dnsmesh 0.7.0

A federated end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol delivered over DNS

DNS Mesh Protocol

End-to-end encrypted messaging delivered over DNS. No central server, no app store, no gatekeeper — runs on the same infrastructure the internet already runs on.

Documentation · Getting started · Protocol spec · 5-min training deck

Status: non-certified yet, pre-external-audit. Wire format, federation, identity / key rotation, multi-tenant auth, and the formal protocol spec are shipped. Don't route confidentiality-critical traffic through DMP until the cryptographic audit lands. See SECURITY.md.

What it is

DMP is an open protocol for moving end-to-end encrypted messages between two people, using DNS as the transport. The recipient looks your records up the same way any computer looks up google.com.

Instead of trusting one company to relay your messages, you trust the DNS recursive chain — which is already what every device on the internet does for every other lookup, all day, every day. That chain has no single owner.

If DNS works on your network, DMP works on your network.

Try it (5 min, against the public node)

pipx install dnsmesh

# Set a passphrase. This is the ONLY thing protecting your identity
# keys — back it up like you'd back up an SSH key. The CLI reads it
# from $DMP_PASSPHRASE first, then a file at the path you set in
# config (~/.dmp/passphrase, mode 0400), then an interactive prompt.
read -rs DMP_PASSPHRASE                      # silent — not in shell history
export DMP_PASSPHRASE

dnsmesh init alice --domain dmp.dnsmesh.io --endpoint https://dnsmesh.io
dnsmesh tsig register --node dnsmesh.io     # one HTTPS hop, mints a TSIG key
dnsmesh identity publish                     # DNS UPDATE + TSIG, no more HTTPS
dnsmesh identity refresh-prekeys             # forward-secret first messages

# Add a contact you know (someone who's already published):
dnsmesh identity fetch [e-mail] --add

# Send + receive
dnsmesh send [e-mail] "hi bob"
dnsmesh recv

The passphrase derives your Ed25519 + X25519 keypair via Argon2id. Lose it and you lose the identity — there is no recovery. Persist it in a password manager or a 0400-permission file. See Getting Started → "Set a passphrase" for the file-based and persistent setups.

Curious what a node currently publishes:

dig _dnsmesh-heartbeat.dmp.dnsmesh.io TXT +short

A live, signature-verified directory of every DMP node currently advertising itself on the public DNS chain: https://ovalenzuela.com/DNSMeshProtocol/directory/. Rebuilt every 30 minutes by an aggregator that queries _dnsmesh-heartbeat.<seed> + _dnsmesh-seen.<seed> from a federated seed list (directory/seeds.txt); anyone can run their own aggregator off the same data.

Full walkthrough with troubleshooting in Getting Started.

Self-host (one VPS)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oscarvalenzuelab/DNSMeshProtocol/main/deploy/native-ubuntu/install.sh \
    | sudo DMP_NODE_HOSTNAME=dmp.example.com bash

After install you need to delegate a DNS subzone to the node so public resolvers can find the records it serves. One NS record at your registrar, one env var on the node. Full walkthrough: Deployment → DNS subdomain delegation.

For a clustered HA deployment (3+ nodes with anti-entropy): Deployment → Cluster.

How the trust model works

After M9 (0.5.x), the protocol speaks DNS in both directions:

• Reads — plain DNS TXT queries. Anyone can resolve any user's identity, mailbox slots, or chunks via the public recursive chain.
• Writes — RFC 2136 DNS UPDATE signed with RFC 8945 TSIG. Each user holds a per-user TSIG key (minted via one HTTPS call to /v1/registration/tsig-confirm) scoped to their own DNS owner patterns. Two users sharing a node can't overwrite each other.

The only HTTPS the protocol uses for normal operation is that one TSIG-key registration step. Everything else is DNS. Cluster anti-entropy between same-operator nodes stays HTTPS as a documented HA-only exception (design note).

End-to-end encryption is X25519 ECDH + ChaCha20-Poly1305, with Ed25519 sender authentication and one-time prekeys for forward secrecy. Wire format and crypto details: Protocol → Wire format.

Not a good fit for

• Real-time chat (DNS caching gives propagation in seconds-to-minutes)
• File transfer or media payloads
• Anonymity from traffic analysis (DMP hides content, not metadata)

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Substantial test suite; security-sensitive changes get an extra review round.

License

AGPL-3.0 — if you host DMP as a service you must publish your changes.