I had a bit of extra time this week to attend a call organized by @jeffg (npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc) regarding a privacy focused project he's been working on for the last year-or-so. Shout-out to @niftynei (npub1e0z776cpe0gllgktjk54fuzv8pdfxmq6smsmh8xd7t8s7n474n9smk0txy) for encouraging me to do so, pushing my somewhat out of my comfort zone in reporting on technical updates.

Also, if you know of or are involved in similar dev calls and would like a report done, please reach out and feel free to share calendar updates.

--@Car would be awesome to see this talked about on SNL later today, as it seems to be a very important/overlooked project for the future of privacy, nostr and bitcoin broadly.

Anyway, here's the unschooled report--my technical explanations may sometimes be scant, but I've done my best to provide more qualified sources where necessary.

Developers met Tuesday, 3 Jun at 1600UTC at what would be the first of a monthly series of community calls to discuss updates and respond to questions about the implementation of the MLS (Messaging Layer Security) standard over nostr.

@jb55 (npub1klkk3vrzme455yh9rl2jshq7rc8dpegj3ndf82c3ks2sk40dxt7qulx3vt)) @hodlbod (npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn), Max Hillebrand (npub1klkk3vrzme455yh9rl2jshq7rc8dpegj3ndf82c3ks2sk40dxt7qulx3vt) and @jeffg (npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc) among others attended and contributed to a discussion about the latter's research and development on implementing a new messaging standard on nostr using MLS.

The call highlighted some of the features of MLS, a relatively new (as of 2023) secure and confidential messaging and group-chat protocol standard. It is modeled to achieve a similar level of security as Signal, prioritizing forward-secrecy and post-compromise security, multi-device compatibility, as well as the ability to scale for large groups.

For those not familiar,

Developers working on the project indicated that it will be an improvement on current instant-messaging standards commonly used by nostr clients, such as nip17, for a relatively simple implementation.

Those in attendance overall showed enthusiasm to push this project forward and developers interested are being encouraged to fork the the Nostr-MLS Rust Library to begin working it into their stack. Notably, @jeffg and Hillebrand are keen to see new contributors work on the project.

Participants had the opportunity to ask technical questions about how the library handles some features as well as how to begin contributing.

Discussion also centered around issues with MLS (such as potential key-package rotation DOS attack vectors and de-syncing) as well as some key concepts for the new messaging standard such as how key-packages are signed by a users nsec and published to key-package inbox relays before being rotated.

White Noise and 0xchat both have implemented MLS on nostr. These are the first to prove that the concept of secure-confidential group messaging is possible over the distributed nostr-relay protocol.

@jeffg has kept detailed project updates on his nostr account. Notably, the post MLS Over Nostr explains the vision he has for the project and his presentation The Past and Future of Messaging on Nostr (youtube) gives a high-level overview of messaging on nostr and the problems he is working to solve.

Follow @jeffg (npub1zuuajd7u3sx8xu92yav9jwxpr839cs0kc3q6t56vd5u9q033xmhsk6c2uc) on your favourite nostr clinent for call updates.

Link to join.

Related:

Telegram Clone (sic) on Nostr: Live Demo by @DarthCoin White Noise: Secure Messaging Over Nostr by @supratic