The last 2-3 days there was a significant slow down with message sending, sometimes 15 seconds, via the default #chatmail relay .... Wasn't a CPU/RAM or other resource problem but a software configuration / implementation problem. After some hours of debugging it was solved by providing the "speed-adjust" proxy option to #postfix. message sending should be back to sub-second. No message was lost. Lesson learned: just search for "speed" in postfix docs first (and fix the offending module later).
It's an excellent read, with lots of good advise, including having a public "hello" profile and another unpublished chat profile for private chatting. #deltachat apps have pervasive multi-profile support (and multi-device support) so it's pretty easy to establish such a two-profile setup.
#deltachat is being used in virtually all world regions where one or more other messengers fail to work. We recently released a major milestone (V2 security hardening releases) that prepared the ground for chat profiles to have multiple #chatmail relays at once ... failure or blocking of a single relay would not disrupt chatting anymore. But multi transport also helps with the "centralization problem in decentralized systems" ... delta.chat/en/2025-06-04-surge… (Funding is looking good currently btw!)
Beginning June we witnessed a sudden surge of Delta Chat usage especially in the US and Cuba. We don’t know the social dynamics behind it but it probably helps that Delta Chat apps resiliently work...
The UK's national drought group is falling ridiculously short when recommending to delete old emails. How about
- stop building any new data centers, progressively tax on their size and resource consumption, no free riding
- legislatively focus on software to become more resource efficient (hint: AI hurts not helps with that)
In any case, #chatmail relays unconditionally remove emails, no user action needed. Everything interesting happens on end devices see en.reset.org/decentralised-eff…
Amount of hours spent to keep a default #chatmail onboarding relay with 500k active addresses running: near zero.
Glancing at stats sometimes: two million messages per day. CPU and IO load at 20% max. 500gb raid1 ssd meandering around 60 percent full. There is room for various optimizations but no big need currently.
end-to-end encryption with metadata minimization is best if servers are boring. No clustering or enterprise license needed, no "SRE team" either.
Hey folks. I've noticed #DeltaChat hasn't got a page in #Wikipedia. Do you know sources which would prove its notability so we could create a page for it?
Boosts appreciated. If you don't know sources, someone else might.
Two of our teams just gave talks at the @passthesaltcon 2025 conference in Lille:
@Xeniax tells the story of "federated messaging" waves and her usable security research, emphasizing "availability" as a key issue passthesalt.ubicast.tv/videos/… --
@hpk starts off with prioritizing usable security and walks through #chatmail transport layer security goals and #deltachat end-point security status, upcoming releases and prospective work on improving metadata and other goals passthesalt.ubicast.tv/videos/…
With the current massive user migration from X and Meta to decentralized social media such as Mastodon, the interest in federated communication infrastructures is gaining traction.
Everyone returns to email in the end. We are there already. #whatsapp wants you to add your email to secure your account ... despite all the nay sayers and numerous well funded attempts and claims to kill #email not even WA can do it. #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc are about deep collab between people, projects and operators to evolve email from within. It is not just about SMTP and IMAP and MIME and OpenPGP which are all exchangeable and can be improved ... Which we set out to do. Cheers.
