Vector Privacy: Q2 2026 Report#

April through June 2026 · by Vector Privacy

One landmark release, a brand-new protocol, fully encrypted Communities, embedded Tor, and multi-device support.

A message to the public#

Last quarter we wrote that privacy was under attack on every front. A quarter later, none of that pressure has eased.

The same fights are still on the table. Lawmakers across Europe are still pushing "Chat Control" and its successors, proposals that would force messaging apps to scan private conversations before they are encrypted. Governments are still treating end-to-end encryption as a loophole to close rather than a right to defend. And the machinery of everyday surveillance, facial recognition, location tracking, and behavioral profiling, keeps getting cheaper and quieter, baked into more of the apps and public spaces people pass through without noticing.

For the people who feel this first, journalists protecting a source, activists organizing under a hostile government, anyone whose safety depends on not being watched, the question is never theoretical. When a tool gets backdoored or banned, someone real loses their cover.

This is the world Vector was built for, and Q2 was the quarter we widened what it can do.

For most of its life, Vector was about talking to one person at a time. In Q2 we shipped v0.4.0, and with it Vector grew into something larger: fully encrypted Communities, servers with channels, roles, and invites, where the relays carrying your traffic still cannot read a single word. That meant building a new protocol from scratch, embedding Tor directly into the app, and making the whole thing work across every device a person owns. It was the biggest release in Vector's history, and it sets the foundation for everything that comes next.

We did not wait for the world to get safer. We built the tools that help people stay safe inside the one we have.

Q2 2026 at a glance#

• 1 — Releases Shipped
• 859 — Q2 Downloads
• 25,267 — All-Time Downloads
• 4,046 — Peak Day Events
• 2,668 — Peak Day Visitors
• 194 — GitHub Stars

Features added in Q2 2026#

Everything this quarter flowed from one decision. Vector moved off Marmot MDK and onto Concord, a messaging protocol we built from scratch for group spaces running over the open Nostr network. The pivot wiped every existing group chat, including the old official community, which was not a call we made lightly. But it was far better to lay the right foundation now than to bolt fixes onto the wrong one later.

The part we keep coming back to: in a Concord Community, membership is the encryption key. Remove someone and you are not hiding them from a list, you are cryptographically locking them out. They genuinely cannot read what comes next. Most "private" group chats can only ask you to trust that. Concord enforces it.

Communities and the Concord Protocol#

Encrypted Communities (v0.4.0)#

Build a Community with channels, roles, admins, and invites, where every message, channel name, and member list is end-to-end encrypted. There is no datacenter, no admin panel a company controls, and no off switch anyone but you can reach. Promote an admin and a verifiable crown appears beside their name, real authority proven by keys rather than a database flag.

Network privacy#

Embedded Tor Integration (v0.4.0)#

One toggle in Settings routes every byte Vector sends through the Tor network, using arti-client, the Tor Project's own Rust implementation, embedded directly in the app. No separate browser, no proxy to configure. With Tor on, your provider cannot even tell you are running Vector at all. It fails safe rather than fall back to an exposed connection, and built-in obfs4 bridges slip through where Tor is blocked.

Remote Signing (v0.4.0)#

For the highest-stakes identities, v0.4.0 supports remote signing over NIP-46. Pair Vector with a "bunker" and your private key never touches the app, the same principle as a hardware wallet. If Vector were ever compromised, there would be nothing in it to steal.

Accounts and devices#

Multi-Device Support (v0.4.0)#

Encrypted group chat that stays in sync across every device you own. Join a Community on your laptop and it appears on your phone. Leave it on one and it disappears from the others. What you have joined, left, or been invited to follows you, carried in an encrypted personal list only you can read.

Multi-Account Support (v0.4.0)#

Run several identities on one install and switch between them in-app, with no logging out. Each account is fully walled off, with its own keys, contacts, and Communities, so a work identity and an anonymous one stay genuinely separate.

Sharing and personalization#

Public Community URLs (v0.4.0)#

Mint a public invite link for any Community and share it anywhere. Paste a Vector invite into a chat and it blooms into a rich card with the Community's name, logo, and a Join button. Revoking the last link does not just hide it, it re-keys the whole Community and seals it shut.

