FIPS Project Update and v0.4.0 Release

FIPS Project Update and v0.4.0 Release#

It has been about six weeks since v0.3.0, and the response has been great. We estimate the public test mesh averages 1500-1600 nodes online at a time, with the optional bootstrap nodes peering with hundreds of inbound connections each.

This growth is welcome on its own, but as planned its real value has been as a live test of the network design and implementation under real-world conditions that are far more demanding than any lab or CI test, including adversarial attacks and probing from the usual suspects. Running at this scale has surfaced latent bugs, race conditions, and capacity limits that have driven the bulk of the v0.4.0 release content.

In parallel, normal development work from existing and new contributors has continued, and this release has a few new capabilities that make it more than just a patch release.

Notable Contributions#

• ⁠Sirius has continued to deliver performance improvements to the FIPS data plane, with a roughly 2x throughput increase between directly connected peers. The nostr-vpn project has switched to using FIPS as its underlying mesh transport.

  He also contributed a new opt-in mDNS LAN discovery mechanism, which lets IP overlay-based nodes on the same local network find and peer with each other without having to go through the full Nostr-based overlay discovery process.

• ⁠oleksky added an outbound Nym mixnet transport, so a FIPS node can peer through the Nym network for metadata-resistant connectivity. Mesh traffic mixes into Nym cover traffic, and it ships with a single-container demo.

• ⁠sandwich implemented a Nix flake for reproducible from-source builds on Nix and NixOS, plus AUR packaging fixes.

• ⁠Arjen continues to develop and maintain the native macOS FIPS port, fixing some connectivity bugs that were revealed in 0.3.0 deployments.

  He also implemented OpenWrt 25+ support, with a native .apk package alongside the existing .ipk one for 24.x.

Community#

Beyond the code in this release, the wider FIPS community has been busy over the same six weeks.

• Learning and onboarding. The fips.network website got a substantial redesign, and a new interactive Learn FIPS guide walks through self-organization and coordinate routing, hop-by-hop and end-to-end encryption, and the full connection lifecycle with layer-by-layer simulations. Join FIPS does browser-side peer discovery, the FIPS Map shows live node geography, and Awesome FIPS catalogues projects built on and around the mesh.

• Podcasts. FIPS featured across several shows: the No Solutions podcast discussed it in its White Noise, MLS and Marmot and Nostr VPN episodes; Open Markets covered FIPS as a decentralization play in "What The Fips"; and Citadel Dispatch's CD193 — "FIPS — Fixing The Internet" is still being reshared.

• Projects building on FIPS. Martti Malmi's NostrVPN — a Tailscale-style private mesh on a FIPS-backed data plane — shipped v4.0.80. Community members are also experimenting with decentralized email addressed by npub and prototyping Nostr-native voice spaces — all reachable directly over .fips addresses.

• Sentiment. In-person FIPS conversations happened at BTC Prague, and there's a healthy push from the community for high code-quality standards in projects meant to last. We share that goal, and a lot of this release reflects it. A few notes from the community over the past six weeks:

  Nostr + FIPS is like the telephone game, but with perfect information the whole way.

  FIPS supports the Pillars of Propagation; the way information flows throughout the internet will change forever.

  NOSTR / FIPS / Bitcoin / Lightning / Cashu / Personal AI — once we have the models and the hardware, there will be no stopping this freedom train.

  A new alternative internet infrastructure is being built with FIPS, but how can we get access to internet when ISPs start to do KYC or the state demands a digital ID? You can partly get around with TollGate, but getting an internet connection trustlessly, bought with bitcoin — that would be a game changer.

Upgrade#

v0.4.0 is wire-compatible with v0.3.0. Linux, macOS, Windows, OpenWrt, and Arch (AUR) packages are on the release page, the Nix flake builds from source, and the public bootstrap nodes are ready for you to join.

Full release notes: release notes.