I'm now cautiously optimistic. This or something similar is likely the long term future of mesh networks, but in the short to medium term, meshcore is the way to go.
Sure, but if it’s anything like MeshCore, a few observer nodes will be able to see which repeaters the message first entered the network from and from that know roughly where it was located.
The worst part privacy wise could be the announce packets which include a hop count and the address for the origin so if you had enough interfaces you could roughly say where a node is on a network graph (geo locating that is an entire other problem)
Privacy also depends on what interfaces you communicate over, eg TCP reveals IP addresses to the nodes you directly connect to (combine with hop counts to see if a packet definitely originated from that node), LoRa gives an idea of how close it might be because of its range limits and the fact radio emissions can be located.
Also reticulum and crypto seem like they go together. Non-http crypto transactions?
What about entirely-non-http blockchains?
A new bitcoin that is completely off the internet as we know it??
personally i find it a beautiful match
Rayfish, Tailscale, ZeroTier, Netbird etc are a different category of tool, designed to facilitate connectivity between you and your own pool of machines. They don't generally do much in the way of multi-hop routing, but rather they orchestrate VPN tunnels on top of another routed network (like the internet).
Reticulum would be better compared to Yggdrasil, cjdns etc as routing schemes for larger networks or true meshes, which can work independently of (and have no dependency upon) the internet.
I suppose it means it's easier to develop the protocol only having to update one Python codebase but it does mean other implementations are kinda in a state where there isn't anything to properly verify they work.
There's also a issue with quite a few vibe coded implementations that don't actually properly work filling the space.
We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases.
The internet may be ripe for disruption, as it has been domesticated for corporate use. It is no longer ours. Browsers have become an operating system unto themselves. Something much simpler would work also. Corporate bloat is continuing to pile up, while markdown evolves to do everything we want.
You're right, and I think a lot of these projects hit the same problem: "what can this offer me that centralized platforms can't?"
Take the Gemini protocol: if someone invents a "Gemini killer app", it can be replicated over the web because the web's features are a superset of Gemini's features. Medium is the centralized equivalent of traditional blogging. The whole indie web could be emulated by Meta (it's not big enough for them to care). Much like capitalism eating subcultures, the existing internet will consume, commoditize and re-sell all alternatives.
The only exceptions I can think of are decentralization itself (centralization can only offer an emulation of decentralization) and freedom from corporate censorship, and not enough people care about them to make the switch.
I'd love to hear counterexamples if anyone has them, because I don't like this conclusion.
Very often what comes as top priority is communication itself, which means radio-amateur radio frequencies where encryption is only available for signing messages but not the content.
Reticulum can be 100% private as it can choose to send packets in plain text. Can also broadcast messages without a specific target receiver, these are features that are necessary for radio transmission on amateur frequencies.
On LoRa: attention that default reticulum is still "too talkative". Meaning that in some LoRa frequencies there is a legal limit to how many messages (transmission time) your device can send per hour and even the automated announcements (to say "Hello, I'm here") quickly waste that available space.
On Internet: reticulum is great. I'm seeing about 700 connected devices across different hubs.
People often compare reticulum to Meshcore or Meshtastic but they often neglect one important aspect: those are exclusive LoRa implementations. Reticulum is the same protocol (language) no matter the network underneath. This means that you can connect a phone via BLE to a LoRa link which on the other side is connected on the Internet and then flies down to another BLE somewhere. This is not common to find on reticulum but possible.
There is a lot of good work on the topic. Maybe it will surface here on HN soon when more stable. In October there is an yearly event in Coimbra, Portugal where these topics are presented and tested in deep.