Ask HN: Are you still using Keybase?
If not, what alternatives have you found?
46 comments
I am still using Keybase. I really hope it continues to exist
I still have it, but never really "used" it.
This is where I'm at as well. I set myself up when friends were setting themselves up, but never really used it for anything. I published my proofs, but as far as I can tell they didn't do anything for me.
Seems like the new PGP key signing party.
Seems like the new PGP key signing party.
We used it at work to provide secure communications and file exchange. We're still using it for chat, but we've almost completely stopped using KBFS and we're looking into alternatives for chat. I think Matrix is the best option there.
Yep, but mostly for its original purpose, never got onboard with all the cool new features they released, unfortunately.
You betcha, chat constantly with the team, encryption is awesome, stable as a rock. Would pay! Are you listening, Zoom?
Thanks for the Stellar Lumens too.
Thanks for the Stellar Lumens too.
Wow, thanks for reminding me about those. I didn't think anything of them when they added them to my account. Looks like I got 1400 lumens from the drop.
A while ago, I switched from Slack to use Keybase and it was doing great until Zoom bought it. In fear of it being shut down at any time, I never came back.
Tomorrow would be exactly 1 year ago since that announcement and Zoom haven't touched or done anything with Keybase yet. So who knows.
Holding those Stellar Lumens was really a good idea after all, which I indeed did.
Tomorrow would be exactly 1 year ago since that announcement and Zoom haven't touched or done anything with Keybase yet. So who knows.
Holding those Stellar Lumens was really a good idea after all, which I indeed did.
Huh, I vaguely remember hearing about the Stellar Lumens airdrop and I just checked and I have ~$230 USD of them in my Keybase account which is nice I guess. I'll probably just hold them but I had forgotten all about those.
I couldn't care less about collaboration features. All I want is a cryptographic way (or, if done well, even without crypto) to tie my identity together across disparate social media profiles so that they are all in one place.
Whoa, thanks! I forgot about this and just reinstalled Keybase to check. I had $675 of free internet money sitting there.
I used it when it was only a way to build a trust network. I stopped using it when they started adding chatting and other functionality. Never even once used the chat feature or anything else they later bolted on.
Same here, wouldn’t mind the chat feature but the crypto wallet was a step too far. The web of trust stuff seems to have been removed and replaced by a follow mechanism that I don’t understand the reason for.
I have it primarily as a way to establish my identity. Like others have mentioned, I have not adopted the new chat and team features
I find it useful as a way that anyone can contact me securely - especially when needing to discuss something with tech teams in other companies who might not be on Slack etc. I think it's actually a great product and it's a shame that Zoom don't seem to.
Nope. Not since they started storing people's private keys on their servers.
For me, that was the "they've jumped the shark" moment.
For me, that was the "they've jumped the shark" moment.
Wasn’t that always optional?
Yes. Your private keys are not stored on their servers unless you hand them your private keys for PGP (specifically).
Yeah. Just the fact they allowed it at all was the complete turn off for me. :/
Never really used the chat feature extensively. I can not recommend it either way, since they are censoring groups like the DEFCAD community. Given the acquisition by Zoom and Keybase's unmonetizable nature, I doubt it will be around for long.
Yes, I still use it for some chat and I have some personal configuration stored in encrypted git repos. Does anyone else offer encrypted git repos with as little overhead?
Deleted my account on the day of the Zoom purchase. It's a shame, I liked some of the features.
May I ask why you did that?
Zoom said they had no intention of continuing developing Keybase as-is., and nobody even pretended it would be business as usual after the acquisition. It’s a little surprising it’s all still running at this point.
(My memory is a little fuzzy, but this is how I remember the announcement and discussion around it.)
(My memory is a little fuzzy, but this is how I remember the announcement and discussion around it.)
I still use it for its identity features, but I switched chat over to a Matrix instance. To be honest, the timing of the acquisition wasn't good -- it came at the height of the Zoom/China FUD, and given that Keybase attracts security-minded users, it was a recipe for diaspora.
switched to self-hosted synapse and element as client
I use the chat with two friends who use that exclusively, and I also use KBFS.
Whenever Zoom finally decides to kill it, I'll probably move my conversations to Signal, and my files to ProtonDrive (whenever it ships).
Whenever Zoom finally decides to kill it, I'll probably move my conversations to Signal, and my files to ProtonDrive (whenever it ships).
Every day, and it's still very reliable and works very well for me; i hope it continues to run, though it would be nice for Zoom to make a strong statement around it.
I note the Keybase github repos continue to receive updates too, so it's not like it's dead.
I note the Keybase github repos continue to receive updates too, so it's not like it's dead.
Git and KBFS only.
