Session is a decentralized alternative to signal. It doesn’t require a phone number and all traffic is routed through a tor like onion network. Relays are run by the community and relay operators are rewarded with some crypto token for their troubles. To prevent bad actors from attacking the network, in order to run a relay you have to stake some of those tokens first and if your node misbehaves thay will get slashed.
I would not recommend it. Session is a signal fork that deliberately removes forward secrecy from the protocol and uses weaker keys. The removal of forward security means that if your private key is ever exposed all your past messages could be decrypted.
Tor relays only relay the traffic, they don’t store anything (other than HSDirs, but that’s miniscule). Session relays have to store all the messages, pictures, files until the user comes online and retrieves them. Obviously all that data would be too much to store on every single node, so instead it is spread across only 5-7 nodes at a time. If all of those nodes ware to go offline at the same time, messages would be lost, so there has to be some mechanism that discourages taking nodes offline without giving a notice period to the network. Without the staking mechanism, an attacker could spin up a bunch of nodes and then take them all down for relatively cheap, and leave users’ messages undelivered. It also incentivizes honest operators to ensure their node’s reliability and rewards them for it, which, even if you run your node purely for altruistic reasons, is always a nice bonus, so I don’t really see any downside to it, especially since the end user doesn’t need to interact with it at all.
Sounds like the staking is a way to incentivize individual node uptime. Also you need to pay into the stake to get going so there is some financial pain involved in neglecting, or worse, manipulating a node. Though it sounds like around €1000 per node, so it’s not really going to slow down governments or billion dollar commercial competitors.
It’s also a way that people can contribute to the network without needing third party payment services. I don’t need to find some node operator’s socials and look up a patron to use a credit card.
If I already have an account with a crypto exchange then it’s easy to pay the operators.
Session is a decentralized alternative to signal. It doesn’t require a phone number and all traffic is routed through a tor like onion network. Relays are run by the community and relay operators are rewarded with some crypto token for their troubles. To prevent bad actors from attacking the network, in order to run a relay you have to stake some of those tokens first and if your node misbehaves thay will get slashed.
I would not recommend it. Session is a signal fork that deliberately removes forward secrecy from the protocol and uses weaker keys. The removal of forward security means that if your private key is ever exposed all your past messages could be decrypted.
shame their entire node system relies on cryptobros tech.
tor doesnt need currency to back it up. i2p doesnt need currency to back it up. why the hell lokinet does?
Tor relays only relay the traffic, they don’t store anything (other than HSDirs, but that’s miniscule). Session relays have to store all the messages, pictures, files until the user comes online and retrieves them. Obviously all that data would be too much to store on every single node, so instead it is spread across only 5-7 nodes at a time. If all of those nodes ware to go offline at the same time, messages would be lost, so there has to be some mechanism that discourages taking nodes offline without giving a notice period to the network. Without the staking mechanism, an attacker could spin up a bunch of nodes and then take them all down for relatively cheap, and leave users’ messages undelivered. It also incentivizes honest operators to ensure their node’s reliability and rewards them for it, which, even if you run your node purely for altruistic reasons, is always a nice bonus, so I don’t really see any downside to it, especially since the end user doesn’t need to interact with it at all.
I2P already did that with their DHT network (remember DHT?). I2P Bote uses that for messaging
Eh, no. A DHT doesn’t solve offline storage of data, when the source node is already offline, and the target node is not yet online.
It does temporarily, on the order of hours to days. It’s not designed to use the network for long term storage, just message passing
yet they couldve done this with volunteer nodes or even their own, because not even the server knows the content, right?
Can you think of another way for people across the world to easily pay each other directly?
lokinet is for data transfer, like a message from your phone to mine, not a currency. Thats why its odd it uses staking instead of any nodes.
Sounds like the staking is a way to incentivize individual node uptime. Also you need to pay into the stake to get going so there is some financial pain involved in neglecting, or worse, manipulating a node. Though it sounds like around €1000 per node, so it’s not really going to slow down governments or billion dollar commercial competitors.
Exactly.
It’s also a way that people can contribute to the network without needing third party payment services. I don’t need to find some node operator’s socials and look up a patron to use a credit card.
If I already have an account with a crypto exchange then it’s easy to pay the operators.
Just use Briar or SimpleX instead of this clowns’ service with no perfect forward secrecy