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 architectural framework designed to let developers build complex, multi-user collaborative applications with rigorous end-to-end encryption, without requiring cryptographic expertise. The project was co-developed by Trevor Perrin, co-creator of the Signal protocol, alongside engineer Nora Trapp and researchers from Microsoft Research and Harvard's Applied Social Media Lab. Its core innovation is a combination of cryptographic change logs—records of every encrypted data modification—and zero-knowledge proofs, which allow a server to prove to each user's device that no changes are missing or unauthorized, without the server ever seeing the underlying data. A 'roll-up' property of zero-knowledge proofs further allows the server to compress the entire change history into a succinct proof, so users can sync to the latest state without replaying every individual change. The team also released a prototype application called Spaces, which demonstrated messaging channels, task tracking, a calendar, and file storage in a functioning encrypted interface, though they caution it is not yet production-ready. The project traces its origins to Signal's 2019–2020 work on encrypted group membership lists, which used anonymous credentials and zero-knowledge proofs to manage group membership server-side without exposing it. 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 properties from without building cryptographic systems themselves.