Willow - News and Updates https://willowprotocol.org//more,changes Here we’ll share bits of news relevant to the Willow protocol, as well as improvements to the site. For example, the completion of an implementation, or the addition of new explanatory text and drawings to the site. Updates will be occasional and meaningful. Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 UTC Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 UTC Rust implementation of Meadowcap released Our own Rust implementation of Meadowcap now conforms to the specification as of August 10th, 2024. The source, can be found at the willow-rs repository and complete documentation can be found at docs.rs.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 UTC Willow Confidential Sync specification status promoted to ‘Candidate’ With a working implementation of the Confidential Sync in willow-js — and several other implementations now in progress — we feel comfortable in promoting the specification's status to Candidate.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 UTC Drop Format in willow-js Last week we published the drop_format, and this week we have a working implementation available via willow-js 0.5.0.

For more information on this implementation, please see the documentation for createDrop and ingestDrop.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 UTC Willow Drop Format A few months ago we published the Confidential Sync protocol, a synchronisation specification for securely and efficiently synchronising data over a network connection. However, there are many contexts where establishing such a connection is difficult, undesirable, or outright impossible.

The drop_format is a new encoding for securely delivering Willow data by whatever means possible. We build upon the tradition of sneakernets make use of the sporadically online and ad-hoc infrastructure users already have.

This new protocol can be used in place of (or as a complement to) Confidential Sync, is relatively simple to implement, and has a mercifully short specification.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 UTC willow-js released willow-js, our own TypeScript implementation of the Data Model and Confidential Sync (formerly the WGPS), now conforms to these specifications as of May 6th, 2024. This module can be used to create, query, and sync Entries and their corresponding Payloads in stores in the browser and Deno runtime.

The source, documentation, and usage instructions can be found at the willow-js repository.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 UTC meadowcap-js 0.2.0 released Our own TypeScript implementation of Meadowcap now conforms to the specification as of January 23rd, 2024. The source, documentation, and usage instructions can be found at the meadowcap-js repository.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Tue, 23 Jan 2024 00:00:00 UTC Welcome to willowprotocol.org! The site for the Willow protocol has been officially released to the public.

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:00:00 UTC A lot of everything In the past year we built up a tremendous reservoir of unpublished work which we are finally making public. From here on out our updates will be shorter and more frequent. If you would like to keep up with our work in a more informal format, we’ve launched worm-blossom.org, where we discuss the development of Willow and much more besides.

We’ve done extensive work to the Confidential Sync (formally W.G.P.S) spec, and made it man-in-the-middle attack resistant through the notion of Read Access and Confidentiality and Handshake and Transport Encryption. Confidential Sync now supports streaming verification of payloads, and its multiplexing system has been promoted to a totally independent specification dubbed LCMUX.

The Drop Format (formally Sideloading protocol) now supports the inclusion of entries without any available payload. We have also created a more efficient encoding which will make drops smaller.

We’ve added Willow’25, a recommended set of parameters for the Willow Data model, Meadowcap, Confidential Sync, and Drop Format.

These are major changes that have brought about some spec status changes. Because the changes to Confidential Sync have been so broad, we’ve demoted its status to Proposal until we’ve finished building our Rust implementation of it. But on the upside, Drop format has been promoted to Candidate, and Meadowcap is now Final!

There’s a lot more we’ve added besides. Dozens of news illustrations and diagrams have been added to the site. We’ve added ActivityPub to the Comparison to Other Protocols page. We’ve updated and redesigned nearly every page, including the landing page.

We hope you enjoy the changes!

]]> https://willowprotocol.org//more/changes Sun, 26 Oct 2025 00:00:00 UTC