A Signal-based client for VOLPAROSSA — the Decentralized Intelligent Cooperative Network.
Keep the familiar Signal experience, with decentralized messaging, voice/video calling and private, cooperative backup storage supplied by the reusable VOLPAROSSA core.
Integration starts with Signal Desktop on Linux. The native encrypted-backup round trip now passes with distributed fragments and one storage provider offline: Signal exports and encrypts a snapshot, the original archive is removed, VOLPAROSSA reconstructs it from surviving fragment copies over its protected network, and Signal imports it with message and attachment checks. The backup connector records the exact trial and boundaries. This is not yet a complete modified Signal client: decentralized messaging, calling, automatic storage contribution and recovery UX remain unfinished. Existing core messages are not already Signal messages.
Compatible clients should exchange Signal Protocol ciphertext over VOLPAROSSA, without using Signal's message-delivery servers for that delivery. Signal retains responsibility for identities, sessions, encryption and decryption; the core transports opaque envelopes. Other peers must not receive plaintext, Signal identity keys or session state.
Ordinary Signal use remains available. Routing must account for every recipient device and the sender's linked-device synchronization, not just the visible desktop. The UI must distinguish fully decentralized delivery, mixed delivery and ordinary Signal delivery. Initial account registration, device discovery and prekey acquisition are separate dependencies; direct message transport does not by itself remove them.
Interrupted or ambiguous delivery must not silently create a second message or consume a second ratchet state. Delivery acknowledgements, retries, attachments, receipts, groups and offline recipients need explicit integration, not plaintext injection into the conversation UI.
Voice and video calls are part of the requested integration, including one-to-one and group conversations. Both call setup and encrypted media need a VOLPAROSSA path; delivering a call invitation through the network alone is not enough. Keep Signal's existing call cryptography and ordinary calling compatibility, and distinguish fully decentralized calls from mixed or Signal-backed calls.
Call media, private signaling and contact associations are not public-cache or training inputs. Group forwarding and connection fallback require their own integration and privacy checks. This is planned functionality, not a working calling feature in this repository yet.
Backup storage belongs in the core, so applications beyond Signal can use it. New exports now invoke the core's distributed fragment path: split Signal's encrypted archive into opaque fragments, spread two copies of each across at least three providers, and reconstruct them for the authorized owner. A real disposable-network trial now passes native export, loss of one of three providers, Signal import, a second non-consuming restore and explicit retirement of all copies. These providers are isolated namespaces in one test machine, not independent hardware. Existing full-archive backups keep their original recovery path.
Both paths are private retained storage, separate from the public content cache and agent-training data. Storage peers do not receive recovery keys. New fragment placement follows the core's common redundancy policy, not a separate Signal-specific protection tier; existing backups must remain recoverable.
The agreed contribution rule counts actual remotely stored bytes, including recovery copies and their overhead. A participant using 1 GB of remote storage must make at least 1 GB available for other users; a 1 GB archive with two full copies requires about 2 GB plus overhead. Offered capacity is not unlimited free disk, and a self-reported number is not proof that remote storage exists.
The contribution target follows usage down as well as up. Reducing actual remote use from 2 GB to 1 GB should reduce that target to 1 GB. Other users' live fragments must first move to verified replacement holders before their occupied space is released; insufficient replacement capacity remains a visible pending reduction, not silent data loss. This adaptive controller belongs in the core and is not implemented by the current local store.
Private leases, durable capacity accounting, restart recovery, renewal, expiry, deletion and complete backup restore must work before this is presented as cloud backup. Replication mitigates unavailable peers; it is not a promise of permanent availability. Chunk checksums are not encryption or authorization, and removing a lease cannot prove that an untrusted peer erased its bytes.
- Signal integration contract: actual send/receive seams, compatibility and remaining work.
- Encrypted backup integration: source staging, connector boundaries and the passing native round trip.
- Upstream provenance: pinned Signal Desktop/libsignal versions and licenses.
- Core: network transport, private storage and application interfaces.
- Browser: a separate client of that same core.
Signal and libsignal retain their upstream AGPL-3.0-only licenses and notices; this repository's existing license does not relicense them. Project VOLPAROSSA Chat is an independent integration, not an official Signal product.