The Block reported: DarkFi, the encryption project that focuses on privacy, has released the alpha version of its application.
The project was founded by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki, who said the team will build a series of products to integrate this completely anonymous P2P messaging feature.
DarkFi is an encryption project focused on privacy, led by early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki, and has now launched its working alpha version of the application. This marks the latest achievement of the community, composed of programmers, artists, and technical experts, who have been working behind the scenes for years.
The app was previewed in last fall's pre-alpha release, and is now basically a completely anonymous IRC (Internet Relay Chat) platform. However, Taaki plans to develop it into a useful product ecosystem.
"We will expand very quickly and add features because we already have many features such as anonymous DAO, wallets, and blockchain," Taaki said in an interview with The Block. "All these features are already running, it's just that they haven't formed into a product yet."
The platform is built from scratch, including a brand new UI designed internally by Taaki and his team. Its messaging component can run through Tor and is completely peer-to-peer.
"No registration, no identity, no link between messages," Taaki said. "This is the strongest anonymity you can get."
The launch of DarkFi comes at a familiar and yet unsettling time, especially for long-time cryptographers. If in 2011, when 23-year-old Taaki launched Libbitcoin (the first alternative implementation of Bitcoin), he was told that privacy advocates like Alexey Pertsev would be prosecuted in the United States 14 years later for developing anonymous tools like Tornado Cash, he might not be surprised.
Taaki is a firm believer in freedom, and in 2015 he fought against the Islamic State in Syria, deeply disappointed by the development of the encryption industry.
"The encryption currency is meant to circumvent censorship, as Satoshi Nakamoto has set the challenge," he said. "There's a quote about Gnutella/P2P where he says 'we're like a hydra, you cut off one head and the other comes out again. This will expand the space of freedom'. ”
But things did not develop as expected. ALPHA has been captured by institutions due to a lack of anonymity. Without strong encryption attack methods, you cannot change the status quo.
Despite Taaki's reluctant respect for Ethereum's neutral technology stack, he believes that specific use cases need to be more strongly focused on.
"It's no longer 2012," he said. "We have a good understanding of the core use cases that need to be met in order to provide people with a truly powerful product."
He also criticized the current consumer technology. He believes that the design of Signal Messenger, possibly a competitor of DarkFi, is unimpressive.
"It's just a bad-looking app, and it's just horrible — there's so much white space, too much padding, and the screen is being used inefficiently," says Taaki. "So this app is not designed to make people more productive."
Taaki's ultimate goal is to build functional and liberating technology. He said that DarkFi takes time to get the details right - or, in other words, "consolidate the already occupied territory" - rather than rushing to launch new features.
First, DarkFi's custom UI is natively cross-platform, which means it can run as a single implementation on Android, iPhone, Mac, Windows, and Linux. This contrasts with Signal's two completely different versions between Android and Apple.
Some people think that DarkFi may be difficult to use because of its underlying technology, but Taaki has rejected this idea.
"We are not doing something elitist," he said. "What we are doing is something that you can use right after loading it - we don't see people as stupid cows."
However, Taaki takes a realistic view of the current product state, stating that the alpha version is "not mature".
"You know, there will be random bugs and other issues," he said. "But it's important to push things out."
