14 ms·

Make the internet yours again with an instant mesh network

308 points by ecliptik 5y ago

emersonrsantos 5y ago
> You can travel the globe, and your IP will follow you: onto a plane, from continent to continent, wherever. Yggdrasil will find you. Is there a privacy option?
- sweetbitter 5y ago
  Changing your keys, I suppose.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brnt 5y ago
Sounds a bit like Zerotier. But I'm not sure how it's different. How does it find other machines, deal with NAT, other corner cases?
- karmanyaahm 5y ago
  Zerotier is typically used for privace networks, and AFAIK it routes through a central server whenever p2p is not possible. On the other hand, the Yggdrasil main net is a public network, and each peer is a router. You don't (and can't practically) connect to every single peer, but any nodes in the middle can route things the right direction. Also, Yggdrasil can run on top of existing tcp/ip like zerotier, but it can also run on custom mesh base protocols.
rnotaro 5y ago
Related thread 6 months ago with 105 comments : Yggdrasil – Early-stage implementation of an end-to-end encrypted IPv6 network [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27577201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27577201
buzzwords 5y ago
Would this be useful to people in countries like Iran, where the internet is restricted and completely cut out whenever the government needs to shut people up?
- dymk 5y ago
  Let's assume this is a perfect technical solution to a government that wants to censor your speech - that doesn't help much if the government has ball-pein hammers and rubber hoses, and is willing to use them on people living in houses broadcasting wifi.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > houses broadcasting wifi Cell phones are popular with drug dealers in south america because they're impossible to shut down - if the government can't shut down drug dealers, they definitely can't shut down people sharing offensive memes.
    - dymk 5y ago
      It may not be possible to target specific uses of cellphone data channels, but this isn't much of a roadblock for the Iranian government. They'll just shut down every cell tower within their borders. Iran is already willing to impose full internet blackouts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Internet_blackout_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Internet_blackout_in_Iran).
      - zinekeller 5y ago
        Yeah, this is the difference. Drug dealers are an annoyance but they aren't a direct threat to any government (as long as you let them be in peace). If it's a direct threat to you, then you do anything, even if the benefits outweigh the risks.
      - roywiggins 5y ago
        In 2019 India shut down both the internet and regular voice networks in Kashmir: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/after-two-month-blackout-cellphones-start-to-ring-again-in-kashmir/2019/10/14/a7b163e0-ee51-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/after-two-...
mawise 5y ago
I like the use of IPv6 addresses as a cryptographic identity. Have there been any discussions about DNS-style layers on top of the mesh?
- karmanyaahm 5y ago
  I believe DNS works like normal with there being AAAA records for yggdrasil's 200:: ips. y.matrix.tomesh.net vs matrix.tomesh.net is an example of that
RF_Savage 5y ago
The fixed global IP sounds like an excellent use of IPv6. I'll have to look into running a node or two of this as an experiment. Preferably as a wireless mesh. Mounted in some high place.
- TheArcane 5y ago
  What are the tracking implications of this? With a fixed IP, ad companies wouldn't have to do any fancy fingerprinting
ki9 5y ago
Reminds me of cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns
- aftbit 5y ago
  Yggdrasil was very aware of B.A.T.M.A.N. and cjdns. https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2019/01/09/history.html https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2019/01/09/history.html
aftbit 5y ago
>Nowadays, running a website from home is just about impossible. You may not have a public IP, and if you do, it likely changes from time to time. And even then, your ISP probably blocks you from running servers on it. I'm not sure about the author's country / ISP, but here in Midwest USA, our residential ISPs (cable or DSL, fiber if you are lucky) generally do not change IPs frequently (unless your router/modem is restarted), and generally only block port 25 (SMTP). I've been running a web/ssh server from home in some form or another since 2002, originally with DynDNS to paper over the IP changes.
- sneak 5y ago
  Cox (USA) blocks inbound port 80, rendering it impossible to get Let's Encrypt certs via http validation. This started in the last year and affects millions of people.
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    I used to think "who cares? why would I want to self host?" but even if I or anyone doesn't care about self hosting, the fact that they block everyone from doing so is wrong.
