FAQ
Do I need a phone number or an account?
Section titled “Do I need a phone number or an account?”No. Wisp has no accounts, no phone numbers, and no email sign-up. When you first open the app it generates a cryptographic identity on your device and gives you a 12-word recovery phrase to back it up.
What is a WispID?
Section titled “What is a WispID?”Your WispID is your public identity in text form — it’s your Ed25519 public key. You share it with people you want to talk to. It’s self-certifying: there’s no registry and no central directory, so nothing can be seized or forged.
What happens if I lose my phone?
Section titled “What happens if I lose my phone?”Restore your identity on a new device using your 12-word recovery phrase. That phrase is the only way back in — keep it somewhere safe and private. No one, including us, can recover it for you.
Can the relay read my messages?
Section titled “Can the relay read my messages?”No. Messages are end-to-end encrypted; a relay only ever sees padded ciphertext. It also can’t tell who is talking to whom, because offline messages are left at rotating, unguessable addresses. Relays hold no accounts and no history.
How do messages reach me when I’m offline?
Section titled “How do messages reach me when I’m offline?”They’re left in an encrypted “dead-drop” — a blob at a rotating, unguessable address derived from a secret only you and the sender share. Your device computes the same address later, collects the message, decrypts it, and tells the relay to delete it.
How do I know I’m really talking to the right person?
Section titled “How do I know I’m really talking to the right person?”Each pair of contacts has a safety number derived from both identities. Compare it with your contact through another channel (in person, a call) to confirm no one is impersonating either of you.
Is Wisp really “serverless”?
Section titled “Is Wisp really “serverless”?”Not quite, and we don’t claim that. Wisp still uses relays and a DHT — but they’re blind (they only see encrypted, unlinkable blobs), swappable (any relay works, and clients route around blocked ones), and non-identifying. The honest claim is: no trusted party, and no single point that can read you, link you, or be leaned on to make you stop.
What can’t Wisp protect against?
Section titled “What can’t Wisp protect against?”A global passive adversary watching the entire network could try to correlate the timing of a message being sent and received. A compromised device defeats any messaging app’s encryption. And like any peer-to-peer system, getting online in the first place depends on reaching a bootstrap node. See the threat model for the full picture.
Which platforms are supported?
Section titled “Which platforms are supported?”Android, Linux, and Windows. iOS is not supported.
Is it open source?
Section titled “Is it open source?”Yes — the Rust protocol core, the Flutter app, and the relay are all open source at github.com/xmahdi1/Wisp.