The protocol
Secure Net: private communication that nobody owns.
Secure Net is an open protocol for talking privately across sites that anyone can run. Your identity is a set of keys you hold, your messages are sealed on your device, and no single site or company sits in the middle.
Where it stands: version 0.7.0 in its source code, not independently security-audited, and used by one application so far.
Read the guide
What Secure Net is, how it is built, how it works and how to use it, with diagrams. Each section starts in plain words, then gives the exact details for people who build software.
PDF, 20 pages, 0.6 MB. Edition of 15 November 2026. Prepared with an AI assistant and not yet reviewed by a person; where it and the specification differ, the specification is right.
What it covers
Each part is written down in the specification and has reference code with tests. None has been examined by an independent reviewer yet.
Identity that belongs to you
Your account is a chain of keys you hold. A site can carry your messages, but it cannot pretend to be you.
CVP-001
End-to-end encryption
Messages are sealed on your device for the people you are writing to. The sites in between hold only scrambled text.
CVP-003
Sessions that resist a quantum computer
Two devices agree keys with an established method and a quantum-resistant one together, then keep changing them as they talk. A recording made today stays sealed, and a stolen key soon stops working.
CVP-016
Sites that talk to each other
Anyone can run a site. People on different sites can find each other and talk, and each site proves which site it is.
CVP-005
A sealed relay between sites
What one site sends another is sealed for that site alone, so nothing in between can see who is writing to whom.
CVP-015
Communities that outlive their host
A community keeps a signed history that approved sites can copy, so it can carry on if its home site goes away.
CVP-011
Debates and votes
Proposals, structured debate, and public or secret ballots that members can check. No blockchain is involved.
CVP-012
Consent you can withdraw
Specific, time-limited permissions, with a plain statement of what withdrawing them can and cannot undo.
CVP-014
Room for other applications
Sites say which features they speak and use what both understand, so different software can work together.
CVP-008
How one message travels
Ann is on one site and Ben is on another. Different people run each site.
Step 1: Find
Ann's app looks up Ben. Her site asks Ben's site for his public keys, and her app checks them itself.
Step 2: Seal and sign
Ann's app seals the message for each of Ben's devices and signs it. Only then does it leave her device.
Step 3: Relay
Ann's site passes the sealed message to Ben's site, in a request sealed and signed between the two sites.
Step 4: Check and open
Ben's devices check Ann's signature against her key history, then open the message.
Neither site can read the message. Either can refuse or delay it. Read the full walkthrough (on GitHub)
What each party can still see
Encryption hides what you say. It does not hide that you spoke. This is what remains visible, and to whom.
| Who | What you said | Who talks to whom | Your network address |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own site | No | Yes, for your conversations | Yes |
| The other person's site | No | Yes, for conversations with its people | Your site's, not yours |
| A community's home site or copy | No | Who posts in it, and when | Of the sites relaying |
| Someone watching the network | No | Which sites talk to each other | Yes |
What it is not yet
A written specification is not proof that software is safe. These are the limits we know about today.
Read from GitHub on 15 November 2026 at 23:17 UTC, and refreshed about every 10 minutes.
- Secure Net has not been independently security-audited. Do not rely on it where your safety depends on it.
- It is early software: its version number still starts with 0. Anything may still change, and no packaged release has been made.
- Its newest parts, the sealed relay, quantum-resistant signatures and end-to-end sessions, were written with AI assistance and have not yet been examined by a human security reviewer.
- Quantum-resistant sessions are in the protocol, but Commonveil uses them only as an optional, experimental extra layer on direct messages. Its ordinary message signatures, and private voting tokens, do not yet resist a quantum computer.
- Larger changes are still proposals under review, not part of the protocol: a standards framework, a social protocol, and a second version of sessions with groups. The Updates page lists what is open.
- Sites still learn who talks to whom and when, as the table above shows. Encryption hides what you say, not that you spoke.
- One application uses it so far: Commonveil. Working with a second, independent application has not been shown.
Read it, run it, or build on it.
Secure Net is open source under the AGPL-3.0-only licence. It needs no particular host, database or company, and you need nobody's permission to build something that speaks it.