Quarks: A Secure and Decentralized Blockchain-Based Messaging Network

Abstract: In last two decades, messaging systems have gained widespread popularity both in the enterprise and consumer sectors. Many of these systems used secure protocols like end-to-end encryption to ensure strong security in one-to-one communication. However, the majority of them rely on centralized servers, which allows them to use their users' personal data. Also, it allows the government to track and regulate their citizens' activities, which poses significant threats to "digital freedom". Also, these systems have failed to achieve security attributes like confidentiality, integrity, and privacy for group communications. In this paper, we present a novel blockchain-based secure messaging system named Quarks that overcomes the security pitfalls of the existing systems and eliminates centralized control. We have analyzed our architecture with security models to demonstrate the system's reliability and usability. We have developed a Proof of Concept (PoC) of the Quarks system leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and conducted load testing on that. We noticed that our PoC system achieves all the desired attributes that are prevalent in a traditional centralized messaging scheme despite the limited capacity of the development and testing environment. Therefore, this assures us of the applicability of such systems in the near future if scaled up properly.