrix and doubly so for p2p matrix...

IPFS doesn't help - you still need a store-and-forward architecture for messaging, so you might as well use that for images too.

IPFS is not a store-and-forward architecture; a file does not get automatically stored by the system, so when the sender disconnects, the file is no longer accessible. There's "solutions" to this, like Filecoin, but nobody wants folks to be paying to upload images.

Or, in other words - the problem IPFS solves is peer discovery for a given hash, not storage. In Matrix, you already know who your peer is - it's whoever sent you the message referencing the image.

Re: P2P Matrix

#15

Post by zaroth »

kick wrote: post #3
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #2

>"P2P Matrix is about more than just letting users store their own conversations: it can also avoid dependencies on the Internet itself by working over local networks, mesh networks, or situations where the Internet has been cut off." Which makes it interesting, and worth learning about.

This makes me wonder: isn't this basically the perfect thing to bootstrap a decentralized DNS with? In a messaging system there's no reason you'd ever want to revoke control of a domain, and the idea of genuinely-anonymizable communication should be appealing to just about anyone. I might not be thinking broadly enough here though.

I think decentralized DNS with machine readable addresses is basically a solved problem (e.g. Magnet links or Tor Hidden Services).

A domain in this case is akin to a hash of a public key, or something like that, just enough to securely identify the target of the communication so there’s nothing to “revoke” although that’s not to say the peer discovery systems could not try to blacklist you.

Decentralized DNS with human readable addresses (unique screen names) is perhaps more a political problem than a technical one, and hence never fully “solved” just different sets of trade-offs that can be made.

Re: P2P Matrix

#17

Post by bronco21016 »

jandrese wrote: post #12
jagger27 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been interested in adhoc mesh networking for a while but I don’t really know where to get started software or hardware wise. I have lots of OpenWRT compatible equipment lying around and want to experiment. I feel like internet blackouts are not a distant idea or all that improbable and I want to have some knowledge in my back pocket just in case.

Distributed mobile ad-hoc routing is an area of research where I feel there has never been a satisfactory answer to "how do I deliver data efficiently?" Typical schemes will cut your bandwidth to a quarter of its nominal rate. Fixed ad-hoc routing is a little better, but tends to be kind of fragile since nodes can appear and disappear at random. I've never found a system that worked as well as I would like, although…

That's an interesting idea, especially with routing over LoRa getting a lot of development. I've been following Meshtastic [0] where they're doing both routing and data payloads over LoRa in low powered communications devices.

It would be an interesting idea to have a device that could use 802.11 for data when in close enough range. With chips like the ESP8266 you could still have a relatively low power device but with much greater bandwidth.

[0]https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-device

Re: P2P Matrix

#18

Post by rglullis »

vertex-four wrote: post #14
rglullis wrote: post #10

Hi @Arathorn, any work on using IPFS as the media store? It seems like this would be also a really good project for Matrix and doubly so for p2p matrix...

IPFS doesn't help - you still need a store-and-forward architecture for messaging, so you might as well use that for images too. IPFS is not a store-and-forward architecture; a file does not get automatically stored by the system, so when the sender disconnects, the file is no longer accessible. There's "solutions" to this, like Filecoin, but nobody wants folks to be paying to upload images. Or, in other words - the…

My idea was more in that every p2p node of Matrix can also be a IPFS server, and be used to pin all of your own media + a small cache of your contacts/group media.

You wouldn't need to save all of the media your homeserver is dealing with, but you still could be reasonably sure that your node would be able to find all media you are supposed to access.

Given that the post talks about libp2p and how libp2p's main driver is IPFS, it seemed reasonable to think that if you are adding Dentrite to your browser you might embed an IPFS server as well.

Re: P2P Matrix

#19

Post by Arathorn »

rglullis wrote: post #10

Hi @Arathorn, any work on using IPFS as the media store? It seems like this would be also a really good project for Matrix and doubly so for p2p matrix...

hey - for whatever reason, nobody's hooked up IPFS (as far as I know) as a filestore. It might be because you still need to pin the content somewhere, as vertex-four says, and so even in a P2P network the fact that the nodes keep coming and going means it might not help much.

Re: P2P Matrix

#20

Post by no_gravity »

I think someone needs to look into the onboarding process. My experience so far:

1: Clicked on "Try Now".

2: Was greeted with a blob of text. Spotted "The easiest way to try Matrix is to use the Riot Web ...".

3: Clicked on "Riot Web" because that is a link.

4: Got transferred to a different website with a lot of buttons on it.

5: Clicked on the green "Get started button"

6: Got transferred to another page with a bunch of buttons on it

7: Clicked on "Browser"

8: A new window with a "Sign in" and a "Create Account" button opened

9: Clicked on "Create account"

10: Entered a username and password

11: Got asked to do the Google Captcha

12: Had to select 4 tiles with traffic lights and cklick next

13: Was told to select stairs.

14: Since there were no stairs, I clicked "Skip"

15: Had to select 7 tiles with fire hidrants and click next

16: Had to select 4 tiles with traffic lights and click next

17: Had to select 3 tiles with traffic lights and click next

18: Had to accept terms an conditions and click "accept"

19: Had to enter a recovery passphrase.

20: Had to confirm my recovery passphrase.

21: Was forced to click a "copy" button to copy the recovery passphrase.

22: Had to click "continue"

23: Staring at a spinner for a while.

24: Was prompted with an "OK" button. Clicked it.

25: Was prompted with a "Welcome to Riot" page with different options.

26: Clicked "Explore public rooms".

27: Clicked on the first one.

28: Had to look at a spinner for a while with "Joining room" next to it.

29: Still looking at the spinner ...

30: Spinner is still spinning ... will take the time to post this to HN.

Update:

31: Back to the Matrix window. Hurray! I'm in a channel. Typing "Hello" and enter. It seems to work.

I wonder if it would be an option to shortcut these 31 steps into just one and throw everyone who clicks "Try Now" into a "Welcome to Matrix" channel.

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