BENCH

Caution

Until further notice, bench has not been audited by security researchers. This will happen eventually, but until then you should assume the client code contains critical vulnerabilities and cannot facilitate secure message channels.

Bench is an E2EE peer-to-peer chat application that lets clients communicate over secure message relays. This is how it works:

1. benchd is the client daemon and contains all crytographic logic, a double rachet state machine, a message store, a wire protocol, chat/channel/community management, and message forwarding logic. It exposes a local IPC socket for UI clients. It is written in Rust.
2. bench-relay is a relay server implementation; it is a stateless message router. Clients talk to each other with encrypted payloads over message relays that they partially trust. Eventually, relay servers will be federated, so you don't need to share a relay in order to talk to a friend. It is also written in Rust.
3. bench-identity, bench-crypto and bench-protocol are Rust libraries that expose encryption and message primitives to enable higher-order functionality in benchd and bench-relay
4. park is the reference client UI that connects to the local benchd socket. It is a tauri application i.e. Rust-backend, web-frontend. Users can elect to use any client UI that they want, given it connects to the local benchd socket. It is also possible to use an alternative spec-adherent benchd implementation, if one ever comes to exist.

I don't know how mobile will work, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

ROADMAP

• bench-identity
  • client identity creation.
  • client identity metadata.
• bench-identity (unit tests)
• bench-crypto
  • initial p2p key agreement.
  • double ratchet algorithm (of signal fame).
  • double ratchet state.
  • session management.
• bench-crypto (unit tests)
• bench-protocol (protobuf)
  • outer message frame.
  • client message payloads:
    • Hello, Ack
    • PreKeyRequest, PreKeyResponse
    • RequestIdentity, GiveIdentity
    • IdentityUpdate
    • TextMessage
    • GetMessages, GiveMessages
    • CreateChannel, DeleteCommunity
    • ChannelInvite
    • JoinChannel, LeaveChannel
    • CreateCommunity, DeleteCommunity
    • CommunityInvite
    • JoinCommunity, LeaveCommunity
    • AdminAction
  • relay message payloads:
    • RelayHello, RelayAck
    • RelayIdentity
    • RelayMessage, RelayResponse
• bench-protocol (unit tests)
• poc: client transport (integration test)
• bench-relay
  • accept tls connections.
  • identify clients.
  • in-memory connection map.
  • forward messages to recipients.
• poc: relay transport (integration test)
• benchd
  • lifecycle.
  • local database (sqlite).
  • relay configuration.
  • relay connectivity.
  • identity awareness.
  • identity table.
  • channels.
  • channel table.
  • channel administration. (not blockchain)
  • channel action table.
  • message sending.
  • message retry.
  • message table.
  • communities.
  • community administration. (not blockchain)
  • community action table.
  • community table.
  • community fork.
  • forwarding: offers (opt-in).
  • forwarding: trusted forwarders (part of identity).
  • forwarding: message retry.
  • forwarding: message TTL.
• benchd: ipc socket
• poc: benchd client communication (integration test)
• park (reference ui)
  • connect rust backend to benchd IPC socket.
  • send and receive ipc messages.
  • ui: window.
  • ui: create identity.
  • ui: restore identity (from file).
  • ipc: identity creation.
  • ui: chat application.
  • ui: channel rendering.
  • ipc: fetch and listen for channel creation.
  • ui: add friend.
  • ipc: add friend / connect to client.
  • ui: accept channel invite.
  • ipc: join channel.
  • ui: message rendering.
  • ipc: fetch and listen for message creation.
  • ui: send message.
  • ipc: send message.
  • ui: user profiles.
  • ipc: user metadata.
  • ipc: listen for user identity updates.
  • ui: my profile.
  • ipc: send identity updates.
  • ui: join community.
  • ipc: join community.
  • ui: community rendering.