We've been busy. In my last update, I shared that I was sure MLS on Nostr was going to work and shared an early demo of the app. What a long time ago that seems now.
The big news is that White Noise is no longer just a demo. It's a real app. You can download the alpha release and run it for yourself on MacOS, Linux, or Android. iOS TestFlight is coming soon. Keep in mind that it's still very much alpha software; a lot is changing and I wouldn't recommend using it for anything serious quite yet.
We've been busy. In my last update, I shared that I was sure MLS on Nostr was going to work and shared an early demo of the app. What a long time ago that seems now.
Vision#
Before we get to the detailed project updates, I wanted to share a bit of my vision for White Noise.
More and more; freedom of speech, freedom of association, and privacy are under attack. Just this week, Apple was forced to remove their iCloud advanced encryption feature for all UK citizens because the UK government demanded that Apple build a backdoor to allow access to customer data. The EU continues to push "Chat Control" legislation that would force companies to remove end-to-end encryption from their platforms. And governments across the world are enforcing draconian "hate speech" laws that criminalize speech that offends or upsets.
The freedom to express ourselves and discuss difficult topics is a critical precondition for maintaining a healthy society. Without the ability to assert ideas and argue their merits vigorously we have no way of making progress or creating a civil society based on shared values and goals. Ironically, the very laws and regulations that many western governments are enforcing to "protect" us are eroding and destroying the most free and innovative societies in history.
White Noise is to built to protect our freedom to gather, to express ourselves, and to discuss difficult topics. It's free and open source; anyone can fork the code and we'll never charge money to use it. It runs on a free and open source protocol; your identity and social graph is yours to own and control. You don't have to trust us with your data, everything is end-to-end encrypted and metadata is next to non-existent. We don't even run any servers, so government data requests will forever fall on deaf ears.
We want to build the fastest, most secure and private, and the most usable messenger in the world. Whether you want to use it to plan a family BBQ or overthrow a tyrant, White Noise should give you the tools you need to make it happen.
If you find this compelling and want to help, please consider contributing to the project or donating.
Progress#
Alright, let's talk about where we're at with the project.
Current functionality#
- Multiple accounts. You can login, or create, many different Nostr accounts in the app.
- Search your nostr contact list, search for users you don't follow, or add contacts using an npub or hex public key.
- Create DM groups. Right now, you can only create chats with a single other user. Under the hood, these DMs are actually groups, I just haven't added the UI for adding/removing users and managing the group.
- Send messages, reply to messages, and add reactions. As you would expect from a messenging app.
- View group information.
- Settings that allows you to manage your accounts, relays, and other app settings.
Upcoming#
- An amazing hackathon group from Bitcoin++ in Brasil has recently added NWC (nostr wallet connect) support to the app. Paste lightning invoices into chats and they'll become QR codes that you can scan or pay them with a single click in the conversation! This will be in the next release.
- Add support for encrypted media in chats using Blossom. We'll start with images, but plan to add video, audio messages, and documents soon.
- Groups with more than two users. We'll add the ability to add/remove users and manage the group. This will also include some upgrades to further improve the forward secrecy of group chats.
- iOS TestFlight. Gated app stores suck. We'll get White Noise on iOS into TestFlight as soon as possible.
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