Frequently asked questions

Aphanite is a wallet-native, end-to-end encrypted messenger — money and messages that are yours alone. Your wallet key is the root of your identity. Direct messages use X3DH and the Double Ratchet (dr-v1) on your device; groups and the developer API still use per-message X25519 sealed boxes (box-v1). Our relay only ever moves opaque envelopes it cannot read.

Yes — signing in uses your wallet to prove you control your address. There's no password or email. If you just want to look around, the homepage offers a demo identity that works without a real wallet.

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. Messages are encrypted with keys that never leave your devices. We cannot read them and cannot produce their contents to anyone.

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 — no sender, no recipient, no device identity. For first contact and groups, the relay still sees sender and recipient addresses and timing in v1. 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.

Handle-to-key bindings live in a public, append-only key-transparency log, and your client can verify a cryptographic inclusion proof against the published root before trusting a key — a key swap has to appear in the log, where it is visible. 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.