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Keybase.io is an alternative for secure chats. Anyone know how it compares to signal, wire & threema?

by wscott 8y ago

otachack 8y ago
I think Keybase does chat well and their code is open source. One issue I see with them is that they seem in a perpetual beta phase, so who knows how dependent you can be on their software. I also don't like the React Native based phone apps as they don't feel native and lack polish. I also worry about them having joined the crypto train with no reason besides being backed up by Stellar foundation. The stake from Stellar into Keybase isn't clear and may influence decision making in direction of Keybase. The chat clients do have a nifty feature of setting up a time based, self destroying message. And you can share git repos within your registered clients and peers. They also have a shared filesystem and team based chat. You can also generate a PGP key pair for identity. The feature list is vast. The main point of Keybase is also sound in my book, which is to have a network of proof such that you can prove who you are in your correspondence in whatever social media or chat you use. You can even use the encryption / decryption services of Keybase only and send the encrypted payloads however you'd like. I think with more polish on their clients and proven stability that Keybase will be a great service to depend on. But I do think they need more personnel and/or they need to step up on their social aspect because their last blog post was 200 days ago.
- wscott 8y ago
  I hear you. The blog post about Stellar made me very nervous. https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar However, I get more nervous about use software without an obvious means of support for the developers so it would be nice if they can fill some nitch and make money as long as they don't kill the current client.
- jillesvangurp 8y ago
  Keybase is nice indeed. I think what they are doing with their network of proofs is somewhat unique in this space and makes end to end crypto usable for the masses (unlike e.g. pgp). I agree they UI is not as slick as slack or telegram but nothing that they won't be able to fix with a bit of love and attention. Fixing this is expensive, however. Hence their association with Stellar for funding. It's worth pointing out that Telegram has recently funded itself with an ICO as well. They are very well funded and they have a huge user base. IMHO investor/greed driven walled gardens have long been a problem in this space and is also the reason email is still around because despite its many flaws, it has one feature that is incompatible with running a walled garden: it is federated and decentralized from the ground up. Anybody can run a server and email clients that lock you into communicating only to users on one server went extinct in the nineties. With chat, it seems there is a pattern of perpetually recreating walled gardens with a single all powerful company at the center. This has been going on since the days of ICQ, AIM, Yahoo messenger, MSN and all those other long forgotten products that each did more or less the same thing and each tried to own your network. Strictly speaking, there's actually very little that differentiates modern day chat apps from those early chat apps in terms of what they do. Signal just got a capital injection from the whatsapp founders. I like that Signal are setup as a foundation and that their stack is intentionally completely open source end to end and yet easy to get into for on techie users. This breaks the pattern of centrally controlled for profit walled gardens as the only option. And this makes them somewhat unique in this space: they are now well funded, independent, and widely respected by people that care about communicating securely, and their mission is keeping it like that. I'm not that eager to swap out Whatsapp for Telegram. Ultimately, I don't trust either of them to do the right thing. But, arguably Whatsapp is somewhat more secure because at least it uses Signal's crypto. I use Keybase because I find their setup intriguing. And of course, I have Signal installed on principle but it seems none of the people I normally chat with are on it. I hope that they can fix that. But realistically, I seem stuck on Whatsapp, which I've never liked because it is such an inferior product compared to almost anything I've used for chat in the last 20 years (fugly UI, limited feature set, no decent desktop client, etc.). But world + dog seems to be on it so there's that.
- AngryAnt 8y ago
  A bit of input on the beta worry: By no means has our experience been flawless, but as a small business we have been running entirely on Keybase for around a year and a half now. We use Keybase every day for team & partner chat, shared storage, and git repository hosting. Our email is on ProtonMail, A/V chat via Wire, and our static websites I am not entirely sure where we host. Keybase IPs are not fixed at time of writing, so a CNAME solution would be our only option for root DNS hosting on Keybase - so we are not interested in that at the moment. Again, we are just a small business and we do indeed run frequent backups of repositories and KBFS to offline storage (though I am not sure I would want things different with any other third party host), but given daily heavy collaborative use for our size, we do not really have complaints on beta-ness. Primary feedback at this point are mostly feature requests - like support for git-lfs, static IPs for better DNS flexibility, minor client usability tweaks, and support for tablet displays. Thankfully the Keybase team is very active in community channels so we have a good idea on the status of these things and rapid turnaround time for bugfixes. Active clients in the team are on android, Docker, iOS, macOS, and Win7.

