36C3 - The ecosystem is moving

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blfr · 2025-01 · Recommendation

There's a great CCC presentation by Moxie (Signal originator) on that [VIDEO] ~summarized in text form [LINK]

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seanieb · 2021-11 · Recommendation

A talk by Moxie at CCC deals with this exact question. > “ Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize. > Amongst an environment of enthusiasm for blockchain-based technologies, efforts to decentralize the internet, and tremendous investment in distributed systems, there has been relatively little product movement in this area from the mobile and consumer internet spaces. > This is an exploration of challenges for distributed technologies, as well as some considerations for what they do and don't provide, from the perspective of someone working on user-focused mobile communication. This also includes a look at how Signal addresses some of the same problems that decentralized and distributed technologies hope to solve.” [VIDEO]

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jazzz · 2026-07 · Reference

Appreciate the clarity. It helps me focus without going off on a wild tangent. The durability/independence of the protocol being a primary driver makes sense, and aligns with the design. > "no privileged party at all" > "The network should outlive the operator, function without it." I also believe these are absolute requirements for the future of groupchats. I'd argue for stronger requirements, but I'm definitely onboard here. This protocol has strengths: 1) Per-sender buckets. This is a clever workaround for the downsides of client-side fanout, and provides reasonable sender identity decoupling. 2) Realistic membership limits. I think the number is quite low, but in general I love the willingness to draw a reasonable Schelling fence here. My criticism of MLS is that focusing on transport-level security in a 10k-person group chat seems rather moot — as the membership count grows, the largest risk comes from "inside" the group. Drawing a reasonable limit here, and basing scalability around it, makes sense. 3) It doesn't accept the status quo. Most protocols attempt to solve the whole world. Re-evaluating what's actually required from a feature set is a great approach to reducing complexity. 4) Static epoch key avoids the issues with state desynchronization due to dropped messages. Assuming the pairwise channel is reliable, this removes a whole host of problems. It's a security tradeoff, but I see the value. > but none of them seem fundamental/unsolvable I think this really dep

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