Custom Emoji Packs (v0.4.0)#

Build your own emoji pack, crop images in-app, and share the whole set with one link. Subscribe to other people's packs and use them across any chat or Community. The picker was rebuilt to open instantly, search smarter, and cache locally.

Custom Wallpapers (v0.4.0)#

Set a custom wallpaper on any conversation, then blur or dim it until it looks right. A small touch that makes the app feel like your own space.

For the full story behind each of these, with screenshots and the reasoning that shaped them, read the v0.4.0 release post.

Release summary#

v0.4.0 (May 26, 2026) — 789 downloads#

The only release of the quarter, and by a wide margin the largest Vector has ever shipped: three months of development, more than 300 commits, one brand-new protocol, and over a dozen features. Where Q1 delivered three incremental releases, Q2 was a single deliberate leap, the move to Concord and the arrival of Communities, embedded Tor, multi-device and multi-account support, and remote signing. It is the release that turns Vector from a private messenger into a private platform. Choosing to pivot protocols mid-flight cost us in the short term and will pay back for years, and we took the long game.

Download statistics#

Q2 2026 by release#

Vector reached people through two channels this quarter: the v0.4.0 release on GitHub, and for the first time Zapstore, the Nostr-native app store. Zapstore served 108 Android downloads in all since May 5; v0.4.0 landed there on June 10 and accounts for 38 of them, with the remaining 70 on the prior build.

v0.4.0 platform breakdown#

Website and documentation traffic#

The Vector documentation site kept growing through the quarter, with one unmistakable peak.

The single highest-traffic day was May 17, with 4,046 events and 2,668 unique visitors, the busiest day in the site's history. It landed squarely in the run-up to the v0.4.0 release, a clear sign that the launch drew people in to read, onboard, and learn before installing.

A smaller bump in mid-April tracked the steady interest between releases, but nothing came close to the launch window. Traffic stayed elevated through the second half of May before easing toward June, the familiar shape of a major release landing and rippling outward.

The overall pattern matched what we saw in Q1, only larger. Interest compounds, and each release reaches more people than the last.

Deep dive: Memory Hardening#

Q2 also brought a technical deep dive worth your time. In April we published Memory Hardening: Why Your Keys Shouldn't Survive a Cellebrite Box, a close look at the security work that landed in v0.3.3.

The short version: your encrypted messenger is great at encrypting messages and usually terrible at hiding the keys that do the encrypting. The post walks through how Vector defends against forensic extraction tools, swap-file leaks, and the kind of memory-scanning malware most messengers never think about. If you want to understand what "memory-hardened" actually means in practice, start there.

Looking ahead: v0.5.0#

Communities are brand new, so the next stretch is about making them excellent and giving them room to breathe.

Widescreen Desktop Client#

The headline of v0.5.0. A phone-shaped window does not do a Community justice on a big screen, so we are building a proper widescreen desktop experience, with channels, member lists, and conversation side by side, the way a real communication hub should feel.

Community and Group Chat Polish#

A steady run of improvements on top of the new foundation: background notifications, richer roles, better moderation tools, and smarter discovery. The features that turn a strong first version into the place you spend the day.

Frontend Refactor#

After 16 months of non-stop development, it is time to clean house. A large frontend refactor will reorganize and optimize the codebase and prune dead code, both to speed up future work and to make the app feel sharper for everyone using it.

Vector Badges, Including Bug Hunter#

We have been quietly tracking everyone who has found and reported bugs, and new claimable badges are on the way. The Bug Hunter badge will arrive with real perks for future releases, our way of thanking the testers who made the v0.4.0 pivot land safely.

Closing#

The world did not get friendlier to privacy in Q2 2026. The same legislation is still advancing, the same surveillance is still spreading, and the people who most need to communicate without being watched still face the steepest odds.

Vector pivoted its entire protocol and shipped Communities anyway.

Privacy is a basic human right. We say it because we mean it, and we build from it. Every feature in this report, every line of the new protocol, and every install is one more step toward making that right real for someone who needs it. To everyone who downloaded Vector, filed a bug, joined the new community, or simply believed that a conversation should belong to the people having it: thank you.

The work continues.

Vector Privacy is a free, open-source, decentralized communication platform built on Nostr.
No KYC. No metadata. No ads. No compromise.

GitHub · vectorapp.io