DEN CHAT
Free your chat
Decentralized, encrypted group chat built on Nostr. One identity, no censorship, permissionless.
Why DEN Chat?
The platforms you rely on today share the same handful of problems. Different logos, same story: you don't own anything.
Platform-wide bans, message deletions, whole communities wiped overnight. Your account, your messages, and years of conversation can be changed or erased on a corporation's terms, with no recourse or appeal.
Messages sit in plaintext on corporate servers, readable by staff, bots, and anyone who gains access. Without open-source end-to-end encryption, "private" is a promise you can't verify.
KYC, age checks, phone numbers, email, sometimes a government ID, handed over just to talk and held against you. Step out of line and you're coerced, locked out, or suspended.
It all lives on one company's servers. When they shut down, get acquired, or simply decide you're done, everything and everyone goes with them.
The usual escape hatch just moves the pain: a separate account and login for every server you join (ten accounts, ten logins), a UX that breaks across instances. And each one still carries the same four problems above, scoped to whoever runs it.
DEN Chat was built to solve all of this: keys you hold, encryption anyone can audit, and a network no single company runs.
- Censorship-resistant
- Permissionless
- Encrypted by default
- No KYC or age verification
- One account everywhere
- You own your identity
Features
Everything you need for modern communication, built on freedom.
See it in action
Real hubs, real discovery, and real presence in voice, from flat chat to a virtual 3D space.
Coming Soon
We're just getting started. Here's what's on the roadmap.
Facts & Questions
Got questions? We've got answers.
Loading questions...
Guides & Tutorials
Learn how to get the most out of DEN Chat.
Loading guides...
DEN Chat vs. the alternatives
How DEN Chat stacks up against the chat platforms people use today, feature by feature.
“Can” = the company or server operator is able to. Censorship-resistant and permissionless are judged as a regular user. The first two columns stay put while the rest scroll.
| Criteria | DEN Chat | Discord | Mumble | Ventrilo | IRC | TeamSpeak | Stoat (Revolt) | Matrix/Element | Fluxer | Slack | Guilded (shut down) | Rocket.Chat | Zulip | Mattermost | Root | Nerimity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Can modify or delete your account, messages, and hubs/servers | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Can spy on your chat and calls | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Can coerce you to provide legal and private info | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Can be shut down | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Already was | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Is open source | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Partly | Yes | Partly | No | Yes |
| Is decentralized | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Partly | No | No | No | Partly | No | No | No | No |
| Is censorship-resistant | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Partly | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Is permissionless | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Partly | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Needs self-hosting to start a community you fully control | No | Not possible | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not possible | Not possible | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not possible | Yes |
| Has self-hosting | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Requires email, phone or ID to use | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Requires multiple registrations and log-in/out on self-hosters | No | N/A | Partly | Partly | Partly | No | Yes | No | Yes | N/A | N/A | Partly | Partly | Partly | N/A | Yes |
| Can separate fiction from reality | Yes | No | Partly | No | Partly | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Hover or tap a number in a cell to read its note.
The trade-offs
None of this is free. The freedom, privacy and control come bundled with real responsibility, and we'd rather you know exactly what you're signing up for.
Instead of the familiar sign-up you know, your identity is a cryptographic key. There's a learning curve to holding and managing keys, and it will feel unfamiliar at first.
You are responsible for your own keys. There is no "forgot password", no reset, and no support team that can let you back in. Backing them up safely is on you.
If your key is gone, so is your ability to publish as you and to open your encrypted content. You need to be at peace with that worst case before you rely on it.
A compromised key can expose your data and let an attacker impersonate you, modify, or delete your stuff. The flip side of total control is that the key is the whole castle.
The app is in alpha, an experimental build of a spec that isn't standardized or widely tested yet. Things will break, features may misbehave, and data can be lost. It isn't always as fast or robust as a polished centralized app, and it can use a fair amount of data at times.
Because your data lives across independent servers, a delete is a request those servers should honor, but some may not. Treat anything you publish as hard to fully take back.
Some will read these as dealbreakers, others as features. Either way they aren't accidents: they're the direct cost of high freedom, real privacy, and individual sovereignty. In one word, the price is responsibility.
Who DEN Chat is for
DEN Chat isn't trying to be for everyone. It's built for a specific kind of person, and it's honest about who it isn't for.
- You want what IRC, TeamSpeak, Discord and the rest offer, without the core problems baked into them.
- You're tired of walking on eggshells, wondering what gets you muted, banned, or erased next.
- You want real ownership of your identity, your data, your privacy and your freedom.
- You're tired of watching the same history repeat, and you want out, or you're already out.
- You can't carry the responsibility that comes with being in full control of yourself and your data.
- You couldn't live with losing or compromising your key, and starting again from near zero with a new one.
- You expect a company to step in and fix it for you when something goes wrong.
If that's you, that's completely fair, and DEN Chat honestly isn't the right tool for you. You'll be better served by a traditional, company-run app like Discord, Slack or Element, where that control is handed to someone else in exchange for a safety net. Use what fits you, no hard feelings.
DEN isn't chasing the average user or the masses, at least not today, even as it works to make the experience as good as it can be. It's for the people who are done repeating the same story and want a way out.
About
DEN Chat is built by Freeden (Free Developer Network), a developer effort dedicated to increasing freedoms through technology.
Freeden produces various open-source projects with a single goal: building tools that respect privacy, ownership, and freedom without compromise.
Freeden
npub18ly7pqxzm4mmy8rd47cdt74ahc424y95xdtl9t7vek8777l5xqss3pttwf
Sponsors
The organizations and individuals who make this project possible.
Are you ready to free your chat?
Join the decentralized communication revolution. No sign-up required.