HN Reader

I’ve been toying with a concept inspired by Apple’s Find My network: Imagine a decentralized, delay-tolerant messaging system where messages hop device-to-device (e.g., via Bluetooth, UWB, Wi-Fi Direct), similar to how “Find My” relays location via nearby iPhones.

Now add a twist: • Senders pay a small fee to send a message. • Relaying devices earn a micro-payment (could be tokens, sats, etc.) for carrying the message one hop further. • End-to-end encrypted, fully decentralized, optionally anonymous.

Basically, a “postal network” built on people’s phones, without needing a traditional internet connection. Works best in areas with patchy or no internet, or under censorship.

Obvious challenges: • Latency and reliability (it’s not real-time). • Abuse/spam prevention. • Power consumption and user opt-in. • Viable incentive structures.

What do you think? Is this viable? Any real-world use cases where this might be actually useful — or is it just a neat academic toy?

A bit different, as it's mainly for voice - but I made an app 'Murmur : Bluetooth Group Calls' - that lets you hold group voice calls and message via a mesh of Bluetooth LE connections. It's available on Android and iOS. https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/murmur-bluetooth-group-calls/i...

Doesn't really get any downloads, so not sure there's much demand for this - but I use it with some shokz bone conducting headphones for talking to my wife when we're cycling (also for wrangling our two small girls)

Whoa this is really neat. I’ve been trying to get into Meshtastic but it’s hard to convince others when you need special hardware. Would be super neat if Apple did something similar. Shouldn’t be too hard since the AirTags use the same idea?

Would also be neat if there was a way to build a LoRA proxy to extend the range. I might give this a try with my meshtastic devices.

FYI on X there is a TestFlight link to try it: https://x.com/jack/status/1941989435962212728

Surprised to see Jack pushing code himself. Love to see it.

Very nice! Could this be published in the App Store, or does it use any APIs Apple considers off-limits?

I'm regularly frustrated by modern phone's complete inabilities to allow any communication when outside of mobile network or Wi-Fi coverage, not even within the two large walled gardens.

It would be so easy for Apple to extend iMessage to work peer-to-peer, at least between people that have already messaged each other before and while both screens are on. That's literally how AirDrop works, and having to send a "Notes" text back and forth is just silly.

As much as I like the idea of people working on peer-to-peer networks, delay tolerant network, if I'm within Bluetooth range, it's quicker to chat with the person I'm talking to than to go through a messaging app.

That technology is interesting, but it is probably not a good usecase. There are potentially lots of interesting things you could do with smart watches and bike computers, such as uploading activities without direct connection to a phone or sharing routes with nearby participants, etc.

Use cases where you may not necessarily have a phone or adequate network coverage.

Oops!

https://blog.technitium.com/2015/05/technitium-bit-chat-rele...

I had released that 10 yrs ago lol.

I read that name as “bitch at”. I thought maybe it was one of those GPS collars for finding your runaway dog.

Technical whitepaper: https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat/blob/main/WHITEPAPER...

Presumably that is the key to getting out of the Apple ghetto.

At first glance this seems like briar except only supports Bluetooth and is made by someone with a less than stellar privacy record. Its cool, but maybe more as a personal project of Jack's than something I'd want to use in the secure-context he's implying it'd be good at.

Am I missing something?

This is a really interesting app, but it is exclusive to Apple devices.

There are other alternatives for Android, like https://github.com/glodanif/BluetoothChat but it is only for close distance chatting without any network other than Bluetooth, doesn't have encryption, and is not IRC-themed.

This is something I've wanted for ages. I go to some event with the family - in London for example or to an airshow - and there's a huge crowd for one reason or another which overloads the mobile network and makes your phone useless. You can lose people who are just a few metres away.

I am glad it's public domain - I don't think I really want to invest any effort in getting non-techy people to try and use something that might go away one day and be irreplacable. OTOH, I need Android as well so....

Everything old is new again... Repo description reminds me of the Shortwave app from the 2010s. https://medium.com/@alonsoholmes/wtfbeacon-how-shortwave-wor...

Is this similar to Briar? I reckon a cool feature would be the ability to create a poll.

Use case? You're in the middle of a protest. Where to next?

Looks pretty interesting.

From what I can see, it's a native IOS/MacOS app (SwiftUI). I don't see an Android version.

Also seems pretty spartan, but it looks like it could be embedded in "friendlier" apps.

Is it Bit Chat or Bitch At?

I've tried a couple of apps like that with use case of communicating during festivals with next-to-none wifi/cell service with a big group of people. None of them worked. Fingers crossed for this one

How does this differ from FireChat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat

Boggles my mind how we all have cellphones capable of forming a massive (global?) wireless mesh network that can't be shutoff/censored (without jamming). Get rid of ISPs.

Get rid of all these garbage social media (government honeypots) platforms that leak all your data every other weak.

Use Zero-knowledge proofs for authentication into distributed web apps.

Use BitTorrent file system to distribute data to prevent a single point of failure where all your data is leaked.

I could go on and on.

related: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt is another decentralized peer to peer messaging platform

Since its so niche people should probably collaborate to get one of these solutions out into adoption. Coding stuff is super fun though...

Interesting try but Bluetooth LE is a non-starter when talking about building a truly decentralized mesh network at scale. The range isn’t there to build a network unless its very tight (in distance). You need sub MHz and eventually cubesats to build something robust, everything else is a toy.

