What stayed
The ideas that still matter.
Encrypt for a person with their public key. Decrypt with your private key. Sign so they can check it was you. Keep keys local.
What VGP changes
Modern differences.
- Signing: modern curve signatures instead of old DSA/RSA habits
- Encryption: modern key agreement instead of ElGamal/RSA wrap
- Integrity: authenticated encryption so tampering is detected
- Private keys: memory-hard passphrase wrap (stronger than old string-to-key hashing)
- Format: simple armored messages — not OpenPGP packets / GnuPG
- Scope: local CLI keys & files — no keyservers or web-of-trust in v0.1
Honest trade-off
When to use which.
If you must interoperate with existing PGP/GnuPG users, use OpenPGP. If you want a clean modern private channel with fewer legacy knobs, use VGP.
Get the intro launch license
Read the FAQ