About

Vision

Provide full control over privacy without compromising on user experience.

Values

  • Privacy by default. Application functionality and settings must default to optimise for the user's privacy.
  • Platform independent. Be where the user is instead of limiting them.
  • Local-first (offline-first) software. See Seven ideals for local-first software.
  • Outstanding user experience. Stay consistent and focus on the details.

History

Most data nowadays is stored unencrypted in the cloud, regardless of how sensible that data is. In addition a user has no idea when someone accesses their data and what data is accessed. While this rarely happens that someone is looking your data specifically, it also exposes user to the risk that all their data can become public knowledge with a data breach.

In recent years we have seen messaging applications demonstrate a new path where messages are end-to-end encrypted. Inspired by Matrix & Signal Nik Graf started to wonder if end-to-end encryption could be applied to other applications as well. After some initial research 2019 he started to experiment with combining end-to-end encryption with CRDTs.

Mid 2020 he got a prototype working and Serenity Notes was born.