Best name since expertsexchange.com and penisland.net !

this looks great for most use cases. most interception has been ruled out by the simple protocol for rooms, where the remaining attack appears to be just to clone the users keys, where it's more viable to attack the phones than the protocol, which is the point.

the spitball questions I would ask might be, a) how do you handle a theoretical timing attack where the time to respond to a room scan could yield whether a given device is a member of a known room, (the paralellism?) and b) does the GCM counter IV/nonce value cluster around rooms, so the counter for a given room will be in a shared range?

not dealbreakers or anything, this is simple and cool for its purpose, but design consideration wise, what's the thinking on those scenarios?

Title should include "for the apple eco system"

I'm relatively new to programming and aware of who Jack Dorsey is, but isn't this quite impressive for a single programmer to build?

My wife and I have been using Berkanan (an iOS app) for many years for this purpose. It's not very good - unlike literally every other chat app, it presents conversations in reverse chronological order, and the interface is janky. But it gets the job done when there's no WiFi (airplanes, though this is becoming less of a problem) or cell service (crowded venues).

This is a really exciting project! I love how it makes each message feel more valuable, like modern-day letters, but more convenient.

Anyone else read it as "Bitch at"?

Who is nothankyou1? That guy is the real developer, dorsey just added some nonsense commits like a true manager.

The coolest thing about this is apparently it’s written by Jack Dorsey, billionaire founder of Twitter/Square. https://x.com/jack/status/1941989435962212728

Cool to see he still gets his hands dirty in code.

For days I’ve been reading this bit chat…today I finally noticed the pun

Imo any kind of p2p mobile app is DOA without background activity on iOS.

But i'm also firmly in conviction that p2p is the future, so i don't know how we get there. regulators getting on Apple's ass again?

The serval project had worked on a similar app but now using Wi-Fi. https://github.com/servalproject/batphone

There's also https://github.com/meshenger-app/meshenger-android for generic LAN (without groups/peer discovery).

I would love to see phone manufacturers start working on add LoRa to phones.

Very cool, I've often thought that such a short-range chat would be fun on an airplane. Not practical, but it could be neat to chat with the group in the air.

Funny, I had a similar idea in 2010, from which nothing followed of course:

https://imgur.com/a/VWiDBO3

It took me like 12h to see the wordplay in the name.

Why Bluetooth which has pretty bad range when most phones have a wifi module built in? Is there not a mode on the module that could function similarly?

This is super neat! I love tech that expands beyond the internet. I have a strong feeling that this kind of technology plays a very important, but limited job in our future.

Looks like we have a new mesh comms solution every two weeks or so.

I can't get bluetooth to reliably airdrop files from one room to the next. I have to do windmills to coax a transfer. No other BT devices in between to mesh.

It seems to me that one could make use of the "Find My" BLE network to create a similar network.

I know it's supposed to be BitChat, but once you notice BitchAt, it's kind of difficult to unsee it...

Reminds me of nntp, from back when the Internet wasn't 'always on' or fully connected.

Be cool if he added reed Solomon to do raid over the packets and send the replicas through multiple routes

i thought during the hong kong protests they used firechat, never heard of bridgefy:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/jack-dorsey-working-on-blu...

If we could bridge over Meshtastic, this would be so good.

Why such a rude name "BitchAt"? At what?

Is the Web Bluetooth API good enough to do mesh stuff?

So we could have localhost or offline websites doing this.

hope this does well. We see people trying again and again like FireChat or Berty it seems that it works for a bit with some devices but then Apple & Google make updates and the app dies.

In general mobile app development seems to be very maintanence heavy

Meh Apple only. Non starter in Europe.

But perhaps I could give briar another try.

Too bad it's not cross-platform which makes any real use pretty limited.

why not just use meshtastic and you get longer range too?

Is this the real Jack Dorsey? I see he even has commit/push access to repos at Block

How easy it is to use for non-technical people?

Anybody know when the next batch of beta invites goes out or how to get one ?

"Can I get your bitch at?"

I don't get the hype around this. No one would be talking about it if it was released by someone who wasn't a billionaire

As a fun project, why not. But this is just another problem which can be solved by radio bought from aliexpress.

No wait, let's reinvent the wheel again :)

In case of war or something, internet is down, decentralized Bluetooth messaging app is your last problem.

IRL you will be using unencrypted radio, yes doesn't make sense. But already proven in the UA war.

Try using encrypted radio on the frontline and you will get suicide drones or artillery shell on your position, pretty quickly ;-)

let's convert this one to kotlin multiplatform...

.

bitch@

More of this please. Bring back peer to peer

Now someone build it on the AT protocol and call it bitchAT

Bridgefy is another player in the sparse, offline messaging space.

When will the Android release be ready?

Is this actual programmer output or is this just what Claude gives you with a certain prompt?

What's the usecase for this? Texting your classmates right next to you when wifi is down and you didnt pay your phone bill? It requires peers to be running bitchat. So is this only going to be useful if everyone has bitchat installed?

I really don't see the relevance of this app. We already know that Bluetooth (BLE) is short range.... so is this equivalent to speaking to people a hundred feet away from you in an encrypted manner? So use case is only for protests I assume?

This looks nice, but isn't this just a duplicated effort to make the subsets of the Reticulum network?

https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/

Looks to be a little IRC-inspired with the usage/commands. Would be neat to have a lora network version, and have this run in a more of a sandbox/term environment instead of a locked-in iOS app.

Wonder how many Claude Code tokens that would take...

This is my very youth toy project that never came to be, always dreamed of something this local when I used to be more at festivals as an introvert and stuff, good times, and awesome to see someone actually was able to pull it of.