@Winter blue tardis🇧🇬🇭🇺 @Jayson Smith @Nick Giannak III The 25 port requirement is for self hosting #chatmail relay not for using the app. There are apps for other platforms such as deltachat for IOS, deltachat or arcanechat for android. As for the deltachat-desktop app interface, unfortunatelly it's an electron app. However it's best used with the screen reader switched into focus mode. I'll try to give you a bit of overview explaining how I am using it. When I launch deltachat-desktop the focus is placed into a search field. If you alt+tab from its window and return back the focus will move to the chat input area if you have active conversation. Regardless of which of these is in focus use tab and shift+tab to navigate at this point. So I'll use the search field as a starting point as if you have no conversations this is the element you will land on after creating or importing your account from the backup. Tabbing away from the search field you will land on the Scan QR code button. You can activate it to share your code for others to scan or to scan a code from someone else. Also we are all blind here in this conversation so I guess we won't be scanning QR codes, we'll copy and paste invite links that is also supported here. So the QR code dialog has two tabs QR invite code and Scan QR code. These are exposed as buttons to screen readers. If you activate one of these buttons the content in this dialog window changes. If you would like to join the chat you will press Scan QR code here and you will find the Paste button. I assume QR code or invite links handling is now a bit clearer so I'll continue describing the main window. When using tab to navigate pressing the tab key while the Scan QR button on the main window is in focus, you will land in the list of conversations. You can use up and down arrow key to navigate, enter key to activate here. Unfortunatelly the items are again exposed as buttons so it might be a bit embarrasing at first. If you continue navigating with the tab key from the list of conversations you will land on the new conversation button. If you continue with the tab key you will move from the new conversation button into the active conversation window. The conversation name is presented. Activating the button named after the active conversation will open a dialog window with user profile of your chat partner or profile of a group chat if the active conversation is a group chat indeed. In the profile window you can see last seen info of the chat partner, their signature, their chat handle, a button for sending them a message that is mainly usefull when you are looking at a profile of a group member, and an ability to share the contact with other contacts. There is a profile menu button that displays a context sensitive menu with more actions such as setting your own local display name for the contact. I'm now done explaining the profile window and imagine we are back in the active conversation view focused on the chat name button. Using tab key to navigate from here lands on the tabs changing the main conversation content. You can use these to change from conversation to the media. Then there is a main menu button. In fact it includes conversation specific menu entries such as search in chat, dissapearing messages and others. Moving forward with the tab key from the main menu button you will land on the message list of the active conversation. Use up and down arrow to navigate here to read the messages. And use applications key or shift+F10 to open a context menu for the selected message. Text messages have no other content but audio messages, messages with reactions or other attachments might have other focusable elements in the tab order. I think this part is pretty self explanatory once you manage to start chatting. One thing other messengers don't have is shared apps. Apps can be posted to the chat and message with the app will have a button to start the app that will then open in a new window. There are various apps made for deltachat and other webxdc capable messengers, such as the shopping list, simple group collaborative editor and similar. I am looking to the future when more screen reader users will adopt this and we can bring some of the fun things we liked to enjoy back in the days on IRC such as playing quiz or card games in the chat. This might be a nice platform for allowing this. Then there is an attachment button, visually it's to the left of the chat input area, then chat input area it-self, smileys and record voice messages button. After the record voice message button you will wrap to the top, of the application window landing on the profile chooser. This part needs a bit of a11y love as the profile names are not exposed to screen readers. These have role tab and you can use up and down arrow keys to navigate here. The last item in this list is a create profile button. Yes, you can have multiple chat profiles if you like. And it's really damn easy to create a new deltachat profile. The most valuable thing on your profile is the list of contacts as you are verified criptographically. Loosing the empty profile is not a problem as you can create a new one whenever you like. The final destination of this walkthrough through the deltachat-desktop main window is the settings button.
Huh, this turned to be a looong post. I believe it clears a few things up for you.
Thinking more about it perhaps I should report some of the little things such as avoid using button roles for the list items, consider using roving tab index for the tabs so only one of them is focusable at a time to get rid of a bit of confusion to the @Delta Chat github issues.
@Winter blue tardis🇧🇬🇭🇺 @Jayson Smith @Nick Giannak III If you are still testing deltachat, I managed to run my #chatmail relay and it's working for a few weeks for me. I have created a groupchat where I'd like to invite other screen reader users. As I have posted a few times recently, #deltachat people do really care about screen reader #a11y so while testing and something is not working the way you would expect lets describe it in details, and report it properly.
@debacle that's about right! As to servers/relays: there are a lot of well working alternative stacks -- #chatmail core even runs with some #Plan9 mail server stack apart from the many classic email server implementations. Replacing Rust Core is possible but considerable work. Beating its maturity and cross-platform portability would require a serious effort. Not impossible, though. FWIW most other messenger projects (#Signal, #matrix, etc.) are trying to move towards Rust.
Comparing #XMPP against #email protocols is too limited. What sets #deltachat apart is *vertical integration* and being driven by UI/UX considerations. Cross-platform Apps and Bots use the Rust core library which connects with #chatmail relays and classic email servers based on a higher level API -- abstracting over SMTP, MIME, #OpenPGP etc. See chatmail.at
#webxdc apps in turn use an even higher level stable API abstracting over email/xmpp/... see webxdc.org/docs/
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
No, Delta does not need a central server. One can use any #chatmail or classic e-mail server. Moreover, there is a P2P-system in-built, see delta.chat/en/2024-11-20-webxd…
Are you interested in enshittification-resistant application development? After almost two years of collaboration with the wonderful Iroh team, and years of discussions with numerous experts in the...
