[briar-devel] How does Briar know where to send a message to reach a given user?

[James M. <ja...@jm...>]

Hello,

I'm planning a secure social media tool, an alternative to FB where users
don't need to trust any servers (which makes it different from the
federated tools I know about).  Servers would do little more than pass
encrypted messages among users and other servers.  I like Briar's
priorities and approach to security, and I may try to use some of Briar's
code in it, or at least the protocols.

As I understand it, a Briar user's identity is basically just their public
key (?).  If each user isn't associated with a server, like the
use...@se... that some federated tools use, then how does user A
know where to send a message to get to user B?  Unless I'm missing
something, I don't see how to do that without a centralized lookup server,
which I thought Briar is trying to avoid.  Maybe server info is stored with
each contact?

I would love for my tool not to require a server name in user IDs; it would
be easier to use onion servers, for example, and easier to transparently
migrate to a different server.

Thanks a lot!  Links to docs, discussions, or relevant source code are most
welcome.

Cheers,
James

[Sent from my phone.]