18 ms·

Kovri – A secure, private, untraceable C++ implementation of the I2P network

118 points by kim0 9y ago

ringaroundthetx 9y ago
One thing I love about cryptocurrencies is that it has created an economic incentive to accelerate hardening of internet communication. I wager that TOR would still be extremely slow without the dark net markets and payment rails. The I2P stewards have similarly has been affiliated with several cryptocurrency projects. But The Monero team's Kovri implementation of I2P will be the best.
- arpstick 9y ago
  Tor is fast because they have a birds eye view of the entire routing concensous where as i2p does not as it can not. The latency suffers as a result in i2p. That is why tor is faster, it's not because of coins. I have considered adding such a thing for i2pd optionally enabled but there is no such interest from the community to maintain such entities.
  - apeace 9y ago
    Don't you think that clients' peer selection logic could be improved to build lower-latency tunnels? Perhaps an intuitive UI could be provided, allowing the user to tradeoff anonymity with latency.
    - icahnvalyou 9y ago
      Get out of here with that segwit crap :P
    - arpstick 9y ago
      I have such functionality in i2pd, what would help a lot are more hints on capacity bandwith and latency from the network. I added "aligned outbound tunnels" which make things MUCH more responsive and snappy. i think that lowering the latency on the network is probably the only way to make i2p faster again.
      - apeace 9y ago
        Can you contact me via: https://apeace.github.io/contact.html https://apeace.github.io/contact.html I've been reading the i2pd source the past few weeks and would love to pick your brain over a couple of emails!
        arpstick 9y ago
        sent
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    Yeah this wasn't a post about TOR being faster than i2p, it was about TOR being faster than TOR used to be because people invested in better connections between nodes regionally.
anomie31 9y ago
How does this compare to i2pd, a more mature C++ implementation of I2P?
- omio 9y ago
  I believe it is forked from i2pd.
- Kr4ken 9y ago
  The FAQ answers this: https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18n/en/faq.md https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18...
  - snvzz 9y ago
    Yet this is just one side of the split.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  a more mature implementation of I2P with the primary focus of further hardening Monero transactions
  - arpstick 9y ago
    Yet they haven't even fixed the bugs they started with.... kovri is a rebrand of i2pd, someone took one of the worst revisions of i2pd back when it sucked more and called it kovri and to this very day still have loads of bugs that are fixed for over a year in i2pd. somehow the kovri people managed to make the code worse than it was when they started complexity wise. disclosure: I work on i2pd a bit.
    - Forbo 9y ago
      Can you provide some examples? The FAQ beginning with [1] seems to paint a different picture, and it would be nice to hear something from the i2pd side. [1] - https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18n/en/faq.md#why-should-i-use-kovri-instead-of-i2pd https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
omio 9y ago
With the recent bust of AlphaBay we know bitcoin mixers are vulnerable. It looks like Monero will take over as the favorite cryptocurrency of new markets especially with I2P integration.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  I support your theory. For whatever that's worth. I've put some of my assets into Monero instead of other alt coins. When I researched the landscape of crypto currencies IMO Monero was best of breed regarding anonymity, privacy, and cryptography theory. Now of course time will tell if the bullet points of Monero regarding untraceable privacy hold true or not but from everything I've read that's the crypto coin I'm parking my Fiat in.
  - fsiefken 9y ago
    Just curious what made you opt for monero instead of dash or zcash?
    - pebx 9y ago
      I can tell you my reasons, but it's mainly the mandatory privacy, where every single transaction has to use RingCT and helps to protect the privacy of the whole network. Zcash's very computing expensive shielded transactions are rarely used and no GUI (and mobile) wallets simply offer them. You can see this in their block explorer: https://explorer.zcha.in/transactions https://explorer.zcha.in/transactions Here is some more information on their own forum: https://forum.z.cash/t/low-percentage-of-total-shielded-zec-as-indicator-of-lack-of-interest/12888/10 https://forum.z.cash/t/low-percentage-of-total-shielded-zec-... Most exchanges also don't accept shielded Zcash deposits/withdrawals. DASH's private send is just similar to a bitcoin mixer and takes even more than 24 hours to finish, since the Masternodes have to wait for mixing partners for you. This mixing creates a shitload of transactions on chain, it were around 70 when I tested it lately and that's a huge overhead. That are probably the (main) reasons why it's rarely used and since Chainalysis, Blockseer and all the Bitcoin tracking companies have no troubles to track mixed transactions, like they did with Wanna Cry, I think it's only a matter of time to extend them for DASH with more adoption: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-exchange-shapeshift-helps-police-as-wannacry-attacker-converts-to-monero https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-exchange-shapeshift-h... Summarising optional privacy makes where almost no one uses it, makes you suspect just for opting in for the privacy feature. It's also much easier to track just the few percent of private transactions by design.
