We are very excited to announce the release of Etebase - an open-source and end-to-end encrypted SDK and backend for applications. Etebase is the new name for the EteSync protocol, and what powers all of the EteSync apps.

We never want to use non-encrypted applications ever again, which is why we created EteSync in the first place. We believe that by enabling other developers to easily build encrypted applications, we can make this dream a reality. Etebase is therefore the direct continuation to our vision for EteSync. Let's end-to-end encrypt everything!

We already mentioned Etebase in a few previous blog posts, and it's already being used by developers and EteSync itself. So we figured it's finally time for a more official announcement. So this is it!

Already know what Etebase is? Head to the website or the docs to get started!

What is it exactly?

Etebase is a set of libraries and a server implementation (all open-source, of course) to help developers build encrypted applications. It hides away all of the encryption parts, and everything is done automatically in the background.

At the moment, it offers an easy way to save and sync user data in whatever simple or complex format your application requires. There are currently developer libraries for Rust, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java/Kotlin, Python, and C/C++, though we plan on adding more in the near future. We created place-holder repositories for a few languages we plan on supporting in the near future so you can star and watch them to sign-up for updates.

There is also easy to follow documentation for all of the above languages, including some example use cases and the first part of a formal specification.

In addition to the aforementioned capabilities, Etebase comes packed with a few additional goodies:

• Full change history (optional) - a full changed history of all your data is saved automatically.
• Integrity protections - use transactions and sync-tokens to ensure that your data is always consistent.
• Collaborative - it's easy to share the same data across different users.
• Fast and efficient - thanks to sync-tokens, only modified data is returned from the API making it very fast.
• Encrypted data de-duplication - changes to items are automatically de-duplicated. This means that if you change a small part of a very large file, only that part will need to be re-uploaded and saved.
• And much more...

Got any feedback? Please let us know!

Why are you releasing Etebase?

Over the years many developers have reached out to us about adding end-to-end encryption to their applications. We hope to enable them, and other developers to build the next-generate of applications as privacy-first and end-to-end encrypted.

Building encrypted applications comes with a myriad of challenges and requires changes to the development workflow. Good cryptography and bad cryptography look identical to the untrained eye, and the data being encrypted makes it harder for the server to maintain consistency, integrity and performance.

We already solved all of these problems (and more) in Etebase, so you don't have to. The same way that different applications don't reinvent HTTP for client-server communication, we believe they shouldn't reinvent Etebase for encryption.

EteSync Partners

Another thing we are very excited about is what we call partners. Partners build apps using Etebase using EteSync's Etebase instance, which means users just use their existing EteSync accounts. We then share the revenue from these users with the developers.

This lets developers build applications without worrying about the backend or costs at all, but also keep user data safe thanks to encryption. In addition to getting access to the large number of existing EteSync users.

More information is available on the Etebase website.

What's next?

We hope Etebase will enable a new age of privacy-first and end-to-end encrypted applications. Your data will no longer be used to track, analyze and manipulate you. Your data, yours only!

If you are a developer looking to secure your users' data: start using Etebase or come chat with us.

If you know of projects that could benefit from Etebase, please let us (and them) know!

Let's end-to-end encrypt everything!

Thank you NLnet and NGI0

The work on EteSync 2.0 is made possible with financial support from NLnet Foundation, courtesy of NGI0 Discovery and the European Commission DG CNECT's Next Generation Internet programme.

The NLnet foundation in general and the NGI0-PET in particular is funding projects to protect everyone's digital privacy, especially in the context of the "next generation" of the internet. It's an extremely important cause which we at EteSync are very much aligned with. Please help by spreading the word about them.

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or  are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Come chat with us on IRC/Matrix, or follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!

We are very excited to announce the official release of EteSync 2.0!

This would not have been possible without the hundreds of testers that helped us make sure everything is solid! So thank you all!

If you already know what EteSync 2.0 is and just want to upgrade your account, please refer the EteSync 2.0 migration guide.

