4.3. Identity, metadata, and comparison to other messengers

Many messaging systems focus almost entirely on encrypting content, while leaving identity and metadata largely untouched.

Signal, for example, has strong end-to-end encryption but relies on phone numbers for identity. Telegram encrypts content selectively and exposes even more information to its servers. In both cases, message content may be protected, but accounts remain tied to real-world identifiers and centralized account recovery systems.

Obscura approaches the problem from a different angle.

By using wallets as identities, it removes the requirement to bind conversations to phone numbers or emails. A wallet can remain pseudonymous, and the system does not need to know who the wallet belongs to in the real world in order to function.

In the MVP, the backend still sees metadata: which wallet sent a message to which other wallet, and when. This is acknowledged as a limitation. What changes is the identity layer. There is no phone number database to leak, no SIM to hijack, and no forced linkage between messaging identity and off-chain personal data.

The result is not anonymity by default, but a cleaner separation between communication and real-world identity than most mainstream messengers offer.