If you're designing E2EE in 2026

And your expectation for the user experience is that even half your users will

• manually verify key fingerprints, safety numbers, etc.
• know what to do when these mechanisms fail

Then you have not been paying attention to the research at all!

That isn't the normal behavior for how we use software.

When's the last time someone you know that doesn't know what "TCP" is inspected a website's certificate before sending it their password?

2026, the year of the AI-driven attacker that could do back flips, they said.

Meanwhile, there's a magic number that allows Auth Bypass against Ivanti EPM (CVE-2026-1603)

something about a pledge 🙄

I wrote this blog post in October 2025: https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-tomorrow/

I think we're getting close to seeing the Public Key Directory project stabilize on a v1.0.0 soon.

COCKTAIL-DKG feedback should be coming in "soon", and then I will begin working on implementations.

It's only been like 3 months (and a lot of that was absorbed by holidays).

With cautious optimism, I may be able to demo v1 of FREEON and ActivityPub E2EE with Key Transparency at DEFCON.