I’ve been looking for the perfect modern messenger for a while. Something that acts like a torrent for chat history, bypassing central servers entirely while keeping the contacts opt-in. I recently stumbled upon Keet and won’t lie, I’m slightly enamoured. It actually feels like it truly wants to be a serverless, distributed messenger at the conceptual level.
It’s not perfect though…
The Good:
- Real P2P
- Surprisingly fast for a DHT-based system.
The Bad (and why I’m hesitating):
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I want to self-host an “archive node” (a blind peer) to seed chat history for when my phone is offline. Right now, there is no official Docker image or headless mode. You seemingly have to hack together a container running a full desktop GUI just to keep a peer online. For a protocol built on distributed data, the lack of an easy “always-on” relay is a massive oversight. Ugh!
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It ignores platform design conventions. There’s no Material 3 Expressive adoption; it ignores predictive back gestures and navigation standards. It feels like using an iOS app port or a generic web-wrapper, which is disappointing to say the least.
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It’s source available rather than open source.
“Real P2P” is also slang for “your contacts know your IP address/approximate physical location” so adjust your expectations accordingly.
Yep Briar is also serverless over the distributed network that is TOR. Not to mention P2P over wifi and BT. It just lacks a pretty modern client like Keet.
Keet is also funded by a crypto company soooo…
Well, if it wasn’t dead in my eyes before, that last sentence seals the deal!