jameskegel 9y ago
The Monero Team is doing lots of cool things, and the proactive security testing they do is comforting. I'm excited to see what this brings to the project, and I applaud the devs for their hard work.
ilaksh 9y ago
It's not really fun to be down voted constantly but I guess I can't help but share my beliefs. What we need more than a 0% trust and 100% anonymity is just a decentralized internet where so many nodes are not controlled by centralized organizations. So while I2P and Monero etc are great, I think we can replace banks and credit card payments for most things with less stringent requirements.
- ericfrederich 9y ago
  ipfs?
  - icahnvalyou 9y ago
    That's the dream compelling the filecoin ico.
- finnn 9y ago
  sounds like you might like cjdns
  - AckSyn 9y ago
    Cjdns would be great if cjd wouldn't have gone full sjw and split into his own sandbox of an ircd leaving the rest of us in the cold. Hypenet is a lotta fun though.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Who's "we"? Everyone can want what they want, and do what they can to realize it.
- dangerface 9y ago
  "I think we can replace banks and credit card payments for most things with less stringent requirements." Can you give examples?
jancsika 9y ago
I don't understand-- what's the significance of an re-implementation of I2P in a memory unsafe language? Also-- why all the comments about Monero? Is it the only altcoin that supports I2P?
- vocatus_gate 9y ago
  The link goes "monero-project" on Github, that's why.
- 72deluxe 9y ago
  Hey I write memory safe C++ - do others not? Only ignoring RAII and move semantics will give you unsafe code.
fulafel 9y ago
If the first adjective is "secure", how to reconcile this with C++?
heja_bruh 9y ago
This is why I've lost respect for lots of developers. I mean why the heck would someone re-implement a piece of code in memory unsafe language? We've a better language now, but this habit isn't dying very soon...
- liuw 9y ago
  "We've a better language now" -- presumably you mean Rust, which tries to break into C and C++'s market. If you check https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html , ARM is only tier 2 support, while Kovri seems to care enough to cover ARM. That's a legitimate reason to not choose Rust.
- ksrm 9y ago
  Your account is 2 hours old and all of your comments consist of you complaining about C++/proselytising Rust. Please stop trolling.
  - heja_bruh 9y ago
    What makes you think I'm trolling? Honestly, I'm tired of all these mediocre devs just pushing their keyboards in some inefficient, unsafe language and are totally unaware of the alternatives. If I'm showing them a greater alternative, am I trolling on this site? Can you show a single reply where I spoke something that doesn't holds true? I accept that there are certain opinions of every individuals that are not ought to match, certain disagreements and other things, but you should respect mine too.
    - pebx 9y ago
      Rust is god. We got it. Now come back to topic... Btw. are we already again in these HTML / Flash wars where the second one was shilled as the only possible future for websites and incoming death for HTML? Oh wait, children can't even remember it... Search for it on Wikipedia (or probably even a printed encyclopedia).
- FussPot 9y ago
mtgx 9y ago
Too bad they couldn't build it in anything safer than C++.
dangerface 9y ago
I don't get it they took I2P and just renamed it, why do people care about this? Their faq says "Kovri has become a unique, actively-developed, community-driven C++ I2P implementation with many improvements, security enhancements, and new features over its predecessor." They claim its unique, cool whats unique about it? What are these improvements, security enhancements and new features? Would it not make more sense to list the new improvements, security enhancements and features? Their table "What does Kovri do/not do for you?" shows it can do everything I2P can do and nothing else, unless I am missing something. Call me paranoid but renaming another project and then, marketing it as more secure and trustworthy without proof is what dodgy fuckers do.
- pebx 9y ago
  Do your research before fucking other people, dude. i2pd has been abandonned by their devs for roughly 6 months and they have not been available at all. Since the Monero team believed, i2p would be better than Tor, they forked i2pd to Kovri and started cleaning up the code and fixing bugs. Why not the official i2p Java client? Because of Java, which is not common in secure environments, fucks up Proxy settings or just ignores them eg.

