Discord has announced that all voice and video calls on the platform are now secure by default with end-to-end encryption. The rollout was completed in March, and the company is now making the news official after extensive, extensive testing.
They are also starting to remove client code that supports unencrypted fallbacks. The platform currently has around 690 million registered users and over 200 million monthly active users.
WhatsApp Discord now encrypts 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 streams.
The only exceptions are stage channels, as they are for large public broadcasts rather than private conversations. Encryption is automatically enabled on all supported platforms, such as desktop, mobile, web browser, PlayStation, Xbox, and Discord SDKs, without requiring any opt-in.
How Discord’s Dave Protocol powers end-to-end encryption
Encryption in Discord is based on DAVE, an open-source protocol that was first introduced in September 2024. DAVE was developed with the help of security firm Trail of Bits, which also performed the audit. The protocol uses WebRTC encoded transforms, messaging layer security for scalable group key exchanges, and short-lived identification keys. Its design aims to improve privacy while reducing latency and call disruption when participants join or leave a session.
Discord engineers say it is a technical challenge to expand DAVE to all supported platforms without causing noticeable latency. One example he mentioned is the compatibility issue with Firefox, which was addressed through direct collaboration with Mozilla rather than dropping support for Firefox.
Why are Discord text messages still not end-to-end encrypted?
Discord has confirmed that DAVE will not expand to include text-based communication for now. The company explains that their text features were originally developed with the assumption 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 remain accessible to Discord on their servers, while only voice and video calls are now protected with end-to-end encryption. The encryption feature is currently available to all users.
