End-to-End Encryption
Also known as: E2EE, end to end encryption, end-to-end encrypted
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a way of protecting data so that only the communicating endpoints hold the keys to decrypt it. The message is encrypted on the sender's device and decrypted only on the recipient's; every party in between — the network, the relay, the service operator — sees ciphertext they cannot read. It guarantees content confidentiality even against the provider running the service.
The defining question for any messaging system is simple: who holds the keys? In ordinary transport encryption like HTTPS, your data is encrypted to the server, which decrypts it, reads it, and re-encrypts it onward. The provider is a trusted middleman who can see everything. End-to-end encryption removes that middleman from the trust equation entirely.
With E2EE, encryption keys are generated and held only on the participants' own devices. The sender encrypts the message locally; it travels as ciphertext through every hop — Wi-Fi, the ISP, the company's servers, any relay — and is decrypted only on the recipient's device. No intermediary ever possesses the key, so no intermediary can read the content, comply with a content-disclosure demand for plaintext, or be breached into leaking it.
Getting this right requires more than an encryption algorithm. The endpoints must agree on a shared key without ever exposing it to the server, which is the job of a key-exchange protocol like X3DH. Mature systems layer on forward secrecy via the Double Ratchet so that a key compromised today cannot retroactively decrypt yesterday's messages, and increasingly add post-quantum cryptography to resist future quantum attacks. The EFF describes E2EE plainly: a message is "turned into a secret message by its original sender, and decoded only by its final recipient." That endpoint-only key custody is the whole idea — and also the source of its honest limits, covered below.
How it works
1. Each user's device generates a keypair locally. The private key never leaves the device.
2. To start a conversation, the two devices run a key-exchange protocol (such as X3DH) to derive a shared secret. The server may relay public key material but never sees a private key or the resulting session key.
3. The sender encrypts each message with a key derived from that session secret, using an authenticated cipher like AES-256-GCM.
4. The ciphertext transits the network and the provider's infrastructure as opaque bytes. Nothing in the middle can decrypt it.
5. The recipient's device, holding the matching key material, decrypts and verifies the message locally.
How RVNT uses End-to-End Encryption
RVNT is end-to-end encrypted by design and goes further than most: there is no central server for message content at all — peers connect directly over libp2p. Keys live only on devices; the handshake is a hybrid post-quantum X3DH (X25519 combined with ML-KEM-768), and message encryption uses the Double Ratchet with AES-256-GCM. The only server RVNT runs holds public prekey bundles and bootstrap discovery, and never sees keys, contacts, or content. See how it works.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between end-to-end encryption and regular encryption?
Regular transport encryption (like HTTPS) protects data between your device and a server, but the server decrypts and can read it. End-to-end encryption keeps the keys only on the sender's and recipient's devices, so the server and every network hop in between only ever see ciphertext they cannot decrypt.
Can the company providing the service read my end-to-end encrypted messages?
No — in a correctly implemented E2EE system the provider never holds the decryption keys, so it cannot read message content even if compelled by a court or breached by an attacker. It can, however, often still see metadata such as who is messaging whom and when, unless extra anonymity layers are used.
Does end-to-end encryption hide who I am talking to?
No. E2EE hides the content of your messages but not the metadata — the fact that two parties are communicating, the timing, and the frequency. Hiding that requires additional techniques like sealed sender, onion routing over Tor, and traffic-mixing.
Every definition here describes something RVNT actually ships — a post-quantum, end-to-end-encrypted, peer-to-peer messenger with no phone number and no servers.