So we want Disjoint Groups to have 8 nodes as a minimum at least to satisfy Vaults??
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Yes, that’s the current MIN_GROUP_SIZE value: If a group falls below that, it starts merging with its neighbour.
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So every data chunk now has 8 total live copies around the network? It used to be 4 right? Is this to be safer against network blackouts / data loss etc?
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4 will still be more than enough. At the moment it’s all group members, with data chains this will reduce once more for efficiency. So more for simplicity right now. Saved us maintaining lists of nodes holding data, we just make them all hold it for now.
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Some time ago, @polpolrene made the following post, which has had a very great impact on my thinking about network and been a good tool for giving others the flavor of the security and privacy of individual actors’ part in the functioning of SAFE.
There has been considerable evolution in the codebase since then, and significant restructuring of node duties and relationships. Especially, with Disjoint Groups, Node Aging and DataChains, a lot more stability has entered as far as longer-term relationships between nodes goes, as far as I understand things, anyway.
My question is: While all this forward progress has been made on the stability of the network structure and efficiency of data handling is obviously huge strides forward, how does it affect the obscurity of all actors over the long haul?
Not that peeling one or two of the seven or eight encryption and obfiscation layers off would be a deal-breaker, in order to improve network function, but I’m just left with that question, from my Simpleton’s perspective, of course. 
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More secure group messages
The current group messages do not provide a high level of protection against attacks on the network, even under the additional assumptions that routes are disjoint and that a quorum of the individual messages need to be intercepted. Assume that an attacker controls 10% of all nodes in the network, and group size is 8 and quorum size is 5. Consider a group message sent via 10 hops.
In that scenario, the chance to intercept any given group request is 71%. With the group-to-group hops proposed here, it will be just 0.43%. Further adjusting the group size and quorum size parameters, this can be reduced to a negligible number, making this kind of attack virtually impossible.
looks like more security on the routing -level. But I really need to update the encryption-layers topic sometime to really get my head around this stuff.
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A lot of what is happening aids that obscurity actually. We are closing down holes that would have allowed fake messages etc. In terms of the security layers and IP address scrub etc. there is no change there. This work is mostly about security readiness and reliability. So think of these changes as more efficiently securing the network and reducing the opportunity for bad actors. We are not complete as you know but that is the path we are on.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if the coming testnets with Vaults work pretty well when it comes to data retention. Especially when the network is small having 8 nodes storing a chunk shouldn’t be a problem.
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Thanks David. I assumed so, but had to ask! P
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