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Secure Messaging (SeM) Overview
Note
: This page is still WiP. This page will be published either as a page on
vac.dev, or alternatively onsem.vac.dev.
Vac's Secure Messaging (SeM) project researches and designs modular p2p protocols for scaling, secure, private, anonymous, and censorship-resistant communications. The main focus is Waku, the communication layer for Web3.
The following tracks are part of SeM.
Secure Scaling
The secure scaling track is concerned with scaling Waku protocols in a secure and efficient way. This includes DoS protection and resilience, as well as making sure that privacy and anonymity properties are not violated.
Restricted Run
Waku's adaptive node concept allows nodes of (almost) any resource profile to participate in Waku networks. Nodes with more resources contribute the network, incentivized by various means addressed in the protocol incentivization track. Nodes with restricted resources mainly consume services.
The restricted run track researches and develops protocols and protocol extensions for resource restricted nodes. The restricted run track covers the need of restricted devices in areas covered by the other tracks (e.g. secure scaling, anonymity, discovery), and can be seen as orthogonal to these tracks.
The complexity that makes protocols like 11/WAKU2-RELAY too resource intense for some nodes also provides (depending on the specific protocol) desirable privacy, anonymity, resilience, and latency properties. A special challenge in the restricted run track stems from compensating these trade-offs as well as possible. We aim to offer restricted nodes protocols that first and foremost allow network participation at all, but also have desirable properties beyond that.
Examples for restricted run protocols are
Restricted run also covers the needs of restricted nodes beyond protocol design, e.g. NAT traversal.
Discovery
In order to build a P2P network, participating nodes first have to discover peers within this network. Ambient peer discovery allows nodes to find peers, making it an integral part of any decentralized application. Our research log post on Ambient Peer Discovery gives more background on this research area.
The discovery track aims to
- improve our existing discovery methods in terms of privacy, anonymity, resilience, and network efficiency
- research and design new discovery methods, as we want the best possible connectivity for Waku nodes
Application Protocols
Privacy & Anonymity
One of Waku's main design goals is being privacy and anonymity preserving. Waku v2 is modular and was designed with pluggable privacy/anonymity in mind.
The Anonymity track analyses current Waku v2 protocols with respect to their privacy/anonymity guarantees, as well as plans to evaluate, specify, and implement new protocols that will enhance Waku v2 privacy/anonymity.
Our research log post on Waku Relay Anonymity provides more background. Adversarial models we consider are listed in 45/WAKU2-ADVERSARIAL-MODELS.
Conversational Security
Conversational Security Roadmap
RLNP2P
See intro here: rlnp2p.vac.dev
The protocol incentivization track uses results from rlnp2p.
Protocol Incentivization
Protocol Incentivization Roadmap
The protocol incentivization track covers research on incentives for nodes to offer specific services and/or resources.
Part of this is research on service credentials. The goal is allowing service consumers to purchase service credentials (or tokens) that can be used to obtain services from Waku nodes. Service providers will be able to claim funds associated with received credentials.
Data Synchronization
The SeM data synchronization track covers research of secure and efficient asynchronous data synchronization between nodes. It complements live messaging via 11/WAKU2-RELAY.
Censorship Resistance
Future Work.