Threaddr.com – serverless E2EE communications platform

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Threaddr.com – serverless E2EE communications platform

Hi HN, I wasn't feeling ready to post my work on HN yet, but with the recent increase in stories about LE attacking free speech [1], I'm starting to tell myself there's no time like the present. I've built threaddr to scratch a personal itch. It's a weird story but I'll share it anyway. My wife is taking Portuguese classes and has grown really close to her teacher. Her teacher has another student who's also in tech and also weary about the control Big Tech has grown to have over our lives, as am I. She (the teacher) kept telling both my wife and her other student we should meet. But I only use an old iPhone for FaceTime with my wife, I made a point of _not_ engaging with the outside world via anything touched by corporations. So, since we didn't have a way to get in touch in a manner that satisfied our principles of privacy and control over our communications, I spent a couple of months to build threaddr. I then wrote a letter on a piece of paper, in which I encoded a cypher that unlocked a thread on threaddr - where the two of us managed to finally discuss and he's actually coming over to meet in person tomorrow (from one end of Europe to another). So I guess that's also part of my motivation to show you my work. Anyway, in a nutshell, threaddr does the following: (i) serverless in that all code runs in the browser; there's no server required to facilitate communications, only a metamask-type plugin (or Brave); messages are stored encrypted on the Gnosis blockchain, no MITM-ing key exchange; (ii) e2ee - you choose a mnemonic passphrase or a password to encrypt conversations; requires out of band "key" exchange; (iii) communications - threads are at the heart of threaddr; a thread hosts messages exchanged 1-1 between two users; in addition to threads & messages, you can also have 1-1 video / audio / screen sharing / file sharing; this works thru p2p (WebRTC) and uses the blockchain to store beacons to facilitate RTC handshakes - all encrypted, without touching a third party server (iv) anonymous - you can choose to create a public profile to make it easy for others to find you on threaddr, or you can stay anonymous and have your wallet address be your identity on threaddr In short, I'm happy how it worked for a sample size of two. Beyond this, I've finally convinced myself to show it to the world and taking the first step with you. Please feel free to share any feedback you have be it the good, bad, ugly, go-lock-yourself-in-a-basement type. I'm equally curious to meet other like-minded people that see value in threaddr or can help make it known to others, or happy to learn I'm a nutjob that needs to focus on something else. Whatever it is, I thank you for your time! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36841369