While Internet allows direct communications, people depend on centralised services, giving them more and more control and personal data. The Jami distributed communication platform aims to solve this increasingly important issue by helping people communicate without depending on any third party.
Communication usually requires the use of a server to relay the signal between peers and providers often monetize their services by selling their users' data or by charging money for it. The Jami distributed platform allows peers to communicate directly with each other without relying on a centralized service.
In this talk we will present the Jami architecture. In particular, the distributed systems used by Jami, how they allow to perform fully peer to peer, authenticated communications and their limits.
We will also discuss the major next steps for the Jami platform, including the design of the distributed group chat feature coming this year and the challenges in its implementation. We will also present the latest design changes in the blockchain smart-contract used for username registration and their impact for Jami users and the community.