First Basis IOU note passed off-the-grid over Meshtastic
Two Ergo enthusiasts, kushti and Mad Spectator, successfully tested Basis note transfer over Meshtastic. In a forest with not Internet connection available, IOU note was passed, and the note is redeemable once Internet connection is there.
The assumption was that two participants Alice and Bob dont have Internet connection during trade, but can have it after. So Alice is signing a note and passing it as JSON to Bob over mesh network (Meshtastic powered)
There was issue with 200 bytes limit. In the test message was about 670 bytes and so I splitted JSON manually to send over mashtastic ui. But it is possible to optimize it and have it under 200 bytes.
With this note, also witnessed by basis tracker, redemption is possible when Internet available.
In a next test, a core assumption would be that both Alice and Bob do not have Internet connection and only tracker has permanent one. For starters, tracker is fully trusted, then we will relax trust by using NIPoPoWs / ergo headers distribution around mesh, Merkle proofs for submitted transactions etc. Then we can consider even more complex setting where even tracker has connection occasionally, so also on spv and/or nipopows
So there will be much more off the grid tests to cover all the real world off the grid scenarios but in many cases what is more or less done as PoC is okay. So we can start reach communities from now.
A paper on Basis got accepted into RAMICS'26 conference on alternative currencies and monetary studies, see accepted papers at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FdbzbDSx-qHJqLva1_QWqoKiEm2tRS_H/view . The paper will be used as Basis whitepaper as well and will be published in coming days.