1.8 KiB
transit
a combined publish-subscribe and post office protocol and implementation for HTTP based decentralized messaging
tl;dr
fragmentation of user identity is a huge problem in web3 app development, every dApp is tied to one chain and the cost of users migrating to another platform is high.
the same problem exists also with centralized social networks, you can't just go to another venue and join the conversation, you have to have a whole new identity and as well as the problems that this enables malicious use, it also makes any efforts to build borderless social network communications applications basically impossible.
nostr
nostr is a project that has paved the way for a mechanism by which users identities work seamlessly across multiple servers, mostly interoperable, but it is plagued with its association with Bitcoin and Jack Dorsey and a faux decentralised committee of grant giving organisations and people defining protocol specifications that are not well-thought-out and constantly changing, and worst, for no reason at all, it uses websockets, which makes implementation too complex and specialised for wide developer adoption.
HTTP API and industry standard cryptography
Instead of using websockets, transit uses standard HTTP REST API for messaging, authentication for access control is integrated into headers and instead of using uncommon cryptosystems, it uses standard, commonly used Blake3 hashes, ed25519 signatures and ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption for protected data.
By using these well-supported, well understood protocol elements, we eliminate the friction for most web developers to build apps that interact with transit relays and enable the building of a multitude of different kinds of collaborative messaging and data storage applications with a single unified toolkit.