Bitsocial and Quorum
Quorum is a group messenger from Quilibrium Inc., the company behind the Quilibrium network. It is organized like Discord, with Spaces, channels, roles and direct messages, and its messages are end-to-end encrypted. It comes up next to Bitsocial because both describe themselves as peer-to-peer and censorship-resistant, with groups that set their own rules. They aim at different things: Quorum at private group chat, Bitsocial at public communities that anyone can read.
Quilibrium describes itself as a decentralized alternative to cloud platforms: a network of nodes that keep data in an encrypted hypergraph and agree on its state through a consensus it calls Proof of Meaningful Work. Nodes earn QUIL, the network's token, which pays usage fees. Quorum began in 2018 as Howler, an idea for a private Discord alternative, and became the first app to go live on Quilibrium, according to the Quilibrium story. Quilibrium Inc., founded by Cassie Heart, develops the protocol and offers Quorum as one of its managed services (FAQ).
How Quorum works
The details below come from Quorum's client source, quorum-desktop for the web and desktop apps and quorum-mobile, as of October 2026.
- Identities. A user's master identity is an Ed448 keyset, and each device gets its own X448 and
Ed448 keys. In the browser the keys are normally protected by a passkey; the mobile app derives
them from a recovery phrase. Addresses are hashes that start with
Qm, and users can show a username from Quilibrium's name service. - Encryption. Direct messages use the Double Ratchet between devices. A Space shares one Triple Ratchet session among its members, who sign their messages with Space-specific keys. Every Space is encrypted. Quorum says its message brokering prevents linking senders and recipients, but the web and desktop client subscribes to all of a device's inboxes, including the one listed in the user's public registration, in a single request to the service, which can therefore tie them to the user's address.
- Joining. Spaces are entered with invite links. A one-time link carries the keys to join in the URL; a public link fetches them from the Quorum service, and public Spaces can be listed in a searchable directory.
- Transport. For messaging, the web, desktop and mobile clients all connect over HTTPS and a
WebSocket to one service,
api.quorummessenger.com. It relays encrypted messages to each member's inbox and holds them until the client acknowledges them. It also stores user registrations, opt-in public profiles, each Space's encrypted manifest (channels, roles, emoji), invite material, the public directory and optional encrypted settings sync. Quilibrium's node software has an inbox and hub service with the same shape, but neither the clients nor Quilibrium's docs say how this service maps onto the network. - History. Each member's client keeps its own copy of the Space in local storage, and both clients pick up messages sent while they were offline from their inboxes on the service. For older history, the web and desktop client asks an online member to sync, while the mobile client replays a durable log that the service keeps for each Space.
- Moderation. Roles grant deleting, pinning, muting and
@everyonementions. Every member's client checks the signature on each moderation action and applies it only if the signer holds the right role. The owner can kick a member, which rotates the Space's keys so the kicked member cannot read new messages. A Space can require signed messages or let members post unsigned, deniable ones. Listings in the public directory carry a review status, and users can report Spaces, and from the mobile app individual messages, to the Quorum service. - Code. The web and desktop client is licensed under the AGPL-3.0 and the mobile client under the GPL-3.0. The mobile client also has a crypto wallet, Farcaster integration and Apex, a paid subscription described below.
Where they differ
Private groups and public communities
A Quorum Space is a group of members: only people holding its keys can read it, and joining takes an invite link. A public link lets anyone in, but only after joining. A Bitsocial community has no membership. Anyone can read it, from any app, without joining, and anyone can try to post, subject to the community's challenge.
What keeps a group online
A Quorum Space has no host node. Members send messages through the Quorum service, which holds a copy for each member until their client collects it, and the owner does not need to be online for others to talk. A Bitsocial community lives on its owner's node, which accepts or rejects each post and publishes the community's latest state. The community stays readable while peers seed it, but cannot accept new posts while its node is offline. See Peer-to-Peer Protocol.
Who enforces the rules
In Quorum, enforcement happens at the edge. Each member's client decides whether to apply a deletion, a pin or a mute, based on the signer's role, and a kick works by moving everyone else to new keys. Alongside that, the service operator receives reports and reviews the public directory. In Bitsocial, enforcement happens at the community node: a post that fails the community's challenge is never accepted, and the node applies its moderators' removals. See Local Moderation, Not Global Bans.