118 points by kim0 9y ago

One thing I love about cryptocurrencies is that it has created an economic incentive to accelerate hardening of internet communication. I wager that TOR would still be extremely slow without the dark net markets and payment rails. The I2P stewards have similarly has been affiliated with several cryptocurrency projects. But The Monero team's Kovri implementation of I2P will be the best.

arpstick 9y ago
Tor is fast because they have a birds eye view of the entire routing concensous where as i2p does not as it can not. The latency suffers as a result in i2p. That is why tor is faster, it's not because of coins. I have considered adding such a thing for i2pd optionally enabled but there is no such interest from the community to maintain such entities.
- apeace 9y ago
  Don't you think that clients' peer selection logic could be improved to build lower-latency tunnels? Perhaps an intuitive UI could be provided, allowing the user to tradeoff anonymity with latency.
  - icahnvalyou 9y ago
    Get out of here with that segwit crap :P
  - arpstick 9y ago
    I have such functionality in i2pd, what would help a lot are more hints on capacity bandwith and latency from the network. I added "aligned outbound tunnels" which make things MUCH more responsive and snappy. i think that lowering the latency on the network is probably the only way to make i2p faster again.
    - apeace 9y ago
      Can you contact me via: https://apeace.github.io/contact.html https://apeace.github.io/contact.html I've been reading the i2pd source the past few weeks and would love to pick your brain over a couple of emails!
      - arpstick 9y ago
        sent
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  Yeah this wasn't a post about TOR being faster than i2p, it was about TOR being faster than TOR used to be because people invested in better connections between nodes regionally.

anomie31 9y ago

How does this compare to i2pd, a more mature C++ implementation of I2P?

omio 9y ago
I believe it is forked from i2pd.
Kr4ken 9y ago
The FAQ answers this: https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18n/en/faq.md https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18...
- snvzz 9y ago
  Yet this is just one side of the split.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
a more mature implementation of I2P with the primary focus of further hardening Monero transactions
- arpstick 9y ago
  Yet they haven't even fixed the bugs they started with.... kovri is a rebrand of i2pd, someone took one of the worst revisions of i2pd back when it sucked more and called it kovri and to this very day still have loads of bugs that are fixed for over a year in i2pd. somehow the kovri people managed to make the code worse than it was when they started complexity wise. disclosure: I work on i2pd a bit.
  - Forbo 9y ago
    Can you provide some examples? The FAQ beginning with [1] seems to paint a different picture, and it would be nice to hear something from the i2pd side. [1] - https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18n/en/faq.md#why-should-i-use-kovri-instead-of-i2pd https://github.com/monero-project/kovri-docs/blob/master/i18...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

omio 9y ago

With the recent bust of AlphaBay we know bitcoin mixers are vulnerable. It looks like Monero will take over as the favorite cryptocurrency of new markets especially with I2P integration.

X86BSD 9y ago
I support your theory. For whatever that's worth. I've put some of my assets into Monero instead of other alt coins. When I researched the landscape of crypto currencies IMO Monero was best of breed regarding anonymity, privacy, and cryptography theory. Now of course time will tell if the bullet points of Monero regarding untraceable privacy hold true or not but from everything I've read that's the crypto coin I'm parking my Fiat in.
- fsiefken 9y ago
  Just curious what made you opt for monero instead of dash or zcash?
  - pebx 9y ago
    I can tell you my reasons, but it's mainly the mandatory privacy, where every single transaction has to use RingCT and helps to protect the privacy of the whole network. Zcash's very computing expensive shielded transactions are rarely used and no GUI (and mobile) wallets simply offer them. You can see this in their block explorer: https://explorer.zcha.in/transactions https://explorer.zcha.in/transactions Here is some more information on their own forum: https://forum.z.cash/t/low-percentage-of-total-shielded-zec-as-indicator-of-lack-of-interest/12888/10 https://forum.z.cash/t/low-percentage-of-total-shielded-zec-... Most exchanges also don't accept shielded Zcash deposits/withdrawals. DASH's private send is just similar to a bitcoin mixer and takes even more than 24 hours to finish, since the Masternodes have to wait for mixing partners for you. This mixing creates a shitload of transactions on chain, it were around 70 when I tested it lately and that's a huge overhead. That are probably the (main) reasons why it's rarely used and since Chainalysis, Blockseer and all the Bitcoin tracking companies have no troubles to track mixed transactions, like they did with Wanna Cry, I think it's only a matter of time to extend them for DASH with more adoption: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-exchange-shapeshift-helps-police-as-wannacry-attacker-converts-to-monero https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-exchange-shapeshift-h... Summarising optional privacy makes where almost no one uses it, makes you suspect just for opting in for the privacy feature. It's also much easier to track just the few percent of private transactions by design.

