Most work is not a one-off delivery. There is a client you report to every month, a board that sees every update, a set of branches that all need the same file on the same Monday. Beacons are for them — a named, encrypted channel you set up once and publish to for as long as the relationship lasts.
Everything GCN.ONE has done until now has been built around a single moment. You upload a file, you share a link, someone downloads it, and the transfer is finished. That is a good fit for the thing it was designed for: sending something once, to someone, and being done.
It stops fitting the moment the same people are on the receiving end every week.
Ten recipients each month means ten fresh invitations, every month. The links scatter across inboxes until nobody is quite sure which message held the current version. And when someone leaves the project, withdrawing their access means finding every link they were ever sent.
What a beacon is
A beacon is a channel with a name and a fixed group of people. You create it once and add the members once. After that, publishing is a single step: attach a share, grant access, and everyone in the channel has it.
The people on the receiving end get something better too. Instead of hunting for the right email, they open the beacon and find everything that has been published to it, in order.
How it works
- Create the beacon. Give it a name, and choose whether it stays private or is listed publicly. You get an address for the channel, and you own it.
- Add the people. Members are added by the email address on their account. Publishers can post new shares to the channel; viewers can only read what is published.
- Publish and grant access. Attach a share you have already uploaded, then grant access. Your browser wraps the file key to each member individually before anything reaches us.
That third step is deliberate, and it is worth being precise about. Attaching a share puts it in the channel, but it does not hand out the keys — a publisher grants access explicitly. Anyone added later stays pending until someone grants them too, which is one click and only wraps keys for the people who do not already have them.
Who can do what
- Owner — creates the beacon, adds and removes members, changes its name and visibility, and can delete it. Is a publisher as well.
- Publisher — attaches shares and grants members the keys to open them, but does not change who is in the group.
- Viewer — reads the channel and downloads what has been published to it. Cannot post anything.
Private or public
Private is the default, and it means what it says. Only members can see the beacon or anything in it. To everyone else it does not exist — not a login prompt, not a permission error, no page at all. Confirming that a channel exists is itself a disclosure, so we do not make it.
A public beacon can be browsed by anyone with the address, but only as a listing: subjects and dates. Downloading still requires being a member with access granted to you. A public beacon is a shop window, never an open door. Anonymous downloads would mean handing one shared key to everybody at once, and that is not a trade we are willing to make.
It is still zero-knowledge
A beacon changes who a file reaches. It does not change how that file is protected.
Files are encrypted in the browser before they are uploaded, exactly as they were. The key that opens them is wrapped separately for every member, using that member’s own public key, and the wrapping happens on the publisher’s machine. What arrives here is a set of sealed blobs we have no way to open.
A shared channel does not mean a shared key. Every member gets their own copy of the file key, sealed to them alone — which is precisely why access can be taken back from one person without disturbing anyone else.
Removing someone deletes their wrapped key. Their access ends immediately and completely, the files stay where they are, and every other member carries on as before. Nothing has to be re-uploaded, and there is no link to chase.
Availability. Creating beacons is part of the paid plans — any paid subscription includes them. The people you invite do not need one; a free account is enough to receive.
Beacons are live now. If you want the longer version — the roles, the visibility rules, and what happens when someone leaves — there is a full write-up at gcn.one/BeaconsHowTo.