waste-rs

A modern reimagining of WASTE - decentralized, friend-to-friend encrypted mesh networking with chat and file sharing.

Architecture

waste-rs/
|-- proto/          Shared types (wire protocol, IPC messages)
|-- daemon/         Main peer process - runs locally on each friend's machine
|   |-- crypto.rs   Ed25519 identity, X25519 ECDH, ChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD
|   |-- mesh/       Connected peer state, gossip, broadcast
|   |-- nat.rs      Relay client + future hole-punching
|   `-- ipc.rs      Local JSON API for UIs (port 17337)
`-- relay/          Bootstrap/relay server - runs on your VPS

How it works

1. Each peer generates an Ed25519 keypair on first run -> their identity.
2. Two peers exchange invite info out-of-band (public key + IP:port).
3. On connect: Ed25519-authenticated X25519 handshake -> per-session ChaCha20 key.
4. All traffic is encrypted; the relay only forwards opaque blobs.
5. Connected peers gossip each other's addresses to strengthen the mesh.

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.78+ (via rustup)
• VS Code with the extensions in .vscode/extensions.json
• cargo-lldb for debugging (installed by the LLDB extension)

Install toolchain (Windows, Linux, macOS)

Use rustup on all platforms.

Windows (PowerShell):

winget install Rustlang.Rustup

Linux/macOS (bash/zsh):

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Then install required components:

rustup toolchain install stable
rustup default stable
rustup component add rustfmt clippy

Verify your setup:

rustup --version
rustc --version
cargo --version
cargo clippy --version

Getting started

1) Build workspace

cargo build --workspace
cargo clippy --workspace -- -D warnings

2) Run local relay

Linux/macOS (bash/zsh):

RUST_LOG=debug cargo run --bin waste-relay -- --bind 127.0.0.1:17339

Windows PowerShell:

$env:RUST_LOG = "debug"
cargo run --bin waste-relay -- --bind 127.0.0.1:17339

Windows cmd.exe:

set RUST_LOG=debug && cargo run --bin waste-relay -- --bind 127.0.0.1:17339

3) Run two peers

Use a local folder for data so paths are portable across platforms.

Peer A (terminal 2)

Linux/macOS (bash/zsh):

RUST_LOG=debug cargo run --bin waste-daemon -- \
  --alias alice --data-dir ./.local-dev/waste-alice \
  --peer-port 17338 --ipc-port 17337

Windows PowerShell:

$env:RUST_LOG = "debug"
cargo run --bin waste-daemon -- --alias alice --data-dir ./.local-dev/waste-alice --peer-port 17338 --ipc-port 17337

Windows cmd.exe:

set RUST_LOG=debug && cargo run --bin waste-daemon -- --alias alice --data-dir ./.local-dev/waste-alice --peer-port 17338 --ipc-port 17337

Peer B (terminal 3)

Linux/macOS (bash/zsh):

RUST_LOG=debug cargo run --bin waste-daemon -- \
  --alias bob --data-dir ./.local-dev/waste-bob \
  --peer-port 17340 --ipc-port 17341

Windows PowerShell:

$env:RUST_LOG = "debug"
cargo run --bin waste-daemon -- --alias bob --data-dir ./.local-dev/waste-bob --peer-port 17340 --ipc-port 17341

Windows cmd.exe:

set RUST_LOG=debug && cargo run --bin waste-daemon -- --alias bob --data-dir ./.local-dev/waste-bob --peer-port 17340 --ipc-port 17341

4) Connect B -> A via IPC

If nc/netcat is available:

echo '{"type":"connect","addr":"127.0.0.1:17338"}' | nc 127.0.0.1 17341

PowerShell equivalent:

$json = '{"type":"connect","addr":"127.0.0.1:17338"}' + "`n"
$client = [System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient]::new("127.0.0.1", 17341)
$stream = $client.GetStream()
$writer = New-Object System.IO.StreamWriter($stream)
$writer.AutoFlush = $true
$writer.Write($json)
$writer.Dispose(); $stream.Dispose(); $client.Dispose()

Relay on Hetzner VPS

cargo build --release --bin waste-relay
scp target/release/waste-relay user@your-vps:~/
ssh user@your-vps './waste-relay --bind 0.0.0.0:17339'

Then start the daemon with --relay your-vps-ip:17339.

IPC protocol

The daemon exposes a newline-delimited JSON API on 127.0.0.1:17337.

Commands (send to daemon):

{"type":"send_message","room":"general","body":"hello"}
{"type":"connect","addr":"1.2.3.4:17338"}
{"type":"get_state"}

Events (daemon pushes to you):

{"type":"message_received","id":"...","from":"...","room":"general","body":"hello"}
{"type":"peer_connected","peer":{...}}
{"type":"state_snapshot","local_peer":{...},"connected_peers":[...]}

Roadmap

• UDP hole-punching (STUN) in nat.rs
• Invite file format (.waste-invite) for easy onboarding
• File transfer implementation
• Tauri UI wrapping the daemon
• Peer gossip -> auto-connect to friends-of-friends
• Message persistence (SQLite)
• Mobile daemon (Android/iOS via Rust cross-compilation)

Crypto choices

Purpose	Algorithm	Why
Identity	Ed25519	Fast, small keys, strong
Key exchange	X25519 ECDH	Modern, fast, safe
Symmetric	ChaCha20-Poly1305	No timing side-channels, fast without AES-NI
Hashing	SHA-256 (ring)	File integrity

Replaces WASTE's original Blowfish/PCBC (broken mode) + RSA.