124 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
124 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
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# waste-rs — Project Roadmap
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A modern reimplementation of [WASTE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE):
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decentralized, friend-to-friend encrypted mesh networking with chat and file sharing.
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---
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## Design Philosophy
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WASTE's core idea is still sound: small trusted groups, no central server, encrypted
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everything, equal nodes. This project preserves that philosophy while replacing the
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aging crypto and adding proper NAT traversal.
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---
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## Architecture
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### Core Daemon — Rust
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The networking core (mesh routing, encryption, peer management, file transfer) is
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implemented in Rust because:
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- **Memory safety without GC** — critical for a long-running daemon handling untrusted peer data
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- **tokio** — excellent async I/O for managing many concurrent peer connections
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- **ring** — modern, audited cryptography (ChaCha20-Poly1305, Ed25519, X25519)
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- **Native cross-compilation** — Windows, Linux, macOS, and eventually Android/iOS
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### UI Layer — TUI first, Tauri later
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**Step 1: Terminal UI (`ratatui` + `crossterm`)**
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The daemon exposes everything over the IPC socket, so a TUI is purely a client —
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it connects to port 17337, renders `IpcEvent` lines, and sends `IpcCommand` lines
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back. No mesh or crypto knowledge required.
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- ~400–600 lines of Rust, two crate dependencies
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- Works on Windows, Linux, macOS, and over SSH
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- Validates the IPC API design before it gets frozen
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- Fast to iterate: restart the TUI, daemon keeps running
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This is the right first UI milestone. It gives you a real working chat interface
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without any build toolchain beyond `cargo`.
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**Step 2: Tauri GUI**
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Once the IPC contract is stable, wrap it in a proper desktop app:
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- Rust backend shares code directly with the daemon
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- Web frontend (React/TypeScript) for a modern chat UI
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- Ships as a native binary using the OS webview — not Electron
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- Works on Windows, Linux, macOS; Tauri 2.x adds Android/iOS
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This avoids the wxWidgets ugliness of the original WASTE and the Qt licensing
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headaches of the VIA fork.
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---
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## Crypto Modernization
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Replaces WASTE's original Blowfish/PCBC (broken cipher mode) + RSA with:
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| Purpose | Algorithm | Replaces |
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|---|---|---|
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| Identity | Ed25519 | Unregistered nicknames |
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| Key exchange | X25519 ECDH | RSA |
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| Symmetric encryption | ChaCha20-Poly1305 | Blowfish/PCBC |
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| File integrity | SHA-256 | CRC |
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---
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## Protocol Modernization
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### NAT Traversal
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WASTE's longstanding problem: one party needs an open port. The fix:
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1. **ICE-style UDP hole punching** (STUN) — try direct connection first
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2. **Relay fallback** — a lightweight relay server (already implemented) forwards
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encrypted blobs when hole punching fails; the relay never sees plaintext
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### Transport (future consideration)
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Consider migrating from raw TCP to **QUIC** (via `quinn`) for:
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- Connection multiplexing — multiple streams per peer without head-of-line blocking
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- Better NAT behavior out of the box
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- Built-in TLS 1.3
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### Identity & Bootstrapping
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- Each peer generates an Ed25519 keypair on first run — the public key *is* their identity
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- Invite via a signed `.waste-invite` file shared out-of-band (email, Signal, etc.)
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- The invite carries: current IP:port hint + public key + short-lived signature
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- Once two peers connect, they gossip each other's addresses to mutual friends
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- At small group sizes (10–50 nodes) a local known-peers list is sufficient — no DHT needed
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---
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## Roadmap
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### Near-term
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- [ ] Invite file format (`.waste-invite`) for easy peer onboarding
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- [ ] Relay-assisted message delivery (daemon → relay → peer when no direct path)
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- [ ] Gossip-driven auto-connect (friends-of-friends)
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- [ ] Ping/pong keepalive with peer timeout and reconnect
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### Medium-term
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- [ ] **TUI client** (`ratatui` + `crossterm`) — chat pane, peer list, text input
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- [ ] UDP hole-punching (STUN) in `nat.rs`
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- [ ] File transfer implementation (FileOffer/FileChunk protocol already defined in proto)
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- [ ] Message persistence (SQLite via `rusqlite`)
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- [ ] Tauri GUI wrapping the daemon (sidebar: peers, rooms, chat history)
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### Long-term
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- [ ] QUIC transport via `quinn`
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- [ ] Mobile daemon (Android/iOS via Rust cross-compilation)
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- [ ] Kademlia DHT for larger-scale peer discovery (if the group outgrows static bootstrap)
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---
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## What We Keep from WASTE
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- Small, trusted friend groups — not a public network
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- No central authority — the relay is dumb and optional
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- Encrypted everything — the relay forwards opaque blobs
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- Equal nodes — no privileged "servers" among peers
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- Simple onboarding — one file or one URL to join a group
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