Mles is aging and references to “modern” and “lightweight” need constant evolving. The earlier state-of-the-art features need an upgrade.

So, what would be the preferable new state-of-the-art technology for next generation?

Based on earlier feedback for Mles during its existence, a more distributed approach would be preferable (even though it is not quite centralized, at least in a common sense). Another suggested feature is strong end-to-end encryption with hidden group member interactions.

Not bad suggestions. And they are nowadays achievable with surprisingly low effort.

Personally I think also CBOR encoding has proven to be awkward, why not ditch it for JSON headers to ease client implementation development? It would be awesome to be able to write a client with a few lines of bash + Netcat. I would call that “lightweight” :)

As a list, I’d summarize the next gen as follows:

• Fully peer-to-peer communication
• State-of-the-art encryption with established distribution protocol (e.g. Noise)
• Hidden protocol headers to avoid group level user interaction monitoring
• JSON format for optional extended headers
• Anything as payload

I already have a prototype implementation in my mind. I’ll publish a 2.0 beta at some point. Let me know if something is missing.