Communications

Communications are one of the primary needs of an 'advanced' civilization. Without communications nothing is able to be accomplished outside individual tasks.

SECURE communications is essential for multiple reasons, and is a requirement for many pieces of software and organizations to meet their promises to their users and members.

However, unless the centralization component is removed, to make DECENTRALIZED AND SECURE messaging, there will always be a 'third party' that must have trust placed within their hands by others. This component is the primary concern in regard to censorship and other issues of today's world, that many people seem to disregard. Until the centralized components are removed, there can be no guaranteed security in digital communications.

Qortal (as of November 2023) has TWO communications platforms considered 'primary' to the platform. The information below will give a quick overview of these systems.

Qortal as of November 2023, contains two primary messaging platforms. Q-Chat, and Q-Mail. Q-Chat, operates as a 'UI plugin' for the Qortal UI, meaning that it is built into the Qortal UI. Q-Mail, is a Q-App, meaning it is published on QDN and is NOT part of the Qortal UI directly.

As of November 2023, Q-Mail DOES have a 'notification icon' built into the Qortal UI, however, this is NOT the long-term method that will be utilized for such notifications. In the longer-term the plan is to allow the creation of notifications for ANY messaging Q-App that the user wishes to add, and not to have focus on one Q-App, as this is not the concept of Qortal overall, which is meant to be able to be fully customized, with or without the 'authority' of any one group (including the existing Qortal developer group.)

Q-Chat was the first application that demonstrated Qortal’s communications capability. Q-Chat is a real-time text-based chat application. Q-Chat is built as a 'UI plugin', meaning it is part of the Qortal UI.

Both UI plugins and Q-Apps can be built for communications. The difference between the two is that Q-Apps are published on QDN, under a registered name, and can be published by 'anyone' without any sort of 'permissions' being given. Any user may register a name, create a Q-App, and publish it.

Q-Chat has evolved significantly since its inception as a humble text-only messaging system with a very low character limit. Q-Chat now has the ability to publish pictures, do replies, forward messages from one group to another, and much more. It is quickly becoming a suitable desktop-based messaging system replacement for the world.

As time goes on further improvements to Q-Chat will be made, as they have been in the past. Q-Chat at one point was planned to be able to store messages longer, however, based on input from the community and communications between the developers in the Qortal development group, the decision as of November 2023 is that Q-Chat should stay a 'temporary messaging' platform, in that the messages will not 'stay forever'.

Currently Q-Chat messagaes last 24 hours, as they have since inception, and utilize unconfirmed transactions on the Qortal blockchain, to send messages. These transactions have been increased in the total size they are capable of, as such increasing the total amount of characters that can be sent in any given Q-Chat message.

Groups, on Qortal, can be utilized in combination with Q-Chat, to create 'messaging channels' in which people can communicate between themselves, and other accounts that are within a group.

More specific details about Q-Chat can be found HERE.

The second primary messaging platform on Qortal as of November 2023, is Q-Mail. Q-Mail is a long-term messaging platform meant to be utilized as that of an e-mail replacement platform. With Q-Mail users can send long-term messages with attachments (of up to 25MB as of Nov. 2023, increases here will be made in the future.) to any other registered name on Qortal. Registered names are required for the use of any Q-App that publishes data, as all data on QDN is published UNDER THE NAME.

Q-Mail also has a system called 'threads' - this is a 'message-board-like' system wherein users in a private group (as of Nov. 2023) are able to make 'threads' and reply to them as they would in a message board, or 'forum'.

With the combination of Q-Chat and Q-Mail, there is the potential for both long-term and short-term messaging between both groups and individual users on Qortal.

Q-Mail is also the only messaging system as of Nov 2023 that contains GROUP ENCRYPTION for messaging. Utilizing threads in Q-Mail, users may now post ENCRYPTED group messages to one another, and attachemnts of up to 25MB. (Attachment limits and modifications to the methodology of the group encryption utilized, will be taking place in the future.)

Read more about Q-Mail HERE.

Overall, there is no comparison to a completely decentralized P2P communications system. These types of systems are very rare, as most companies and people building messaging apps are wishing to make use of those apps to ‘make money’. A truly decentralized application has no ‘owner’ and therefore cannot be used to enrich anyone. Also, a truly decentralized platform that is capable of building applications with features like those that exist on centralized systems, does not really exist. Qortal will be one of the first platforms to have all the functionality necessary to facilitate complex, decentralized P2P encrypted messaging systems.

Many other communications applications claim to be secure, encrypted, and unable to infringe on users’ privacy. However, it has been proven multiple times that 'encrypted service providers' will hand over information they claimed not to exist. Such as logs for VPN providers, and emails/other identifying information for encrypted mail providers. The primary issue with this, is not even really the fact that the information is not what people assume it is when they see 'encrypted messaging' or the like, but more that the ABILITY EXISTS AT ALL for information to be given without the authorization of the user, and that the service providers have the capacity to outright lie about the existence of logs, or the strength/application/nature/relevance of the encryption they claim is provided. Essentially, many messaging applications and the companies that run them, are blatantly lying about what their application does and how it does it. The only method to obtain truly secure P2P encrypted messaging, is to utilize a decentralized, AND encrypted system. Blockchain-based systems are a great way to establish such systems, but many of them are not being utilized in a fashion that also allows continued use without extensive amounts of data being REQUIRED by the underlying blockchain itself. The only blockchain-based system that will allow complex messaging applications and essentially everything that centralized services offer, is Qortal. Most other platforms, even ones that are decentralized on the base level, utilize some sort of centralization to accomplish certain goals that their base platform cannot facilitate. Whenever a centralized aspect is added to a decentralized application, it makes the entire application centralized and ruins the goal of decentralization.

Qortal’s infrastructure will allow any type of messaging application. From text to video, to audio calls and more, to be accomplished with true encryption that can only be accessed by the accounts involved (true decentralization and no ‘authority’ at all). Qortal will allow people to communicate completely securely without concerns of their information being viewed, used, and/or manipulated by centralized control.

More info can be found on the Q-Chat page.