When Mark Qvist of #Reticulum was asked about removing encryption from the protocol stack this was his response:

"'>>Fork Reticulum and gut it like a fish [...] replacing everything encrypted about it with techniques that use signing instead of encryption'

Mark:

'From the very beginning of sketching the Reticulum protocol, I was very well aware that at some point, this idea would come up, and that the above "solution" would seem like the most "sensible" quick-hack for people who just wanted Reticulum without encryption. Luckily, it is simply not possible to do it.

Reticulum makes many implicit assumptions about the level and homogeneity of entropy in the raw data flows. Breaking any of those will make things fall apart very quickly, and I can assure you that trying to remove encryption is the best way to break all of those assumptions.

You will then end up with a protocol that works most of the time at first, then very little at all, then maybe a bit again, and everyone involved in that project will spend a lot of time pulling their hair, in a wild goose-chase of "bugs" that aren't really such.

Yes, I did this completely on purpose, and not only did I take very great care to make it practically impossible to scissor out the encryption from Reticulum, I tried my best to make it as confusing and painful as possible for anyone who would try to do so.'"

🐐🐐🐐