We (iroh) don't do birthday paradox hole punching yet. There is some internal debate whether it is worth it.

So if you are in an extremely weird NAT you will fall back to a relay, either our public relays, your own relays rented from us via iroh services, or a self-hosted relay.

But I would argue that a p2p social application that occasionally uses a relay is very much preferable to a centralised app.

The relay is generic internet infrastructure. It just forwards end to end encrypted connections. It can not learn anything about the content.

A relay that is hosted on a non KYC server rented via ZCash would be interesting though if you are super paranoid.

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synctext 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, we need "generic Internet infrastructure" for linking devices.

By 2030 we hopefully understand the mathematics-of-trust and can link all the billions of citizens together in a single overlay.

> non KYC server rented via ZCash would be interesting though if you are super paranoid.

What will happen if a decentralized Internet emerged and presented an existential threat to existing profit margins? Company lawyer would start to attack you, correct?

	▲	broken-kebab 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>What will happen if a decentralized Internet emerged and presented an existential threat to existing profit margins? Company lawyer would start to attack you, correct? I think it's very misplaced concern. Commercially-viable internet will not be decentralized because of legal restrictions. If whatever engineering solution will be found to weaken them, governments will step in to curtail it. FWIW any moderately successful decentralization effort is more likely to be attacked from exactly this side: some countries will hate it for uncontrolled information dissemination, others for fiscal reasons.