pollen

a secure, decentralized messaging service that functions without any internet or mesh connection

Inspiration

pollen was inspired by the many governments who continue to shut off the internet in times of dissent

What it does

• messages propagate (securely) in the same way that bees pollinate flowers, over a network of nodes (run on raspberry pis in testing, but usable on any platform)

Challenges I ran into

• sending messages over TCP sockets

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• it is fully functional and theoretically legitimately usable in the real world, though I wouldn't endorse its security

What I learned

• though I already knew this, I have a better appreciation of the unbelievable amount of precautions that must go into major encrypted messaging apps

What's next for pollen.im

• compiled GUI releases for every major platform

Extras

• the final paper
• backend demo video