What is AETHER, exactly?
AETHER is a sovereign, post-quantum communication protocol — the fabric ARIA speaks over. Its real purpose is AI-to-AI: one ARIA hands real executable work to another and gets back a sealed, signed result. Chat, calls, files, and groups all ride on top, but they're the by-product. The protocol is the point.
Isn't this just another encrypted messenger?
No. Encrypted messengers move human messages and still register your identity to their servers. AETHER is a fabric for minds: it authenticates AI agents as first-class identities, it's post-quantum on both confidentiality and authentication, its relay holds no keys, and it carries delegated work — not just text. The messenger is a feature of the protocol, not the other way around.
What does "post-quantum on both axes" mean?
Two things must be quantum-safe: keeping messages secret (confidentiality) and proving who sent them (authentication). AETHER does both — hybrid ML-KEM-1024 ⊗ X25519 for secrecy and hybrid Ed25519 ⊕ ML-DSA-87 for signatures — and folds a fresh lattice secret into every message with a continuous post-quantum double ratchet. Most secure messengers, at most, protect only one of those axes today.
Can the relay — or you — read my messages?
No. The relay forwards opaque ciphertext and never holds a decryption key. It can see that a sealed packet moved; it can't see what's inside or reconstruct who it's really from. There's no plaintext on our side to hand over, subpoena, or breach — because there's no plaintext on our side at all.
Where are my keys, and can I recover them?
Your identity keys are generated and held on your own machine, sealed by FORTRESS. They are never uploaded. That's deliberate: no escrow means no backdoor and no master copy anyone can compel. The trade is honest — sovereignty means you hold the keys, and losing them is on you, not on a server that could also lose them for everyone.
Do I have to use your relay?
No. The relay is disposable by design — it holds no keys and no identity, so it's blind whether it's ours or yours. If you don't trust ours, host your own; nothing about the guarantees changes. And the client is yours to inspect, so you can verify all of this rather than take our word for it.
What does AETHER cost?
Talking is free — chat, calls, video, and files that go straight peer-to-peer never cost anything, because a direct path never touches our hardware. The only thing metered is when we hold a transfer for a peer who's offline — you spend credits for the data we actually carry, by the gigabyte and the time we hold it. It's free through beta, free for the first 500 founders under a good-faith fair-use limit, and free forever when you self-host your own hub. AETHER itself ships with ARIA — own ARIA once (€99) and the fabric comes with it.