    - sneak 5y ago
      Pointing a dyndns at your home connection for vhosting toy apps and sites on existing hardware with no additional cost is a long tradition in tech. Not everyone wants to give monthly Danegeld to Bezos.
  - jessechahal 5y ago
    I have the same problem with my ISP. Solution was easy, just use DNS validation. All my home service's have valid Lets Encrypt certs using this method.
- gjs278 5y ago
- 5y ago
boopmaster 5y ago
If my ISP hadn’t sent those legal threats for having an open access point someone used to downloaded music from, I’d run this kind of thing on a guest network segment. Edit: open to suggestions like running a segment through Tor
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  meh, if you want to do that, limit this bandwidth to x mbps and dump that through a VPN to a VPS. If you ever have any trouble there, just get a different VPS. Additionally, you can provide usable http/https access but block services that are likely to get you into trouble. You can even put it on your captive portal: This service blocks torrent traffic, Use a VPN if you need to do that. (link to VPN)
jeofken 5y ago
Anyone having success connecting with the iOS client?
- jeofken 5y ago
  Update: it’s working great. This is amazing, and I’ll incorporate it in on all my computers!
siliconunit 5y ago
I ran a citadel mail server on a pi, using a xyz domain..worked for few days before getting blocked as possible spam from google..no appartent solution... the old internet is indeed broken..
nynx 5y ago
Computers (even phones) have a enough spare computing power and bandwidth that a true, cooperative mesh network is probably possible now: Data routed through a mesh of local networks created by each device to taps which can route across long-range fiber and satellite comms.
- jethro_tell 5y ago
  you still have to have back haul if you want to connect to the rest of the internet. If you want to make a mesh and do things locally with people on the mesh, and I certainly believe there is a place for that, this will work. If you want to mesh net your way out of a great firewall, you still have to find a point that has a connection to the rest of the world.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Phones do not have enough spare battery power to be relaying messages on a mesh network.
  - pzo 5y ago
    phones probably spend 1/3 of a day (during night) being charged and plugged to the wall. You could have a mesh network that at any given time at least 1/3 of members is active - public key could have a timezone/timerange during what time note usually operates.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      Phones spend almost all of their time charging next to the owners wifi router which is always plugged in. It just makes no sense at all to use phones as mesh nodes.
- hffftz 5y ago
  Did Google finally stop blocking ad-hoc Wi-Fi networks?
daenz 5y ago
>Enter Yggdrasil This is perhaps the worst branding I've seen in awhile. It's impossible to say correctly without being taught, difficult to remember, and difficult to spell. It's almost like they don't want their efforts to be acknowledged.
- nynx 5y ago
  It’s pretty easy to say and quite memorable in my opinion. Are you aware of the Norse roots of the name?
  - ehutch79 5y ago
    For normal, mainstream people, it isn't.
    - donohoe 5y ago
      In your bubble that might be the case, but that’s not necessarily true for a lot of other people.
      - rnotaro 5y ago
        Something like "Zeus" is mainstream. Yggdrasil is not. You can lookup the Google Trends [1] to see that it's not really popular outside of Northen Europe. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1641779400?hl=fr&tz=300&date=all&q=%2Fm%2F087_t,%2Fm%2F088pn,%2Fm%2F03qx2,%2Fm%2F0mpp&sni=3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16417794...
    - dariusj18 5y ago
      https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Yggdrasil https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Yggdrasil
    - sannee 5y ago
      The first sentence on the website says: > Yggdrasil is an implementation of a new name-independent routing scheme and functions as an end-to-end encrypted IPv6 network. Somehow I don't think this project is aimed at "normal, mainstream people"...
dboreham 5y ago
Just to be that guy: the internet already _is_ a mesh.
- doublerabbit 5y ago
  Maybe for the web4.0 we should head back to the token ring topology.
bertil 5y ago
What was the name of the Spanish company that offered a similar idea circa 2010? They had a big community branding and a catchy name – and the focus was on phone calls.
- Tijdreiziger 5y ago
  Perhaps you are referring to Fon, though their idea was quite different (‘democratized public Wi-Fi hotspots’, basically), and despite the name I don’t think they did anything re: phone calls. I think I still have one of their Fonera routers lying around somewhere (long unused by this point). Looks like they’re still around, but these days they partner with telcos rather than individual consumers [1]. One of the largest Dutch ISPs (KPN) used to provide access to their network on all their consumer modems until 2020 [2]. [1] https://fontech.com/fon-success-stories/ https://fontech.com/fon-success-stories/ [2] https://www.kpn.com/internet/wifi-hotspots/gratis-wifi-met-fon.htm https://www.kpn.com/internet/wifi-hotspots/gratis-wifi-met-f...