I still use it fairly often... only complaint is the extremely annoying update reminders that seem to come up way too often. Would prefer if they didn’t just pop up and only showed when I opened the app
If someone from Zoom wants to sell Keybase to a nonprofit to be run as a utility, hit me up.
I reinstalled it recently because the whatever-coins associated with my account were worth more than €500.
The app itself and their GitHub repo feel abandoned, so I wouldn't be surprised if they announce its discontinuation.
The app itself and their GitHub repo feel abandoned, so I wouldn't be surprised if they announce its discontinuation.
Yep, still works great.
Tried to the other day and discovered that I can't log into the app at all. Can log into the website no problem, but the app gives me a weird error and there doesn't seem to be a way of getting help if you aren't using the app.
Never really used it.
[deleted]
Keybase failed to expand on the on the one thing it was good at: Provide an identity root.
Rooting everyone's identity in a PGP is a great idea, any making that accesible to non-nerds would solve _a lot_ of problems faced in nearly every industry.
Rooting everyone's identity in a PGP is a great idea, any making that accesible to non-nerds would solve _a lot_ of problems faced in nearly every industry.
Yep still use it. It's been stable, and still does what it did before the zoom purchase.
Actually, it felt like Keybase was scrambling to add weird features and find a fit before. They are what they are now.
Actually, it felt like Keybase was scrambling to add weird features and find a fit before. They are what they are now.
I'd like for it to be more popular but as it is there's nobody to chat with and the one team I created is long defunct. I still look at it once in a while to look at the 75$ worth of stellar they handed out a while ago. Jumped to 750 Euro in the last days. It's been up and down like that for the last few months. Basically somebody farts in the bitcoin community and other coins go up or down by 20-30%. It's completely random and hype driven at this point. Too bad because Stellar actually has a bit of serious use cases. But I could not claim with a straight face that has anything to do with its current value.
The Zoom acquihire kind of destroyed any ambitions Keybase had. I was disappointed when it happened because it had some potential. But of course Zoom doesn't look like they care enough to do anything productive with keybase. This seems more like an acquihire to bail out the investors than Zoom doing anything with their new hires. At least I wouldn't be able to name a single thing that happened to Zoom since the acquisition that you could attribute to that.
Too bad really, because it kind of makes sense for Zoom to compete more directly with Slack, MS Teams, Google Meets,etc. Kind of a crowded market to be a one trick pony like Zoom currently is. IMHO they need to evolve to stay relevant. Their product is alright but not that remarkable.
The Zoom acquihire kind of destroyed any ambitions Keybase had. I was disappointed when it happened because it had some potential. But of course Zoom doesn't look like they care enough to do anything productive with keybase. This seems more like an acquihire to bail out the investors than Zoom doing anything with their new hires. At least I wouldn't be able to name a single thing that happened to Zoom since the acquisition that you could attribute to that.
Too bad really, because it kind of makes sense for Zoom to compete more directly with Slack, MS Teams, Google Meets,etc. Kind of a crowded market to be a one trick pony like Zoom currently is. IMHO they need to evolve to stay relevant. Their product is alright but not that remarkable.
No. They lost sight of what made them great in the first place (building a trust network). They added unnecessary things like chat and a wallet for a shitty alt coin.
I found Matrix/Element:
- E2EE
- cloud sync
- arbitrary many devices and web client
- you can choose your vendor and even alternative apps without having to argue with contacts
- floss
- E2EE
- cloud sync
- arbitrary many devices and web client
- you can choose your vendor and even alternative apps without having to argue with contacts
- floss
We are still using it at TrueLayer (almost 200 users). Any good alternative out there?
I was an early adopter, used it with their Linux client. Then didn't use it for quite a while.
Some time after the "Stellar" drop, I tried to set up their client again, but it now wanted some authorisation from a different of my devices. However, I never registered any other devices to my account, nor did they have paper keys back then. Logging into the website still worked fine, but only gave very limited functionality.
Even after digging out the old config files from back then, the (newer) client gave some obscure error message after semi-logging in. Same for older versions I've tried.
Thus I had to completely reset my account and it seems my Stellar balance is gone, too. That's when I abandoned my account.
Some time after the "Stellar" drop, I tried to set up their client again, but it now wanted some authorisation from a different of my devices. However, I never registered any other devices to my account, nor did they have paper keys back then. Logging into the website still worked fine, but only gave very limited functionality.
Even after digging out the old config files from back then, the (newer) client gave some obscure error message after semi-logging in. Same for older versions I've tried.
Thus I had to completely reset my account and it seems my Stellar balance is gone, too. That's when I abandoned my account.
I have a good size community on KeyBase that uses it regularly. We tried to switch to other platforms like Signal, Matrix, Session, and others, but the one that everyone feels comfortable with is KB.
Yes. I love it.