Are you still using Keybase?

No, and I am sad about it. Like a lot of people, I stopped using it when the Zoom acquihire was announced.

The Keybase backend was never open-sourced and there doesn't seem like a viable path forward for Keybase without the founders.

At the same time, doesn't seem to be any other single solution for the range of things Keybase did.

For secure E2EE chat, I moved to Matrix/Element and it was extremely painful. I am rooting for them, but getting regular people (like my dad and sister) onboarded is super hard. A typical HN reader can probably make it work, and deal with all the bugs and issues, but a "normal" person not so much. The bot story isn't anywhere close to as good as it was with Keybase. Most of my friends can't be bothered to get it set up and working, either.

I really miss Keybase Git, which was a brilliant idea that I haven't seen anybody else do. I set my dad's company up storing their business documents in git backed by Keybase git instead of GitHub. I had to move that git hosting to a server I now have to manage, ugh.

I didn't really use the "secure file sharing between arbitrary people" feature, but I don't know of anything as easy if you did want to do that. I use Syncthing to share sets of files across my own machines, and it works well for that.

The crypto wallet part is well-covered by existing apps. No big loss there.

I really liked Keybase, especially toward the end when the performance problems on mobile with sharing images and basic stuff like that were mostly fixed, and the apps started to show a higher degree of polish.

It is pretty hard to recommend Keybase at this point, though — never fully open sourced, and complete radio silence since the "we've been acquired" blog post. I think it is highly likely that bits will gradually stop working and won't get fixed, and/or Zoom will pull the plug.

(I was afraid that happened the other day, when Keybase Git stopped working and git push operations were failing, but it came back up. Not sure what happened, and AFAIK there was no announcement or anything.)

I still use KBFS, but I don't use the other features as much anymore. I moved the encrypted git repos to private GitHub repos, which was fine for what I was doing. I never used the chat much. I couldn't get anyone in my circle interested in it so there wasn't a lot of value for me.

I feel like Keybase missed a lot of money prior the acquihire. I would've spent $xx/month or year for some of the capabilities or increased storage in KBFS. Additionally, it didn't integrate well with other environments (especially mobile) and applications. Dropbox and others expose their contents to other applications on mobile OSes. If Keybase had done that for KBFS, it would've been fantastic for me. I had been keeping a lot of org files in KBFS (still have them there, but backed up to other locations). Being able to pair something like beorg + KBFS would've been very convenient. Or KBFS + textastic.

But I had to open the files inside a plaintext viewer inside the Keybase app. And that's just one possible UX improvement. If they'd been willing to take customer money for some of the things, they could've afforded to work on those kinds of enhancements.

Not actively anymore. In fact, you've reminded me I should shut down and clear out my account.

I only really used the cloud drive type capability, which I've replaced with Sync Thing running on a handful of devices.

The thing I will miss is the identity assertion chain. I'm not sure of the best alternatives for asserting that the same person controls accounts on different platforms.

I didn't really use the chat or git functions.

Love Keybase, will continue to use as long as possible. Running a little company with it, too. Cyph is utterly shit in comparison, and I even paid for that. I am concerned at Zoom’s purchase but not that much yet.

Sad to say but I am still using Keybase. The only part that keeps me on using Keybase is because I love the KBFS (File Storage), Chat, and the Keybase.pub (Static Hosting HTML and Markdown) sample: https://coffeekitkat.keybase.pub/blog/env-vars-in-vue

The moment of Zoom acquisition, I barely used Keybase and started to research about alternatives, but I haven't found one that can match or have better quality than Keybase if ever I've found something good I might say goodbye to Keybase.

You can still use the platform if you find it really useful specially the Chat feature of it, but always be cautious. I personally have doubts and trust issues towards Zoom.

Keybase is great, but a full alternative is needed.

Related Topics/Links that might interest you:

[Zoom Acquires Keybase](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23102430)

[Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23103386)

[Open source the server components of Keybase #24105](https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/24105)

What exactly does (did) Keybase do?

It was my understanding that Keybase worked like this:

- Alice has a bunch of online accounts (Github, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)

- Alice wants someone who knows one of her accounts to be able to find all of her accounts

- Alice generates a keypair (public P, private K)

- Alice posts a certain kind of message signed by K somewhere on her public Github, public Twitter, and public LinkedIn

- Alice uploads the account ID's to a server owned by Keybase

- Keybase verifies the signed messages and keeps track of who has what accounts on what platforms

- Bob asks the Keybase server who Alice (Twitter ID) is on other platforms

- Keybase server returns a list of accounts

- Bob can verify the returned list of accounts by running the signature verification himself (i.e. the Keybase server is only used for finding the account names)

Basically in my mind, "Keybase == Somebody duct-taped together a PKI using public posts on social platforms."

But reading others' comments I see that:

- Keybase is a chat

- Keybase is a better Git than Git

- Keybase shares files securely

- Keybase is a crypto wallet

- Keybase is the KBFS filesystem

- Keybase is easy for non-technical users to use

Did I miss something?

I stopped using it the day of the acquisition announcement.

I miss encrypted git repos a lot, nothing else I’ve found is as reliable or easy.

Irrelevant to zoom acquisition, I refused to go anywhere near it from the get-go because this is not something that should be run by a for-profit company.

The open source community needs to work on a protection mechanism to prevent decay of certain properties/guaranteers upon acquisition.

I think one way could be the right legal language in an open source license (e.g. acquisition triggers the duty to open source).

I’m no longer using Keybase but i wasn’t making much use of it before it was acquired by Zoom

Nah. Got rid of it when they kept spamming me about some cryptocoin or other.

Honestly being owned by Zoom makes them more trustworthy at this point, they don't need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to pay for it

Good alternatives to keybase?

I deleted my account shortly after receiving their cryptocurrency spam.

In the early days it seemed like a good idea, to improve upon the ideas of the web of trust, but they seem to be a company who lost their way.

I still use it basically every day for git and chat

Nope, as soon as Zoom acquired it I left. Security and privacy without transparency isn't a good match.

I was hardly using it, though I definitely took advantage of the crypto thing when I had the opportunity.

Nope, as soon as Zoom acquired it I stop using it. I don't trust Zoom.

I stopped using it when it became a cryptocurrency client.