  - bertil 5y ago
    Fon! Thank you!
cormacrelf 5y ago
I was going to ask how the routing algorithm differs from eg Kademlia[1], but then I realised this explicitly builds on Kademlia’s ideas.[2] Kademlia uses “bitwise XOR of peer id” as a distance metric for routing; after querying the DHT you can immediately build a routing table for reaching a particular peer, and you instantly know a next hop for any particular destination you had in mind. Yggdrasil’s contribution is that it only does this next-hop thing when you first wish to connect to an Yggdrasil IP; instead of just sending to The closest current peer and expecting them to forward, you recursively ask that peer if they have any closer ones to a particular address and add them to your list. When you can’t get any closer, you have either found that peer (and a public internet IP you can contact them on), or the closest node to them that can forward there (eg over non public network, Bluetooth, etc), or you can’t find them. Very cool. Future work alluded to at the bottom of that post: > Also, while the current DHT should be fine for peer-to-peer type applications, I wouldn’t want to be the keyspace neighbor of an especially popular server, as this would mean a large number of DHT lookups would go through my node. A caching DHT could, in principle, be able to address that issue without changes to the protocol, but that’s not a very high priority given the size of the current network. [1]: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia-lncs.pdf https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia... [2]: https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2018/07/28/addressing.html https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2018/07/28/addressing.ht...
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  Another interesting comparison is Matrix’s Pinecone, which originally used Yggdrasil but eventually wrote their own custom version. See why in the README. https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone
  - cormacrelf 5y ago
    And this thread including a better summary than the one in the wiki IMO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080335
mikewarot 5y ago
Once I find a secure OS for a daily driver, this could be a path back towards the fun of the 1980s, being able to try out software on a whim and sharing it with everyone, in a safe and secure manner.
ackbar03 5y ago
I think this touches on an issue with internet decentralization though, a large component (although definitely not all) is to do with lack of unique IP4 addresses which makes it difficult to decentralize even if you wanted to. I have no idea why the whole idea of web3 is associated with crypto now.
- razemio 5y ago
  Isn't crypto a natural fit for web3?
- hoppla 5y ago
  With so much (real) money at stake, it is not surprising that “crypto” tries to latch onto any technology unrelated to “crypto”. Every time it successfully gets associated with something else, it drives the frenzy.
Animats 5y ago
OK. So the obvious thing to do is to put a phone and message app on it. Has anyone done that?
outside1234 5y ago
Is there a community or conference that is a good “watering hole” for ideas like this one? (Ideally not web3/crypto related - real decentralized solutions - not scams and hucksters)
- Qub3d 5y ago
  I'd say you're already at one: Hacker News. Otherwise, IRC chatrooms maybe?
belic 5y ago
Tried getting some answers on their site and older HN post (did not spend too much time doing so), but I failed to find answers to couple of questions, few being: * What transport does this network use for the IPv6 overlay network? (6in4 encapsulation, IPSec... this probably opens a number of other questions) * I saw some notes about "hosting your own website" while reading about this project, does it allow for any YG node/network (from 200::/7) to be reachable from Internet? (I know 200::/7 will not be reachable directly, and I believe the answer is obvious NO, but then I am puzzled why is there a mention of hosting your own website like back in the day when it's only available on YG network). * Is there a large performance hit when a node with IPv6 X, moves across the world (say my laptop when I travel), and it changes it's place in the topology? I will assume it only requires new DHT discovery and that the rest mostly depends on actual Internet lacentcy between end nodes + some overhead. (question is meant to be about the risk of overlay topology not converging when underlay changes, possibly causing packets to go around the world few times).
smm11 5y ago
I gave up home-based SMTP in the late-90s. Some things just aren't worth it, and this is among them.

