Estoc Research

Estoc Research is an independent research studio working on decentralized communication: how people can keep their own data, host their own presence, and reach each other — even offline — without a platform in the middle.

What we believe

Your data should live on your devices, not in someone else's cloud. Your content should be served from hardware you control, addressed by who you are rather than where you signed up. And your messages should reach you even when your devices are asleep — carried by relays that hold sealed envelopes, not readable mail.

None of this requires everyone to become a system administrator. It requires protocols where delegation is safe: where the parties you rely on can be verified, replaced, and told as little as possible.

Three research threads

Local-first data

Data that lives on your own devices and syncs between them on your terms. Servers, where they exist at all, are replaceable relays — not the home of the truth.

CRDTs · sync protocols

Self-hosted presence

Publishing from a machine you control — a home server, a small box on your shelf — and being findable through your identity, not a platform account.

DIDs · did:web · did:peer

Messaging that survives offline

Personal devices are not always on. Mediators accept encrypted envelopes for you while you're away and hand them over when you return — seeing ciphertext, never content. How little can a mediator be made to know? That question is our sharpest point.

DIDComm v2 · Coordinate Mediation · Message Pickup
you sealed envelope mediator ciphertext only picked up later them offline right now — and that's fine
Mediated delivery in DIDComm: the mediator is a mailbox, not a post office. It stores sealed envelopes until their owner collects them, and learns as little as the protocol allows.
Where we are

Estoc Research is new — a set of questions before it is a set of answers. We are mapping the DIDComm mediator ecosystem, running interoperability experiments, and measuring what mediators can actually observe. Research notes will be published here as they mature.

Contact

Working on mediators, local-first software, or self-hosted identity? We'd like to compare notes: estoc@merely.ca