January 2023 status


screenshot of customized cryptpad instance for education

️ New pricing for hosted instances

The project site has new pages dedicated to Education, Nonprofits, and Enterprise. This is an opportunity to showcase some instance customizations and put forward some key arguments for CryptPad in each of these sectors. We are also launching our pricing range for managed instances, with the following basis:

  • Enterprise
  • Nonprofit (50% off Enterprise)
  • Education (50% off Enterprise + only staff are counted)

While self-hosting remains a free option for everyone, managed instances are a way for companies and organizations to contribute to the long-term stability of the project.

‍ Wolfgang joins the team

We are thrilled to welcome Wolfgang Ginolas to the team. He started first thing in 2023 as an R&D Engineer, bringing 14 years of experience in full-stack software development. Wolfgang will tackle some of the important challenges ahead, such as improving OnlyOffice integrations, and many more...

CryptPad Blueprints officially starts

Even though work has started since Theo joined the team back in October, the CryptPad Blueprints project has now been fully signed-off as part of the NGI0 Entrust fund.

Blueprints is perhaps the most R&D project we have done to date. It is about thoroughly documenting the use of cryptography in CryptPad, and paving the way towards the "next generation" of the project. This will be done through a set of deliverables that range from documentation to experimental prototypes, including but not limited to:

  • Whitepaper documenting the use of cryptography in CryptPad
    • Including a detailed threat model
  • Guide for users on how to use CryptPad in the most secure way
  • Experimental prototypes and/or mockups for future features:
    • Offline first editing with Conflict Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs)
    • Perfect forward secrecy for a more fine-grained degree of access control e.g. to the document history
    • Account-recovery mechanism making use of social secret sharing

Look for these as we start publishing outcomes in the coming weeks and months. If you'd like to hear about this work from Theo himself, catch his presentation at FOSDEM this Saturday Feb. 4th, which brings us to:

FOSDEM presentations

A few people of the team will be at FOSDEM in Brussels this weekend, so please come say hi if you are around. We'll be giving the following presentations

Whom Do You Trust?

Privacy and Collaboration in CryptPad

Speaker: Theo von Arx (Cryptography researcher, CryptPad team)
Day: Saturday
Start: 15:00
End: 15:25
Location: UA2.118 (Henriot)

https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/security_whom_do_you_trust/

The Importance of Collaborative Applications for European Digital Sovereignty

Progress and challenges of alternatives facing the BigTechs

Speaker: Ludovic Dubost (XWiki CEO)
Day: Saturday
Start: 15:45
End: 16:45
Location: H.1301 (Cornil)

https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/sovcloud_the_importance_of_collaborative_applications_for_european_digital_sovereignty/

Privacy and Collaboration

How CryptPad lets you have both

Speaker: David Benqué (Project lead, CryptPad team)
Day: Saturday
Start: 18:00
End: 18:25
Location: K.4.601

https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/collab_cryptpad/

Next up

  • Similar to Blueprints, CryptPad AUTH has been in the final stage of approval for some time, so we are looking forward to getting it over the line and start implementing new authentication features.
  • We have a number of big partnership projects lined up for 2023, each with the potential for adding new and important features to CryptPad in the year(s) to come. We hope to be able to say more in the next monthly status.