# Chat without phone number: wallet sign-in, encrypted DMs

> How Cherry replaces a phone number with a wallet signature: SIWS sign-in, identity keys derived on your device, end-to-end encrypted DMs, and the limits.


Cherry is a wallet-to-wallet messenger for crypto, and it is a chat without phone number, email, or KYC: your wallet is the account, and direct messages are end-to-end encrypted with keys your device derives from a wallet signature. You sign in by signing a message with a wallet you already use, such as Phantom, Solflare, Backpack, or the Seed Vault Wallet on a Solana Seeker. This page covers what the sign-in does, what the encryption covers, where it stops (group chats are not end-to-end encrypted), and how that compares with apps that register you to a phone number.

## What a chat without phone number means on Cherry

It means one credential: a signature. Sign-in on Solana is Sign In With Solana (SIWS), where the wallet signs a text message locally. Nothing goes on-chain and no gas is paid, so a fresh wallet with a zero SOL balance can still sign in and read.

Cherry's privacy policy, last updated 23 August 2025, states it plainly: "We do not collect your phone number, email address, or require KYC (Know Your Customer) information." There is no account form, no verification code, and no document upload anywhere in the flow.

Your address is your identity. Display names come from names you already own: SNS names (`.sol`, also written `.sns`), `.skr` on Seeker, and other AllDomains TLDs, with avatars pulled from the domain records. That is covered in more depth on [wallet identity](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/wallet-identity/).

Because the address is the account, you can start a conversation with an address that has never opened the app. The message waits until that wallet signs in, which is how [DMs to a wallet address](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/dm-a-wallet-address/) work.

Every wallet that signs in joins the Cherry Announcements channel, which had 77,441 members on 11 September 2026.

[Cherry Announcements on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@cherry)

## How wallet sign-in and encrypted DMs work

Two signatures do the whole job, and both are off-chain and free.

| Signature | Where you approve it | What it produces | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sign-in | The "Secure Authentication" screen, button "Sign & Authenticate" | A session bound to your wallet address | No gas, nothing on-chain |
| Encryption | Pick "Send encrypted" in a DM composer, or tap a locked message, then press "Enable" | Your identity keys, derived on your device | No gas, nothing on-chain |

The sign-in screen says what it is doing: "Sign a message with your wallet to verify ownership and start your session." Hardware wallets get their own path, behind the checkbox "Using a Ledger hardware wallet?", because Ledger devices cannot sign off-chain messages; that path signs a deterministic transaction that is never sent to the network.

The second signature is the interesting one. The message your wallet shows starts with `CherryChat:v1:` and contains your wallet address and a hash of it, so you can recognise it before you approve. Your device turns that signature into your identity keys: an Ed25519 key for signing and an X25519 key for agreeing on a shared secret with another wallet's key. The signature never leaves your device, and Cherry only ever sees your public key.

Sending one DM then looks like this:

1. Your device seals the text with AES-256-GCM under a fresh random key made for that one message.
2. It locks that message key so only your identity key and the recipient's can open it, which is also how you read your own sent messages.
3. It signs the result with your identity key, so the recipient's app can confirm the message came from your wallet.

Cherry stores and delivers the sealed message, and it can tell which account sent it without being able to read it. The same signature always produces the same keys, so a second device that signs the same message arrives at the same keys. There is no key export step and no separate backup phrase.

## What is different from a phone-number account

The contrast is what the account is attached to.

Telegram's own FAQ states the model: "Each phone number is a separate account on Telegram." A number that changes hands, or a SIM that is ported by someone else, is an account-level event.

Towns, an onchain group-chat app on Base, announced its new iOS app on 27 February 2026 as a "new app, new account" that adds friends from phone contacts.

Farcaster splits identity and login. Its documentation says: "A Farcaster account is created by calling the IdGateway contract. It will assign a new Farcaster ID or fid to your Ethereum address." Registration is an on-chain transaction, while its client offers sign-in with email or phone. We go through the rest of that comparison in [Cherry vs Farcaster](https://cherry.fun/learn/compare/cherry-vs-farcaster/).

On Cherry the registration is the signature. There is no contract call to fund, no code to receive, and no third-party verification site in the middle. The same principle runs through access control: [token-gated chats](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/token-gated-chat/) are checked by Cherry against the chain, so joining a gated room needs no verify bot and no separate verification link.

