Nice take on the issue. But why rely on the browser stack and javascript hell, though? I think the approach you describe looks a lot like the Secure Scuttlebutt

Nice take on the issue. But why rely on the browser stack and javascript hell, though? I think the approach you describe looks a lot like the Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) protocol : local "gossiping" with centralized hubs to relay authentication and/or encrypted information. > using DNS is straightforward to do verified claims That could be simpler in some regards, but not others. Consider most shared hosting name servers don't provide a simple API to update your zone, so you may have to do manual edits for key rolling, vcard changes, etc.. Also, not all implementations of domain names are alike. The traditional DNS is a tree-like datastore and many things (such as routing and security) are outside of its scope. But take for instance tor's onion services: they don't allow you to store/retrieve arbitrary records, but ensure the routing/authentication/encryption to the service and back. On tor, owning a name on the network is the actual mathematical proof of identity (the onion is a fingerprint of the actual encryption key) so you somehow don't need to let the DNS hold your keys for you. I think the issues you mentioned have mostly been tackled by modern P2P projects. The actual pain points are in my opinion: - the state of client applications (usually either ugly/broken or dependent on gigabytes of Electron shit that only runs fine on your dev hardware) - backup: democratizing encrypted friend-to-friend backups, but also building server-side stacks for hosting coops, individuals and companies alike to easily setup "seeding"/"backing up" of your data using standard protocols - identity recovery: people often complain loosing their data/identity on P2P networks (think Bitcoin, etc.), or regret lending it to the wrong entity (cryptoscams and hacks and whatnot). Proper identity recovery can be done either by dividing a secret among friends or with passphrase-generated private keys (or both) - key distribution: centralized key distribution is a security nightmare and web-of-trust exposes the whole social graph... i guess that's another area where we have to innovate?