Jack Dorsey Releases BitChat: Encrypted Messaging via Bluetooth LE Mesh

Re:Jack Dorsey Releases BitChat: Encrypted Messaging via Blu... by sneak on Monday July 07, 2025 @03:37PM (#44493882)

Meshtastic barely works. There are only a few hundred nodes in Las Vegas and already the main public channels are at high utilization with almost no real end user traffic on it.

I love the project and participate, but people mentioning stuff like this in response to buzzwords irritates me. Like ipfs it is a buzzword-driven curiosity, not a real solution to real problems that anyone has.

Additionally, the meshtastic encryption is a toy. In 2025 when you say encryption you make people think of modern features like replay resistance, perfect forward secrecy, etc. Meshtastic doesn’t do any of this.

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Re:Jack Dorsey Releases BitChat: Encrypted Messaging via Blu... by SamPatt on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @11:03AM (#44500667)

IPFS used to be a real solution, we used it as the base layer for the decentralized marketplace OpenBazaar and it worked fairly well for that. I haven’t followed it in a few years though.

IPNS, on the other hand...

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Re:Jack Dorsey Releases BitChat: Encrypted Messaging via Blu... by immibis on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @03:09PM (#44503025)

I think of IPFS as a cross between HTTP and BitTorrent. Like BitTorrent it can seek a given dataset by some kind of hash, no matter where it's hosted; like HTTP it's more suitable for collections of small files.

In practice, it takes upwards of a whole minute to locate a file it's never seen before, so it's not terribly useful. It's better than nothing, but it's not terribly useful.

It's still cool that someone tried. IPFS is one in a long line of ideas that didn't really work. Occasionally some of these ideas have massive success, like the Internet, and Bitcoin.

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