The current web is optimized for surveillance capitalism; this is positive compared to other ways our data can be used. Data from activities on native utility applications and communications on social messaging applications, both offline and online, are routed through centralized systems managed by admins who decide whether these actions proceed to completion at all and what happens to the data post-communication.
The theory of decentralization for user-centric systems is “absolute user control.” Born out of extreme necessity, decentralization has made significant progress in finance thanks to blockchain technology, but it struggles in other aspects of human communication. Encryption, borderless information transfer, zero middlemen… the ideas are the same. But the bottleneck is the modern internet’s inherent design, hijacked from its original promise of being peer-to-peer, for a matter of Big Tech oligarchic incentives; conversely, ‘money’ is a more flexible concept, already almost a mesh network of value.
A certainty is the user’s rejection of this arrangement. Technological revolts against the centralized internet have sparked several attempts to build a purely peer-based internet. Napster, Freenet, BitTorrent, the list goes on. The remarkable progress made by each of these is eclipsed by their struggles with P2P indexing and throughput. It questions the possibility of an unstoppable web, leaving everyone’s fate in the hands of the centralized internet.
Moreover, privacy as a basic human right begins with the most common form of interaction. This necessitates what Tether is building: the Holepunch protocol, punching through NAT (Network Address Translation) barriers to create a stable communication between autonomous devices.
Breaking through the Internet’s tamper-proof indexing architecture
The critical problem in secure P2P communication is bypassing Network Address Translation (NAT), a method that prevents IP address depletion and scale routing by mapping individual networks’ IP address spaces. To bypass this, Tether’s Holepunch protocol uses Hyperswarm to establish stable connections across different NAT Mapping structures by punching through them using a Distributed Hash Table (DHT).
Hyperswarm uses HyperDHT, a Kademlia-based DHT that connects devices using cryptographic key pairs, where the public key serves as your global address. To connect, the devices first perform a Noise IK handshake via the DHT, use random DHT nodes to determine the type of NAT, and then establish connections by sending encrypted packets between the devices via another set of randomly selected DHT nodes. Once both sides have agreed to communicate, they learn each other’s external IP addresses and send User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets to one another. Outbound UDP packets open a series of external ports, allowing incoming packets to be sent to the same ports. Once the ports line up and a direct UDP connection is established, Hyperswarm upgrades it to a secure, reliable stream using libsodium’s secretstream and libudx’s ordered UDP streams. This way, Holepunch can create stable communication between devices without servers.
Maintaining a portable private communication
Randomised NATs are a bottleneck for private communication; one of Hyperswarm’s main innovations is allowing almost all peers on consistent NATs to connect directly to any peer, including peers on randomised NATs, through a novel holepunching approach.
To improve connectivity, peers can connect via a blind relay, which relays end-to-end-encrypted traffic between them while they hole-punch to directly connect, or, in rare cases where a direct path fails, they still have a relayed connection. A blind relay announces itself to DHT as well, like any other peer, allowing powerful topologies to be built where even normal users can run blind relays from their home networks, even if they are behind a consistent NAT.
Pursuing adoption through expansive use cases
pears
Tether’s technological breakthroughs with its Holepunch tech are packaged into Pears, an open-source, native P2P runtime and deployment platform built on the Bare modular JavaScript engine. With Pears, developers can easily leverage Hypercore modules to build scalable, P2P systems. Apps built with Pears are ‘serverless’, they load from peers remotely and can run on mobile and desktop devices.
The following applications are built with Holepunch technology
- Keet: A private messaging application.
- QVAC Health: Intelligent Wellness application for routine health-related inferences.
The unstoppable web is not a myth.
Millions of devices have installed Keet and are enjoying private messaging with Holepunch technology. Keet breaks down the barriers of centralization and puts users in charge. An array of products powered by the Holepunch protocol and Pear runtime is bringing complete control and privacy to billions of users.
Tether is building the new hyper-resilient and scalable Internet. Follow Tether’s developments and the evolution of P2P communication.
