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Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

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Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#251

Post by clarkmoody »

Aurornis wrote: post #201
moneywaters wrote: post #96

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 messag…

> 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. The Helium Network tried something like this, but with a fixed infrastructure: People were incentivized to run Helium network nodes and could earn micropayments for running nodes and handling traffic. It revealed a lot of problems with structures like this, such…

Many such cases with crypto. Moderately good idea powered by a token becomes a Ponzi.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#252

Post by krunck »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #118
moneywaters wrote: post #96

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 messag…

> Relaying devices earn a micro-payment The thing is, it's almost impossible to guarantee payments work as expected in decentralized system, see "double spend attack". Bitcoin was designed to prevent it but does it by having common ledger which is a bit too much for a chat

Bitmessage tried this. Defunct now I think.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#253

Post by miketery »

Aurornis wrote: post #201
moneywaters wrote: post #96

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 messag…

> 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. The Helium Network tried something like this, but with a fixed infrastructure: People were incentivized to run Helium network nodes and could earn micropayments for running nodes and handling traffic. It revealed a lot of problems with structures like this, such…

In helium there was no input revenue. OP mentions payment to send. This is a very different scheme.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#254

Post by bad_haircut72 »

related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt is another decentralized peer to peer messaging platform

Since its so niche people should probably collaborate to get one of these solutions out into adoption. Coding stuff is super fun though...

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#255

Post by Tokumei-no-hito »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #58
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this argument. Apple spends billions of dollars vetting their store for high quality apps. You can't even verify the build you get off Github was compiled from the same posted source. As much as people want to be "leet" and run 3rd party software, it's inherently insecure and that's why Apple shuts it down.

> You can't even verify the build you get off Github was compiled from the same posted source Sure you can: build it and check the hash. If the maintainer prepared for such a check ahead of time it can be as simple as: wget https://github.com/owner/foo-project/releases/download/.../foo sha256sum foo # make note of this nix build github:owner/foo-project sha256sum result/bin/foo # it should match this A pinky promise…

OP was referring to apps downloaded from the app store.

you can't get a build hash from a downloaded app to then compare to a source build.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#256

Post by kragen »

eternityforest wrote: post #95
kragen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropping 10% of packets sounds like a trivial problem to solve. That's not a range that requires fancy things like erasure coding or even SACK; it's easily handled by just retransmitting packets that don't get acknowledged.

You need to track individual subscribers at that point, which uses lots of ram and could use lots of airtime, heuristics like resending until you get 1 reply like Meshtastic don't work well. If there's receive window timing issues you can't assume two nodes right next two each other will get the same subset of packets most of the time. My solution is just to resend every message four times, and not bother with protoc…

There are scalable reliable multicast protocol designs that don't require publishers to track subscriber lists, but you're right that the approach I suggested above would require that.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#257

Post by kragen »

Aurornis wrote: post #203
kragen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extremely surprising to me too. I would have expected BLE to reach a few meters, not kilometers. How can I learn more?

Search for “BLE coded PHY”. The S8 coded mode with 125kbps rate is the long distance one. Support for it in phones is not widespread, sadly.

Thanks! I didn't realize that was the key phrase.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#258

Post by kragen »

Beretta_Vexee wrote: post #220
Tepix wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the whitepaper: " bitchat implements a custom mesh networking protocol over BLE " I wonder why they didn‘t implement the BLE mesh networking standard released in 2017 by the Bluetooth SIG.

There are already several open source implementations, but the Bluetooth SIG standard only supports flood propagation. This is fine for managing a few hundred temperature sensors or lighting controls up to the building's floor concentrator, which is the main use case for this standard, but it is completely unsuitable for sending individual messages from user A to user B.

Flooding does work for sending individual messages from user A to user B at a small enough scale, but it gets progressively less efficient as the network grows, and at some level it will collapse.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#259

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

moneywaters wrote: post #96

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 messag…

Well it's a tough problem even before you start adding money to it.

Re: Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks

#260

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

moneywaters wrote: post #96

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 messag…

If it's ever going to happen the receivers won't be getting anything. They'll just be forced to participate by Google/Apple who will run this as a system service, probably with dedicated hardware to reduce power usage impact.
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