Overview
Simplex chat [1] is a chat application that boasts privacy as a feature and doesn’t have user IDs. As I have been involved with Status and Waku and the underlying protocols that run them (hosted by Vac), it makes sense for me to understand how it differentiates itself from the protocols I understand, and what their tradeoffs are.
These are my notes in trying to understand Simplex, and how it differentiates itself, technically, from other chat protocols and apps.
How does it not have User IDs?
As per the front page of the website, it uses “temporary anonymous pairwise identifiers of message queues.” The Whitepaper [2] goes on to detail how this is done.
The tl;dr is a user defines what servers they receives messages at, which is described in the initial contact creation. Sending a message to someone is just sending a message to a queue within their predefined server(s). From there, clever use of cryptography allows an app to reconstruct a back and forth betwen users.
General data flow
- Contact addition is out of band a. contact addition includes:
References
[1]: https://simplex.chat official site [2]: https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/blob/stable/protocol/overview-tjr.md whitepaper [3]: https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplexmq/tree/stable/protocol/diagrams diagrams