Lokinet goes next level: Integration in Session and other apps
We often talk about Lokinet being a next-generation onion router — fast, versatile, and adaptable. It’s plug and play, and it can be used with any application you can think of. For a long time, that has been Lokinet...in theory. But with the arrival of the Audacious Aurochs hardfork, service nodes are now able to support the release of Liblokinet.
Liblokinet cuts right to the heart of what Oxen is all about: creating a platform for developers to make more secure, private applications. Lokinet isn’t just an onion router you download and use to secure your browsing (although, it is that). With the arrival of Liblokinet in the next few weeks, developers can integrate Lokinet as a library into their applications. This lets them communicate with service nodes, other Lokinet clients, and SNApps.
Before the hardfork, Lokinet needed to be enabled at the system level — meaning your operating system. For desktop, this wasn’t a huge problem, but it was much more difficult for mobile implementations. Because of the way mobile devices handle their networking, it requires utilisation of VPN APIs. While we are working on that for Android, and plan to do it for iOS as well, what all this means is that Lokinet would end up running in the background of your device all the time, even if it was only needed (or being used) for one app. Not ideal — and not letting Lokinet live up to its full potential.
