Logos Messaging

From Local Area Network

Logos Messaging is the messaging layer of the Logos technology stack, built for private, censorship-resistant communication between parties. Its main component, Logos Delivery, was formerly called Waku. With Logos Blockchain and Logos Storage it makes up the initial Logos stack, which people run on their own machines through Basecamp.

What it does

The Logos documentation says Logos Messaging lets applications send messages, relay data and coordinate with one another without relying on centralised servers or exposing metadata. Messages travel across a peer-to-peer relay network with no central broker. It supports one-to-one messages, group messages and public broadcast channels. Anyone can run a node, and there is no gas fee for sending or receiving messages. Among its use cases, Logos lists resilient, private messaging for coordination in hostile environments.

Logos describes the messaging layer as a transport layer, with chat as one of the things built on it. It lists three uses: coordination between people and groups that no platform is hosting, a channel the other modules and applications talk through, and a mixnet layer. In its words, the module removes "the platform that controls who can organise with whom."

How it works

Logos Messaging has two modules.

  • Delivery is the peer-to-peer messaging network at the base of the messaging stack and the reference implementation of the Logos Messaging protocol. Applications combine a set of protocols. Relay handles publish and subscribe messaging, in which senders publish to topics, the labels that route messages, and nodes receive the topics they subscribe to. RLN Relay adds spam protection with rate limiting nullifiers (RLN). In place of the sender's identity, each message carries a zero-knowledge proof. In the Messaging FAQ's description, the proof shows only that the sender belongs to a set of users allowed to send a certain number of messages in a given time. Filter, Store and Light Push serve nodes with little bandwidth. Store keeps messages for a time so that offline peers can catch up. It does not guarantee that they stay available, and Logos recommends Logos Storage for long-term storage.
  • Chat is a protocol and library for end-to-end encrypted one-to-one and group conversations. It uses de-MLS for group messaging and Delivery as its transport.

Delivery encrypts the connections between nodes but applies no default encryption to the data itself, so applications choose their own encryption for message contents.

LAN Issue 2, the Logos movement's zine, sets out what de-MLS changes. According to the zine, MLS, the standard for encrypted group chat, assumes an always-online server, so whoever runs the server holds the member list. The de-MLS version removes that server and gives the job to one member at a time, with the role rotating. Members propose adding or removing someone, and the group votes over the network. A protocol called Scalable Data Sync keeps every member in step, since each message points back to the messages that led to it. See Issue 2/Who Keeps the Member List?.

Logos Messaging is built on libp2p, a widely used peer-to-peer networking library. On top of it, Logos Messaging adds a service network that anyone can use without running their own infrastructure, and spam protection, which libp2p does not provide.

Its privacy has limits. Relay provides pseudonymity, so messages carry no real identity, and unlinkability, so messages are hard to tie to their sender. Store and Filter need a direct connection, so a node serving them can link a peer's identifier to the topics it asks for.

Mixnet

The networking layer of the Logos stack also includes a mixnet. It routes messages through a sequence of intermediary relay nodes that shuffle and delay traffic before forwarding it, and adds cover traffic. Logos describes the mixnet layer as running today as a demo. For Testnet v0.2.1 the documentation describes a separate desktop app, chat_ui_mix, built from a branch of the Logos Chat interface. It connects to a testnet-0.2 mix fleet and sends messages through the 3-hop mixnet so that they cannot be linked to their sender. With Testnet v0.3, Chat uses RLN and Mix through Delivery. Developers can also reach Mix through the Messaging API, and the Mix module allows node operators to run mix nodes.

In Basecamp

The Logos website lists a Chat app in Basecamp for encrypted one-to-one chat, peer to peer with no server in the middle. The procedure for one-to-one chat, marked accurate for Testnet v0.2.1, installs Chat from the Basecamp Package Manager. Installing it also brings in the chat module and the delivery module. The app gives each instance an address that another instance uses to open a conversation. In that version identity, conversations and message history exist only while the app is running. With Testnet v0.3 Chat keeps message history across sessions, although reopening it creates a new account. Conversations from an earlier launch stay readable under Previous sessions but cannot be sent to.

The group procedure, written for Testnet v0.3.0, covers end-to-end encrypted group conversations in the Chat app, with members invited by address. In that release membership only grows, as members cannot be removed and cannot leave.

Sending on the logos.test network needs an RLN membership, and a node's messages do not go out until its membership is active. In Basecamp the membership is registered from the Delivery Demo app. The node pays for it in LEZ native tokens from a payer account that it derives itself, and there is no faucet. Chat and its two modules are among the Basecamp apps that run natively on Windows.

On 1 November 2026 the official module catalogue, logos-co/logos-modules-release on GitHub, listed seven Logos Messaging modules. They include the delivery and chat modules, the Chat interface, a libp2p networking module, two rate limiting nullifier modules and an educational Delivery Demo. The catalogue pinned the delivery module at version 0.3.3 and the chat module and Chat interface at 0.3.0. The underlying chat library is pre-1.0 and still moving, with every component at version 0.1.0 and the protocol not yet frozen.

In use

Projects on the Tools page that use Logos Messaging include Booth, Receiver, Forumer, KYM, Perun, Shrooms, WhisperBox, Backpack, Whistleblower and Logos Autonomous Agent. LNS, LEZ Atomic Swaps and Forum-protocol also use it, though the Tools page lists those three under the Logos Execution Zone.

In October 2025 the Porto Circle proposed a privacy-first support tool for survivors of domestic violence, designed on Waku. Its proposal argued that "Existing helplines and police systems are centralised, easily traceable, and often unsafe."

Names

Waku is an old name for the Logos Delivery component of the Logos stack. Among the Logos repositories, logos-delivery was formerly nwaku and logos-delivery-js was formerly Waku v2. The documentation still links to Waku pages and specifications in places. The Logos Field Guide (2026), a guide for anyone publishing or building under Logos, notes that Logos Messaging was previously part of Waku. It asks for current module names in public-facing work and keeps the name Waku for legacy work, older documents, upstream history and specific technical components.

See also

Sources

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