Hello, thank you to the Monero Village organizers and the Monero community for inviting us
to be part of this amazing conference and the opportunity to show you what we are doing at
LochaMesh. We are going to show you a demo of the LochaMesh, which is a community-driven,
open-source software and hardware project. It started two years ago with the idea of making
a decentralized censorship-resistant network for payments and communication without internet.
For disaster-hit countries and privacy-concerned individuals and groups who would like to keep
their privacy and their communications and payments as private as possible.
Well, Mesh Networks has existed for decades now, but we focus our efforts on making one
that doesn't rely on seed nodes or bootstrap nodes or servers nor intermediaries at all.
Each LochaMesh node is independent and can keep enough information for it to be able to
deliver messages through PATH and HOPS to its destination messages and data without internet
at all. Well, Luis, who is the CTO, will show you a demo of a Monero transaction that is going to
take place from a completely off-the-grid computer that is only connected to the LochaMesh network
to a remote Monero node. Luis?
Good afternoon and welcome everyone. I would like to start by thanking all
of the Monero community and especially to those who supported us through Monero CCS
proposals. I'm Luis, the CTO and co-founder of LochaMesh. I would like to show you a demo
running the Monero graphical user interface and the Monero daemon in the same network,
in this case in the LochaMesh network. As you can see in the picture, here is the environment.
On the right side, you can see the server
with two network interfaces. One is connected to the internet and the other to LochaMesh.
The Monero daemon is running on this server. The network interface for the LochaMesh
is this one. And on the left side is my laptop represented as n1 using the launchpad. The
launchpad is this red bar, as you can see in the webcam, and this red bar is the network interface
for the LochaMesh using this address. Between them, we have a node whose network address we
don't know, but we don't care either because it just helps to find the path between my laptop
and the server. Shut off the other microphone. You have two of them, I think.
Or is it... it is down, right? I don't know if it's...
What?
No, check the other microphone in case it is in the other computer.
I don't know if it's working or not.
It's noisy? Noisy? No, it's closer to the microphone in the other computer.
Okay, okay, continue. Yeah, sorry.
Sorry.
Okay.
What?
Between the laptop and the Monero, there is a node, so we can start
with the terminals. On the right window,
I have an open terminal to the server running the Monero
server, and I have configured the network interface for the LochaMesh.
And we can check the interface. The interface is this one.
And in the left side, I need to check.
Okay, it's correct.
Okay.
Before executing the Monero GUI, or the Monero graphical user interface, we must
make sure we have the configuration file ready with the server address.
This is the Monero
conf file. Okay, this is the address of the Monero server, and this is the port.
So, we can
start the GUI.
Need to check
the ways the wallet is synchronizing. This can take a while.
And it's ready.
So, the next step is Randy, can you send me some Monero, please?
Sure. So, now that you have your wallet synchronized over the LochaMesh to a remote Monero
GUI, he can now create an address to get payments without having to have any connection to the
internet. He's only connected to the LochaMesh through the toolkit device. In this case, he's
using a Launchpad, which is for development. But you can see one of the revisions of the
hardware we are doing there also in the webcam. So, he's now going to share with me
Monero address to get payment. So, what we're... exactly, copy and share.
What we are going to see now is that I, myself, who are connected to the internet,
I'm going to broadcast a transaction to the receiving address Luis has shared with me.
And the Monero daemon, which Luis is running on server, connected to the internet and also to
LochaMesh, will see the transaction that I'm making on the internet. I'm going to set this to
a good number so you can see it. Okay. Send. Now, my transaction is being sent over the internet.
It's done. Enter password. Okay. Sent. Now, what is going to happen is that the Monero d running
on the daemon that Luis has connected to both the internet and the LochaMesh, which is a peer-to-peer
mesh network, is going to see this transaction on the Monero mempool. And it knows that this
transaction belongs to this user who is connected to the Monero d over the LochaMesh only.
So, now when the transaction has been broadcasted to the internet and the Monero d running on the
server sees it, it's going to populate this or share this information with the user.
Transactions. Yeah, it's sent. Let's see. So...
Well, you can see there. There, you can see in the background of the user interface
that in the terminal, you can see that the interface is communicating with the Monero d
over the LochaMesh only. And now it has received the incoming transaction to its wallet.
And this information, he has received it over the LochaMesh. The LochaMesh is a mesh peer-to-peer
decentralized mesh network that only needs another node in range. So, it needs to be in range in order
to be able to be part of the same mesh. And when there are going to exist more mesh
isolated in cities or distributed in different countries, what we will have is bridges or long
range distant radio that will connect one mesh with another over the internet as a bridge or
gateway or also with long range radio. So, we're going to connect cities with each other and we'll
have this mesh networks not isolated anymore in each city, but interconnected to make a huge
network of devices that are capable of delivering messages, data, and information like in this case
all over the world. So, once everything is running inside the mesh and you won't need to go
to the internet anymore because miners will be inside the LochaMesh, servers will be running
inside the LochaMesh, and Monero remote nodes will also be there, wallets, everything will run there.
