Multiparty Encryption in Public IRC Channels with IRCSRP
npjh.comI would think that XMPP would be better fitted for this kind of work for its extensibility. And there is already some work done on end to end encryption for XMPP which maybe could be of use.
Couple things I noticed: The key exchange/renewal seems somewhat centralized to some Dave guy, which I don't like too much. Also the protocol seems to require an additional, new, username for each user which seems kinda odd design for me. And lastly there is the UI problem when mixing encrypted and plain text communication in the same system.
There were no other solutions for this functionality when I searched in beginning of 2011. XMPP is great, but IRC is ubiquitous. IRC is also very easy to implement plugins against.
The central authority of Dave is by design.
You are correct, mixing the should be deprecated in favor of : join unencrypted room && auth with dave && invite to secure room. But that feature is yet to be implemented.
Thank you for the feedback.