308 points by ecliptik 5y ago

> You can travel the globe, and your IP will follow you: onto a plane, from continent to continent, wherever. Yggdrasil will find you. Is there a privacy option?

sweetbitter 5y ago
Changing your keys, I suppose.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brnt 5y ago

Sounds a bit like Zerotier. But I'm not sure how it's different. How does it find other machines, deal with NAT, other corner cases?

karmanyaahm 5y ago
Zerotier is typically used for privace networks, and AFAIK it routes through a central server whenever p2p is not possible. On the other hand, the Yggdrasil main net is a public network, and each peer is a router. You don't (and can't practically) connect to every single peer, but any nodes in the middle can route things the right direction. Also, Yggdrasil can run on top of existing tcp/ip like zerotier, but it can also run on custom mesh base protocols.

rnotaro 5y ago

Related thread 6 months ago with 105 comments : Yggdrasil – Early-stage implementation of an end-to-end encrypted IPv6 network [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27577201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27577201

buzzwords 5y ago

Would this be useful to people in countries like Iran, where the internet is restricted and completely cut out whenever the government needs to shut people up?

dymk 5y ago
Let's assume this is a perfect technical solution to a government that wants to censor your speech - that doesn't help much if the government has ball-pein hammers and rubber hoses, and is willing to use them on people living in houses broadcasting wifi.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > houses broadcasting wifi Cell phones are popular with drug dealers in south america because they're impossible to shut down - if the government can't shut down drug dealers, they definitely can't shut down people sharing offensive memes.
  - dymk 5y ago
    It may not be possible to target specific uses of cellphone data channels, but this isn't much of a roadblock for the Iranian government. They'll just shut down every cell tower within their borders. Iran is already willing to impose full internet blackouts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Internet_blackout_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Internet_blackout_in_Iran).
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      Yeah, this is the difference. Drug dealers are an annoyance but they aren't a direct threat to any government (as long as you let them be in peace). If it's a direct threat to you, then you do anything, even if the benefits outweigh the risks.
    - roywiggins 5y ago
      In 2019 India shut down both the internet and regular voice networks in Kashmir: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/after-two-month-blackout-cellphones-start-to-ring-again-in-kashmir/2019/10/14/a7b163e0-ee51-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/after-two-...

mawise 5y ago

I like the use of IPv6 addresses as a cryptographic identity. Have there been any discussions about DNS-style layers on top of the mesh?

karmanyaahm 5y ago
I believe DNS works like normal with there being AAAA records for yggdrasil's 200:: ips. y.matrix.tomesh.net vs matrix.tomesh.net is an example of that

RF_Savage 5y ago

The fixed global IP sounds like an excellent use of IPv6. I'll have to look into running a node or two of this as an experiment. Preferably as a wireless mesh. Mounted in some high place.

TheArcane 5y ago
What are the tracking implications of this? With a fixed IP, ad companies wouldn't have to do any fancy fingerprinting

ki9 5y ago

Reminds me of cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

aftbit 5y ago
Yggdrasil was very aware of B.A.T.M.A.N. and cjdns. https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2019/01/09/history.html https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2019/01/09/history.html

aftbit 5y ago

>Nowadays, running a website from home is just about impossible. You may not have a public IP, and if you do, it likely changes from time to time. And even then, your ISP probably blocks you from running servers on it. I'm not sure about the author's country / ISP, but here in Midwest USA, our residential ISPs (cable or DSL, fiber if you are lucky) generally do not change IPs frequently (unless your router/modem is restarted), and generally only block port 25 (SMTP). I've been running a web/ssh server from home in some form or another since 2002, originally with DynDNS to paper over the IP changes.

