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This is exactly how bitmessage worked. The problem was that spammers would be able to flood the network with crap so to counter that it was added that proof of

This is exactly how bitmessage worked. The problem was that spammers would be able to flood the network with crap so to counter that it was added that proof of work must be completed to have your message forwarded on. The problem with this is it means you could not send a message from a mobile device because the PoW required was too high. Also a method to reduce the amount of traffic required was called streams. Instead of reviving all messages, you would be able to know what stream the receiver is on and then the receiver would just listen to all messages on stream 5. This scales up infinitely since you can just balance the network so all streams have hundreds of thousands of users on them.

generalizations 6y ago
> spammers would be able to flood the network with crap Would there be a legit motivation to do that? I get that it's a threat, but would it be possible to gain anything from DDOSing that network? Seems like either a) you come up with a system for banning spam IPs, or b) the spammers improve the anonymity of the rest of the network by creating more noise for the messages to hide in.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  When you design a system for users to send short messages for free, there is always someone who says "I could split my hard drive into billions of tiny pieces and send them all!".
- jakear 6y ago
  Any state actors who like to snoop would be incentivized to cripple the snooping-free network for the low low price of a few high capacity links. (Or better yet very many low capacity links)
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  If its easy and annoying then there does not need to be a motivation. Someone somewhere in the world will pump out terabytes of junk just to ruin the system for others. And banning spam IPs is a kind of crap solution. Spammers would be running on home network IP spaces mostly so as those addresses shuffle around you end up banning most legitimate users as well. I have found my self banned from many sites I am only visiting for the first time due to someone else who was on my IP address before.

generalizations 6y ago

> spammers would be able to flood the network with crap Would there be a legit motivation to do that? I get that it's a threat, but would it be possible to gain anything from DDOSing that network? Seems like either a) you come up with a system for banning spam IPs, or b) the spammers improve the anonymity of the rest of the network by creating more noise for the messages to hide in.

londons_explore 6y ago
When you design a system for users to send short messages for free, there is always someone who says "I could split my hard drive into billions of tiny pieces and send them all!".
jakear 6y ago
Any state actors who like to snoop would be incentivized to cripple the snooping-free network for the low low price of a few high capacity links. (Or better yet very many low capacity links)
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
If its easy and annoying then there does not need to be a motivation. Someone somewhere in the world will pump out terabytes of junk just to ruin the system for others. And banning spam IPs is a kind of crap solution. Spammers would be running on home network IP spaces mostly so as those addresses shuffle around you end up banning most legitimate users as well. I have found my self banned from many sites I am only visiting for the first time due to someone else who was on my IP address before.