jameskegel 9y ago

The Monero Team is doing lots of cool things, and the proactive security testing they do is comforting. I'm excited to see what this brings to the project, and I applaud the devs for their hard work.

ilaksh 9y ago

It's not really fun to be down voted constantly but I guess I can't help but share my beliefs. What we need more than a 0% trust and 100% anonymity is just a decentralized internet where so many nodes are not controlled by centralized organizations. So while I2P and Monero etc are great, I think we can replace banks and credit card payments for most things with less stringent requirements.

ericfrederich 9y ago
ipfs?
- icahnvalyou 9y ago
  That's the dream compelling the filecoin ico.
finnn 9y ago
sounds like you might like cjdns
- AckSyn 9y ago
  Cjdns would be great if cjd wouldn't have gone full sjw and split into his own sandbox of an ircd leaving the rest of us in the cold. Hypenet is a lotta fun though.
mirimir 9y ago
Who's "we"? Everyone can want what they want, and do what they can to realize it.
dangerface 9y ago
"I think we can replace banks and credit card payments for most things with less stringent requirements." Can you give examples?

jancsika 9y ago

I don't understand-- what's the significance of an re-implementation of I2P in a memory unsafe language? Also-- why all the comments about Monero? Is it the only altcoin that supports I2P?

vocatus_gate 9y ago
The link goes "monero-project" on Github, that's why.
72deluxe 9y ago
Hey I write memory safe C++ - do others not? Only ignoring RAII and move semantics will give you unsafe code.

fulafel 9y ago

If the first adjective is "secure", how to reconcile this with C++?

heja_bruh 9y ago

This is why I've lost respect for lots of developers. I mean why the heck would someone re-implement a piece of code in memory unsafe language? We've a better language now, but this habit isn't dying very soon...

liuw 9y ago
"We've a better language now" -- presumably you mean Rust, which tries to break into C and C++'s market. If you check https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html , ARM is only tier 2 support, while Kovri seems to care enough to cover ARM. That's a legitimate reason to not choose Rust.
ksrm 9y ago
Your account is 2 hours old and all of your comments consist of you complaining about C++/proselytising Rust. Please stop trolling.
- heja_bruh 9y ago
  What makes you think I'm trolling? Honestly, I'm tired of all these mediocre devs just pushing their keyboards in some inefficient, unsafe language and are totally unaware of the alternatives. If I'm showing them a greater alternative, am I trolling on this site? Can you show a single reply where I spoke something that doesn't holds true? I accept that there are certain opinions of every individuals that are not ought to match, certain disagreements and other things, but you should respect mine too.
  - pebx 9y ago
    Rust is god. We got it. Now come back to topic... Btw. are we already again in these HTML / Flash wars where the second one was shilled as the only possible future for websites and incoming death for HTML? Oh wait, children can't even remember it... Search for it on Wikipedia (or probably even a printed encyclopedia).
FussPot 9y ago

mtgx 9y ago

Too bad they couldn't build it in anything safer than C++.

dangerface 9y ago

I don't get it they took I2P and just renamed it, why do people care about this? Their faq says "Kovri has become a unique, actively-developed, community-driven C++ I2P implementation with many improvements, security enhancements, and new features over its predecessor." They claim its unique, cool whats unique about it? What are these improvements, security enhancements and new features? Would it not make more sense to list the new improvements, security enhancements and features? Their table "What does Kovri do/not do for you?" shows it can do everything I2P can do and nothing else, unless I am missing something. Call me paranoid but renaming another project and then, marketing it as more secure and trustworthy without proof is what dodgy fuckers do.

pebx 9y ago
Do your research before fucking other people, dude. i2pd has been abandonned by their devs for roughly 6 months and they have not been available at all. Since the Monero team believed, i2p would be better than Tor, they forked i2pd to Kovri and started cleaning up the code and fixing bugs. Why not the official i2p Java client? Because of Java, which is not common in secure environments, fucks up Proxy settings or just ignores them eg.