Free speech by design
The platform cannot read, judge, or remove what it cannot see. There is no account to ban and no feed to curate.
Fully encrypted. Peer to peer. Open source.
Send it.See it once.Gone forever.
Private by math, not by policy.
A message on Light Speed travels encrypted between two devices, is shown exactly once, and is deleted on both ends the moment it is seen. No server holds it. No moderator reads it. No company keeps it.
02 the tension
Surveillance is the business model.
Every mainstream social app is built to extract. Your messages are stored, your photos are scanned, your behavior is profiled, and the result is sold to advertisers. There, privacy is a policy, and policies change.
Light Speed is built the other way around. Encryption happens on your device, decryption happens only on the device of the person you chose, and nothing is ever written to a server. The architecture makes surveillance impossible, not merely unwanted. There is no moderation layer, because the network only relays ciphertext it cannot read.
03 the pillars
Six pillars
Not promises. Properties of the architecture.
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Every message and every photo is encrypted on your device with keys only you hold. Not even Light Speed could read what you send.
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Messages travel device to device through an encrypted relay that holds nothing. There is no central store, so there is nothing to breach, subpoena, or sell.
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Photos and videos open a single time, then are wiped from both devices. No archive to leak, no backup to steal, no history to review.
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The client and the protocol are published in full. Read the code, build it yourself, and check every claim on this page against the source.
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The relay cannot see what you send, so there is nothing for a moderator to review and no algorithmic feed to game. What reaches you is decided only by who you follow.
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No phone number, no email, no real name. Your identity is a keypair generated on your device and controlled by no one but you.
Every message and every photo is encrypted on your device with keys only you hold. Not even Light Speed could read what you send.
Messages travel device to device through an encrypted relay that holds nothing. There is no central store, so there is nothing to breach, subpoena, or sell.
Photos and videos open a single time, then are wiped from both devices. No archive to leak, no backup to steal, no history to review.
The client and the protocol are published in full. Read the code, build it yourself, and check every claim on this page against the source.
The relay cannot see what you send, so there is nothing for a moderator to review and no algorithmic feed to game. What reaches you is decided only by who you follow.
No phone number, no email, no real name. Your identity is a keypair generated on your device and controlled by no one but you.
04 the lifecycle
The life of a message
Four steps. Zero copies.
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Write it
You compose a message or capture a photo. It exists in plain text on your device alone, and it never leaves that way.
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Encrypt it
Your device locks it with the recipient public key. What enters the network is ciphertext the relay cannot open.
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Deliver it
The payload crosses a relay that sees only encrypted bytes and lands straight on the device you chose. No server writes it down.
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Delete it
It is shown once, then wiped from both devices in the same breath. The conversation leaves no trace, because there was never a copy.
05 the constants
Principles that cannot change
Load bearing walls, not slogans.
Audit everything
Open source, reproducible builds, and a public threat model. Do not trust us. Verify us.
No central owner
No company server holds your conversations, so no one can be compelled to hand them over. The network has no single point of control.
No ads, no data
There is nothing to sell, because there is nothing collected. No tracking, no profiling, no advertising, ever.
06 the model
The security model
What the cryptography actually guarantees, in plain language.
Confidentiality here does not depend on trusting the operator. The relay only ever handles encrypted bytes, and every property below holds by construction, not by policy.
- S.01 Forward secrecy
- Every message is sealed with a fresh key from a ratcheting protocol. Compromise one key, and past messages stay unreadable.
- S.02 Post quantum ready
- Key exchange blends classical and lattice based algorithms, so ciphertext captured today stays safe against a quantum computer tomorrow.
- S.03 No server plaintext
- The relay holds ciphertext in memory for the seconds it takes to forward it, then discards it. There is no message database to breach.
- S.04 Reproducible builds
- The published binary is built from the public source in a way anyone can reproduce. If the code and the binary ever disagree, you will know.
10 field notes
The engineering blog
Notes on the protocol, the threat model, and releases.
Why we are open source, and how to verify a build
Open source is not a label, it is a check you can run. A short guide to reproducing our binary from the public source and confirming they match.
Our threat model, in plain language
Who we protect you from, who we do not, and the honest limits of any app that promises privacy. Read this before you trust us with anything.
How the view once relay works
A walk through the path of a single message, from the sender keypad to a single render on the receiver screen, and why nothing readable is ever written to disk.
07 the questions
Questions
Can Light Speed read my messages?
No. They are encrypted on your device with keys only you and your recipient hold. The relay carries ciphertext it cannot decrypt, so there is nothing for us to read even if we tried.
What happens after a message is viewed?
It is deleted on both devices immediately. No archive, no backup of message content, no server copy waiting to be recovered.
Do I need a phone number or email to sign up?
No. Your identity is a keypair you generate and control. We never ask for a phone number, an email, or a real name.
Is there really no moderation?
Really. The network relays content it cannot read, so there is nothing to moderate and no feed to curate. What reaches you is set only by who you follow.
Is the code actually open source?
Yes. The client and the protocol are published in full with reproducible builds. Compile it yourself and check the claims.
What if I lose my device?
Your keys live on your device, so existing conversations are gone, and that is the point. No one else could read them either. You start fresh with a new keypair.
08 the invitation
Take back your moment.
Send the first message no server can read, or join the waitlist and hear the moment Light Speed lands on your platform.
09 the channel
Talk to us
Press, security research, and protocol questions all reach a human. We reply within two business days.