From Depression to vibecoding: Enigma X or how we gave people back their right to privacy

My name is Jack Khrapkov. Previously I was a growth marketer with track record: CMO at Welovenocode, which grew to a $30M valuation in two years and relocated to San Francisco. After that I led marketing for Heyhack, which also was acquired by F5 after several funding rounds.

What we built and why it matters

All messengers without exception have a fundamental problem. WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal — they all use reliable encryption, but there's always one problem: they generate the encryption keys themselves. This means they can technically have access to these keys. I'm not claiming they all do this, but I think they all do. And that applies to all messenger apps without exception.

Add to this modern realities, when AI can analyze your conversations in seconds, and the insights such analysis can produce are shocking. Try it yourself as an experiment: throw your chat history into Claude or a flagship GPT model and ask it to create a psychological profile of the conversation participants. I promise that the results will shock you a bit.

Enigma X offers a fundamentally different approach — a fully decentralized solution where keys are created and stored only on your device, while messages remain on messenger servers as usual. Only with Enigma X, messengers technically cannot have the keys, and Enigma technically cannot have your chats and conversations.

How it works

Enigma X is an app for creating and securely exchanging encryption keys, plus a keyboard that encrypts all your input before it reaches the messenger's input field.

The process is simple:

1. Create a key in the app with one tap

2. Share it with your contact via QR code or asymmetric encryption if they're not nearby (works like crypto transactions)

3. Use Enigma X keyboard's private mode for everything you consider sensitive

4. All the messenger will see is a string of emojis: 🌙🎨🔮🌊🎭🏰🌸🎪🔥🎯. And only your contact can decrypt it if they have the right key.

If this sounds complicated, I assure you - it only seems that way. I managed to teach my 75-year-old grandma to use the Enigma X keyboard, and I think that's a great indicator of our UX simplicity.

More basics about Enigma X

• Besides text, it encrypts media - images and videos

• We made ciphers beautiful — instead of unaesthetic hex symbols, we use emojis

• Impossible to document: screenshots of Enigma X conversations are useless and carry no semantic meaning

• Protection from AI analyzing you through your messages: I think no explanation needed here

• Token mining: Using the $ENIGMA keyboard in regular mode, you earn tokens for every click. You can spend them on encryption - or save them and wait for our TGE.

Tech details

• Military-grade protection: AES-256 for content, ECDSA for key exchange

• Anonymity: login via seed phrase, no KYC, no personal user data (we don't even collect email)

• Works in any messenger and app: WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Email - anywhere a keyboard is called

• Decentralized approach: You encrypt with Enigma X, but ciphers (messages) are stored only on the servers of the messengers you use.

Our results in the first months

• 10 days after launch and 350+ active users — without a single dollar on marketing

• $500 MRR (Enigma X uses a Freemium monetization model)

• After launching on ProductHunt, major IT communities and publications started picking us up organically

More information about how Enigma X works, how security is built into the app's structure, and possible use cases can be found on our website. By the way, I vibecoded it with Claude Code.

The Creation Story: From clinical depression to an encryption revolution

Break-even point

\> Jack Khrapkov: August 2024, Spain. We're having dinner in great company when the news arrives — Pavel Durov is being arrested in France. At that moment I realized: this is the end of free Telegram. And considering how much AI has developed in data analysis, it seemed to me that Orwell's dystopia could become reality as early as 2025-2026. But to understand how I came to create Enigma X, we need to go back a few months.

The rise and fall:

After a successful marketing project in the UAE, I returned to Finland. And I was hit by a second wave of clinical depression with severe apathy (catching depression in Finland is like going out for a walk, it is the happiest country after all 😐). I was considering options to end it all. Therapy didn't help this time, I couldn't cope on my own.

Thanks to loved ones who broke my stereotypes about antidepressants — they literally saved my life.

The first three weeks of taking them — hell. But then the apathy was dispelled by a random business idea that needed a simple script. No money for a developer. No income either, for several months already. But plenty of time - I was doing absolutely nothing then. Just sleeping 12 hours a day.

And I decided: why not try to write it myself with AI? I already knew how to work with it excellently, even did neural network training in 2023.

A passion from childhood and adult problems

I managed to make the first script. I slowly started to understand programming, already coding Python scripts as a hobby. And then — Durov's arrest.

A memory from first grade popped into my head. My friend and I were passing notes across the entire classroom, and I invented a cipher so the teacher couldn't read how much we disrespected her. Only the two of us had the keys. Here's a reconstruction of our school encryption:

True, my mutual dislike with teachers continued and led to a conflict with the computer science teacher in 8th grade, completely killing my desire to study programming.

Until August 2024, when I realized: my AI skills are stronger than childhood blocks. Nothing stops me from trying to solve the privacy problem. And most importantly — I want this and it drives me.

Two weeks of solo work — first version is ready. Chrome extension that allows you to create and exchange encryption keys independently. Chat 100% privately in some messengers like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord.

Showed it to an investor friend. He said the idea was cool, but it could only become mass-market with a mobile version. Challenge accepted. Several sessions in an altered state of mind and I came up with the keyboard approach (the Chrome approach was much more primitive).

Vibecoding as a lifestyle

After studying iOS limitations, I realized — Apple had literally just added capabilities that make my idea technically possible. Green light. The next six months — holed up in my apartment. ChatGPT and Claude AI from morning till night. Learned Swift, tons of stuff that seemed impossible before. Probably would have gone crazy, but the antidepressants were working, and I was enjoying the process every day.

Unexpected Takeoff

May 15, we launched on Product Hunt. And something happened that I didn't expect — major IT communities like 1337, Technochat and many others started picking us up ON THEIR OWN. Without marketing, without advertising budgets. And I understand them, because what we've made is a game-changer. And this is just the beginning.

I named the product Enigma X after that encryption machine from the movie with Cumberbatch, which really inspired me as a child. The circle closed: from childhood ciphers through depression and the Pavel Durov events — to a product that by its architecture returns people's right to online privacy. Fate? Mission? Maximalism? I think all together, but it’s beautiful. > Jack Khrapkov: A bit more personal: My grandfather was an inventor and Laureate of the USSR State Prize. And the imposter syndrome lived with me until 2025. Seems like I've worked through it pretty well 😆

Website: https://ifonly.tech/enigmax

Link to Enigma X in the app store: https://apps.apple.com/fi/app/enigma-x/id6739142029

Our TG channel: https://t.me/ifonlysolutions

Me LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-khrapkov/

My personal IG: @jackrowellee (https://www.instagram.com/jackrowellee/)