1 cent per five years .... is the current marginal hosting cost for a #chatmail address, with which #deltachat apps facilitate world-wide private messaging including interactive #webxdc apps that run end-to-end encrypted in any chat group.
<1 Million EUR per year is the estimated marginal hosting costs for 350 Million EU citizens. Such scaling requires, however, research and development, including careful UX and #cryptography work. Related writing from @gordon
@Paweł Masarczyk @Cleverson I know you are looking for a way to stay in contact with people you are already connected to using traditional email. Still I would recommend creating a #chatmail account on your relay of choice just for testing so you can start with an empty profile and you'll get to experience the @Delta Chat the way it has been meant to. Then as an exercise continue with other more advanced scenarios such as classic email login. The #chatmail based onboarding is really very simple, there is nothing to do wrong.
@Paweł Masarczyk While testing I have used gmail or my own classic email account. It worked but I have understood using #chatmail servers is what makes it most attractive. I think I have read a blogpost from someone a few months ago explaining this very well that inspired me, however I can't find that article in my browser history right now. CC @Cleverson @Delta Chat
@Erion Yes, SMTP port 25 for server to server communication is a protocol requirement that is not possible to substitute I am afraid. In the readme of the @Delta Chat #chatmailrelay they are recommending to use a cheap VPS to host the whole thing or route the public IP address to your home using VPN.
Woohoo. My #chatmail server just to experience the fun and enjoy some real simple end to end encrypted chatting where the server side is light on resources as well is now live. My next mission is getting the location streaming to work and play with some realtime apps.
Playing with various technologies tonight. Managed to setup a brand new debian 12 systemd-nspawn container. Now looking through various documentation and other internet sources to combine it to a working #chatmail relay server. The thing is I only have a single IP address on the host system so I need to adapt it so the nginx running on the host either redirects or proxies to the container. Plus I guess I need to share the certificate in some way so postfix and dovecot can use it too.
#chatmail relays can serve 200k+ users on a small physical machine, are easy to setup and even easier to maintain. Chatmail relays enforce end-to-end encryption and rely on cryptographic verification for interoperability instead of IP reputation and spam checking magic. Tomorrow (Sunday) evening, @compl4xx will give a hands-on setup workshop in Hamburg cfp.eh22.easterhegg.eu/eh22/ta…
With Signal, Whatsapp, and other centralized messengers suddenly running their servers in an authoritarian territory, we need a decentralized alternative.
The trajectory of E2E-encryption is about de-platforming: There shall be no central machines that can control the edges/peers, and the social groups and virtual centers they freely form.
Our #deltachat R&D around #chatmail relays and #webxdc apps all aim to realize such a "zero-platforms" fully E2E-encrypted interaction model. However, this is *not* just about cryptographic cleverness. Rather it is about usable anti-authoritarian designs, as explicitly stated in January delta.chat/en/2025-01-23-webxd…
How can we evolve and deploy web apps without allowing developers or operators to become a “billionaire in the middle”? There are many ways to try to address this challenge and some involve the tec...
new security milestone reached: #chatmail relay servers are hardened to only transfer end-to-end encrypted e-mail with metadata minimization. No cleartext message can enter or leave the secure chatmail network anymore.
We now talk about "chatmail relays" rather than servers as they only ephemerally store messages until delivery. Dirt cheap to run.
We opened up our #rust "chatmail core" infrastructure library and set up an overview of the community driven ecosystem ...
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
The downside of our project approach was that we often got experts being very dismissive on re-using email and #OpenPGP ... and there still is some opposition which often subsides when actually trying #deltachat and #chatmail, looking at security audits and our strong usable security focus.
There may also be surprising upsides. The UK "Online Safety Bill" which attacks end-to-end encryption integrity seems to not apply for ... e-mail. Because everyone knows, e-mail is unencrypted, right? :)
With #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc developments we aim to instigate a new modern foundation for secure E-Mail and a resilient Web without platforms. We are building a kind of #minecraft system for modern decentralized messaging.
