Aphotic is an encrypted messenger for Android that works without a phone number, an account or your name. Everything travels over Tor, which hides your IP address from us as well as from everyone else. The encryption is already built to hold up against quantum computers.
Aphotic
- personal details we ask for
- 0
- encryption, plus post-quantum key exchange
- AES-256
- before an undelivered message is deleted
- 7 days
- pay without a card or bank account
- Monero / Bitcoin
personal details we ask for
encryption, plus post-quantum key exchange
before an undelivered message is deleted
pay without a card or bank account
Your device does the crypto. The relay only ever moves ciphertext.
Every feature below exists to stop some piece of information about you from ever being created.
Sealed sender by default
A direct text message arrives with nothing on the outside saying who sent it, so the server cannot read the sender off it. The technical name for this is sealed sender.
Runs only over Tor
There's no public web address to attack or watch. Tor comes built into the app, so there's nothing extra to install, and neither you nor the person you're writing to ever learns the other's IP address.
Disappearing messages
Pick a timer between 30 seconds and 7 days. The timer is sealed inside the encryption along with the message, so the server never learns that you set one.
No phone number or account
You are a random ID that you share as a QR code. The app asks for no email address or real name and never touches your contact list.
Post-quantum key agreement
Someone can record your encrypted messages today and sit on them, hoping to crack them in twenty years with hardware nobody has built yet. Aphotic sets up every conversation with a hybrid X25519 + ML-KEM-1024 key exchange, chosen to still hold when that day comes.
A vault with a panic PIN
Everything stored on your phone sits in an encrypted vault. Five wrong PINs erase it. A second PIN makes the app look like it opened normally while it wipes everything.
Zero trust
What the server knows about you
To judge a messenger, ask what its operator could hand to the police. Everything ours could hand over is listed below.
The server stores
- 01A random ID and the public keys that belong to it
- 02Scrambled message data: 7 days at most in the queue, longer for a Community with saved history
- 03Proof that somebody paid, with nothing tying it to a person
The server never has
- Who sent a direct text message. Its envelope carries no sender.
- What you say. Only the scrambled version ever reaches us.
- A phone number, an email address or your contacts. We never ask for any of them.
- Your IP address or your location. Tor hides both ends of every connection.
- When you signed up or when you were last online. The database has no columns for either.
License keys are our only income
Aphotic is paid software. You buy a license key with Monero or Bitcoin, and those sales are how the operator earns money. There are no ads or trackers, since there is no data business here to feed.
Your payment can't be connected to the identity you chat under either. The walkthrough further down shows why even our own database can't make that link.
Around 10,000 users per relay
The design is built for ten thousand. Past that you'd need a far more complicated setup and a team to keep it standing. Below it, the backend is two small programs that one person can read in an afternoon and check for themselves, and that is why the limit exists. If you need more room, run a second relay.
- messages a second under load testing, 278,935 sent, zero errors
- 3,569
- to deliver one at that rate, worst case
- 250 ms
- before an undelivered message is deleted
- 7 days
How do I stay anonymous while paying?
You pay with crypto and get a license. The server that took your money must never find out who you chat as, and maths guarantees it through a trick called a blind signature. Think of signing your name across a sealed envelope: the signature is real, and the signer never saw what was inside. The steps below show what your phone does.
- 1
Pay with crypto, get a license key
You buy with Monero or Bitcoin, with no name, email address or account. All you walk away with is a 16-character license key. Most crypto payments appear on a public list of transactions; Monero payments don't.
no name · no email · no account
- 2
Your phone blinds a random token
Your phone invents a fresh random token and covers it with a secret of its own before anybody else sees it. The covered version looks like noise, and the token underneath stays hidden, like a letter in a sealed envelope.
token × secret cover
- 3
The licensing server signs it blind
The licensing server checks that your license is valid and signs the covered version without ever seeing the token underneath. It keeps a count of how many tokens it has signed and nothing of the tokens themselves.
checks license · counts · never reads
- 4
Your phone unwraps the signature
Your phone removes its secret. What's left is a real, valid signature on the real token, one the signer has never laid eyes on and cannot recognise if it sees it later.
uncover → valid signature
- 5
The chat server redeems it
You hand the uncovered token to the chat server. It checks the signature and lets you in for the next hour. It cannot trace that token back to your license or to your payment.
licensed for the hour · untraceable
What the operator cannot do
Even the operator, running both servers with full read access to both databases, cannot connect the license you paid for to the identity you chat as. There is no stored link to find, because it could never be created in the first place.
One small network, nothing to seize
The system is small and hidden on purpose. Every connection goes through Tor, there is no public address for anyone to attack, and adding servers never gives anyone something new to learn about you.
Your device
The only place your messages are ever readable. Your keys live here, inside an encrypted vault, and Tor runs inside the app, so there's nothing separate to install.
readable only here, nowhere else
The Tor network
Chatting, buying a license, updating the app: every one of those goes through Tor. No server learns your IP address and you never learn a server's. There is no ordinary web address to attack or watch.
no IP addresses · both sides hidden
The main relay
The server we run. It's reachable only inside Tor and has no ports open to the internet at all. It passes your encrypted messages along, and it's also where licenses come from.
inside Tor only · nothing exposed
Operator relays
Anyone with an operator license can run their own server for their community, on hardware they control. Your ordinary license works on any of them, and you choose which one is your home. Friends on other relays are still one message away: your app posts straight to their relay.
independent relays · your license works anywhere
A directory you can verify
Your app finds servers through a list that the main relay signs, and the key that checks the signature is baked into the app. A fake or altered server cannot forge its way onto that list.
signed centrally · checked by the app
Getting access
You buy a license with Monero or Bitcoin, with no account and no email address, and it can't be traced back to the identity you chat under. That's the sealed-envelope signing described in the section above.
crypto · anonymous · can't be traced back
Reaching people on other relays
Every account has a home relay, and you can message anyone on any relay. Your app posts each message straight to the recipient's home relay over Tor, sealed so that relay cannot tell who sent it. The relays themselves never connect to each other: your own relay never sees who you write to elsewhere, and nobody's messages pass through a server they didn't choose. Hidden senders, end-to-end encryption and central licensing work the same across every relay.
How the mesh works →What this network never learns
Tor covers both ends, so no server sees your IP address. Your messages are encrypted the whole way, so no server can read them either. Direct messages arrive with no sender on them, and your payment can't be tied to your chats. Adding servers adds capacity and choice and gives nobody anything new to learn about you.
One key, no account or email
Buy a license, install the app, type in the key.