Every value in my little embedded key-value store gets encrypted, then its ciphertext gets encoded as a string of A/C/G/T characters before it ever touches the filesystem.
Open the file in a text editor and you'll see actual DNA-looking text - not because it's a gimmick, but because that's genuinely the storage format.
This is , a ~348KB embeddable encrypted key-value store I built in Rust for places a server can't reach - a watch face, a phone app, a background service.
It's part of a larger repo, ModelDB, that also includes MDC, a Python conversational data engine (query AI models, databases, images, and documents in plain English, no SQL) with its own DNA-inspired archival storage tier.
The actual storage format Every call does this, in order: Pack into one plaintext buffer.
Encrypt the whole thing with XChaCha20-Poly1305 (a 256-bit key you supply - the crate never generates or stores key material itself; real key custody belongs to the platform's secure hardware, iOS Secure Enclave or Android Keystore).
DNA-encode the resulting blob: 2 bits per base, .
Every byte maps to exactly 4 bases, so there's no padding ambiguity on decode.
Write the ACGT text to disk, atomically (temp file + rename).
Filenames are keyed BLAKE3 hashes of the logical key, not the key name itself, so a directory listing alone leaks nothing - no key names, no values, no way to tell how many distinct keys exist versus how many files are on disk.