Discord announced that all voice and video calls on its platform are now protected with end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default.
The rollout applies to direct messages, group calls, voice channels, and Go Live streams, with Stage channels remaining the only exception.
Discord first revealed in August 2023 that it was experimenting with E2EE for voice and video, though at the time the effort was described cautiously and without a clear deployment timeline.
A major milestone came in September 2024, when Discord engineer Stephen Birarda introduced DAVE, an open-source protocol designed specifically for encrypted audio and video communications at Discord’s scale. The protocol was later expanded by engineer Clément Brisset to support additional platforms and features, including web browsers, PlayStation and Xbox consoles, Discord bots and apps, and the company’s Social SDK.
Discord is one of the world’s largest communication platforms, with hundreds of millions of users relying on its infrastructure for gaming, social communities, livestreams, and workplace collaboration. Unlike many encrypted messaging platforms that focus primarily on mobile devices, Discord’s infrastructure must support highly mixed environments where participants can join the same call from PCs, phones, consoles, and browsers simultaneously while maintaining low latency and high-quality audio.
DAVE was designed to operate transparently without affecting call quality or introducing noticeable delays. Discord claims the encrypted experience is indistinguishable to users from previous unencrypted calls.
To improve transparency and trust, Discord made both the DAVE protocol and its implementation open source. The company also subjected the protocol to an external security audit conducted by cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits and expanded its bug bounty program to include vulnerabilities affecting DAVE.
As part of the final migration phase, Discord began requiring all clients to support DAVE to participate in calls. The company also confirmed it is removing legacy code that allowed fallback to unencrypted communications, meaning future voice and video sessions will no longer be able to downgrade to unprotected connections.
Stage channels, which are designed for large-scale broadcasts such as AMAs, live events, and town hall sessions, remain outside the scope of E2EE. Discord said the architecture and use cases of Stage channels differ significantly from those of private conversations, making end-to-end encryption impractical in those environments.
Despite the expansion of encryption for audio and video, Discord said it currently has no plans to extend E2EE protections to text messaging. The company noted that many of its text-based features were built around server-side processing assumptions that would require substantial redesign work to operate under encrypted conditions.
Users do not need to manually enable the feature, as encrypted voice and video calls are now active automatically across supported Discord platforms.
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