November 5, 2025
Messi memes vs math: MLS meltdown
Making MLS More Decentralized
Not That MLS: Decentralized chat, Messi jokes, and math
TLDR: Phoenix R&D proposes DMLS to make secure group chats work without a central server while keeping past messages safe. The comments instantly split between “not that MLS” clarifiers, Messi jokes, and a few serious devs, highlighting how big the stakes are for decentralized, private messaging.
Phoenix R&D says they’re making secure group chats more “decentralized” with a new idea called DMLS, and the internet responded exactly how you’d expect: instant soccer and real estate chaos. The moment someone said MLS, one wag asked, “Which team are they starting with first?” while another joked, “MLS has already decentralized Messi.” Cue the hero commenter who swooped in to clarify: this is Messaging Layer Security, not the soccer league, not real estate. Thank you, lifeguard of the brain pool.
Under the jokes, there’s a real story: MLS is the tech that keeps group messages secret, but it normally needs a central server to keep everyone in sync. Phoenix’s DMLS aims to let chats work without that “traffic cop,” even when conversations split into multiple timelines (think: two people talking at once). The nerdy tension: when conversations fork, it can weaken “forward secrecy,” the promise that old messages stay safe even if someone gets hacked later. Phoenix says they’ve got a fix inspired by research, while devs dropped useful breadcrumbs like a TypeScript MLS implementation and the MLS spec (RFC 9420).
But the thread devolved into a mini culture war: punsters vs. cryptography purists. One exasperated voice scolded, “important protocol… comments are full of unrelated puns,” while the rest dunked on Messi metaphors. Beneath the memes, the stakes are big: safer, serverless group chats—if the math, not the memes, wins.
Key Points
- •MLS relies on a Delivery Service to strictly order commits and avoid distributed systems conflicts.
- •Without a central arbiter, concurrent commits create forks, turning the group state history into a DAG.
- •Forks force clients to retain epoch key material, weakening Forward Secrecy.
- •RFC 9420 mandates sequencing and minimizing forked/previous states to preserve Forward Secrecy.
- •Phoenix R&D proposes DMLS, based on research by Alwen, Mularczyk, and Tselekounis, to address fork-related security issues.