Keybase.io is an alternative for secure chats. Anyone know how it compares to signal, wire & threema?

by wscott 8y ago

Keybase.io is an alternative for secure chats. Anyone know how it compares to signal, wire & threema?

I think Keybase does chat well and their code is open source. One issue I see with them is that they seem in a perpetual beta phase, so who knows how dependent you can be on their software. I also don't like the React Native based phone apps as they don't feel native and lack polish. I also worry about them having joined the crypto train with no reason besides being backed up by Stellar foundation. The stake from Stellar into Keybase isn't clear and may influence decision making in direction of Keybase. The chat clients do have a nifty feature of setting up a time based, self destroying message. And you can share git repos within your registered clients and peers. They also have a shared filesystem and team based chat. You can also generate a PGP key pair for identity. The feature list is vast. The main point of Keybase is also sound in my book, which is to have a network of proof such that you can prove who you are in your correspondence in whatever social media or chat you use. You can even use the encryption / decryption services of Keybase only and send the encrypted payloads however you'd like. I think with more polish on their clients and proven stability that Keybase will be a great service to depend on. But I do think they need more personnel and/or they need to step up on their social aspect because their last blog post was 200 days ago.

wscott 8y ago
I hear you. The blog post about Stellar made me very nervous. https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar However, I get more nervous about use software without an obvious means of support for the developers so it would be nice if they can fill some nitch and make money as long as they don't kill the current client.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Keybase is nice indeed. I think what they are doing with their network of proofs is somewhat unique in this space and makes end to end crypto usable for the masses (unlike e.g. pgp). I agree they UI is not as slick as slack or telegram but nothing that they won't be able to fix with a bit of love and attention. Fixing this is expensive, however. Hence their association with Stellar for funding. It's worth pointing out that Telegram has recently funded itself with an ICO as well. They are very well funded and they have a huge user base. IMHO investor/greed driven walled gardens have long been a problem in this space and is also the reason email is still around because despite its many flaws, it has one feature that is incompatible with running a walled garden: it is federated and decentralized from the ground up. Anybody can run a server and email clients that lock you into communicating only to users on one server went extinct in the nineties. With chat, it seems there is a pattern of perpetually recreating walled gardens with a single all powerful company at the center. This has been going on since the days of ICQ, AIM, Yahoo messenger, MSN and all those other long forgotten products that each did more or less the same thing and each tried to own your network. Strictly speaking, there's actually very little that differentiates modern day chat apps from those early chat apps in terms of what they do. Signal just got a capital injection from the whatsapp founders. I like that Signal are setup as a foundation and that their stack is intentionally completely open source end to end and yet easy to get into for on techie users. This breaks the pattern of centrally controlled for profit walled gardens as the only option. And this makes them somewhat unique in this space: they are now well funded, independent, and widely respected by people that care about communicating securely, and their mission is keeping it like that. I'm not that eager to swap out Whatsapp for Telegram. Ultimately, I don't trust either of them to do the right thing. But, arguably Whatsapp is somewhat more secure because at least it uses Signal's crypto. I use Keybase because I find their setup intriguing. And of course, I have Signal installed on principle but it seems none of the people I normally chat with are on it. I hope that they can fix that. But realistically, I seem stuck on Whatsapp, which I've never liked because it is such an inferior product compared to almost anything I've used for chat in the last 20 years (fugly UI, limited feature set, no decent desktop client, etc.). But world + dog seems to be on it so there's that.
AngryAnt 8y ago
A bit of input on the beta worry: By no means has our experience been flawless, but as a small business we have been running entirely on Keybase for around a year and a half now. We use Keybase every day for team & partner chat, shared storage, and git repository hosting. Our email is on ProtonMail, A/V chat via Wire, and our static websites I am not entirely sure where we host. Keybase IPs are not fixed at time of writing, so a CNAME solution would be our only option for root DNS hosting on Keybase - so we are not interested in that at the moment. Again, we are just a small business and we do indeed run frequent backups of repositories and KBFS to offline storage (though I am not sure I would want things different with any other third party host), but given daily heavy collaborative use for our size, we do not really have complaints on beta-ness. Primary feedback at this point are mostly feature requests - like support for git-lfs, static IPs for better DNS flexibility, minor client usability tweaks, and support for tablet displays. Thankfully the Keybase team is very active in community channels so we have a good idea on the status of these things and rapid turnaround time for bugfixes. Active clients in the team are on android, Docker, iOS, macOS, and Win7.