DMCNP (DMCN Protocol)
dmcn.dev- Category
- Developer Tools
- Rank
- No. 2077Tools index
Previous survey · No. 1967 ·
- Pricing
- Open Source
- Type
- TOOL
- Use case
- Security & Identity
- Interfaces
- Web · SDK
- Date
About
DMCNP is an open protocol that replaces SMTP-style trust with cryptographic identity: an email address names a specific public key, published and signed via a DNS record rather than vouched for by a central server. Messages are end-to-end sealed to that key before leaving the sender's device, so relays only ever carry bytes they cannot read, and there is no global directory that can be censored or seized.
What it does
DMCNP ties every mail address to a cryptographic key that a domain announces and signs through a DNS TXT entry, letting a receiving client confirm who actually sent a message. The sender's device encrypts mail directly to that key before transmission, and the relay carrying it in between only ever handles unreadable, encrypted data.
Stated on the product site
- License
- The code and schema are released under Apache-2.0 with a patent grant, though the license explicitly does not cover use of the project's names
- Identity keys
- Each user identity is built from a pair of keys, one for signing and one for key exchange
- Message encryption
- Each message is encrypted with its own symmetric key, which is then wrapped individually for every recipient
- Core protocol scope
- The required core covers only address resolution, identity verification, and sending and receiving mail, with onion routing and an SMTP bridge described as optional additions
- Relay wire format
- Relay communication is defined as length-prefixed protobuf messages carried over a peer-to-peer networking layer
Not stated on the site
- The page does not state whether any hosted or managed relay service exists for people who do not want to run their own, or what such a service might cost.
- Beyond its own reference implementation, the page does not say which mail clients or other software currently support the protocol.
- The page notes that formal versioning and a conformance test suite are not yet in place, without saying when they might be.
Written from the product site at dmcn.dev.
What it can do
Resolve an email address to its associated public key using a signed DNS record
Email address → Public key
Encrypt messages end-to-end to the recipient's public key before sending
Message and recipient public key → Encrypted message
Relay encrypted messages between users without decrypting them
Encrypted message → Delivered encrypted message
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