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w3f / messaging

Messaging for Web3
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Compare different approaches #5

Closed keorn closed 5 years ago

keorn commented 6 years ago

Explicitly contrast mix network with other approaches, such as broadcast based, onion routing, (PIR/DC) so it captures Whisper/PSS/Tor issues.

PKI alternatives: gossip based vs other approaches.

oskarth commented 6 years ago

Here's a comparison between Whisper and PSS that @arnetheduck wrote up https://our.status.im/whisper-pss-comparison/

burdges commented 6 years ago

PIR and DC nets scale poorly. Also, they require much more coordination and uptime, so they're less decentralized.

Tor is good, but we want better privacy guarantees than Tor provides. Also Tor costs you asynchronous messaging.

There is an interesting collaborative routing mixnet design by @FatemeShirazi et al. which helps address the PKI issue, but it throws us into threshold security assumptions, which makes us nervous. I'd expect source routed IBE mixnets to have similar security assumptions, but not sure yet.

oskarth commented 6 years ago

Some more here re circuit/packet switching and broadcast based. https://github.com/validitylabs/messagingProtocol/wiki/State-Of-The-Art

Suggested acceptance criteria: Put in README concise overview of biggest different families and why Mixnetwork was chosen and what trade-offs this provides.

oskarth commented 5 years ago

Largely a duplicate https://github.com/w3f/messaging/issues/20, but PKI etc approach should probably be a separate issue