From the dawn of internet communications and networks, the world has long been in search of a secure communication protocol, which is both robust, secure and censorship-resistant. With the launch of a secure communication tool like Utopia, the global community finally has a solution that solves one of its biggest challenges yet.
For starters, Utopia is a third-generation peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Being a peer-to-peer network, it means all the nodes connected to the network are equal, in their clearance and responsibility. The unique and great part about a peer-to-peer network is that it is a completely decentralized system. This means it doesn’t rely on any type of central server.
The perks of abandoning the client-server architecture is that the system will be able to work seamlessly regardless of the number of network participants. Given our experience in this space, one thing is sure: having a central server poses a serious threat to security and reliability. And since servers are essential points of intersection between communication channels, any sudden breakdown will likely result in third-party actions.
More so, since all servers are owned by individuals or organizations that are susceptible to external pressure, the Utopia premise is to replace central servers with P2P network protocol as the one sure way to achieve a fully secured and anonymous means of network integrity and security.
For those familiar with the P2P network, you’ll agree that the initial process of searching and connecting to other P2P network nodes is one of the most significant weaknesses that comes with setting up a robust, censorship, and distributed network. This explains why there is a heavy reliance on central servers. For instance, when using the BitTorrent protocol, a node would first have to connect to a tracker in order to get the addresses of other nodes. But since central servers have proven to be the weakest link, you’re bound to run into issues from time to time. But the Utopia network approach to this problem of primary node searching is by introducing alternative and very creative methods, which is through its node search cascade algorithm. This helps users of the Utopia network to have access to a confidential means of communication without succumbing to censorship at any level.
Depending on several factors along with user’s unique circumstances (type of network connection, censorship in users region, provider blocking, users on the local network and others) This network protocol is designed to independently perform the necessary search for peers using the following methods:
To initiate the process, the Utopia network will make IP/DNS Resolve predefined IP addresses in the distribution. By doing so, the network will be able to get a list of available peers. And should IP address data be blocked by censorship, Utopia activates the next step, the UPD local method. This process essentially entails a broadcasted request to connect to local subnet codes. And if this fails, the Utopia network will escalate things further by scanning the internet in search of pre-placed images that will be used to encrypt the IP addresses of the initial peers. This method is super reliable since no one will ever be restricted from posting images to the world wide web.
To bring about a fail-proof method, the network has added other methods of connection. In addition to some of the methods we have highlighted above, the network is able to search for Bitcoin transactions, since the initial IP addresses of the peers are securely encoded in transaction amounts. This method is also applied to the NXT cryptocurrency.
What we have described so far is just a partial list of methods leveraged by Utopia’s client to establish initial connection to the Utopia network. For those curious about the security of Utopia’s network transmission process, it would interest you to know that the network transmission on the Utopia network is sealed via two layers of modern elliptic curve encryption before it is transmitted across the network. And just so you know the encryption happens during the authentication mode via the libsodium library and a public key encryption algorithm (Curve25519 + XSalsa20 stream cipher + Poly1305 MAC).