Germ Wins a Cypherpunk Fellowship from Protocol Labs for Our Open-Source Contributions to MLS
We’re excited to share that Germ was awarded a Cypherpunk Fellowship to complete a portion of our open-source work extending the IETF end-to-end encryption standard Messaging Layer Security for decentralized systems. This fellowship capped off a fantastic three days at Cypherpunk Camp, an initiative of Protocol Labs and Web3 Privacy Now that Germ co-founders attended this fall outside Berlin.
Integrating Germ with AT Protocol
End-to-end encrypted Germ DM is now a Bluesky messenger. In this technical post, we introduce the architecture of Germ’s integration with AT Protocol. From the beginning, Germ has been building for an interoperable E2EE ecosystem, and this extends to our integration with AT Protocol. We’ll define the goals that we set for this integration, detail our first steps toward those goals, and outline our path forward.
Decentralized Pairwise MLS
This is the second of two technical posts explaining Germ's technology. Previously, I introduced the Autonomous Communicator(AC) Protocol, built around Messaging Layer Security (MLS). In this post I’ll explain in further detail how we use MLS for 1:1 messaging within the AC Protocol.
Autonomous Communicator (AC) Protocol
“Hi, I’m Mark, here’s how you can send a message to me.”
In our last post I announced our incorporation of MLS into Germ, and how MLS underwrites our ability to innovate in identity. Today, I’ll introduce that innovation, our Autonomous Communicator (AC) Protocol. The AC Protocol empowers people to autonomously define identities which they can exchange with others to form relationships for communicating over end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging channels. We designed it to use cryptography to support the ways we naturally form, grow, and dissolve relationships.
Germ DM is now on Messaging Layer Security!
We’re thrilled to announce the release of Germ DM 2.1, featuring Messaging Layer Security (MLS). Germ empowers people to form effortless digital connections without oversharing, now with best-in-class end-to-end encryption.