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# System prepended metadata

title: Awesome Shutdown Sprint (aka ShutDAOn)

---

# Awesome Shutdown Sprint (aka ShutDAOn)

A number of countries, regions and communities (geographic or otherwise) around the world are subject to internet shutdowns at various layers in network infrastructure on an ongoing basis.

End-users need a simple way to communicate and coordinate in a peer-to-peer and mesh-networked way which avoids monitored networks for a couple of core use-cases.

Let's make that experience as frictionless as possible for non-technical users... let's make it awesome.

Sprint:
* Explore off-the shelf apps like Briar & Berty (note: high latency)
* Explore viability of projects like Agregore mobile

Feedback from in the field:
* people are very dependent on the internet for comms. 
* They do not trust the landline or cell phone internet providers for text messaging. 
* majority of citizens use e2e messaging apps ie Telegram or Whatsapp (both for comms and file sharing) but these fail to function in internet/data shutdowns. 
* once internet/LTE/3-5g is shut down they are stuck
* Briar only works in close distance and not very useful for organizing protests as its latency is too high etc and fails in protest or situations where immediate signal/information needs to be communicated
* protest situations is kinda hard to control- and generally it is way too slow especially if there's an urgent message to be sent. Still it can be useful in certain situations and will pass it on to others


Deliverables:
* easy: an ["awesome" list](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome) for shutdowns
* med: a review of existing apps against this set of reqs
* med: survey of existing research, audits, writing
* advanced: put together some new software or augment existing into MVP
* advanced: audit/modifying existing OSS tooling to solve 

## Primary Use-cases

Primary needs:
* low latency messaging 
* ideally not network dependent to function (3-5G/LTE or access to wifi required)
* does not need to be installed via an app store (often these are blocked/limited)

Secondary needs:
* ability to push/send network wide alerts/notifications
* file sharing
* publishing
* reading
* collaboration

## Threat Model

* Government is actively monitoring communications networks and shutdown of 3-5G/LTE networks in addition to internet channels- more here: https://github.com/wheresaddie/read-us/blob/main/README.md 

Open questions
* What is the surface of identifiability?
* What is the vector of deniability?
* Are they able to monitor IPFS traffic yet?

## Requirements

* does not require telecom provider network access
* does not need to be downloaded in an app store or offers a proxy/alternative means to get app (for example, an email address etc)
* full e2ee

## Identities (or not)

* TBD

## Deployment

Without access to traditional network installation (i.e. app store), need to get creative.

Must include easiest possible method of verification that the software has not been tampered with.Ideally open source or audible 

Below is list of options to consider, not mutually exclusive. Deployment needs to be like water, but also verifiable (could be deployable on trusted nodes/p2p torrents etc)

* Publish APK to IPFS
    * Need to figure out mutability, IPNS can be slow with DHT, and need to check if it works well over ad-hoc networks.
* APK shared off thumb drives etc
    * 
* "Faucet" - APK generation on demand
    * 
* Self-Bootstrapping
	* F-Droid style
	* if you have the APK, can you set up another device with the APK.
	* Wifi Hotspot with captive portal for APK downloads

## Notes on users and environments

* mobile devices are the priority
	* Android easier to use since Apple more restrictive for installing apps / more aggressive on blocking apps
* most people have Bluetooth ready devices
* ease of use for people with little to no experience in code

* Twitter space someone was saying they need burner phones to use briefly and then dispose quickly to help organise protests
