I ran it for a bit a few years ago when I had very bad internet on holiday - I could never get it working. It hogged all my battery for ages and couldn't send a message to my gf who was right next to me.

IMO the way for mesh messaging tech to gain a foothold is by being useful when there's a bunch of people in a location where there's no internet, so they should be targeted at those people first:

• Holiday destinations where people are charged for WiFi and the mobile network is either under heavy pressure or not available (campsites, cruise ships, holidays where roaming charges hurt)
• Hiking, where people have intermittent internet but other people are sometimes in range for relaying messages
• Music festivals, where huge numbers of people gathered in one place overload the network.
• Nightclubs and warehouse parties where you're in a metal box with no signal unless you go for a smoke
• A device that doesn't have a network subscription, like tablets, but wants to get messages while away from WiFi networks

Then build a public mesh that has utility, not this crazy one-hop fundamentalism but something that actually works.