## Who chats without a phone number

Three situations recur.

A trader has a counterparty's address from a swap or a transfer and nothing else. They open the address in Cherry and write to it. If the deal is real, it moves to an escrowed OTC swap in the Cherry mobile app, where both legs settle atomically instead of through screenshots.

A community owner moves a group off an app where every member is a phone number. Members arrive by signing with the wallet that already holds the token or NFT, so the owner never holds a list of phone numbers, and the entry check is the wallet's balance rather than an admin's judgement. The same gating covers ERC-20 and NFT holders on Base and Ethereum, as described in [multichain token-gated chat](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/multichain-token-gated-chat/).

A Seeker owner signs in with the Seed Vault Wallet through Mobile Wallet Adapter on Android, and their `.skr` name is the display name other members see. Cherry ships on the Solana dApp Store, so the phone's own wallet is the login.

## Limits and honest caveats

Group chats are not end-to-end encrypted. That is a design decision: moderation, bots, and the call bot need to read messages. End-to-end encryption applies to direct messages.

Messages are stored off-chain on Cherry servers. Tokens and escrow live on-chain; the conversation does not.

Encryption in the web app is opt-in. Until you sign that second message, your DMs go out unencrypted and encrypted DMs sent to you stay locked, with a prompt to enable them.

No phone number also means no phone-number recovery. The identity keys come from a signature only your wallet can produce, so losing the wallet loses the account, and no support flow can restore it.

The privacy policy is worth reading for what it does collect: your public wallet address, basic identifiers derived from it for push notifications, Google Analytics usage data, and device and crash data (23 August 2025). On iOS, Cherry does not track users under Apple's App Tracking Transparency definition: no IDFA, no data brokers.

New wallets meet a speed bump. A wallet with no successful on-chain transaction is blocked from posting in public groups, and its first DMs land silently in the recipient's Requests tab under "Hidden" with no push notification. The [message requests and paid DM](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/message-requests-and-paid-dm/) rules explain the escape hatch, and [anti-spam](https://cherry.fun/learn/features/anti-spam/) covers the rest of the layers.

## How to start

1. Open [chat.cherry.fun](https://chat.cherry.fun) and connect a Solana wallet: Phantom, Solflare, Backpack, or the Seed Vault Wallet on a Seeker.
2. On the "Secure Authentication" screen, press "Sign & Authenticate" and approve the signature request in your wallet. Nothing is broadcast and no fee is charged.
3. Using a hardware wallet? Tick "Using a Ledger hardware wallet?" first and approve a transaction that is never sent to the network.
4. In a DM, choose "Send encrypted" from the send-button menu or tap a locked message, press "Enable", and sign the second message. The composer sends encrypted from then on.
5. Start a conversation by entering a wallet address or a name such as `alice.sol` or `alice.skr`.

Sign in with the wallet you already use at [chat.cherry.fun](https://chat.cherry.fun), and read [what Cherry is](https://cherry.fun/learn/about/) if you want the short version first.

## FAQ

### Can I use Cherry without a phone number?
Yes. Cherry signs you in with a wallet signature, and its privacy policy (last updated 23 August 2025) states that it does not collect a phone number or an email address and does not require KYC.

### Does Cherry require KYC?
No. There is no identity document step and no account form. The only credential is a signature from the wallet you connect.

### Are Cherry DMs end-to-end encrypted?
Direct messages are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived on your device from a wallet signature. Group chats are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderation and bots can read and act on messages.

### Does signing in cost gas?
No. Sign In With Solana is an off-chain message signature. Nothing is broadcast to the network and no fee is paid.

### What happens if I lose the wallet I signed in with?
You lose the account. The identity keys are derived from a signature only that wallet can produce, so there is no phone-number reset and no support recovery path.

### Can I message someone who has never opened Cherry?
Yes. You can start a DM to any wallet address or name such as `alice.sol`, and the conversation waits for the owner of that address to sign in.

## Sources

- [Cherry privacy policy, last updated 23 August 2025](https://cherry.fun/docs/privacy.html)
- [Telegram FAQ](https://telegram.org/faq)
- [Farcaster documentation: accounts](https://docs.farcaster.xyz/learn/what-is-farcaster/accounts)
- [Cherry Announcements on Cherry](https://chat.cherry.fun/@cherry)