Show HN: OpenDescent – a P2P messenger with no central server (libp2p, Ed25519)

Jaguwa1 pts0 comments

OpenDescent: Private messaging for normal people. Encrypted. Peer-to-peer.

▶ Breaking

Meta is ending end-to-end encryption on Instagram DMs on May 8 2026.<br>Here's what to use instead →<br>//<br>Discord leaked 70,000 government IDs.<br>Why we built this →<br>//<br>OpenDescent v0.5.7 released: run the network on your own relay.<br>Download →<br>//<br>Normal life deserves privacy.<br>//<br>Meta is ending end-to-end encryption on Instagram DMs on May 8 2026.<br>Here's what to use instead →<br>//<br>Discord leaked 70,000 government IDs.<br>Why we built this →<br>//<br>OpenDescent v0.5.7 released: run the network on your own relay.<br>Download →<br>//<br>Normal life deserves privacy.<br>//

Encrypted / Peer-to-peer / Open source<br>分散型メッセンジャー

For normal people.<br>Because normal life<br>is worth keeping private.

Chat, call, and build communities without anyone watching. End-to-end encrypted, peer-to-peer, with nothing between you and the people you talk to.

▶ Download for Windows<br>See how it works

AES-256

Message encryption

Ed25519

Identity keys

Zero

Central servers

Zero

Accounts to steal

Cipher // AES-256-GCM<br>暗号化中

1Typed

I love you

2Encrypted on device

YOU-<br>PEER-<br>PEER-<br>THEM

3Delivered

Ed25519 f7a3:2c91<br>Awaiting

01 Plaintext leaves device never

02 Hops peer-to-peer, never servers

03 Only recipient can decrypt

Breaking / 2026-04-24

Meta is ending Instagram DM encryption on May 8. Every message you send will be readable: by Meta, by advertisers, by law enforcement. Here's what to use instead.

Leaving Instagram

Why this exists

Private messaging shouldn't be suspicious. It should be normal.

For years, the internet sold you "private" messaging, then walked it back quietly: buried the setting, scanned "for safety", trained an AI on your chats. OpenDescent starts from the other end: nothing to roll back, because there was never anyone in the middle in the first place.

01

Nothing in the middle

Your messages travel peer-to-peer, encrypted before they leave your device. No company sees the plaintext. There isn't a server to scan, subpoena, or monetise, because there isn't a server at all.

02

No account, no ID

No phone number. No email. No government ID. Your identity is a cryptographic key on your device, backed up by a 12-word phrase you keep . There's nothing to leak, because nothing was ever collected.

03

Encrypted by default, period

Not opt-in. Not buried. Not "rolled back in May." Every message, call, and file transfer is end-to-end encrypted by default, always , with no toggle and no regional exceptions.

Everything you expect from a modern chat app. Nothing that spies on you.

§ 01 / Features

The flagship

Private messages, public-grade encryption.

Every text, voice note, and file you send is encrypted on your device with AES-256-GCM, using ephemeral X25519 keys so that even if a key is ever compromised, past messages stay private. Forward secrecy. No plaintext in transit. No plaintext at rest on anyone's server. There is no server.

X25519 DH + HKDF + AES-256-GCM + Ed25519 signatures

Hub // study-group<br>ハブ

did you see the deadline moved?

yeah finals week, great

🎙 voice note · 0:08

sending the notes now

3 peers · encrypted<br>E2E

🌐<br>True peer-to-peer

Messages travel directly between devices. No middle server relays, stores, or can read a thing. Circuit relay and NAT hole-punching keep it working even on hostile networks.

libp2p / KadDHT / DCUtR

🧬<br>Cryptographic identity

An Ed25519 keypair is your account. No phone number. No email. No password. Back it up with a 12-word mnemonic, recover on any device, ever.

Ed25519 / BIP39 / TOFU pinning

📞<br>Voice & video calls

Crystal-clear WebRTC calls with DTLS-SRTP encryption. Direct connections whenever possible, TURN relay fallback when needed. Your calls don't touch anyone else's infrastructure.

WebRTC / STUN / TURN

🏛<br>Community hubs

Text channels, voice channels, roles, invites. The things a Discord server has, without a server. Hubs are peer-replicated and can't be shut down from the outside.

Categories / Channels / Roles

👤<br>Dead Drops

Onion-routed anonymous posts with proof-of-work spam prevention. No identity attached, no metadata trail. For the conversations that need to exist but shouldn't be traceable to a person.

Onion routing / PoW / Daily key

📡<br>P2P live streaming

Go live to your community. Viewers redistribute chunks to each other mesh-pull style (think BitTorrent, live) so the stream scales without a single point of failure, or a single point of surveillance.

WebRTC DataChannels / Mesh-pull

Watch encryption happen. In real time.

§ 02 / Security

Not a promise. A pipeline.

Every message you send runs through the same three steps: a fresh X25519 key agreement, an AES-256-GCM encryption, and an Ed25519 signature before it ever leaves your device. Here, you can watch it happen with your own words.

There's no special "encrypted mode" to toggle. This is the only mode there is.

› Type anything on the right

› Watch the keys agree, the message encrypt, and the signature...

peer encrypted server encryption ed25519 device

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