But who are we building it for?
For all who need reliable trustable means of modern private communication.
While our work needs hackers and experts it's not designed for them. @tante raises interesting and important related thoughts tante.cc/2025/03/03/who-is-fre…
For a while I have been arguing that maybe there are some issues with the whole “Open*” movements, their founding myths and ideologies (see for example my talk at Fluconf). This criticism comes from a place of love.
No coins, no chains, no big machinery but plain, efficient and scalable decentralization, leveraging the largest open internet messaging network ever created by humans ... made safe, fast and resource efficient with #chatmail servers using strong and audited #interoperable #cryptography. It just works (tm) in many places where Signal and WhatsApp fail today. It's time to reclaim "decentralization" from techbros, insist on real-life #resilience and trust this cute figure from @Xeniax :)
- why chatmail servers? - how to setup a server with your child - (avoiding) spam filtering - metadata and guaranteed end to end encryption in #deltachat - #cryptographic #interoperability for email message routing
Thanks to attendees for the great energy even if was the last talk on the day and also for questions and conversations afterwards!
As an excellent programmer once noted: constraints induce creativity and focused design. Delta Chat has been running against classic e-mail provider constraints for years and had to evolve its code to work against these constraints (rate limits, spam filters, signups, delays etc) and thus we were uniquely positioned to create a minimal #chatmail server template that beats Gmail, Outlook, iCloud etc regarding security, performance and efficiency. It's a similar story with #deepseek if you will.
A main technical and economic difference to #matrix servers/clients: The family of #deltachat apps uses #chatmail servers as ephemeral message transports that know nothing and forget everything: Servers don't store group metadata or cryptographic identities and delete messages after download by default. In effect, a 30EUR/month #chatmail server with 10K's of active users hums along with 2% IO and CPU pressure, 1GB RAM and negligible disk usage. No Pro-version or Kubernetes needed to scale ;)
It is possible for #chatmail users to communicate with classic email users who have published their public key.
You just have to do manual chatmail registration, save your login details and private key securely, and use it with something that supports #pgp like #Thunderbird or #Mailvelope.
Note to my-self and other people like me: Read the #deltachat help at delta.chat/en/help it's all perfectly explained there in easy to follow language. It's even translated to various different languages already. The number one answer for me is that there are #deltachat specific so called #chatmail servers suitable for anonymous instant messaging over email. So eventhough I like to self host my emails, I think I'll go with existing #chatmail server at least initially.
What is Delta Chat? Delta Chat is a reliable, decentralized and secure messaging app, available for mobile and desktop platforms. Delta Chat feels like Whatsapp or Telegram but you can also use and...
With mobile Delta Chat apps, a chatmail web site allows users to click a link to create an instant chatmail profile without asking any personal data. No permission needed from Delta Chat developers to run a server, and we never learn e-mail or IP addresses from their users.
Decentralized interoperable onboarding with secure #E2EE :)
Dwa proste kroki, aby rozpocząć korzystanie z ChatMail - anonimowe profile czatów z szybkimi, bezpiecznymi i interoperacyjnymi serwerami chatmail, z natychmiastowymi powiadomieniami push. Minimalne wymagania: Android 4.1 lub iOS 12, Windows 10, Linux
We consider our efforts aligned: #deltachat #chatmail and #webxdc implement "right to exit" on all levels of our decentralized messaging project.
- deploy your own servers permission free and interoperable with all e-mail servers ("federation mast") - all apps and libraries and server components are 100% Foss - interactive chat-shared web-apps can be used in other messengers
Running #chatmail servers is <2h effort per month, according to an ad-hoc poll with 10 operators responding. Some have 10Ks of #deltachat users. Typically 300MB ram is used and max 60gb disc space per server. And all interoperate safely based on high security standards (DKIM and TLS enforced, and only no-metadata #openpgp encrypted messages allowed) .... with typically 0.5 secs end-to-end delivery. Who said again that email is insecure, cumbersome and slow? :)
Before you ask, this is not standalone. For that someone would need to compile #deltachat_core to wasm and setup some WebSocket proxy because websites are not allowed to open raw TCP connections which are the basis of IMAP and SMTP.
But not impossible, as we could decide to make such a "WebSocket to IMAP/SMTP"-proxy part of the #chatmail project.
