Nothing blocks Nostr clients from sending Nostr events to one another directly, without a relay.
Both clients need to be online and show some IP that the other will connect into. Totally feasible.
We can even use a Push Notification server to send phone to phone messages with background apps. But that's kinda like having a relay in the middle.
Simplex and Nostr are directly fused, and repeaters are compatible
What's the security risks here? And some more downsides besides both clients need to be online. Please elaborate
Hard to say. It will require us to actually develop it to flesh it out. You would have one less public surveillance point (the relay) but you would potentially introduce other security/privacy issues like Bluetooth/WIFI sniffing for instance.
https://simplex.chat/ Simplex has so few servers, and if you can combine Nostr, it's a great product!
I use ProtonVPN and see tons of servers there. Could they be used as Nostr relays? Or at least the IP address that I connect to with it?
Simplex is unfortunately blocked by the government in China, I am extremely disappointed! I really want to get a gun to fight them and blow up the wall!
I think this is the ambition of nostr:npub1g53mukxnjkcmr94fhryzkqutdz2ukq4ks0gvy5af25rgmwsl4ngq43drvk to send events p2p
What if every client had a TOR address, and peer to peer worked that way without revealing IPs?
It could work. Maybe some TOR + VPN scheme since simply connecting to a TOR relay would raise eyebrows from the IPS across the globe.
Makes sense, but seems doable. I like the idea of direct connections with followers, and relays being more like Global.
This would be pretty cool!
I am here to plug keet.io again, we could use it for p2p video calls and more inside nostr clients that don't burden the relays.
That really changes things in terms of privacy.
The events wouldn't be visible to other npubs or relays & so couldn't also be decrypted following an nsec leak. The existence of the events wouldn't even be visible.
The big drawback would be the need for both clients to function in this way & be reachable.
I suspect that a better compromise might be using a specified relay for exchanges with certain npubs. A trusted local relay for certain events.
This might then pave the way for semi private (non encrypted) event exchanges using agreed relays.
