Ah yes, the app that said "we will open source in December" two years ago and still operates on the "just trust us bro!" model like every other centralized chat app.
nostr:note1djuqk4c3y3zs6ftvwwtnvm8sden4swzm22a9g3mrepevf9qq6q4s2ry7j2
Discussion
not only is it half closed source it hardly works properly either, has the same key-sharing problem as simplex (you can't have the same identifier on separate installations) and the actual "holepunch" technology isn't always effective at getting results
in all seriousness, i don't know what the fuck they bother with this nonsense for, you can use the IPFS protocol to enable bidirectional peer to peer connections, including internet connected nodes performing rendezvous for your peers
and not only that, it got abandoned because Tor changed the API so much it broke it but there was a p2p chat that used tor hidden services called Torchat... i'm not sure, i don't think anyone has bothered to try and get that working again but literally can use tor hidden service identifiers as your public keys to connect to you when you are online
all of them have a problem of async messaging though, something that Nostr can solve if some devs get their heads out of their arses and start putting full relays inside clients and building desktop clients with backend services that run as your inbox/outbox
all possible, all can be done with the tech, yet somehow nobody is actually doing any of it. retarded.
I kinda like what nostr:npub1tm99pgz2lth724jeld6gzz6zv48zy6xp4n9xu5uqrwvx9km54qaqkkxn72 is doing. Has it's quirks but I could see being the only app of that sort I'd ever need if it had (as you correctly point out!) a self-contained relay.
And god yes, holepunch indeed sucks. Best thing I came up with using that stack still lives on my Shithub I think, and is naught but a NAT driller allowing applications to traverse firewalls.