Past mesh pitfalls and why FIPS might differ

FIPS is an open source mesh networking project that enables devices to connect directly to each other without relying on any central servers or infrastructure. Today's internet depends on companies and governments that can monitor, censor, or shut down communication at will. FIPS solves this by giving every node a cryptographic identity and encrypting all traffic automatically, so no one in the middle can see or block what you're doing. Nodes discover each other and route messages through the mesh on their own, and regular apps like browsers and SSH clients work on top of it without any special setup.

Arjen on Nostr: https://primal.net/p/npub1hw6amg8p24ne08c9gdq8hhpqx0t0pwanpae9z25crn7m9uy7yarse465gr
Jonathan on Nostr: https://primal.net/p/npub19wavu4f7l6l43h24jyskn7fvzy37kcfp67aqjtmv2qgy4lp34nhsda8p6k
FIPS Repo: https://gitworkshop.dev/npub1y0gja7r4re0wyelmvdqa03qmjs62rwvcd8szzt4nf4t2hd43969qj000ly/relay.ngit.dev/fips
Tollgate: https://tollgate.me
Sovereign Engineering: https://sovereignengineering.io/

EPISODE: 193
BLOCK: 939631
PRICE:  1465 sats per dollar

(02:03) Introducing FIPS and the goal of a middleman free internet

(04:16) Why static IPs fail for hosting and how FIPS reframes identity

(05:51) Decoupling transport and routing: protocol-agnostic design

(06:50) Peer discovery across Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, and local broadcast

(07:43) Future global routing ideas and decentralized discovery

(09:05) Local mesh handshakes, Noise encryption, and Bloom filters

(11:02) Community meshes, resilience, and mixed transports

(11:42) Starlink and bridging meshes over the wider internet

(13:21) Use case: protest resilience and reconnecting to the world

(14:08) Origins: conferences, Sovereign Engineering, and NoDNS

(16:04) From NoDNS to FIPS: faster updates, remaining gaps

(17:10) Economics: sats for peering and incentive-aware routing

(18:00) Abuse, DDoS surfaces, and defenses via npubs and rate limits

(19:45) Learning from mesh hype cycles and bootstrapping adoption

(22:32) Lowering app friction: make existing apps work over FIPS

(25:12) DNS trick: IPv6 mapping and transparent transport

(27:08) Backwards compatibility as a must-have for scale

(28:08) Rethinking data flow with Nostr streams and local hosting

(30:12) Offline-to-online spectrum and graceful reconciliation

(31:10) Status update: early servers, testers, and bandwidth limits

(32:20) Physical constraints: MTU, Bluetooth, LoRa

(36:00) Reality checks: pitfalls, past meshes, and expectations

(38:12) New primitives: Nostr, Blossom, eCash; Jonathan’s role

(40:37) Identity concerns, key rotation, and operational practices

(46:10) Hosting sensitive services: hot keys

(48:09) Self-hosting privately, Tor comparisons, and latency

(49:37) Observation, Tollgate incentives, and community privacy

(50:40) Tollgate legal concerns and community norms

(53:21) Call to action, testing FIPS, and packaging plans

(55:10) Closing thoughts