For the millennials: built a dumb little P2P messenger with WebRTC
Been building this for fun - an old-school MSN-style messenger where chats happen directly P2P over WebRTC (best on desktop, but works on mobile too):
Firebase Anonymous Auth and Realtime Database act as a deliberately dumb server for presence, friends and signalling. SDP/ICE is encrypted before touching Firebase and removed after connection. No message server.
No email, phone number or other identifiable account info. Identities are browser/device-local, so if you clear your browser data, you lose access. Inactive accounts are also cleared after 30 days.
I’m using Firebase because it’s basically free at this scale and I’m too poor to run a DigitalOcean droplet… 😅 Though I might set up a “buy me a coffee” if it gains some traction!
I’ve also got an iOS beta built on the same principles (completely different UI). If anyone wants to try it on TestFlight, let me know in the comments.