Syndie can be as anonymous as the infrastructure it uses is. Pretty much we started from the bottom up, making a mix network (done) and PIR-like system (need to do) first with plans to add a forum on top of it, and they started from the top down, making a forum first and never making a strongly anonymous system underneath of it (but rather relying on existing anonymity infrastructure). The mix network we have coded is provably more secure than Mixminion or Mixmaster, and it gives the user control over the trade off between latency:anonymity, whereas Mixminion and Mixmaster both set the time delay for the user. Also, Mixmaster is considered deprecated at this point, Mixminion was an improvement on it in every way, and the mix network we have is an improvement on mixminion in every way. In fact, Syndie could probably be interfaced to use our system (Alpha-mix-net + PIR-like-system) with little trouble. However, I still desire to make a different forum software, especially because the UI for Syndie is pretty ugly. I don't know what encryption they are using but I doubt it is ECC. I cannot even tell if they automatically handle key exchange. It looks like they automatically use encrypted zip files, but no documentation on how key exchange is done. Syndie is cool, so is Frost for Freenet, even BitMessage is kind of neat despite being full of flaws (and it uses PIR even, but in a totally different way than we are going to) but I think we can make huge improvements over all of these systems. For example, look at the Syndie graphic on the page you linked to. It can make use of already existing anonymizers such as Tor, I2P, Mixmaster, Mixminion, etc. It can use pretty much any anonymity infrastructure. It can also make use of already existing content archives, including HTTP archives, Mail archives and Usenet archives. The content storage systems it can currently use either do not support anonymous receiving of messages (other than via Tor etc), or they only support it via Everybody Gets Everything PIR. So you can delay forward messages to an archive with Mixmaster or Mixminion, but you still need to either use Tor to obtain them or mix many groups together using the same content storage server and then use Everybody Gets Everything PIR to download the messages. This is in contrast to what we are doing. We are making a new anonymizer (alpha-mixing with sphinx, which is already implemented), and a new content archive (the PIR-like system, which also allows for anonymous receiving of messages without needing Everybody Gets Everything), and then after these things are done we are making a component that is more similar to Syndie (although hopefully with a better user interface, and probably with better automated security features, and other features such as integrated Bitcoin/Zerocoin) to make use of them. So where their diagram has Syndie -> Mixminion -> Mail Archive, ours will have New Forum Software -> New Mix Network -> PIR-Like-System and also ours will not have the various other lines connecting it to all the other infrastructure (anonymizer, jap, i2p, mixminion, mixmaster, HTTP archive, Mail archive, Usenet archive, etc). Although technically ours will be: Forward Messages: New Forum Software -> Tor -> Specific New Mix Network -> Tor -> Specific New PIR-like-system Message Retrieval: New Forum Software <-> Tor <-> Specific New PIR-like-system Syndie is: Forward Messages: Syndie -> Any Or No Anonymizer -> Any content archive Message Retrieval: Syndie <-> Any Or No Anonymizer <-> Any content archive