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BitMessage was probably the most important experiment in all that blockchain insanity. Among other things, it showed that there are limits for maximum entropy f
by juskrey 5y ago
BitMessage was probably the most important experiment in all that blockchain insanity. Among other things, it showed that there are limits for maximum entropy for messaging. E.g. everyone should receive every message to plausibly deny communication, but we have a clear and very short horizon for that amount of data. Hence should expire messages quickly, which does not work in many if not most real world situations.
- KirillPanov 5y agoI don't think bitmessage languished due to any inherent technical obstacle, did it? It simply didn't attract a lot of interest because most people figured that PGP-encrypted messages sent from throwaway webmail accounts was good enough. Also the bitmessage software was really horrifically low-quality python, and the project seemed to take the bitcoin attitude that "the first implementation is the spec, multiple implementations equals bad" which was a turn-off. I had a really really hard time putting my faith in that codebase. I think the idea behind bitmessage will resurface in a cleaner form if a compelling use ever arises. Enough smart people heard about bitmessage that the idea is now "out there" permanently. If it ever does, I think a neat twist would be changing the Proof of Work (used to limit spam) into Proof of Storage like Chia uses, except that the storage "plots" are the active set of circulating bitmessages (which are encrypted and therefore have no exploitable structure, just like the hash chains in Chia plots) plus a smaller indexing structure. Two birds, one stone. This is not straightforward, but I believe it is possible.