Rust

IMPORTANT: i dont reccommend you read through my code here. feel free to reach out for clarity on the details.

id like to investigate about rewriting my "decentralized p2p encrypted messaging app" in Rust. if you are familiar with any of the details, id like to hear your opnions on the approach.

my project is complex and would carry a significant overhead to redo in Rust. the core reason behind investigating rust is that it has better tooling for things like formal-verification. in general it seems like a better language for a project like mine. as a webdev, it was easy enough for me to put together and while i can use things like tauri to build for native, i think dioxus's approach for a native build is good.

im aiming to create something fairly unique for "secure messaging". i created a prototype (without AI) for my project to share and discuss. it demonstrates the core-concept around client-side managed secure cryptography in javascript.

https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat

javascript doesnt have a great reputation in the cryptography communities and its always a struggle to promote, so it was important for it to be open source. im proud of the work there, but i see details i overlooked. this led me to creating a new version to fix the outstanding issues. (it was things like handling key-rotation, group-messaging, etc).

https://positive-intentions.com/blog/introducing-enkrypted-chat

the MVP version lacked things like unit-tests, while the second-iteration not only had unit-test, but armed with AI, i was able to do things like create audits and formal-verification. the whole project is absurdly complicated and not worth your time to review. things like audits and formal-proofs/verification are fundamentally invalid because i used AI to create it. the attempt is genuine and i found the process educational, but cybersecurity and cryptography is specialized and has countless nuances to consider. it isnt worth your time to debug my code.

i now i think the project could benefit from being rewritten in Rust. its a much more suitable and respected language for what im trying to do, but i have never used rust to do something of this scale. i expect it will carry a huge learning curve given my background as a webdev.

https://github.com/positive-intentions/whatsup

creating a webapp for me is easy enough, but my project relies on some core technologies which i want supported on all platforms consistently. some core things i need to consider:

• webrtc - its the core data-channel for my project. im sure that as a webapp it can be done... it might be a stretch to build a wasm to bridge to JS if nessesary, but im sure it can work. i would also like rust to build for other architectures. i think the support is also reasonable for the native build, but i wonder it there could be issues for a CLI version.
• Module federation - in the browser-based version im using module-federation and its working as exected. it particularly helps to separate functionality, which is generally a good approach for a complex project. in Rust's cargo file, it seems i could add something like `foo_crate = { git = "https://github.com/MyOrg/foo/_crate"}`. that seems like it would also limit how i handle close-source details of the project
• local-only storage - a core detail to my app is that it works p2p without registration. there are no databases of registered users. in a pwa i can use various forms of storage provided by the browser. i would like to use an approach that is consistent in rust to avoid bespoke code for different platforms (easier maintainance).\
• ui framework - im using dioxus for far, but its largely AI slop... its could just as easily be leptos (im still investigating comparing the two)... but if i really think outside the box... i wonder how difficult it would be to use webcomponents from rust. i was working on a webcomponent framework and it would be interesting to seem if there would be a performance advantage to using something closer to vanillajs. webcomponents probably are not a good idea if i want better support between platforms.

maybe there are other details i should keep in mind? i think i will have to create multiple creates for things like UI components library and p2p-framework (similar to how i did it for the javascript version)

thanks for reading this far. have a nice day.