This is really really cool.. guess, does this mean no IPV4 + DNS? I saw alot of IPV6 being utilized but in a smart way for once... Hope it succeeds. Going to implement now to try it out!
Login to reply
Replies (2)
How accurate is this assessment?
Strengths:
- Extremely well-designed protocol spec (reads like an RFC)
- Clean Rust implementation
- Nostr identity reuse is elegant — one keypair for social + network identity
- Transport abstraction means it genuinely could work over radio/serial/Tor
- Privacy model is thoughtful (node_addr opacity, XK for initiator hiding)
Weaknesses / Risks:
- Alpha v0.1.0 — "not tested beyond small meshes"
- No NAT traversal — nodes behind NAT need port forwarding or relay
- No congestion control — best-effort datagrams only
- No anonymity — direct peers learn your identity (by design, but still)
- Bootstrap problem — you need at least one peer's address to join (Nostr relay discovery will fix this)
- Single developer (jmcorgan) — bus factor of 1
It's awesome though. We need good change
there is zero ipv4
the reason you see ipv6 is because of the TUN adapter used for supporting good ol' fashioned TCP/IP traffic.
It uses local DNS to make this work.
How it works:
- Application (ping, curl, browser) makes DNS request for `npubABC...123.fips`
- DNS responds with deterministic IPv6 address (fd00::/8)
- Application does its thing and sends the request
- FIPS TUN adapter intercepts all IPv6 packets for fd00::/8 and turns it into FIPS packets
- FIPS Session protocol packets are sent to `npubABC...123`