wireapp

proteus

Rust2016–2019

wireapp / proteus

proteus

Axolotl Protocol Implementation

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6Distinct people

6Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

420GitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Axolotl Protocol Implementation

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

signalapp/libsignal-protocol-java · linked in 2 of the same discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year6 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-05-18 22:02:05 UTC to 2019-09-03 05:49:00 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Comments
2016	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	4	4
2017	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1

What Hacker News says

6 sources

cwyers·Sep 3, 2019

Signal is really three things with the same name (four or five, if you count the foundation and/or the LLC): 1) The Signal protocol, which can have multiple implementations (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype all use it), 2) The Signal client and server, which are open source, and 3) The Signal service operated by Signal Messenger, LLC. You can use either 1 or 2 to implement a system that doesn't require a phone number to use. Wire, for instance, is a messenger that has adopted parts of the Signal protocol and the Signal source code. [https://github.com/wireapp/proteus/blob/develop/src/internal...] What you can't do is change how the Signal servers operated by Signal Messenger are operated, or refer to your own client/server using Signal trademarks.

In Hong Kong protestors using Bridgefy's Bluetooth-based mesh network messaging app

Siimteller·Apr 9, 2017

If you're into rust then their crypto is all in Rust https://github.com/wireapp/proteus

In Wire messenger server code open-sourced

jnthn·Oct 7, 2016

Check out https://github.com/wireapp/proteus/

In TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

niftich·Jul 23, 2016

They use a Rust library [1] they wrote for the Axolotl protocol, which is the old name for the Signal protocol before it was renamed [2]. They refer to their implementation as 'Proteus'. [1] https://github.com/wireapp/proteus [2] https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-inside-and-out/ EDIT: Their webapp is written in Coffeescript, including their cryptography functions used in said webapp [3]. [3] https://github.com/wireapp/wire-webapp/search?q=proteus&type...

In Wire open-sourced

jsnell·May 18, 2016

"Impossible" is a tough standard to meet. But given how different idiomatic Java code and idiomatic Rust code are, it does seem kind of unlikely. I'd expect nothing at all would carry over from one codebase to the other even if you were making as straight a port as possible. Or alternatively one program would look like total garbage, like someone mechanically translating Lisp to C. And indeed, with a quick browse through the Wire [0] and OWS [1] repositories I just can't find any kind of commonalities at all. Not in the structure, not in the comments, not in naming, not in the data structures, etc. Am I missing something, is there anything at all in the code itself that suggests the two codebases are related in any way at all? Or is the "GPL's OWS code" you refer to something else entirely? [0] https://github.com/wireapp/proteus/tree/dev

Read the rest

elop/src/intern [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-protocol-java/tr...

In Open Whisper Systems Partners with Google on End-To-end Encryption for Allo

nkobeissi·May 18, 2016

> Complaints about Signal are, unsurprisingly, getting dumber and more venomous. For instance, last week, Nadim Kobeissi (the author of Cryptocat, a competing secure messaging system that I think you should avoid) was on Twitter talking about how impossible a GPL violation could have been given that Wire's Signal implementation is in Rust. Given that I'm mentioned by name (and tied to a bunch of exaggerated claims), I'd like to clarify a few points. 1. I never claimed that a GPL violation was impossible because of different programming languages. I merely questioned whether this was the case with Wire's Rust codebase [0], given that its data structures, namespacing etc. are substantially different from the OWS Java code [1]. To me, different code organization + different implementation style + different programming language don't exactly

Read the rest

amount to a line-by-line conversion from Java to Rust as OWS seems to be claiming. 2. Cryptocat does not compete with Signal: it's a desktop XMPP client that focuses on synchronous messaging (that I write in my free time and with no funding or business plan, to boot), and does not at all target the mobile space. I was very happy to adopt a variant of Signal Protocol into Cryptocat and consider Signal's contributions to the field of secure messaging to be highly valuable. I'm not sure why tptacek brings up Cryptocat (completely unrelated to this discussion) but by all means, don't avoid it! The recent rewrite is pretty good, actually. Overall, this situation just struck me as very ugly. Moxie seemed at some point to be reticent to allow fully independent implementations of the protocol, and Wire's lawsuit was pretty aggressive. Both parties locked in a catfight and then (apparently?) realized their approaches were counterproductive and gave it up. The best resolution here, in my view, would have been for Moxie to publish a public-domain reference specification document of Signal Protocol that's independent of the code, and for Wire to be allowed to write a Rust implementation of it without any party causing drama. [0] https://github.com/wireapp/proteus [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-protocol-java

In Open Whisper Systems Partners with Google on End-To-end Encryption for Allo