Add additional IRC servers (incl. I2P) — pending until #1049 is clarified

[xanoni]

ON HOLD — Let's first figure out the more focused PR here: #1049

Should we try this? More redundancy means more resiliency, right?

FYI, it seems that the Agora server is down, as of today.
However, their website says: "disabled currently, will be fixed"

• Agora: https://anarplex.net/agorairc/connect/
• Ilita (Tor): http://ilitafrzzgxymv6umx2ux7kbz3imyeko6cnqkvy4nisjjj4qpqkrptid.onion
• Ilita (Tor2web): https://irc.acetone.onion.ws/
• Irc2P: https://geti2p.net/en/docs/applications/irc

[kristapsk]

Have you tested them? Last time I tried, I was unable to connect to Agora via I2P and Irc2P had some errors when I tried doing actual coinjoins.

[xanoni]

On the Agora website they say that they are fixing the I2P destination (I2P (disabled currently, will be fixed)).

I assumed that was a recent message, but when I just tried to I couldn't confirm that: "Wayback Machine has not archived that URL." " We do not have any snapshots of the given URL https://anarplex.net/agorairc/connect/ in our database."

No, I haven't tested it on Irc2P ... I tested that I could join the channel, but that's it (I originally had 7 servers on my list, but 4 were dead) ...

I thought we were just sending very basic IRC messages where little can go wrong in 2021, but there are always surprises... Any chance you remember what happened?

[xanoni]

yup sounds good

[xanoni]

I've force-pushed an update... if anyone wants to join and test these servers, please do .... as the author I'll quietly follow once there is some form of anonset ;-)

[chris-belcher]

I've been told i2p's privacy isn't that great:

<IRCNICK> I2P isn't nearly as secure as tor; i2p has no unbroken line of release keys; i2p's main devs went to zcash; major aspects of i2p have been broken for long periods of time; i2p is easily sybil'able; i2p is so unreliable that long-term nodes that have been up for weeks still can't connect to many of the sites inside the network; some of the people who contributed to i2p are straight up horrid people
<IRCNICK> (I left long ago though); i2p depends on code that either can't, or at the very least is VERY DIFFICULT to, be compiled from source and so other safer platforms are essentially barred from running it; i2p documentation for its internal protocols is so shitty that writing i2p support for things is basically impossible; etc.
<IRCNICK> simple tools and utilities to debug i2p problems are totally hidden and unknown. etc etc etc.

I don't know how much any of this is true, but we should check it out before rushing.

[xanoni]

Similarly, I don't have insider knowledge of the project(s). Here is some context on the last 20 years of I2P, which describes the key people and priorities: https://i2p.medium.com/20-years-of-privacy-a-brief-history-of-i2p-8f62af87ee87

Many of the key folks mentioned in the article are still active on various sites/places, including Reddit and IRC (Irc2P). My informal interactions have been positive, one of them always helped me.

There are at least 2 stable & independent implementations (i2p = Java, i2pd = C++):

• https://github.com/i2p/i2p.i2p (afaik they mostly use Gitlab)
• https://github.com/PurpleI2P/i2pd

Both are actively maintained (albeit with less manpower and funding than behind Tor). Java sounds scary, but there's also the lightweight, zero-dependency i2p-zero distribution of i2p: https://github.com/i2p-zero/i2p-zero (uses the same code base)

Personally, I like some of their design decisions better than Tor's. To me i2p seems more flexible/granular, e.g., it has packet switching, UDP support, routes/hops can be controlled with high granularity, etc.

My main criticism is that there is not much information on the current project state and priorities on the clearnet. PR and marketing have never been their strength, it seems. Besides, the fact that their "ideology" mostly rejects clearnet proxies means that it's more niche and (visible) adoption is lower than Tor's. There's also no "Tor Browser Bundle" for newbies.

To add to the pro side, it has been running smoothly with Bitcoin Core and I haven't seen any complaints since I2P support was officially released in bitcoind. I've been running I2P on my node without issues since the experimental code first became available in master. Feedback from the Monero community also seems to be positive.

I'd give it a shot, obviously disabled by default, given still only few people have I2P set up on their nodes. That could change, though, as tutorials have improved a lot and integration is being discussed in projects such as Raspiblitz.

[xanoni]

@bisqubutor You mean like this?

PR1 adds:

• Agora I2P (disabled by default, as Tor alternative)
• Ilita Tor (enabled by default, given we want to move away from clearnet in the defaults)
• Ilita I2P (disabled by default)

PR2 adds:

• Irc2P I2P (disabled by default)

[xanoni]

@chris-belcher @bisqubutor @kristapsk

What about using this instead? #1049

[xanoni]

@ALL ... I'll "refactor" this PR to include whatever is left once we figured out #1049

[PLEASE MOVE DISCUSSION TO #1049 FOR NOW]

[AdamISZ]

I'm going to close this based on us moving away from IRC servers over the medium term.