Discord has announced that all voice and video calls on the platform are now protected by default with end-to-end encryption. The launch was completed in March and the company is now making the news official after extensive testing at scale.
They are also starting to remove client code that supported unencrypted backup. The platform currently has around 690 million registered users and more than 200 million monthly active users.
Does Discord now encrypt end-to-end by default?
End-to-end encryption is used for direct messages, including voice and video calls, group direct messages, voice channels, and Go Live broadcasts.
Stage channels are the only exception, as they are intended for large public broadcasts and not for private conversations. Encryption is automatically enabled on all supported platforms such as desktop, mobile, web browsers, PlayStation, Xbox, and Discord SDK, with no subscription required.
How Discord’s DAVE protocol powers end-to-end encryption
Encryption on Discord is based on DAVE, an open source protocol that was first introduced in September 2024. DAVE was developed with the help of security company Trail of Bits, which also performed audits. The protocol uses WebRTC, Messaging Layer Security encoded transformations for scalable group key exchanges and ephemeral identity keys. Its design aims to improve privacy while reducing latency and call interruptions when participants enter or exit a session.
Discord engineers note that extending DAVE to all supported platforms without causing noticeable latency is a technical challenge. One example they mentioned is a compatibility issue with Firefox, which was fixed by working directly with Mozilla instead of removing support for Firefox.
Why aren’t Discord text messages end-to-end encrypted yet?
Discord has confirmed that DAVE will not be expanding to include text-based communications for now. The company explains that its text features were originally developed assuming that messages are not encrypted. As a result, adding end-to-end encryption to text would require significant engineering efforts.
This means that direct messages, group chats, and channel texts are still accessible to Discord on its servers, while now only voice and video calls are protected with end-to-end encryption. The encryption feature is currently available to all users.
