[PLUG] Vetting security apps?

[Mike C.]

I'm curious to know what others do in vetting security apps they use
or may recommend to others.

I use a variety of fairly well known secure email & chat apps but just
learned about an app called Keybase. https://keybase.io/docs

It's like encrypted Slack but also some really interesting things like
an encrypted cloud based file system and secure digital identity
management.

Also, this seems like they're using blockchain:
"Every account on Keybase has a public history. "Sigchains" let
Keybase clients reconstruct the present without trusting Keybase's
servers. And when you "follow" someone on Keybase, you sign a snapshot
of your view of the claims in their sigchain."

In the past I trusted apps that I use because of recommendations by
the EFF, Edward Snowden, the general digital security community.

Currently, there doesn't seem to be too much written up about  Keybase
other than an article on HackerNews from 2016.

The ask. Does anyone play a bit more on the bleeding edge with privacy
& encryption apps and if so how do you go about vetting an a new app
that's relatively unknown?

Thank you,

Mike