Re:Ask HN: Why does P2P encrypted messaging still suck?
by ReverseCold on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @11:01AM
(#16755349)
> Running the actual network
The ideal would require no servers, because the chat would be fully peer to peer. People wanting to be anonymous could just connect through Tor. (Each user account is just a private key, etc, etc.)
Of course, in reality everything is behind a NAT and/or firewall. It wouldn't be too difficult to have "dumb" servers that just exist to pass messages hosted by the community though.
The ideal would require no servers, because the chat would be fully peer to peer. People wanting to be anonymous could just connect through Tor. (Each user account is just a private key, etc, etc.)
Of course, in reality everything is behind a NAT and/or firewall. It wouldn't be too difficult to have "dumb" servers that just exist to pass messages hosted by the community though.