Lokinet is a onion-router (like tor, i2p) implementation of the LLARP protocol which tries to be a modern re-implementation of i2p. Session is a private messenger (like Signal) built using lokinet to hide metadata. If I understand correctly they have a cryptocurrency called oxen, which is earned or mined by providing servers to the loki network and oxen blockchain.

Imo they have these arguments on their side:

  • i2p is really slow and if re-implementing yields the results they claim it would be awesome
  • building a private messenger on top of onion-routing seems like a very good idea, since metadata is the new surveillance while it doesn’t generate massive amounts of traffic per user

What I worry about:

  • I don’t like cryptocurrencies in general, they haven’t yet proven that they can be used as anything but be used to speculate.
  • if people who are supposed to be the backbone of the onion-routing service are paid to do this I worry that in some (maybe new and still unknown) way this will weaken the network in comparison to a network run by volunteers and users (like tor and i2p). Maybe this will favor larger servers so all of the onion-routing is done in “the cloud” and none from home which in result is easier to surveil.
  • a talk at the yearly chaos computer congress about the alt-rights online behavior titled “Let’s play Infokrieg” (the talk is in German, but I linked the version with english live translation) talks about lokinet and how the developer advertised it on 8chan. This is all the connection they mention though and it’s pretty thin Imo.
  • in general I believe that cryptocurrencies don’t draw a very good crowd, also
  • I haven’t seen any reputable source advertise any of this. Not Lokinet, not session messenger, of course not their crypto coin…

Conclusion:

All of this isn’t a big problem, if they stay a small project. But them having the fastest onion-router, elon musk maybe tweeting about them and people flocking to them to “invest” might have the project gain momentum and them being the new tor or even bigger, applications built on top of it being a threat to signal etc.

I think some of their tech is very cool, a fast and modern onion-router could be very important for future secure web applications, but it’s troublesome

  • it’s in the hands of people nobody knows
  • motivated by financial gain
  • coupled with cryptocurrency

What are your thoughts on this? I am really interested to hear, how we should tackle this in your opinion.

  • @KeeJef@lemmy.eus
    1•3 years ago

    Hey, i’m the CTO at Oxen, just wanted to take some time out to answer the questions/concerns in this post and related comments.

    if people who are supposed to be the backbone of the onion-routing service are paid to do this I worry that in some (maybe new and still unknown) way this will weaken the network in comparison to a network run by volunteers and users (like tor and i2p). Maybe this will favor larger servers so all of the onion-routing is done in “the cloud” and none from home which in result is easier to surveil.

    Actually we think that the cryptocurrency aspect of things improves the networks ability to resist really common attacks like Sybil attacks and generally improves the quality of the nodes added to the network. Sybil attacks for example are much more expensive on Lokinet, since each Service Node operator needs to stake 15,000 Oxen to start a new Service Node, which is approximately $17,000 USD. Particularly it creates a feedback loop where the more Oxen that is bought off the market and locked into Service Nodes, the more expensive it becomes to buy more Oxen and lock it into Service Nodes. The other main advantage is we can enforce desirable network behavior by locking a Service Node’s stake, which means we can create a fairly large network of always online, high bandwidth nodes https://oxendashboard.com/#4 . We think this is an advantage over I2P, which is a larger network, but is mostly comprised of low bandwidth and low reliability nodes which exacerbates performance issues. Although your points about most Service Nodes running inside of data centers is true, we must ask the question as to whether we can build a viable, widely used onion routing network just using personal computers and residential internet connections? to me it seems that the need for high bandwidth onion routing has outweighed the need for lower bandwidth routing as evidenced by the adoption levels of Tor vs I2P, considering that most Tor routers also run inside data centers.

    a talk at the yearly chaos computer congress about the alt-rights online behavior titled “Let’s play Infokrieg” (the talk is in German, but I linked the version with english live translation) talks about lokinet and how the developer advertised it on 8chan. This is all the connection they mention though and it’s pretty thin Imo.

    This is incorrect, that post where Jeff, the primary developer of Lokinet is promoting Lokinet is actually on Endchan not 8Chan/8Kun. We don’t have any association with the alt right, and the non-for-profit that develops Lokinet https://optf.ngo is fairly apolitical mostly focusing on defending human rights and furthering privacy enhancing technologies.

    it’s in the hands of people nobody knows

    We don’t really make an effort to hide the team or anything, many of us have public profiles, an out of date list of some of our team members can be found here https://loki.network/team/

    Under the Lokinet initiator’s announcement on 8chan, someone pointed out that “LLARP” is a funny name for that, to which the Lokinet initiator replied that they considered calling the server implementation “WIZARD”, which is itself a self-referential term for sad virgin men in the *chan-context, but also just shows that the “LLARP” acronym wasn’t accidental.

    This is pure coincidence, LLARP stands for Low Latency Onion Routing Protocol, i forget what WIZARD stood for but it was something similarly onion routing related. We aren’t designing protocol names to dogwhistle to alt-right groups.