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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @g4ala 19 Sep 2021 \ on: How to send Bitcoin transactions via SMS bitcoin
A nice P.O.C, but I'm not too sure how this would work, given the use case:
...if the internet is not available (blocked by the government, etc.). then how would a very simple Flask server... propagate them to the Bitcoin network. The 'Bitcoin Network' is Internet dependent, is it not?
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @bob 19 Sep 2021
If the internet was mostly shut down by a government in a specific country, one could still potentially use that SMS service as long as the server was hosted outside of said country.
The 'Bitcoin Network' is Internet dependent, is it not? Nothing in Bitcoin's consensus rules says nodes must communicate via the Internet. It's just how most (if not all) clients are implemented.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @g4ala 19 Sep 2021
Yes, I fully understand about the Bitcoin Protocol, but it's the Computer Network that would be the break point. I thought about the issue of how any computer network would function in the absence of the current infrastructure, or if a government hit the kill switch, and the only work around that I could think of was some sort of radio based comms. Back in the day, I was very much into Ham Radio and CB Radio, but as computers and computer networks came into the realms of an average hobbyist, I sold all my gear and switched over. I still think that a Radio based Computer Network could be implemented. Does anyone know of any research being done?
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @bob 19 Sep 2021
I have never used radio but always found it interesting. I'm aware of several examples of successfully broadcasting bitcoin transactions via radio but this seems to be more to extend the network for special circumstances like emergencies etc.. because presumably, the user could broadcast a transaction but not keep the blockchain in sync. At least this is my current understanding.
I'm not sure if a mesh radio network would scale in terms of bandwidth. And as the only support for communication of Bitcoin data my concern is that it would be a centralizing factor in how blocks are propagated. But as a redundant source of confirmation (you would only need to download the blocks hashes) or as some sort of central proxy that anonymizes the sender of the transaction I could see it being a good solution to have around.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @g4ala 19 Sep 2021
To answer my own question (in part, least ways) there's this document that I came across when I first though about this issue. Internet Protocol and Radio Frequency Networks I'll link it up in a new post.
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