About the founder
Curtis Baldwinson
Founder of AshNote
I've spent much of my career building communications systems, from hardened encrypted platforms to commercial communications infrastructure. Over time, that work led to a simple conclusion: when sensitive information is involved, trust should be placed in cryptographic design, not in the goodwill or invulnerability of the server.
The experience that influenced AshNote most directly was helping build encrypted communications infrastructure that at its peak served tens of thousands of users across Europe. Working on the applications inside that ecosystem reinforced a principle I now consider foundational: if a server can access plaintext, the server is part of the attack surface.
Later roles, including work at ReadyMode, deepened my understanding of communications systems from a different angle: how real-world platforms are deployed, operated, and relied upon at scale in ordinary business environments. Together, those experiences made one thing clear: most systems still ask users to place too much trust in infrastructure they do not control.
AshNote was built in response to that problem.
Secrets are encrypted in the browser before they leave the device. The server stores ciphertext it cannot decrypt. Short-lived burn-after-read secrets are kept only in memory and are never written to disk. Team key exchange uses a hybrid post-quantum design combining X25519 with ML-KEM-768 to strengthen confidentiality against both current and emerging threats.
The objective is straightforward: compromise of application infrastructure should not mean compromise of user secrets.
I did not build AshNote because the world needed another notes app. I built it because sensitive information is still too often shared through systems that were never designed for transient, zero-knowledge disclosure. AshNote exists to provide a stricter standard.
See how it works
The architecture, encryption model, and design principles behind AshNote.