fmsg
An open distributed messaging protocol
Details
- External ID
- 47834580
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- fmsg
- Website domain
- github.io
- Launched
- April 20, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 5
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.11182519280205655
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
fmsg is a message definition and protocol intended as an alternative to email and IM apps. Like email it's distributed – anyone can host a server for their domain. Unlike email, messages are binary, verifiable by all peers, and linked into a DAG using cryptographic hashes. Sender verification and message integrity are built into the protocol, so you get what email needs SPF/DKIM/DMARC for out of the box.The host implementation (fmsgd) is written in Go. There's a Docker compose setup to get a full stack running in minutes: https://github.com/markmnl/fmsg-dockerThe spec is nearing v1.0: https://github.com/markmnl/fmsg — would love feedback. Send me a fmsg at @[email protected]
Enrichment
- Theme
- email infrastructure and inbox utilities
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Data infrastructure
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- distributed messaging protocol
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Designing a distributed, cryptographic DAG-based binary messaging protocol requires deep expertise in distributed consensus, cryptography, and network protocol design.
What it would actually take: The protocol would need formal specifications, a binary serialization format (e.g., Protobuf or custom binary schema), Ed25519/BLS cryptographic signing, and a peer-to-peer sync engine using libp2p or custom TCP/gRPC transports over distributed hash tables. The hardest problems are federated identity verification, Sybil resistance, DAG convergence/conflict resolution, and network abuse prevention without central authorities. This demands senior cryptographers and distributed systems architects.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 71 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #68 of 72 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 126 days after the earliest competitor.
- Flux, a tiny protocol that rethinks email from the ground up · hn · 2026-03-08 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway · hn · 2026-05-27 · 83 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- imyemail · ph · 2026-09-12 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- SentriSend · ph · 2026-09-09 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Self-hosted email server for 2026 · hn · 2026-01-03 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Alias · ph · 2026-09-07 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- SMTP Tunnel · hn · 2026-01-07 · 140 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- VaultSandbox · hn · 2026-01-06 · 58 upvotes · similarity 0.38
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a data infrastructure tool for Media & entertainment yet.