sneak 5y ago
Cox (USA) blocks inbound port 80, rendering it impossible to get Let's Encrypt certs via http validation. This started in the last year and affects millions of people.
- chana_masala 5y ago
  I used to think "who cares? why would I want to self host?" but even if I or anyone doesn't care about self hosting, the fact that they block everyone from doing so is wrong.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Pointing a dyndns at your home connection for vhosting toy apps and sites on existing hardware with no additional cost is a long tradition in tech. Not everyone wants to give monthly Danegeld to Bezos.
- jessechahal 5y ago
  I have the same problem with my ISP. Solution was easy, just use DNS validation. All my home service's have valid Lets Encrypt certs using this method.
gjs278 5y ago
5y ago

boopmaster 5y ago

If my ISP hadn’t sent those legal threats for having an open access point someone used to downloaded music from, I’d run this kind of thing on a guest network segment. Edit: open to suggestions like running a segment through Tor

jethro_tell 5y ago
meh, if you want to do that, limit this bandwidth to x mbps and dump that through a VPN to a VPS. If you ever have any trouble there, just get a different VPS. Additionally, you can provide usable http/https access but block services that are likely to get you into trouble. You can even put it on your captive portal: This service blocks torrent traffic, Use a VPN if you need to do that. (link to VPN)

jeofken 5y ago

Anyone having success connecting with the iOS client?

jeofken 5y ago
Update: it’s working great. This is amazing, and I’ll incorporate it in on all my computers!

siliconunit 5y ago

I ran a citadel mail server on a pi, using a xyz domain..worked for few days before getting blocked as possible spam from google..no appartent solution... the old internet is indeed broken..

nynx 5y ago

Computers (even phones) have a enough spare computing power and bandwidth that a true, cooperative mesh network is probably possible now: Data routed through a mesh of local networks created by each device to taps which can route across long-range fiber and satellite comms.

jethro_tell 5y ago
you still have to have back haul if you want to connect to the rest of the internet. If you want to make a mesh and do things locally with people on the mesh, and I certainly believe there is a place for that, this will work. If you want to mesh net your way out of a great firewall, you still have to find a point that has a connection to the rest of the world.
Gigachad 5y ago
Phones do not have enough spare battery power to be relaying messages on a mesh network.
- pzo 5y ago
  phones probably spend 1/3 of a day (during night) being charged and plugged to the wall. You could have a mesh network that at any given time at least 1/3 of members is active - public key could have a timezone/timerange during what time note usually operates.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Phones spend almost all of their time charging next to the owners wifi router which is always plugged in. It just makes no sense at all to use phones as mesh nodes.
hffftz 5y ago
Did Google finally stop blocking ad-hoc Wi-Fi networks?

daenz 5y ago

>Enter Yggdrasil This is perhaps the worst branding I've seen in awhile. It's impossible to say correctly without being taught, difficult to remember, and difficult to spell. It's almost like they don't want their efforts to be acknowledged.

nynx 5y ago
It’s pretty easy to say and quite memorable in my opinion. Are you aware of the Norse roots of the name?
- ehutch79 5y ago
  For normal, mainstream people, it isn't.
  - donohoe 5y ago
    In your bubble that might be the case, but that’s not necessarily true for a lot of other people.
    - rnotaro 5y ago
      Something like "Zeus" is mainstream. Yggdrasil is not. You can lookup the Google Trends [1] to see that it's not really popular outside of Northen Europe. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/1641779400?hl=fr&tz=300&date=all&q=%2Fm%2F087_t,%2Fm%2F088pn,%2Fm%2F03qx2,%2Fm%2F0mpp&sni=3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16417794...
  - dariusj18 5y ago
    https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Yggdrasil https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Yggdrasil
  - sannee 5y ago
    The first sentence on the website says: > Yggdrasil is an implementation of a new name-independent routing scheme and functions as an end-to-end encrypted IPv6 network. Somehow I don't think this project is aimed at "normal, mainstream people"...

dboreham 5y ago

Just to be that guy: the internet already _is_ a mesh.

doublerabbit 5y ago
Maybe for the web4.0 we should head back to the token ring topology.

bertil 5y ago

What was the name of the Spanish company that offered a similar idea circa 2010? They had a big community branding and a catchy name – and the focus was on phone calls.

