# What is Sealed? **Sealed is a private messenger designed to protect both your messages and your identity.** It allows people to communicate without relying on a central message server, a phone number, or blind trust in a company that promises privacy behind closed doors. Most messaging apps work in a similar way: even when the content of your messages is encrypted, the app still depends on servers controlled by the company behind it. These servers may not be able to read your messages, but they can often see important information around them, such as when you are active, when you send messages, and which accounts interact with each other. Sealed is built differently. Instead of sending messages through a traditional company-controlled server, Sealed uses public blockchain infrastructure and privacy-focused smart contracts to move encrypted messages between users. In simple terms, messages are not handled by one central server that users must trust. Before a message leaves your device, Sealed encrypts it. After that, only the intended recipient can read it. To everyone else, including the network that helps deliver it, the message looks like unreadable data. ### A private messenger without a central server The main idea behind Sealed is simple: private communication should not depend on a central company server. In traditional messengers, the server plays a key role. It helps send, receive, route, and synchronize messages. This creates a point of control and a point of trust. Sealed removes that dependency. Messages are handled through open blockchain infrastructure instead of a private messaging backend. Users interact with the same public system, which makes it harder to clearly see who is talking to whom. The content of the message remains encrypted, while the delivery process avoids direct wallet-to-wallet messaging by default. For a non-technical user, the experience should still feel familiar: 1. You write a message. 2. Sealed encrypts it on your device. 3. The encrypted message is sent through Sealed’s decentralized infrastructure. 4. The recipient’s app finds it. 5. Only the recipient can read it. The complexity stays under the hood. The user simply gets a private messenger. ### Public infrastructure, private conversations Sealed is based on the idea that infrastructure can be public, while conversations remain private. At first, this may sound unusual. Public infrastructure means that the system can be inspected and verified. Private conversations mean that the content of your messages is protected before it ever reaches that infrastructure. Sealed does not rely on the system being hidden. It relies on encryption and verifiable design. That is the core difference. A traditional messenger asks users to trust that the company is handling their data correctly. Sealed is built so that the way the system works can be checked, reviewed, and improved by the community. ### Private access without exposing your messaging wallet Sealed also separates payment from communication. In many digital services, the account that pays is directly connected to the account that uses the service. This can create a privacy problem, because payment activity can become linked to user activity. Sealed uses a credit-based access model. A user can receive messaging credits and use them from a wallet that does not need to reveal where the original payment came from. These credits can also include the cost of sending messages, so the messaging wallet does not need to hold the blockchain’s native token directly. For the user, this means a simpler and more private experience: * you can use credits to send messages, * your messaging wallet does not need to hold ALGO, * sending costs can be covered automatically, * payment activity is separated from messaging activity. The goal is to make private communication easier to use without forcing users to expose unnecessary information. ### No phone number required Sealed does not use a phone number as your identity. A phone number is closely connected to the real world. It can be linked to your name, country, mobile provider, payment history, and other online accounts. For a private messenger, this is a weak starting point. Sealed uses cryptographic identity instead. This means that your access and conversations are based on digital keys and wallets, not on your phone number. You do not need to give up a personal identifier just to start a private conversation. ### More than message encryption Encryption protects what you say, but real privacy also depends on what can be learned around the message. This surrounding information is called metadata. It can include things like when messages are sent, how often users communicate, which accounts appear active, or whether payment activity can be linked to messaging activity. Sealed is designed to reduce this type of exposure by combining several privacy-focused ideas: * end-to-end encryption, * separate keys for different conversations, * message padding, * decentralized message delivery, * credit-based access, * separation between payment and messaging wallets, * and private access to blockchain infrastructure through OHTTP. These mechanisms do not make every trace disappear. No honest privacy system should claim that. However, they are designed to make communication amost impossible to track, link, or profile. ### Optional direct communication Sealed can also support direct peer-to-peer communication between devices. This option is useful for highly sensitive information, because the message does not need to be placed on-chain, even in encrypted form. However, direct communication comes with trade-offs. Both devices usually need to be online at the same time, and each side may expose its IP address to the other. For that reason, direct communication is best used with trusted devices and specific situations where users understand the trade-off. ### Open by design Sealed is open source. This means the code can be inspected by users, developers, and security researchers. The goal is not to ask people to believe privacy claims, but to make the system verifiable. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.sealed.channel/introduction/what-is-sealed.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. 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