Messenger alternative: Volla Messages with big promises

The German smartphone manufacturer Volla Systeme has opened the beta phase of the Volla Messages app and made a lot of headlines. The messenger is a WhatsApp and Telegram alternative, but is even “Made in Germany”. A lot of advance praise, but on closer inspection it seems rather misplaced.

Unsurprisingly for a first beta version, Volla Messages currently only offers basic features: you can “send text messages and share links, photos and files – including a download option”, writes the provider. Audio and video conferences for groups and individual contacts are planned. Volla Messages is a peer-to-peer (P2P) application: users' devices connect to the “Volla Cloud” to forward messages. Registration or account creation should not be necessary and there is no need for classic servers, as with centrally or federated organized messengers. Partners who want to chat with each other must first exchange a contact code in some other way to find each other.

P2P systems of this kind often have to go to great lengths to ensure data retention and security and to guarantee data subject rights under the GDPR, for example. After all, they distribute data to various untrusted end devices. Passive participation in such systems can also cause difficulties for users, for example if illegal third-party data is stored or forwarded from their devices. It is not clear from the press releases or the current documentation how Volla addresses these problems.

Something with “crypto”

Technically, the Volla cloud is based on the Holochain project. According to Volla, this “post-blockchain technology” is characterized by the fact that information can also be deleted in a targeted manner. Usually, the inerasability of information in blockchains is one of the main reasons for their use. The press release does not explain what advantages the holochain is supposed to offer as a messenger basis compared to other P2P systems. We asked the manufacturer about this.

An important quality criterion for messengers is their encryption. Specifically, the aim nowadays is to offer genuine end-to-end encryption based on established and tested encryption methods, such as Threema, Signal, Matrix, iMessages and even WhatsApp. However, we did not find any information on the messenger's encryption either in the press release or in the GitHub repository – not even whether Volla uses encryption at all. Only a screenshot shows that the app advertises “encrypted”. We have contacted Volla with these and other questions and will update this report when we receive answers.

Preliminary conclusion

Volla Messages still has a lot of growing and documenting to do before it can be a “secure messenger alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram”. Unlike WhatsApp, the app's source code is available, albeit under the “Volla License”, whose restrictions are unlikely to meet the requirements of the Open-Source Initiative or the Free Software Foundation – the traditional guardians of the “Open Source” and “Free Software” labels. Until then, it is better to use a different messenger: there are many that have been tried and tested over many years, are open source and are well encrypted.

(dmk)