Tijdreiziger 5y ago
Perhaps you are referring to Fon, though their idea was quite different (‘democratized public Wi-Fi hotspots’, basically), and despite the name I don’t think they did anything re: phone calls. I think I still have one of their Fonera routers lying around somewhere (long unused by this point). Looks like they’re still around, but these days they partner with telcos rather than individual consumers [1]. One of the largest Dutch ISPs (KPN) used to provide access to their network on all their consumer modems until 2020 [2]. [1] https://fontech.com/fon-success-stories/ https://fontech.com/fon-success-stories/ [2] https://www.kpn.com/internet/wifi-hotspots/gratis-wifi-met-fon.htm https://www.kpn.com/internet/wifi-hotspots/gratis-wifi-met-f...
- bertil 5y ago
  Fon! Thank you!

cormacrelf 5y ago

I was going to ask how the routing algorithm differs from eg Kademlia[1], but then I realised this explicitly builds on Kademlia’s ideas.[2] Kademlia uses “bitwise XOR of peer id” as a distance metric for routing; after querying the DHT you can immediately build a routing table for reaching a particular peer, and you instantly know a next hop for any particular destination you had in mind. Yggdrasil’s contribution is that it only does this next-hop thing when you first wish to connect to an Yggdrasil IP; instead of just sending to The closest current peer and expecting them to forward, you recursively ask that peer if they have any closer ones to a particular address and add them to your list. When you can’t get any closer, you have either found that peer (and a public internet IP you can contact them on), or the closest node to them that can forward there (eg over non public network, Bluetooth, etc), or you can’t find them. Very cool. Future work alluded to at the bottom of that post: > Also, while the current DHT should be fine for peer-to-peer type applications, I wouldn’t want to be the keyspace neighbor of an especially popular server, as this would mean a large number of DHT lookups would go through my node. A caching DHT could, in principle, be able to address that issue without changes to the protocol, but that’s not a very high priority given the size of the current network. [1]: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia-lncs.pdf https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia... [2]: https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2018/07/28/addressing.html https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/2018/07/28/addressing.ht...

cormacrelf 5y ago
Another interesting comparison is Matrix’s Pinecone, which originally used Yggdrasil but eventually wrote their own custom version. See why in the README. https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone https://github.com/matrix-org/pinecone
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  And this thread including a better summary than the one in the wiki IMO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080335

mikewarot 5y ago

Once I find a secure OS for a daily driver, this could be a path back towards the fun of the 1980s, being able to try out software on a whim and sharing it with everyone, in a safe and secure manner.

ackbar03 5y ago

I think this touches on an issue with internet decentralization though, a large component (although definitely not all) is to do with lack of unique IP4 addresses which makes it difficult to decentralize even if you wanted to. I have no idea why the whole idea of web3 is associated with crypto now.

razemio 5y ago
Isn't crypto a natural fit for web3?
hoppla 5y ago
With so much (real) money at stake, it is not surprising that “crypto” tries to latch onto any technology unrelated to “crypto”. Every time it successfully gets associated with something else, it drives the frenzy.

Animats 5y ago

OK. So the obvious thing to do is to put a phone and message app on it. Has anyone done that?

outside1234 5y ago

Is there a community or conference that is a good “watering hole” for ideas like this one? (Ideally not web3/crypto related - real decentralized solutions - not scams and hucksters)

Qub3d 5y ago
I'd say you're already at one: Hacker News. Otherwise, IRC chatrooms maybe?

belic 5y ago

Tried getting some answers on their site and older HN post (did not spend too much time doing so), but I failed to find answers to couple of questions, few being: * What transport does this network use for the IPv6 overlay network? (6in4 encapsulation, IPSec... this probably opens a number of other questions) * I saw some notes about "hosting your own website" while reading about this project, does it allow for any YG node/network (from 200::/7) to be reachable from Internet? (I know 200::/7 will not be reachable directly, and I believe the answer is obvious NO, but then I am puzzled why is there a mention of hosting your own website like back in the day when it's only available on YG network). * Is there a large performance hit when a node with IPv6 X, moves across the world (say my laptop when I travel), and it changes it's place in the topology? I will assume it only requires new DHT discovery and that the rest mostly depends on actual Internet lacentcy between end nodes + some overhead. (question is meant to be about the risk of overlay topology not converging when underlay changes, possibly causing packets to go around the world few times).

smm11 5y ago

I gave up home-based SMTP in the late-90s. Some things just aren't worth it, and this is among them.