Comment by ifwinterco
3 hours ago
In theory if as many people use bitchat as used whatsapp somewhere like central london, everyone actually could communicate in a fully decentralised manner - you're frequently in bluetooth range of other people's phones just walking around or even sat in your house.
Would that actually happen? No, but it's an interesting thought experiment
So other users are broadcasting messages of third parties onwards? How many devices does it take to saturate the channel? What does this do for phone battery?
Yes, but messages can be encrypted so relaying parties can't read them. And yes, it would have an effect on battery and have very limited bandwidth compared to whatsapp (no sharing videos etc).
Like I said definitely not practical for messaging but I think something along these lines is how airtags work?
> definitely not practical for messaging
Text based messaging ala IRC? Just how quickly and how much do you type? A few hundred KiB exchanged between nodes only every 10 seconds or so ought to be able to accommodate thousands of simultaneous users in most scenarios. The impact on battery life should be far less than using a bluetooth headset.
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