Seeing that this was put together by one of the co-authors of the recently released MLS (Message Layer Security) spec and backed by an EU funding grant are both interesting tidbits that got me more interested in this.
This would indeed allow for a very different internet and would provide some viable options untethered to big tech as it exists today.
I case you refer to me as the MLS co-author, I'm not directly affiliated with the p2panda project. I think p2panda uses OpenMLS (OSS implementation of the MLS protocol, https://openmls.tech), hence the connection. I did however exchange with this friendly an motivated team!
Yes, it's been a pleasure to work with OpenMLS, they consulted us with the integration into p2panda! As mentioned in my other comment: while most low-level parts have already been written, we still need to work on our high-level APIs, which should allow for easy integration of data encryption when using our SDKs. We aim at doing this in our next funding period.
This would indeed allow for a very different internet and would provide some viable options untethered to big tech as it exists today.