You won't need to use the internet anymore. What is the advantage of this is that, as you can see,
you can have a developer launchpad that you can build yourself in your house and you won't need
to be identified or KYC by anyone in order to be able to use the LochaMesh. So, we are making
a custom hardware and this is important for us because... well, this custom hardware that
you can see there on the revision hardware that we have is the Terpial and it's made out of
pieces and components that you can buy online today. So, you can make your do-it-yourself version
of it with all the shell parts too. So, if you do this and you do it in your house and you build it
yourself, you won't need to identify yourself or share your ID or scan your face with any
service provider, ISPs, or government in order to be able to communicate and make use of applications
in this LochaMesh network. So, it is important for us to make the custom hardware
because that enables us to develop the firmwares from scratch in order to make them
open source. So, in order to be able to make it public, available for everyone to use, so that you
can build your own or buy the ones that we are going to sell, instead of using already existing
equipment for radio communications, which currently most of them, or if not all of them,
depend on closed source tools for flashing and proprietary firmwares. So, the two devices
communicate with each other over radio in the ISM unlicensed bands, 915 MHz and 868 MHz.
The routing protocol that we are building is based on AODV version 2, and we have two IPv6
support. So, any application software server, which currently is capable of working with IPv6
address in the IP protocol, can run on the LochaMesh without any extra work. So, Luis is going
to show you, for example, SSH access, web servers, Monero block sync, not only the wallet itself,
is going to work inside the LochaMesh. Messaging apps, remote nodes, you will be able to access
your computer over the LochaMesh without having to use the internet. So, you won't expose your
house IP address. You won't expose your phone IP address, which is connected to your identity.
You will be able to use the LochaMesh to do all this. So, now, Luis is going to show you how
you can run a web server in a computer and access this website from another computer
over the LochaMesh, completely off the grid, without having to use the internet at all.
Very basic web server.
And I need to launch the browser. Here is the browser.
Here is the address of the server and the port.
Okay, that is it. So, this is an example of how you can run a web server in a computer,
a server, or a Raspberry Pi in your house, and you can access to that service or that computer
over SSH, web, HTTP, and you can synchronize your wallet. You can synchronize your
your full node, even over the LochaMesh, in a peer-to-peer decentralized mesh network that is
private and information transmitted, the data transmitted, can be encrypted because we are
using the unlicensed ISM bands, which allows you to encrypt the information that you are sending.
So, it's also private. That's why it is so important for us that the Monero community
has decided, an individual has decided, to support us through the CCS support crowdfunding
method that they have. And we understand that the Monero community is a privacy-focused community,
and we are also, too. So, we are not only enabling people to use Bitcoin and Monero
without internet, we are also letting people continue being in contact with their loved ones
during disaster-hit countries, for example, or censorship, internet shutdown, and blockades,
or infrastructure failures. So, this is more a project, a community-driven project,
which is open source. And we invite you all in the community of makers, hackers, and everyone who
likes the privacy and the freedom of using your money to join us on our GitHub, which is
github.com. And we invite you to join us in the Lucha por la Locha Libre, which is the fight for
the freedom of money. So, in this demo, we wanted to show you what we are working on. As I said,
you can build the do-it-yourself version of the devices yourself, but we also are going to sell
the 2PL devices, which is a battery-based mobile hotspot that is going to give you access over
Wi-Fi. It is a hotspot which has a Wi-Fi AP access point that you can access with up to four
mobile phones. And you can also connect it to a server, like in this example, through a USB cable.
So, in a range, if you have enough density and there are enough devices around you, you will be
able to chat and make payments and sync your full node over the Lucha Mesh. What we are also working
on is on the radio model itself. So, the radio model that is going to be welded in the 2PL devices
is going to be available in other formats. So, you can use a Raspberry Pi hat, for example,
and add it to a Raspberry Pi. So, it is going to be able to communicate over the Lucha Mesh with
others in order to offer services, for example, a web server or a wallet sync or an Electron server
or a remote Monero D that others can use. And you will be able to get paid for that. So,
you will be able to get paid using Monero, using RPC Pay, the RPC Pay feature or Bitcoin or the
Lightning Network, and you're going to get payments for the services you are providing to others
inside the Lucha Mesh as a way to incentivize you for running these services inside the Lucha Mesh.
So, you will be able to build the devices yourself. You will be able to buy the radio models that
we're going to build, or you can buy the more consumer-ready for newbies device, which is the
Turpill device. And so, you can have all your family, relatives, and friends have a Turpill
device that they can carry around with them in order for them to be able to chat with you or
use the services you are providing to them from your house on your Lucha Mesh-enabled computer.
So, this is what we wanted to show you, and this is what we've been working
on for the past two years. And thanks to other communities like the Monero community itself,
we've been able to do this mostly on donations and grants that we have received. But we also have a
company, which is the hardware company, that we want to make devices in order to sell them for
the common users that are not going to build them, but they are going to buy them in order to be
a node inside the Mesh and be able to provide relay messages for others and maybe get
payments for providing that service too. So, if you are interested in supporting us,
you can make a donation or you can join us on GitHub and help us test the devices,
the DevKit devices that we expect to have pretty soon. Or you can pre-order
the tour device that we expect to have ready for shipment early 2021. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Luis? Thank you very much, everyone.
Okay. Thank you. Hope you enjoy the rest of the DevCon. Hope you enjoyed all this weekend,
which has been very interesting and exciting. And hope to see you again. If you have any questions,
you can reach out to us at locha.io, L-O-C-H-A dot I-O. And you can find us on Twitter and also
on GitHub, as said previously. On Twitter, we are locha underscore I-O. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you for attending. Thank you.