--- title: How should group chats work in decentralized systems? description: Building group chats in a fully decentralized P2P messenger (Kiyeovo) requires navigating tradeoffs that centralized servers normally handle: membership... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-should-group-chats-work-in-decentralized-systems--gbru0d40j twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How should group chats work in decentralized systems? | daily.dev og:description: Building group chats in a fully decentralized P2P messenger (Kiyeovo) requires navigating tradeoffs that centralized servers normally handle: membership... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-should-group-chats-work-in-decentralized-systems--gbru0d40j og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/GBRu0d40j.png og:image:alt: How should group chats work in decentralized systems? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How should group chats work in decentralized systems? **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Building group chats in a fully decentralized P2P messenger (Kiyeovo) requires navigating tradeoffs that centralized servers normally handle: membership authority, key distribution, message ordering, and offline delivery. The author evaluated several approaches — centralized coordination (Signal/Matrix), MLS/TreeKEM, leaderless membership, and fixed membership — before settling on a single-creator authority model. The creator holds exclusive rights to invite/kick members, identified by an Ed25519 key. Messages are encrypted with a per-epoch XChaCha20-Poly1305 symmetric key, rotated on membership changes. Group state lives in a DHT as a signed, hash-chained append-only log. Offline messages are stored in per-sender DHT buckets, and libp2p pub/sub topics are derived from the epoch key so removed members can't subscribe. Key tradeoffs include the creator being a single point of failure, no intra-epoch forward secrecy, and best-effort message ordering. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How to Create Your Own Decentralized Messenger Protocol - Build it yourself](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-create-your-own-decentralized-messenger-protocol---build-it-yourself-z9tasfswr) · Programming Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Part 1: Building End-to-End Encrypted Group Messaging in React Native with OpenMLS](https://daily.dev/posts/part-1-building-end-to-end-encrypted-group-messaging-in-react-native-with-openmls-cocmg3pz4) · Nitro Modules · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Seizing the means of messenger production](https://daily.dev/posts/seizing-the-means-of-messenger-production-9r784ont3) · Stack Overflow Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Email Simplicity vs Decentralized Chat](https://daily.dev/posts/email-simplicity-vs-decentralized-chat-xtvnrvi5u) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Messaging Encryption Has Come a Long Way, but Falls Short](https://daily.dev/posts/messaging-encryption-has-come-a-long-way-but-falls-short-n7hutoa7j) · Feisty Duck · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#encryption](https://daily.dev/tags/encryption), [#peer-to-peer](https://daily.dev/tags/peer-to-peer) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-should-group-chats-work-in-decentralized-systems--gbru0d40j) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How should group chats work in decentralized systems?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-should-group-chats-work-in-decentralized-systems--gbru0d40j","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-should-group-chats-work-in-decentralized-systems--gbru0d40j"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T19:39:39.582Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T19:42:40.172Z","description":"Building group chats in a fully decentralized P2P messenger (Kiyeovo) requires navigating tradeoffs that centralized servers normally handle: membership...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--foaA6JGU--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2004","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--foaA6JGU--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2004","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-should-group-chats-work-in-decentralized-systems--gbru0d40j","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"encryption,peer-to-peer","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How should group chats work in decentralized systems?"}]} ```