As we said in the post announcing EteSync 2.0, time flies. We still can't believe it has already been three and a half years since EteSync was first released. It started out as a simple end-to-end encrypted sync solution for Android. We have since added support for sharing data with other users, and we now have clients for the desktop (DAV bridge), the web, and iOS, built-in support in and Tasks.org, and there are add-ons being built for GNOME, KDE and Thunderbird.

What is EteSync 2.0?

EteSync uses the EteSync protocol (now Etebase protocol) behind the scenes to power all of the apps. While the existing protocol has served us well, it limited our progress and prevented us from achieving some of the things we would like to achieve for EteSync, so after three and a half years, it's finally time for a major protocol upgrade.

EteSync 2.0 is a great improvement over the 1.0 version, while still maintainig everyone's favourite features and capabilities, including, end-to-end encryption, sharing and a full version history. However, since so much has changed under the hood, EteSync 2.0 and 1.0 are incompatible, and you need to migrate your account to 2.0 in order to start using it.

What does it mean for you?

It means we are finally be able to offer some long awaited and often requested features such as notes synchronization and secure location sharing. It means that your sync is faster. It means the EteSync applications are simpler to develop, which means they are easier to improve. We are already seeing these benefits in all of the apps, which already work much better, and helped us reduce large amounts of code.

In addition, there are a lot of user-facing improvements and changes, including:

1. EteSync 2.0 uses usernames for identification (rather than emails previously), so you will need to choose a new username. Usernames should be at least 6 characters long. Shorter usernames will probably be allowed in the future. Changing your email and username will both be possible later on.
2. EteSync 2.0 has just one password that's used for both the encryption, and the login. It uses a zero-knowledge proof to authenticate to the server making sure your password never leaves your device. This makes it more secure than before but much easier to use. Please make sure to keep it safe and don't lose it, as without it you won't be able to access your data!
3. The change log (previously change journal) used to show all of the changes in one long list. Changes are now grouped per item with only the latest changed shown. To show previous changes you need to click on an item and check the past revisions.
4. Invitations UI is a bit different, and there's now a special page for accepting or rejecting invitations, and it's now also easier to leave collections you've been invited to.
5. "Journal" has now been renamed to "Collection", which is a more accurate term and people find it less confusing.
6. You can now easily change your account's email address directly from the dashboard.

What's next

The above is just the tip of the iceberg. The biggest benefit of changing to EteSync 2.0 is not how it improves things, but rather what it enables us to do next!

Thanks to EteSync 2.0 we were already able to release EteSync Notes. Additionally, as we said in the previous post, we aren't ready to get into details just yet, but we plan on bringing in some long-awaited features such as secure location sharing. Expect a few more announcements in the coming month or two which will make EteSync a more complete solution for your data syncing needs!

We also plan on formally verifying the protocol using Verifpal and releasing a formal spec to make it easier for other developers to examine, use and improve it, and potentially making it into a standard.

Upgrade to EteSync 2.0

Upgrading to EteSync 2.0 is very easy. First thing to do is to make sure you've update all of your apps to their latest versions.

As we said above, EteSync 2.0 accounts are incompatible with EteSync 1.0 accounts, so a new account needs to be created. However, the billing for both is linked. The migration tool automatically takes care of linking the billing, so you don't need to worry about that.

For step-by-step instructions please refer to the EteSync 2.0 migration guide.

Developers: easily build end-to-end encrypted applications

Over the years many developers have reached out to us about adding end-to-end encryption to their applications. Building end-to-end encrypted applications is both hard to get right, and very time consuming, so using an existing solution makes a lot of sense, especially since EteSync is versatile and isn't limited to contacts, calendars, tasks and notes.

We are now also ready for developers. For more information, please take a look at the developer homepage (Etebase).

