[tor-dev] [GSoC] CONIKS implementation for Tor Messenger

[Huy Vu Quoc]

Hi Marcela, 

Thanks for your quickly reply. 

> It's reasonable to assume that the client may one day talk to other CONIKS servers and  
> clients. So clearly specifying the data format that the Tor Messenger client (and also 
> the server) uses is an important part of the project. Ultimately, the data format specification  
> should follow the data formats given in the paper. So you should provide a clear specification  
> for Tor Messenger but you shouldn't worry too much about making it compatible with other  
> services. The main reason being that we don’t know of other communication services that  
> have already implemented and deployed CONIKS. 
>  
> I'm not currently working on a standard specification. That's something that I think  
> communication/identity providers should come together to do once there are a few tested  
> deployments of CONIKS. This is what I've heard from other communication service providers  
> I've talked to, and I think it makes sense. 
>  
> To get a rough sense of what a data format might look like, you may look at the CONIKS reference  
> implementation (github.com/coniks-sys/ref-implementation). It uses Protobufs  
> to specify the data exchange format, so you could use a similar format. 

Thanks for your suggestion. I will have a look at this carefully.   

> As part of your application, we’d like for you to provide us with your planned timeline  
> according to the functionality we’d like to have. Here’s the functionality that would  
> be great to have by the end of the summer: key registrations, lookups and monitoring.  
> The nice thing about splitting up the functionality like this is that it allows for the  
> key server and the client to be built incrementally. So given how you want to tackle these  
> tasks, you should set up your plan accordingly. 

I get it. It would help me a lot when writing my proposal. 

best, 
Vu Quoc Huy