Germ Wins a Cypherpunk Fellowship from Protocol Labs for Our Open-Source Contributions to MLS

Mark presents his co-authored Distributed MLS paper at IETF 124

We’re excited to share that Germ has been awarded a Cypherpunk Fellowship from Protocol Labs 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 Germ cofounders Tessa and Mark spent at Cypherpunk Camp, an initiative of Protocol Labs and Web3 Privacy Now that Germ co-founders attended this fall outside Berlin. In particular, the grant was awarded to evolve the design for a decentralized configuration of Messaging Layer Security, implement it in an MIT licensed library, and analyze the design through testing to prepare for standardization in the IETF.

Participating in the Berlin convening itself was an opportunity to connect with about a hundred engineers and policymakers with a range of technical specialties and a broad-base commitment to digital rights to deepen our networks and our familiarity with each others’ work. Mark and Tessa’s time was mostly spent with a great group of builders there from Bluesky and the AT Protocol developers community, and with other attendees working on end-to-end encrypted messaging.

This fellowship reflects Germ’s commitment to building open-source technology that serves all people’s right to private and secure digital relationships. Germ cofounder and CTO Mark Xue presented this work in progress, coauthored with researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School, at IETF 124 in November in Montreal. Thank you to Protocol Labs and Web3Privacy Now for the invitation to Berlin and the support. We look forward to continuing to share the fruits of this work.

Mark and Tessa at the Cypherpunk Retreat outside Berlin