Privacy through separation of trust
The architectural idea behind an OHTTP relay and gateway.
Two different responsibilities
Oblivious HTTP separates a request’s route from its contents. A relay forwards an encrypted request, while a gateway performs the cryptographic processing needed before the application handles it.
Cloudflare’s announcement explains why independent, non-colluding operators matter: the design aims to avoid one party seeing both the client identity and the request contents.
The takeaway
Privacy is sometimes an architectural property, not a switch added to a single server. Drawing which component can observe which information is a good starting point for understanding a design like this.
OHTTP is not simply another name for HTTPS or a general-purpose anonymity guarantee. The source is useful for its threat model and division of responsibilities.
Curated by Kishan Vyas on . The date at the top preserves my original share date.