Blind Peering 🔒

Keet has no central servers — a room lives on the devices of the people in it. That raises a fair question: if I send a message while the other person is offline, and then I go offline too, how does it ever arrive?

The problem

To sync a room, someone holding a copy of it has to be online. Most phones and laptops aren't online all the time — so two people who are never online at the same moment would never catch up on each other's messages.

The solution: blind peers

A blind peer is a peer on the network that is simply more available than most devices — it stays online so a room's data stays reachable.

When you send a message, a blind peer keeps a copy. When other members of the room come online — even long after you've gone offline — they sync the latest messages from whoever holds them, including the blind peer.

But can't that peer read my messages?

No — that's why it's called blind.

A Keet room is encrypted, and only the people in the room have the keys. A blind peer stores the room's data in its encrypted form and has no key to unlock it: it can't read your messages, files, or names. It helps keep the room available — it can never see inside it.

Want the deep technical version?

See Availability and blind peering 🍐 in the Pear documentation.