129 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
129 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
[
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](https://github.com/orgs/indra-labs/projects/1/views/1)
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# Indranet
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[](https://pkg.go.dev/git.indra-labs.org/dev/ind)
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[]([http://unlicense.org/](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/))
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Lightning powered distributed source routed relay network protocol.
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[White Paper](docs/whitepaper.md)
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## About the Indra Network Protocol
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The ubiquitous use of encryption on the internet took some time to happen,
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there was a time when the US government defined them as munitions and
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claimed export restrictions, and famously the PGP project broke this via the
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First Amendment, by literally printing the source code on paper and then
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posting it, it became recognised that code, and encryption, are protected
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speech.
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With ubiquitous 128 and 256-bit AES encryption now in use by default, the
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content of messages is secure. However, the volume of messages and endpoints of
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signals are still useful intelligence data, enabling state level actors to
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attack internet users and violate their privacy and threaten their safety.
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Protecting against this high level attack the main network currently doing
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this work is the [Tor network](https://torproject.org). However, this system
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has many flaws, and in recent times its centralised relay registry has come
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under sustained attack by DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.
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More specifically, the protocol has a severe bottleneck in its rendezvous model
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for linking two outbound 3 hop connections, attackers flood these with requests,
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and legitimate users cannot get a word in edgewise. Ironically they built a
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proof of work protocol to give users a way to get ahead of the spammers.
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Indra eliminates this problem by using a constantly changing set of introducers
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and the actual bidirectional anonymity is done by the parties themselves via the
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source routing headers plus pairs of hops added in front of the recipient's
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routing header.
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One of the big problems of the Tor network is its weak network
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effect. There is no incentive for anyone to run nodes on the network, and
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worse, the most common use case is tunneling back out of the network to
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anonymize location, is largely abused and led to a lot of automated block
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systems arising on many internet services to prevent this abuse.
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Indra makes it possible for anyone to offer this kind of outbound relaying
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service if they want to, but with compensation for doing so, which covers the
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risk they take as being the visible origin point of shady traffic from time to
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time. We are not going to expressly promote this as we believe that the service
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provider is the sole authority over their services, subject to their fidelity to
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providing them honestly and justly.
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Indra uses source routing, similar to the Lightning Network and an early but not
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really quite viable mixnet design called HORNET. The problem with source routed
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mixnets is that they are very vulnerable to spam. Indra eliminates this problem
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by no traffic being relayed without first paying a small forward payment to
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relays for this traffic, thus creating an economic disincentive for spam if the
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profit is below the routing fees.
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## License CC0
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## Mission Statement
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We are building Indra to end the information asymmetry between large and small
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entities on the internet.
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We want to earn something from doing this and so we intend to act as introducers
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in the initial few years of operation of the main network.
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Once the network is running smoothly, we want to distribute that introduction
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privilege as widely as possible, at first to several prominent, trusted
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organisations, who are diverse and far flung from each other and ideally, in
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competition with each other, so that the users interests are paramount.
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Regarding copyright and patent, we strongly disagree with any form of monopoly,
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no matter what. History shows over and over again that monopolies are fragile
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and do not help the people, only the cabal who organise it.
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But where the monpoly courts rule in favour of such claims we simply withdraw
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from such a lawless place.
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We are building Indra because the little people who don't have thugs with titles
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to defend fiefdoms, will have far greater freedom to communicate and organise
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when the thugs don't have a bird's eye view of the network.
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So there is no need to defend such rights since the mission matters more. Plus,
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traveling is great for getting new ideas seeing how other cultures solve
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problems and the philosophies that lead to their selection.
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Indra's anonymous communication system really will form an "outside"
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jurisdiction everywhere. Like bringing Lex Merchant onshore. Both the founders
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of this project are very interested in laws of contract and tort and equity, in
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addition to our CS background. As such, it will enable far more things than you
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can list in hours of brainstorming.
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The root of power is the control of the flow of information. An enemy cannot
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prevail over an army if it never knows the internal state of the enemy, that all
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attempts to gather intelligence fail to be either actionable or effective.
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The Byzantine Generals Problem was solved for the broadcast case as with
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Bitcoin, and many altcoin projects seek to achieve this via federations, which
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in our opinion due to economic and game theory reasons is doomed to failure.
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Indra builds the solution for the peer to peer case, and we acknowledge that we
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are building on the platform that the Bitcoin and Lightning Network community
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has built.
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We are using the same principles as used in Lightning, and indeed even,
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Lightning network developers are unwisely stepping into trouble attempting to
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enable their payment channels to carry arbitrary messages. To our minds, this is
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as foolish as adding a complex, Turing complete language to the broadcast model
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distributed ledger, it is just going to end up proving that when you make
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obnoxious behaviour cheap it proliferates.
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We intend to be the answer to the question that led to this perilous situation.
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Indra will be more than just a way to enforce your privacy, the micropayment
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monetised relay service model is wide open to all kinds of innovation, and as
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such, it is a core goal that we wish to achieve is a system that enables users
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to generate their own message protocols that are executed by Indra relays.
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Single point relaying, like is the standard for VPN service, is possible with
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Indra's design. So is absurdly long paths, and forking, joining, and deliberate
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relaying delays for asynchronous messaging systems all will be easy for
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developers to specify in their Indra-savvy applications.
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