The anonymous IRC project (IIP -- http://www.invisiblenet.net/iip/) provides encrypted anonymous IRC chat. Haven't looked in the protocol in detail to see how they get their anonymity, but the guy seemed aware of Chaum etc and they have crypto protocols document up there. They have resource problems in continuing to run it, and so have announced end-of-life for the project, but source etc is available, and they are calling for interest in taking over the project. Anyone with a bit of bandwidth and interest in preserving anonymity of IRC want to help them out? (The way I first heard about the project is that they use hashcash to throttle nym registration abuse -- before that people were creating 1000s of handles through it.) Adam