New possibilities on the horizon for further decentralising Bitcoin ride on the recent announcement from goTenna and Samourai Wallet. The ability for you to submit a transaction to the Bitcoin blockchain without actually being connected to the internet! There has been talk of Samourai Wallet’s team looking into new tools for Bitcoin transaction. This appears to be the next step in implementing this research.
How could you use this? Take the example of you traveling to an alternative country and not purchasing a SIM card for your phone, as long as there is a goTenna mesh user somewhere in the network that is connected to the internet your transaction could be passed along to that person and have it published to the blockchain. As long as the receiving person is happy that the transaction was submitted/confirmed there is no need to be concerned as the sender. You could then re-sync your wallet with all the updated details when you get back to your hotel at the end of the day. You could even use your blockstream satellite’s transmitted blockchain updates to check the transaction was confirmed with the chain without ever connecting to the internet. An interesting point is it could add a level of privacy where the original location may not have been tracked and if your wallet was set up anonymously the ip address/internet connection that transmitted the transaction had nothing to do with the actual transaction. A extra/new level of obfuscation if you will.
There are several components to this to be aware of that need to be broken down as some may not be aware of all the components. Namely this is the goTenna, a mesh network and the TxTenna app.
What is a goTenna? The goTenna is a tool that allows direct communications, line of sight, between two connected mobile phones. This device, about half the size of a smartphone in with and the same in length and depth bluetooth connects to your phone allowing messages to be sent using their app (SDK available) allowing direct communications, the devices are built more like a hand held walkie talkie for distance communications rather than a smart phone’s speed for images, video and music. The previous rendition of this piece of hardware was direct one person to another, the goTenna mesh allows users to act as repeaters and attain greater distance in communications.
More about the “mesh”? The new goTenna Mesh allows the hardware to pass the message along to other goTenna Meshes that can hear it and so on so that even if you wanted to send a message from A to B and B was out of range but both A and B could see C, C would be able to relay the message from A to B, therefore the message would go A-C-B. Adding more creates a mesh network, the more users the bigger the mesh, the further the communications (or limited by software in “hops” between repeaters). By having one or more users on the internet connected to the mesh network it allows the messages to be passed to users not on the mesh network but connected to the internet. As a result some areas will find there are a lot more users than others. Personally I have only achieved communications with my family on hikes but other areas there is a full network waiting to be utilised. See the map below for areas of higher mesh density, higher chance that this will work for you.
https://www.imeshyou.com/
So what about the TxTenna app and Samurai Wallet? Samurai has been in the phone wallet business for some time now, providing user based key storage and the ability to push transactions through your own node. This next step in the evolution of the software, TxTenna, will allow you to sign your message and forward it through the goTenna mesh network. Hardware wallets and other pieces of software have allowed you to do this for some time, allowing you to write/print/copy the transaction before submitting it to the blockchain. This automates the process of taking that and submitting it to another network rather than direct to your or the app’s node.
Can’t someone change my transaction if it isn’t submitted to the network? No, the app will likely inform you once submitted to the network. If someone was to attempt to jam the part of the network you were in (the rest of the network would bounce around the jammer) or if no one were connected to the internet it would not be transmitted BUT if someone were to attempt to modify the transaction they would fall short because of the amazing cryptography behind the cryptocurrency! They would make the transaction invalid and it would simply fail when the miners got to it. Also note that the standard messages within the goTenna are also encrypted.
As we wait for this software to come out we look forward to an extra step in the decentralisation of Bitcoin. Less reliance on a single point of failure (your ISP), more flexibility when traveling, no talk of lightning… yet... Thumbs up to Samurai and goTenna team for working on these awesome projects, I look forward to seeing how you progress.
Note that I am not receiving reward from either goTenna or Samurai for this article. I was a kickstarter backer of the goTenna project and have been enthusiastic about their tech since.