4 · Anonymous Routing & Retrieval
🚧 Draft (core-idea sketch). Part A · Core Ideas.
The problem. Move data between nodes, and find who holds a given value, without revealing who wants what or exposing the network's structure to observers. Ordinary routing leaks exactly this; ordinary content-discovery (a DHT) broadcasts your interests.
The core idea. Three cooperating pieces:
- Distance-aware anonymous routing (DAR) — nodes embed in a latency coordinate space (Vivaldi-style) so "closer" means "cheaper to reach," and traffic is onion-wrapped (HORNET-style) so relays learn neither source nor destination.
- Data-trail search (DTS) — follow breadcrumbs left by previous retrievals to locate rare data without a global index.
- Reverse-hash-lookup (RHL) — find providers of a content hash.
The latency coordinate space is reused everywhere else as the system's "body map": it also organizes currency zones, consensus tiers, and birth-time vouching (problem 1).
Leans on: identity (1) for relay reputation under pseudonyms. Enables: the resource market (5) — this is its move-through-space edge — and general data availability.
⚠️ Where it's thin. The routing-coordinate + HORNET design has no simulation results yet; the relay-incentive game (who pays whom for bandwidth, and how bargaining settles) is unresolved; DTS's rare-data case and RHL are sketches. Reviving the simulator is the cheapest de-risking step. Part B.