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SimpleX vs P2P

P2P networks are not good for privacy because it is very easy to obtain a communication graph, except for Bitcoin, since in its implementation of the Gossip protocol, Bitcoin makes a diffusion of all the information that arrives and its own, in this case transactions, making indistinguishable one client from another and not knowing which packets are sent by your node and which are retransmitted from other nodes.

This is not viable in mobile messaging because it would imply an unacceptable use of data and resources.

SimpleX mitigates the privacy issues in p2p networks and also the problem of centralization by using independent servers that do not communicate with each other.

When a conversation is first created with a contact, the receiving and sending servers chosen randomly by the clients are established. Contact A actually chooses its receiving server and contact B chooses its receiving server.

Analogous to Coinjoin, the more SimpleX servers there are, the higher your anom set will be since it is impossible to know which servers the clients have chosen, and even controlling a large part of the network, you should deal with the fact that for each conversation a different id is used regardless of its members.

On the other hand, SimpleX does not make use of DNS servers and transport protocol is easy to implement over other standard web protocols which makes it indistinguishable and hardly censurable.

Decentralized 2y ago

Would you include i2p in that statement? And Nym Network?

It's a real doubt.

Maybe the Nym network is too new, and there is not enough info about it.

But I have the theory that i2p is a good P2P network that not many people are taking into count (I'm not an expert, and I have to read and learn a lot about i2p)

I lost interest in Nym because of the use of a token and KyC, but it's there.

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Discussion

Cyph3rp9nk 2y ago

Maybe I have expressed myself wrong, really the title should have been SimpleX vs P2P messengers.

The Bitcoin example I have exposed as a privacy problem extrapolated to p2p messengers like Briar, Keet or Berty.

Decentralized 2y ago

Ahhh, Ok, maybe was my bad 😬, but now everything is clear.

Thanks for your answer!

cgi-bin 2y ago

About Nym it's a pretty interesting to solve metadata leakage at network level

About KYC, it's only to receive rewards or other grant given by Nym not to interact with the mixnet and about the token, here's a quote from the team

Nym does not aim to be a currency. Nym needs a way to capture the value of the service behind. That is why it is a utility token that will be the representation of X GB of data in the mixnet. Sats only cannot do that until they become the unit of account of computer ressources. Eventually this will become transparent where indeed people will pay sats for the service.

Right now when you use ToR or I2P usage doesn't compensate the infrastructure providers and this is a vector of attack.

I would have loved to have been able to build a system directly over Bitcoin or LN, but when the design choices were made this was too complex. Also, and as maxis (that i consider myself as), we need to acknowledge that without funding mechanism this team wouldn't be able to work at all. We have the largest ever mixnet running and it's maintained fully by a community.

Also, please understand that all mixnet experts are not Bitcoin maxis :)) so we need to bring them there. And i can tell you, they already had a good journey in understanding core cryptocurrencies concepts :)