zmkne

zmkne is an open-source software project that provides a privacy-preserving data synchronization protocol and runtime for distributed applications. It is designed to operate in environments with intermittent connectivity and to enable secure collaboration across devices.

Origin and scope. The name zmkne has no widely accepted expansion and is used as the project identifier. The project targets scenarios such as collaborative note-taking, inventory management, and field data collection where participants may be offline or intermittently connected. It emphasizes end-to-end encryption and modularity.

Architecture and features. At its core, zmkne uses a CRDT-based data model to converge state across peers without centralized coordination. It supports end-to-end encryption, pluggable backends for storage, and a modular synchronization protocol that can run over various transport layers. The system is designed to be embedded into applications via a lightweight runtime library and to support multi-user conflict resolution.

History. zmkne originated as an open-source effort in 2020–2021 by an international team of developers. The first public release appeared in 2021, with subsequent major updates in 2022 and 2023. The project is maintained by a community and governed under an open-source license.

Usage and reception. The project has been adopted by small teams and hobbyist projects that require offline-capable collaboration. It has received attention for its design simplicity and privacy posture but remains comparatively niche; ecosystem tooling and third-party integrations are limited compared with larger platforms.

See also. Conflict-free replicated data type, end-to-end encryption, offline-first databases, peer-to-peer networks.