Researchers Unveil 'Encrypted Spaces,' a Cryptographic Architecture for Secure Collaborative Applications

Released on June 11, 2026, Encrypted Spaces is an open-source code library and architecture designed to let developers build rigorously end-to-end encrypted collaborative applications without requiring deep cryptography expertise. The project is led by contributors including Trevor Perrin, co-creator of the Signal protocol, engineer Nora Trapp, a former Signal technical lead now at Harvard's Applied Social Media Lab, and cryptographers from Microsoft Research. The system works by maintaining an encrypted change log of all user modifications to shared data; servers use zero-knowledge proofs to verify the integrity of that log and prove to each user's device that no changes are missing or unauthorized, without ever seeing the underlying data. A 'roll-up' property of zero-knowledge proofs allows the server to provide users with a succinct proof of the current state rather than replaying the entire change log. The team also released a prototype application called Spaces, which demonstrated functioning end-to-end encrypted messaging, group notes, a calendar, and file storage — though it currently lacks features like voice calling and search and is not recommended for production use. The project traces its origins to Signal's 2019–2020 work on encrypted group membership lists, which used anonymous credentials and zero-knowledge proofs, and has since expanded into a broader vision for privacy-preserving infrastructure across all application types. Cryptography professor Matt Green of Johns Hopkins described it as 'the Signal protocol for collaboration apps,' offering a standardized, reviewable foundation that developers can inherit security from without building it themselves.