Spam control
Quorum keeps spam out mainly through invitations. A one-time link admits one person, a public link admits anyone holding it, and the owner can kick and rekey afterwards. The clients also limit how fast a member can send, and the web and desktop client drops Space messages from any sender above 10 in 10 seconds. Bitsocial identities are free keypairs, so each community chooses a challenge to run before accepting a post, such as a captcha, a payment, a token balance or an allowlist. See Custom Anti-Spam Challenges.
The client and the network
A Quorum app is a client of the Quorum service, which Quilibrium Inc. runs. The apps do not join a peer-to-peer network themselves, so reaching a Space depends on that one endpoint. Separately, Quilibrium is a network of its own: in October 2026 its explorer showed 114 reachable peers and 181 provers across 99 shards.
A Bitsocial web app can run a libp2p node in the tab, fetch community content from peers and publish over gossipsub. Peer discovery goes through HTTP routers that only return provider addresses; anyone can run one, and clients can switch routers by changing their configuration. See Browser Peer-to-Peer.
Economics
Quilibrium has a token at its core. QUIL is mined by nodes and pays network fees, and a wrapped version, wQUIL, circulates on Ethereum. Quorum itself is free and needs no payment or phone number. Its optional Apex subscription costs $5 a month, paid in wQUIL, SNAP or USDC on Ethereum and split between Quilibrium Inc. and four Spaces the subscriber picks. Bitsocial has no payment layer in the protocol; a community can require a payment or a token through its challenge.
Private messages
This is where Quorum is stronger. Direct messages and Space messages are end-to-end encrypted with forward secrecy, and message content reaches the Quorum service only as ciphertext, except when a member reports a message from the mobile app, which sends its content to Quorum's moderators. Bitsocial focuses on public communities and has no native direct messages yet. A Bitsocial post is encrypted to the community node's key while it travels over pubsub, but once accepted it is public.
Project status
In October 2026 the Quorum repository called the web app a beta, and the Quorum website still listed the Google Play and App Store apps as coming soon. The two clients also diverge: the mobile app has the wallet, Farcaster and Apex features, while the web and desktop client shows its Wallet and Farcaster pages as coming soon, and the two catch up on Space history differently.
Quilibrium's mainnet reached version 2.1 on September 30, 2025, when the network resumed after a halt (announcement). In 2026 the node was rewritten in Rust, with post-quantum signatures for consensus and a wire protocol that older nodes cannot speak. Parts of the documentation describe the design rather than the running code: they describe mixnet routing. Nodes do relay traffic among themselves through onion-routed circuits, but in node 2.1.0.25 the mixnet service is a stub that accepts messages without mixing them.
Comparison
| Question | Quorum | Bitsocial |
|---|---|---|
| Category | End-to-end encrypted group messenger from Quilibrium Inc. | Peer-to-peer community network |
| Identity | Ed448 master keyset plus per-device keys, behind a passkey or a recovery phrase | Ed25519 keypairs for users and communities |
| Who can read | Members holding a Space's keys | Anyone, from any app |
| Where messages live | Each member's device; the Quorum service holds undelivered copies, and a per-Space log for mobile | The community owner's node and the peers that read and seed it |
| What clients connect to | The Quorum service at api.quorummessenger.com | Peers over libp2p, found through HTTP routers, including from a browser tab |
| Communities | Spaces with channels, roles and invite links | First-class objects whose node accepts or rejects posts |
| Spam control | Invite links, kicks with rekeying, client-side rate limits | Each community's challenge before a post is accepted |
| Moderation | Roles enforced by every member's client; the owner kicks; reports go to the service operator | Community owners moderate their community; apps choose what they show |
| Private messages | End-to-end encrypted direct messages | Public communities; no native direct messages yet |
| Economics | QUIL network token; optional $5 monthly Apex subscription | None in the protocol; a challenge can require a payment or token |
| Main tradeoff | Private, encrypted groups, but every client depends on one service | Free identities and browser access, but no private messaging and only the latest state is kept |