I have been working on an Android App quite a while now, starting from a simple idea.
A messenger where messages travel directly between phones with no servers in between. Using direct WebRTC encrypted connections (SRTP/DTLS), there are no servers that stores, reads, or relays content. Group chats use a gossip protocol where members relay to other members.
The only infrastructure the app touches is a signalling relay to set up the connection (no message content), a push notification to wake up a sleeping phone (also no content), and a TURN relay for restricted networks (encrypted packets only).
I wrote a detailed white paper explaining the full architecture: https://www.mindtheclub.com/white-paper.html
The app is in Open Testing on Google Play (1,000 tester cap): https://www.mindtheclub.com/beta-signup.html
I’m interested in this community's perspective on whether the architecture holds up.
Briar is good, it has just has a different positioning.
MTC is a balance between standard rich multimedia real-time messaging, including audio/video calls, and privacy (full peer-to-peer).
Briar's design, based on Tor, limits the possibility of a full messaging experience (WhatsApp-like), but it's strong on metadata hiding, and its target users are different (activists and journalists in hostile or censored environments, etc.)
MTC's target users would be standard messaging app users with some more attention and concern about protecting their private conversations, without giving up all the standard messaging features they're used to.