Realman78

Yes, and that's what I'm saying - the attach vector is small. There isn't much on the network to take advantage of. It's basically one giant value-encrypted lookup table

Everything on your list except one is possible with servers + crypto. The exception is permissionless operation. Any server-based design has an "operator" who can be compromised. The network should outlive the operator, function without it. Infrastructure servers that I set up (in order to reduce user onboarding friction) shut down in about 2 weeks. The app will keep working without me.

Regarding the extra complexity - the design was "no privileged party at all", the price is the complexity.

You're right about the DHT metadata -> queries expose requester IP to nodes on the path, so designing a social graph is possible. However, that is exactly why there are two modes:

- fast mode, which basically trades metadata privacy for lower latency and calls - anonymous routes everything (DHT queries also) over Tor

Regarding compromise recovery, you're also correct. That is on top of the v2 list.

Additionally with the group size limits, lack of forward secrecy/post compromise security Direct (1:1) chats rotate keys every 15 messages - I thought about a similar approach for group chats, but it turned out to be very noisy, also a v2 feature to address.

You mentioned some valid flaws, but none of them seem fundamental/unsolvable. Of course, there is going to be a certain kind of trade-off when going fully decentralized, but these trade-offs are becoming smaller and smaller each day. In return, we are getting our privacy back. There is still a long way to go regarding the things that you mentioned, but also some basic UX: - Mobile app - Anonymous mode Tor alternative (thought about I2P, but it's very slow) - Calls in anonymous mode ...

But notice your own option: "stop communicating with people you don't trust." For a group, kick is an option: everyone stops including X, at once.

And that's where the leader matters -> to make that option executable as a group. Without an agreed authority, it's N separate choices that have to stay consistent forever: one member with a stale roster keeps X in the loop by accident, or X kicks Y while Y kicks X and there are two rosters claiming to be the group. One signed kick says "we stopped talking to X" for everyone.

But then again, you're right. If 4 members want to kick out member#6, but member#5 doesn't want to, there is nothing we can do to stop member#5 from sending everything to member#6. That's not a software-solvable problem.

Sure, the offline delivery part can be thought of as e-mail-ish. Is that what you're going for?

I've looked now... We have a similar design regarding the leadership roles, with the difference that they support multiple "leaders". However, they use a full-mesh which means sending a message to each user separately. Kiyeovo has "anonymous" mode which routes traffic through Tor. That means that even offline messages that get saved to DHT get routed through Tor. They are already slow as it is when sending 1, now imagine sending 9... Thanks for the suggestion though!

This is genuinely cool (and weird that I haven't heard of it). I released the 1.0 version today, but I'm already thinking about improvements for v2. Hopefully you will figure it out and I can implement it for v2 haha

Best of luck!

Thank you!

Sure, but what is there to hijack in a messenger platform? The groups basically act as their own separate islands, and everything is signed for their buckets. Worst thing that an attacker can do is hurt availability

The issue with that is that when there is no "leader", there is also no way to guarantee kicking someone out. Signal didn't have the kick option for years, and they only added it once they moved the group state management to the server. Now, is "kicking" a good enough justification to go with the leadership route? That is up for debate...

I understand the vision, but I would still have to rotate keys through different groups. It doesn't solve anything, it just gives the illusion of a clean group delete-then-rebuild

I agree, and since there is no mobile version, this won't replace your whatsapp, and it was never designed for that. The actual people I see using this: - People who want anonymous messaging (I realize that there are already Tor messengers, so the idea was to make this one much more feature rich) - Friend groups that want private group chats without any central dependencies or accounts - security, self-hosting, decentralization and open-source enthusiasts

The repo is open sourced so issues can be raised. I also included my email inside the app's info dialog

I have verified that the app works without an issue on clean installations of Ubuntu, Debian and MacOS. I have spent the last 2 days testing the app by pretending to be a malicious user and patched those holes up. I ran the whole app through a detailed security scan using Fable. I went through the whole app and reduced metadata leakage to a bare minimum required by the app to work. I implemented all electron security recommendations. Currently, I'm just doing manual testing which mostly doesnt bring up any bugs, but rather some UI issues (like flickering or text going out of bounds) that I immediately patch

In this blog post, I share my experience of fully letting the AI take over the wheel. My goal was to complete one of my small side-projects without having to think about it (while watching a TV show).

https://github.com/Realman78/Kiyeovo - I'm currently working towards the full release of my P2P dual-network mode messenger which is currently in beta. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive when I released the beta a week ago so that motivated me to try extra hard to make it pseudo-perfect upon full release

Haha, it's roughly pronounced as it's typed out. The name actually comes from a Croatian dialect. "Ki je ovo" translates to "who is this" -> and then when you connect the words and make it english compatible, you get kiyeovo.

