this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Briar is probably the goalpost they have to overcome. Internet plus mesh Bluetooth
And Bitchat is really closer to Meshtastic. It can use LoRa repeaters (based on a cursory look, I could be wrong) while Briar seems it's either direct BT messaging or internet, no mesh relays. If Briar just allowed encrypted BLE repeaters, it would be the obvious winner.
I might have this wrong with Briar, but it seems like nothing does this exactly as would make sense: Decentralized as prioroty routing, internet routing as backup.
https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/
The briar mesh is via peer to peer Bluetooth / wifi connections but it is a mesh via briar message passing
So if your friend group is at a concert and the internet is down you can have a forum where y'all call still communicate, with the caveat that only people in the group will mesh/proxy messages once in range.. the benefit of this is that nobody outside the group can see the message activity, if one person makes it to the internet all messages will sync and when they go back to the concert the offline members will see internet messages.