IRCD + Tor should meet those needs. If you can get your friends to use a client that supports OTR even better so that you are not just depending on self signed

IRCD + Tor should meet those needs. If you can get your friends to use a client that supports OTR even better so that you are not just depending on self signed TLS being on Tor but also end-to-end encryption in private chats. The reason to have a self signed cert within an already encrypted Tor is to allow your friends to install the public key for pinning or alternately to use torsocks + openssl client to validate the fingerprint and not depend on Tor specific mechanisms. Irssi [1] and pidgin support OTR Off The Record. I believe the Weechat IRC client may also support OTR. UnrealIRCD [2] is the most flexible and powerful that I know of but takes a little bit to set up optimally. NGIRCD [3] is the simplest as far as I know as it can be set up in about 2 minutes. In terms of not storing data just avoid running services and instead make dedicated channels within the IRCD and either log to a ram disk or disable logging all together. Both IRCD's support requiring a password to access the server and/or channels. A single instance should be fine if you have less than about 20k friends especially if not running services. [1] - https://irssi.org/documentation/help/otr/ https://irssi.org/documentation/help/otr/ [2] - https://www.unrealircd.org/ https://www.unrealircd.org/ [3] - https://ngircd.barton.de/ https://ngircd.barton.de/