A look under the hood — how VELA achieves privacy, performance, and compliance simultaneously. No compromises.
Choose a username and password. That's it. No email, no phone, no real name required. A cryptographic key pair is generated on your device — your identity lives on your device, not our server.
Zero-Knowledge IdentityChoose who can discover you: Everyone, Connections only, Category searchers, or Ghost. You can also set per-category rules — visible to electronics buyers but hidden from everyone else.
Granular Privacy ControlSearch for people, products, or services in any language. Results respect visibility settings — ghost users never appear. Results are ranked by trust score and relevance, never by who paid more.
Privacy-Respecting SearchSend a connection request (optional) or start a conversation directly. The VELA server matches your device with the recipient's device, then steps aside. All communication is P2P from that point on.
P2P HandshakeThe encrypted message arrives on the recipient's device, is decrypted locally, and (if translation is enabled) translated on-device using an offline language model. At no point does VELA see plaintext.
On-Device Decryption + Translation