# Cover Traffic

The HOPR mainnet will be an incentivized decentralized mixnet. For a decentralized mixnet to be truly private and secure, we need what’s known as cover traffic. This is arbitrary data which is transmitted through the network to provide cover for the real data which users are sending between each other. This is particularly important at less busy times, when users are more exposed. With data privacy, there’s always safety in a crowd. Cover traffic ensures that there’s always a crowd to get lost in.

With this layer of extra data constantly moving through the network, outside observers are unable to extract any metadata about who is using the network and how much data is being sent through it.

CoverBot will be providing cover traffic to this testnet and rewarding you for helping to relay it. Along the way, we’ll be stress testing the limits of our network and trying to find inventive ways to break it. Finding these issues and fixing them in a safe environment will help us to ensure the network is secure when it launches for real later in the year.

Eventually this cover traffic will need to be fully decentralized, but for now we’re just testing whether the mechanism works. For three weeks, CoverBot will transmit data randomly through the network and back to itself. We’d like your help relaying this data, and in exchange you'll receive points on the scoreboard for a share of the 100,000 HOPR prize fund.
