Cold Constructs Blog

TribeNet only exists in my head as of this writing. It is a massively decentralized network of darknets. Darknets are intranets that utilize whitelists.

I’m a disciple of decentralization and, in particular, mesh networking. This TribeNet works along those lines: each darknet of people is a tribe (probably of Dunbar’s number size) who use it to keep in close touch with each other and share/build their culture. Because it’s a whitelist, members of each tribe never have to worry about spam, identity theft, or anything of the sort–as long as they don’t treat it like MySpace, adding anyone and everyone. Though these darknets aren’t published so there’s no incentive to boost numbers.

In addition, each member has their own darknet of trusted people and sites, and can belong to any number of darknets (as long as those other darknets accept them as trustworthy). They will be able to access all of the information they want due to the small world effect.

The new protocol will be something like LocustWorld with the addition of a reputation system and IPv6. The latter will allow one person to own a unique address permanently, which the former will attach itself to.

(To clarify: a collection of trusted IPs is a darknet, and a collection of trusted IPs assigned to people is a tribe.)

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There’s a problem with TribeNet being a mesh network of trusted IPs: in order to connect to a particular node you have to route through other (untrusted) nodes. In short, using encryption will solve this. But to ensure that all communications that go through untrusted IPs remain secure… well, only quantum encryption can completely guarantee that. There are other solutions that work of course, they’re just not 100% reliable. But they’ll do for now.

Please share your own ideas, comments, and criticisms with me by commenting.