Two ways a Velta message moves

Velta is a client for Delta Chat. The core encrypts on your device with OpenPGP. Velta does not keep a copy of the keys, and the project does not run the mailbox.

The ring

The ordinary path is a chatmail relay: an email server that stores ciphertext and hands it on. You can keep more than one relay on a profile. One of them is primary for sending. If it fails, another can take the turn. The relay can see that a message existed, and roughly how large it was. It cannot read it. It also accepts only encrypted messages — plain email is dropped on arrival, so there is no spam either.

Your identity on that path is an email address. Not a phone number, and not an account you open with Velta. One profile can hold several addresses — aliases that all lead to the same key — and the key stays yours if an address changes.

The chord

Two features skip the mailbox when you ask them to. Velta Beam sends a file peer to peer to the people in the chat and shows each receiver’s progress until the checksum matches. Velta Loop — local chat, still in beta — is a whole conversation on the same network, over iroh QUIC — one to one, or a group of up to five devices. The media limits there are deliberate: 256 MB in a pair, 32 MB in a local group.

Audio calls are a third path that feels direct, and they are also beta. They are one to one, set up through the encrypted chat, and the phone only rings while Velta is open.

What stays true on both paths

• No analytics, telemetry, or crash reports.
• HTML inside a message is drawn in a sandboxed frame that does not share the app’s origin.
• Link previews can be off. When they are on, tracking parameters are stripped.
• You can export a profile, and you can delete it.

You do not pick one at install. The ordinary path is a relay. Beam is the direct one.