Thank you NLnet and NGI0

The work on EteSync 2.0 is made possible with financial support from NLnet Foundation, courtesy of NGI0 Discovery and the European Commission DG CNECT's Next Generation Internet programme.

The NLnet foundation in general and the NGI0-PET in particular is funding projects to protect everyone's digital privacy, especially in the context of the "next generation" of the internet. It's an extremely important cause which we at EteSync are very much aligned with. Please help by spreading the word about them.

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or  are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Come chat with us on IRC/Matrix, or follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!

Time flies. It has already been three and a half years since EteSync was first released. It started out as a simple end-to-end encrypted sync solution for Android. We have since added support for sharing data with other users, and we now have clients for the desktop (DAV bridge), the web, and iOS, built-in support in vdirsyncer and Tasks.org, and there add-ons being built for GNOME, KDE and Thunderbird.

All of the above was made possible thanks to the EteSync protocol, which remained mostly unchanged during this whole period. However, while the existing protocol has served us well, it limited our progress and prevented us from achieving some of the things we would like to achieve for EteSync, so after three and a half years, it's finally time for a major protocol upgrade.

What does it mean for you?

It means we will finally be able to offer some long awaited and often requested features such as notes synchronization and secure location sharing. It means that your sync will be faster. It means the EteSync applications will be simpler to develop, which means they will be easier to improve.

We will also change the EteSync usernames to be actual usernames instead of based on the email addresses. This will make it easier to support changing the email addresses you use with EteSync.

The above improvements are just the tip of the iceberg. We have a lot more coming, so expect a few more announcements in the coming month or two which will make EteSync a more complete solution for your data syncing needs!

In addition, the new version of the protocol will be formally verified using Verifpal and will be based on the widely used and audited libsodium, which together will provide very high confidence that everything is as secure as it should be. We also plan on releasing a formal spec of the protocol to make it easier for other developers to build implementations in other languages.

What's next?

The new version of the protocol is essentially ready, and the server side is fully implemented. We now need to upgrade all of the existing applications to use it. We have already made quite a bit of progress on this front, and we hope to have the web, Android, iOS and DAV bridge all ready for testing within the next few weeks.

After we are certain everything works as expected, we will add migration tools to each of the clients that will easily upgrade your EteSync accounts to EteSync v2.

Until then, we would love to get some help with making sure everything works as expected, if you are interested in helping out please reach out to us at the community chat (IRC/Matrix/Web), or email us at v2-testing@etesync.com. Edit: testing is now open for everyone! More information at the new blogpost.

Using the EteSync protocol in your app

Over the years many developers have reached out to us about adding end-to-end encryption to their applications. Building end-to-end encrypted applications is both hard to get right, and very time consuming, so using an existing solution makes a lot of sense, especially since EteSync is versatile and isn't limited to contacts, calendars and tasks.

With this new version of the protocol, the client libraries have been designed with 3rd party developers in mind, making it easier than ever to use the EteSync libraries in your apps. If you are interested, please let us know by emailing us at contact@etesync.com.

Thank you NLnet and NGI0

The work on EteSync 2.0 is made possible with financial support from NLnet Foundation, courtesy of NGI0 Discovery and the European Commission DG CNECT's Next Generation Internet programme.

The NLnet foundation in general and the NGI0-PET in particular is funding projects to protect everyone's digital privacy, especially in the context of the "next generation" of the internet. It's an extremely important cause which we at EteSync are very much aligned with. Please help by spreading the word about them.

If you are working on such a project and think you can make a big difference with some financial help, I suggest you apply here.

More specifically, if you have any cool project ideas related to EteSync please apply, or reach out to discuss it. We will be happy to help you with the application, and do our best to help with your actual project.

As usual, we would like to remind you that we rely on your feedback and contributions to make EteSync better. Do you have any suggestions or  are experiencing any issues? Please send patches, report issues or just contact us.

Come chat with us on IRC/Matrix, or follow us on Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, reddit or RSS for the latest updates and privacy-related content!