What is this White Noise thing? Should I get all hyped up like I am about bitch@ (the future of social media and better than even bitcoin)
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It's hopefully the future of Nostr DMs with very strong privacy without leaking metadata. If it holds up to those expectations, it should be adopted by other clients that include DMs. NIP-17 has been somewhat of a band-aid to hold us over while MLS messaging on Nostr was in the works.
Can you use it as a standalone messaging app or something? Like telegram? 🤔
Yes. It is a dedicated messaging client.
Cool. Thank you:)
Whats it doing diff than keychat?
Many people are curious about the difference between Keychat and White Noise.
Keychat encrypts one-to-one chats and small groups with the Signal protocol, while large groups use MLS encryption. White Noise, by contrast, encrypts every message solely with MLS.
Think of each message as a letter: both Keychat and White Noise rely on OpenMLS to encrypt the content inside. The main distinction lies in the envelope—the format of the recipient address and how that address rotates.
For large-group messages, Keychat adopts exactly the same envelope as a Nostr direct message (NIP-17), blending the traffic so thoroughly that an outside observer cannot distinguish a Keychat message from a Nostr DM.
Why does Keychat choose the Signal protocol over MLS for one-to-one chats? Because Signal’s ratchet advances more frequently than MLS’s, providing stronger post-compromise security.
Could Keychat’s large groups interoperate with White Noise’s groups in the future? Quite possible—after all, the two are already 90 % identical.
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That said, Nip 17 does do some things that NIP-EE seems not able or not ready to do. This from NIP-EE:
"It is not possible to share group state across multiple Clients. If a user joins a group from 2 separate devices, their state is separate and they will be tracked as 2 separate members of the group."
That's pretty huge, since we all live cross-device these days. It's not a limitation of MLS, but it could be a limitation forced by how MLS integrates with Nostr in this particular way, I'm not sure. Either way, on NIP 17 as a single npub you can operate cross-device (say Macbook and iPhone) with relative ease.
Actually maybe that's referring to a cryptographic state that can be abstracted away by clients, need to test!
Scratch that, I read it wrong!
Correct!
This is one big feature of the MLS design, it's built for multi device users and large groups.
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NIP-17 won't die, it's better suited for social media app capabilities, and it's enough secure for that usecase too, it just sucks for groups. NIP-EE is good for the signal usecase
And what is the difference between keychat and 0xchat?
0xchat now has two apps: 0xchat and 0xchat lite. 0xchat is primarily based on NIP-17, while 0xchat lite uses MLS.
NIP-4 vs NIP-17 vs Signal Protocol vs MLS Protocol
Microblog DMs and standalone chat apps represent different scenarios and application types.
Microblog DMs prioritize multi-device synchronization over enhanced security, while standalone chat apps favor better security over multi-device synchronization.
NIP-4 and NIP-17 are suited for microblog DMs, while the Signal and MLS protocols are ideal for standalone chat app.
NIP-4 and NIP-17:
These protocols are suited for microblog DMs due to their efficient multi-device synchronization, as the encryption key and receiving address remain unchanged. Importing an nsec key allows users to receive and decrypt DM messages, which is ideal for microblog DMs.
However, this same feature becomes a disadvantage for standalone chat apps because it compromises forward secrecy and backward secrecy, and exposes the recipient's identity.
Signal Protocol and MLS Protocol:
These protocols update the encryption key with each message, and the receiving address can also be updated. This feature is best suited for standalone chat apps due to its robust security features.
However, this advantage turns into a disadvantage for microblog DMs due to poor multi-device synchronization capabilities. Simply importing an nsec key is not sufficient to receive and decrypt messages in such scenarios.
NIP-4 vs NIP-17:
Both NIP-4 and NIP-17 do not conceal the recipient’s identity. However, NIP-17 conceals the sender's identity, unlike NIP-4.
Signal Protocol vs MLS Protocol:
The Signal Protocol is best suited for one-on-one chats and small group chats.
The MLS Protocol is ideally suited for large-scale group chats.
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