Cluddy
Security, Privacy, Self-Hosted, Peer-to-Peer, Networking
Hi Cluddiers 👋
Early Access is live, and today I’m launching two exclusive challenges for the very first adopters of Cluddy.
🔹 “Legendary Five”
The first five Early Access subscribers will receive an extra free month after their first paid month.
I’ll personally confirm via email (from contact@cluddy.org) if you made it into the Legendary Five and send instructions.
🔹 “Top Three Leaders”
The first three Early Access users who invite a friend (who also subscribes) will each get one free month — and their invited friend will also get one.
To validate, the invited user just needs to send an email from their Early Access address to contact@cluddy.org with the referrer’s email.
⚠️ Important: one user can only participate in one of these challenges — either the Legendary Five or the Top Three Leaders. Choose wisely.
Cluddy is not about chasing numbers — it’s about building a tool for true privacy and control over your data exchange.
But for those who want to be first movers and help us shape the future, here’s your chance to lock in something unique.
Let’s see who claims their spot. 🚀
🔗 Apply for Early Access: www.cluddy.org/early-access
👉 Important note: These limited-time offers (“Legendary Five” and “Leader’s Trio”) are extra bonuses — not replacements for standard Early Access benefits.
Hi Cluddiers and Indie Hackers,
I’d like to clarify a few common questions I keep receiving about Cluddy:
1. Is Cluddy a messenger?
No . Cluddy is not a messenger. It doesn’t store messages, profiles, or history. Instead, it focuses purely on transporting data securely between peers.
2. Is Cluddy just another VPN?
Not at all.
1.A VPN masks or modifies your network identity and routes your traffic through a provider’s infrastructure.
2. Cluddy, on the other hand, is a set of tools that together establish a cryptographic tunnel for data exchange. It doesn’t alter your identity or metadata — it simply encrypts traffic with dynamic encryption keys, using a non-standard approach to cryptography.
3. Do both sides need a subscription?
Not exactly. To start an exchange, only one side needs an active subscription. Why? Because transportation happens through a Cluddy Host deployed on the subscriber’s VPS.
In my next post, I’ll go deeper into how Cluddy actually works under the hood.
Stay tuned 🚀
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Clear explainer, nice work. When you say non standard cryptography, which primitives and modes do you use, and has anyone external reviewed it? How do you handle NAT traversal and fallbacks? Is the VPS host always in the path, or can peers connect directly when possible?
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Thanks a lot for your comment! 🙌
By non-standard cryptography I mean that Cluddy doesn’t follow the classic RSA+AES hybrid model. Instead, packets are signed and encrypted directly between peers, with keys exchanged once per session over a secure WSS channel. Connections are limited to exactly two peers, and all data is ephemeral — nothing is logged or stored.
This approach isn’t the academic standard, but it’s deliberate: Cluddy is about practical privacy. Even if someone tried to intercept, they would need real-time access to both the packets and the peer’s keys. That makes passive surveillance extremely hard in practice.
For NAT traversal: yes, the VPS host is always in the path. That was a design choice — it removes the need for complex NAT punching, and the host is fully user-owned on their VPS, with no hidden infrastructure.
Happy to dive deeper in future posts, but I hope this gives a clear picture :)
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Got it, thanks for the clear breakdown. The VPS in path and ephemeral keys approach makes sense.
btw we could partner up. Me and my team are building HustleAdvisor, a social network where entrepreneurs share practical step by step lessons. If you join the waitlist and later post a short write up on how you built Cluddy, we will boost it in the main feed so more people see it. https://hustle-advisor.com/
You get: more users
We get: an entrepreneur
приєднуйся, будемо раді тебе бачити)
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👋 Hey IH!
I tried something unusual with my project Cluddy — printing real paper invitations for secure information exchange.
Normally people just drop a host address in a messenger. But I thought: what if even that is too risky for strict privacy scenarios?
So I created a concept…
📄 A formal letter with the sender’s alias, time, host, and a QR code to get the Cluddy Client.
You can hand it over in person, drop it in a mailbox, or even send it by post.
Is this the core of Cluddy? No.
But it’s a fun way to show how far privacy can go — even outside digital channels.
👉 See how it looks here: LinkedIn Post
or below:
Hi, Cluddiers! 🚀
I’ve been working full-time on a project that I deeply believe in, and today I’m excited to finally share it with you — Cluddy.
Cluddy is a self-hosted infrastructure framework for secure, peer-to-peer data exchange. It runs on your own VPS, giving you full control, end-to-end encryption, and zero third-party involvement. Think of it as your own private data tunnel — no logs, no middlemen, just encrypted communication under your control.
✨ Early Access is now open!
Head over to cluddy.org, explore the products, and start testing.
Would love to hear your feedback and thoughts 🙌
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