If you go to google translate, select Croatian input "kijeovo" and click the speak button, you will hear how it is properly pronounced. Not that I care how people pronounce it, just wanted to share :)

The two modes are in one app for convenience, but they are separate systems. IMO, the risk is not data leaking between mode protocols/DHT, but rather the user linking their identity between the modes through their behavior - reusing usernames, same contacts... So in short, it's ease of use vs the risk of user error

Yes, I agree Tor is not the best anonymity service these days. I2P was my first choice, but the performance was just awful. I did not fully give up on the I2P idea, maybe it was just that day, so I will give it a second choice and mazbe add a third mode or fully replace tor. Not sure since a lot of people are familiar with tor, and not I2P

I appreciate the criticism, really. In the current version users only have to exchange the username or peer ID via third party and then find each other on the DHT...

However, there is also another way, which is already implemented and I am currently writing the how-to on my blog site, and that is using "trusted users". Basically, instead of 2 users trying to find each other on the DHT, they can just export their profiles in the "Profile" section. That prompts them to create a shared secret and exports a ".kiyeovo" file. You send that file to the other party, they click on the "+" in the sidebar header ->"import trusted user", select the ".kiyeovo" file and voila!

I know it's not nearly as convenient as what you're describing, but it's just a more "trustable" way of creating a contact which is also not that inconvenient.

You're right in general. The main mitigation here is that Kiyeovo does not trust unsigned DHT data: the important records are signed and validated. That doesn't fully solve censorship nor eclipse attacks, but it does stop record forgery. The remaining risk is mostly availability/partitioning - bootstrap connectivity (topology) matters a lot here

QR code key exchange is convenient, but I did not plan phone support.

Third party info exchange. I don't see that as an issue though. For example, for discord, you also 100% exchanged usernames via a third party system. I mean, even phone numbers are exchanged via third parties. Now that I think about it, the only place where you can search people somewhat reliably are social media sites

In theory, if only Kiyeovo nodes were handling Kiyeovo records, then yes, they could kind of behave like their own subnetwork. The problem is that in a public DHT, the nodes responsible for storing keys are those closes to that key, we cannot guarantee it would be a Kiyeovo node. So even if Kiyeovo clients all use the same validation rules locally, the actual nodes that get hit with the queries do not. The chances of the network converging to the same, correct answer are much slimmer this way

Good question. The 4 initial bootstrap nodes that I provided (in the README) are all connected to each other. If everyone connects to all of them, we are all basically on the same network instead of on "isolated islands"

The group creator distributes the updates to each group member individually (each pair of users has their own buckets). Of course, if the member is not online for a long time, the update does not just get lost, it gets republished and will continue to republish until the member has read the update. Did I answer your question?

Also, the netbooks are old now. A new chip with an optimized linux distro will be a joy to work with.

Nice throwback. I like the idea of 20 dollar netbooks, ordering one for sure! However, the form factor of the product I'm building is smaller than an iPhone XR (that's the only one I have for measure lol), only thicker because it will open up. The point is that I can fit it in my pocket or in someone's fanny pack. With that for factor, you will have to type with thumbs, but I don't mind that. Also, taking inspiration from the Mecha Comet, I could add in a detachable component (keyboard, joystick, etc.)

I saw that. Cool, but very expensive. It has a bunch of features that jack up the price but are not worth it for me.

I’m planning to build something like this over the next few months. Think Nintendo 3DS-sized, but as a tiny laptop. The goal is extreme portability while still being able to program on it reasonably well.

I travel a lot and manage servers, so I’ve been wanting a dedicated “SSH machine” that I can always carry with me. With how good AI tooling has gotten, doing real work on a tiny device is suddenly very viable. The other day I SSH’d into a box from my phone while I was at the gym and just told Claude Code to fix a Kubernetes manifest issue. It was fixed and deployed in under two minutes.

I mentioned this idea at work and a few coworkers immediately said they’d buy one if it existed. Curious what others think.

Just played it, really super. Great job.