Nim Chat POC

This is a technical proof of consuming the chat_proto in nim.

This POC introduces the following Conversation Types:

• Inbox : Asymmetric channel for receiving invites
• PrivateV1: 1:1 private messaing with Forward Secrecy and Post compromise security

Messages are delivered over Waku

See EchoBot for a minimal client side usage example.

Quick Start

# Build Dependencies and link libraries
make update

# Build executables
make all

# Run the Text Interface
./build/tui

Details

Message Flow

To establish a secure conversation, Saro and Raya need to:

1. Exchange key material
2. Agree on a secret key, and location to communicate

For this technical proof, recipient identity keys are exchanged out of bound via an invite link. More complex identity systems will be explored in the future.

Key derivation and message framing is defined by Inbox spec

sequenceDiagram
   actor S as Saro 
   participant SI as Saro Inbox 
   participant C as Convo 
   participant RI as Raya Inbox 
   actor R as Raya 


   Note over SI,RI: All clients subscribe to their default Inbox

   SI ->> S: Subscribe
   RI ->> R: Subscribe

   Note over R: Key Information is exchanged OOB 
   
   Note over S: Conversation is created
   C ->> S : Subscribe
   S ->> RI : Send Invite `I1`
   S ->> C : Send Message `M1`

   RI --) R : Recv `I1`
   Note over R: Conversation is joined
   C ->> R : Subscribe
   C --) R: Recv `M1`

   R ->> C: Send M2
   C -->> S: Recv M2

Limitations

1. .proto files are included in this repo due to complications in importing nested packages using ?subdir=. Once resolved there will be a single definition of protocol types.
2. Currently messages are not sent over the wire. They are simulated using a TransportMessage.

License

MIT