Generally it seems that tying things to a SIM card (required for SMS) generally hurts privacy. Seems much better to replace centralized servers with a more distributed approach. Much like the original skype with it's supernodes.
The problem is that generally smartphones (at least on the WAN) do not accept incoming network connections except those blessed by the OS provider (Apple and Google). Said push notifications are tightly controlled and not particularly feasible as a p2p network transport.
I think what would solve this problem is a 2 level p2p system. The supernodes would be raspberry pi's,a plug computers [0], or even a wifi router. They can accept incoming connections, don't pay as much for bandwidth, could be shared among friends/family/neighbors. Even a 64GB microsd + arm would handle substantial messaging traffic.
Then the more network and power constrained phones could check in with their preferred supernode, ideally falling over to other supernodes if necessary. Messaging traffic is tiny, so storing it 3-4 times on redundant supernodes would still be cheap.
Said supernodes would earn reputation with their direct peers in the form of providing bandwidth, storage, and forwarding packets.
That way it would be much harder to censor, fairly robust, and ideally still easy to use. Whoever writes the software could charge an extra $20 for a turn key raspberry pi or plug computer.
The problem is that generally smartphones (at least on the WAN) do not accept incoming network connections except those blessed by the OS provider (Apple and Google). Said push notifications are tightly controlled and not particularly feasible as a p2p network transport.
I think what would solve this problem is a 2 level p2p system. The supernodes would be raspberry pi's,a plug computers [0], or even a wifi router. They can accept incoming connections, don't pay as much for bandwidth, could be shared among friends/family/neighbors. Even a 64GB microsd + arm would handle substantial messaging traffic.
Then the more network and power constrained phones could check in with their preferred supernode, ideally falling over to other supernodes if necessary. Messaging traffic is tiny, so storing it 3-4 times on redundant supernodes would still be cheap.
Said supernodes would earn reputation with their direct peers in the form of providing bandwidth, storage, and forwarding packets.
That way it would be much harder to censor, fairly robust, and ideally still easy to use. Whoever writes the software could charge an extra $20 for a turn key raspberry pi or plug computer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_computer