This year feels different. Sovereign Engineering 06 and 07 are rolling in and I'm gearing up for it right now. Over a month of resonating brainwaves, and this time also radio waves. All above water on the island.
We're at a time where there is a complete set of primitives to make local networks thrive again. We have TollGate, nsite, NoDNS, FIPS, Relays and Blossom. Together these are an incredibly potent cocktail of sovereignty and resiliency
Assess#
Before you can solve any problem you need to know what the problem even is. We have assessed, and and I have a summary from my perspective:
Over the last decade, the cracks on the internet became a massive fissures, the whole thing barely hanging on. The analysis of the problem became easier, but the pressure to mitigate grew even harder. Luckily we know exactly what is broken in networking, and a lot of it comes down to lack of a proper identity and incentive system.
- ICANN - DNS requires KYC identities, making it a huge attack vector from centralized forces. A rugpull kills your service.
- IANA - IP requires hierarchy, you need static addresses to reliably host any service. A rugpull or changes to your IP causes outages.
- ISP's - The incentive structure of Internet Service providers is lacking, but both switching cost and startup costs are prohibitively high.
- Continuity - Many services/sites depend on continuity of the creator. A website, your window into Nostr goes down if a maintainer disappears. That is a fragile system.
- Tight transport coupling - Why can i not visit a website over Bluetooth. Why do I need WiFi to fetch a Blossom file from the same (physical) room? We treat networking differently depending on the physical transport. We shouldn't.
Mitigate#
Before diving into perfect solutions, what can we do to slow the growth of cracks, while we build the new house next door? New systems take time and experimentation. Time that we don't really have.
One such mitigation is NoDNS: A system to self-publish an [npub].nostr DNS records, Stored an distributed through Nostr relays.
What does it mitigate? Domain rugpulls. At least you will have an identifier that cannot be taken from you. Even though your IP can still change or disappear, Your clients can still reach the service. This is VERY important if the effective identity of your service IS the domain name.
This is the case for Nostr relays and Blossom servers, and, I'd argue more importantly, CASHU MINTS! If they get rugpulled, apps currently break.
My suggestion: These core services should use an npub in their domain name. Both on centralized domain systems and by using NoDNS.
This would result in:
- mint.npubAbc123.com
- mint.npubAbc123.nostr
If .com gets rugpulled. clients can switch over to NoDNS's .nostr.
Solve#
This is where the beauty happens. The real fixes, the long-term solutions. This has to be a convergence of technologies. I think the parts and the people are there. We now need to assemble the pieces.
Solve: Incentives with TollGate#
TollGate attacks the incentives problem. The cost of running infrastructure is not properly allocated. When we do, the network becomes more efficient, and attacks become costlier.
Solve: Continuity with nsite#
nsite hosts your website on nostr + blossom. There are some exciting updates to nsite's spec that will make it waaaay more reliable.
What nsite solves is that with the vanishing of a website's creator, the site doesn't have to. nsite's can be stored local. So if you maintain a functioning local network, you can use and exchange these sites well into the distant future.
Nostr is useless without a window to view it through. It's apps are essential and should be treated as such.
Solve: Network hierarchy & transport coupling#
Independent networks runs into a hierarchy problem due to the structure of IP addressing. It's a tree structure that cannot be applied to the flat structure of a mesh network. And it doesn't work well for living networks that rearrange constantly.
I've been exploring the idea of using nostr keys for routing internet traffic and doing so in a way that is fully compatible with existing applications and also link agnostic. During the cohort we'll explore this more and start testing with an early implementation.
Conclusion#
We (the community) have assessed the situation in the last few years. We know what's broken. We've worked on independent solutions that we know hold water. But we haven't applied the mitigations and solutions in a coherent manner yet. All it needs is the right people working on it together to make it a whole.
And I haven't even talked about the cool stuff people work on with regards to radio and satellite communication yet. Which is an incredibly exciting field in which i'm an absolute n00b. But I'm excited to combine forces with people that understand waves in this way.
If you've looked at sovereignengineering.io at least twice and not signed up? Dude! (or Gal!), are you really gonna keep staring at it without taking action? It's not gonna sail over to you. Sign Up!
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