Thread by @Conaw

So - pretty sure I just figured out a way you could get End to End Encryption for some or all of your @RoamResearch notes - as an open source #roamjs plugin - right now.

I'll sketch the idea out in this thread, and in 2 weeks, will award 10k to those who push the idea furthest

I'll also share another big decision we've made -- this week (if God wills it, inshallah, 🤞) we'll be shipping the first version of #roamdepot - an easy way to discover and install themes, javascript plugins, and community developed features that have been vetted by Roam team.

The obvious move would be to have #roamdepot be a marketplace - but we want to make sure the folks building free plugins are rewarded too - so to start we'll be distributing a portion of our revenue back to plugin authors based on installs and reviews.

Ok so - quick idea for how you might make e2ee work as a plugin.

Step 1 - you have to prevent the textarea of Roam from saving - (maybe insert a textarea of your own above it) -- before any edit actions fire - you are going to run it through encryption algorithm with local key.

I know @roamhacker has done some wild stuff with simulated textareas - so if I was doing this he's someone I'd want to talk to

Possible we might need to add some stuff to our API to help, if you send me requests or questions - I'll have a call and post recording in next few days

Next step - when you're decrypting the text - you're going to run it through that cypher with the private key stored in local storage.

Limitations: if you've got the version of e2ee - you'll get no unlinked references, probably no search, query, autocomplete

Do have other ideas

One idea -- and you could totally get a proof on concept for this done with {{roam/render: }}

You have a tag like #private -- and the blocks created which have that tag - or nested below that tag - or on a page with that attribute - are not saved to the standard graph at all

Instead what you do is first those edits to a different datascript connection -- which could be local - or on a server you own -- or to just another area of our backend eventually

BUT before those edits get sent over the wire 🔒-- and before edits are read into local state 🔓

Beauty of @nikitonsky's datascript is you can do queries across N distinct in-memory databases -- so in theory, you could weave a few different local dbs together that have different sharing settings (provided you have access to them all)

Basically - there are few different ways to approach this -- the weak version is basically just taking the feature we already have - but making it more ergonomic for longer form writing (whole pages or subtrees quickly 🔒 and 🔓--no special Roam Features)

https://twitter.com/RoamResearch/status/1226658292333568003?s=20

The strong version does same thing as above - but rather than the encrypt/decrypt step happening between the text input and the local state - it happens between local state and our syncing backend.

Some parts might be especially tough for a 3rd party developer - but seems doable