Frequently asked questions

Aphanite is the way to send and receive crypto and message anyone, even someone who's never used crypto. You send money and a private, end-to-end encrypted conversation as a link; the recipient needs no wallet, app, or bank to receive it. Direct messages use X3DH and the Double Ratchet (dr-v1) on your device; groups and the developer API use per-message X25519 sealed boxes (box-v1). Our relay only ever moves opaque envelopes it cannot read.

Yes, and that's the point. You send a link; they open it and receive the funds, and Aphanite creates their self-custodial account invisibly (no seed phrase to write down first, no app to install). They can also chat with you right there. To be precise: they do end up holding real keys of their own on their device (that is the self-custody), and they need to open the link for the money to reach them.

No. You can connect a wallet you already have (a gasless Sign-In with Ethereum signature), or start without one: Aphanite creates a self-custodial account right on your device, with no seed-phrase ceremony up front. There's no password or email either way. If you want to look around first, the homepage offers a demo identity.

Not to use Aphanite: you sign in with a wallet or a link, with no phone number and no email. One caveat: buying crypto with a card, or cashing out to a bank or card, goes through MoonPay, a regulated partner, and the law requires them to run a quick one-time ID check for that.

Your on-chain funds sit in keys only you hold. There's no bank, exchange, or Aphanite balance in the middle, so there's no one positioned to freeze or seize them. (Scope: this is about your on-chain funds; it doesn't make transactions private. See the privacy question below.)

Message content is end-to-end encrypted, so we can't read it. Payments can use stealth addresses, which pay a fresh one-time address instead of your main wallet and so reduce the on-chain link to you. The limits: on-chain transactions themselves are public by nature, and our relay still handles routing metadata (see 'What can the server see?').

It isn't a wallet you manage. It's how you send crypto and talk to people, including people who don't have a wallet at all. The money and the conversation live in the same place: a transfer starts inside the chat that explains it, and a payment link carries a conversation with it. Under the hood you (and your recipients) still hold self-custodial keys; Aphanite never makes that the product you have to wrestle with.

No. Sign-in uses Sign-In with Ethereum (EIP-4361): your wallet signs a single-use, domain-bound challenge that proves the address is yours. It's gasless and entirely off-chain, and Aphanite never constructs a transaction. The rule is sign, never spend.

Yes. Create a poll from the group composer with up to six options. Votes tally live on the card, and both the question and every vote are end-to-end encrypted, so the server can see neither the question nor the results.

No. Message contents are encrypted with keys that never leave your devices, so we cannot read them and cannot produce their contents to anyone. To be precise about scope: this covers content, not metadata. Like any messaging service, our relay necessarily handles routing data (who is exchanging envelopes, when, and their sizes); established one-to-one conversations further hide that behind unlinkable mailbox tags, but first contact and groups are still identity-addressed in v1.

Never message content. For established direct conversations, envelopes travel under rotating unlinkable mailbox tags (sealed sender), so the relay stores ciphertext under an opaque label, with no sender, no recipient, and no device identity. For first contact and groups, the relay still sees sender and recipient addresses and timing in v1. One notifications trade-off: if you turn push notifications on, senders' devices tell the relay to wake your address when mail arrives, so the relay learns that you received something and when, though never the content or who sent it. Turn notifications off and tag mail names no one. We state the remaining metadata plainly rather than papering over it.

For direct conversations you already have: no. Once a conversation is established, your clients exchange per-conversation secrets inside the encrypted channel and address envelopes to rotating opaque tags over sessionless calls. The relay can't see who is talking to whom, and message sizes are hidden by bucket padding. For first contact (consent requests) and groups: yes, for now. Those are still identity-addressed in v1, with group tag-addressing on the roadmap. The relay also still sees client IP addresses and coarse timing; if that matters to you, reach it over Tor or a VPN.

Yes. An independent security and claims audit reviewed the protocol, the application, and the on-chain smart contract at the source level, and separately verified every public claim on the site against the code that backs it. A follow-up remediation review re-checked each fix: all three high-severity findings and the large majority of medium and low items are resolved and confirmed in code, with the remaining items (a smart-contract hardening item that needs a redeploy, and a low-severity storage quota) documented openly. You can read the full report, including findings, fixes, and what's still on the roadmap, from the download link on this page and in the site footer. It is a point-in-time source review, not a substitute for a formal third-party audit, which we plan to commission before high-risk use.

Handle-to-key bindings live in a public, append-only key-transparency log whose Merkle roots are anchored on Ethereum mainnet. Your browser verifies a cryptographic inclusion proof against the root it reads from the blockchain, not one the server asserts. For any entry covered by an on-chain checkpoint, that means the directory can't swap a key, rewrite history, or show different users different logs without producing publicly provable evidence. Entries added since the last checkpoint are covered by the next one. Verification is a free read-only call; it never costs you gas. You can also compare safety numbers with a contact, and any key change is surfaced, the same way Signal does it.

Yes. You can send a transfer directly inside a conversation, and view an address's recent on-chain transaction history from the chat.

Real end-to-end encryption means there's no back door. If you lose every device and don't have an encrypted backup, your message history can't be recovered. That's the trade-off for messages only you can read.

Messaging is free. We plan to charge only for optional extras: custom handles, verified business accounts, encrypted backup and multi-device sync, larger groups, and a developer API.

Use the wallet-verified contact form on our homepage. Your signature confirms it's really you, which helps us cut spam and reply with confidence.