XTrace – Encrypted vector DB (search embeddings without exposing them)
Hey everyone! This is XTrace. Wanted to share what we’ve been working on for the past year. We built a private vector database from the ground up that performs similarity search on encrypted vectors. The server never sees your plaintext embeddings or documents. The problem we’re trying to solve: every vector DB today requires plaintext on the server. If you're doing RAG over sensitive data (medical, legal, financial), your embeddings — which researchers have shown can be inverted to recover original text — sit exposed on someone else's infrastructure. XTrace encrypts everything on your…
XTrace – Encrypted vector DB (search embeddings without exposing them) launched on April 22, 2026 with 13 votes, #1,135 of 21,248 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches.
In plain words
XTrace is a vector database that performs similarity searches on encrypted data without exposing plaintext embeddings or documents to the server. Designed for organizations handling sensitive information in medical, legal, and financial sectors, it encrypts vectors using Paillier homomorphic encryption and text with AES-256 before storing them. The server only accesses ciphertexts while encryption keys remain in the user's environment. The SDK is open-sourced under Apache 2.0 license, allowing offline verification of encryption functionality.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
open source version xtrace sdk. Contribute to XTraceAI/xtrace-sdk development by creating an account on GitHub.
The encrypted vector database. Your data never leaves your machine in plaintext. Every vector database on the market requires you to hand your data to a third party in plaintext. XTrace doesn't. Your documents and embedding vectors are encrypted on your machine before anything is transmitted. The server stores and searches over ciphertexts — it computes nearest-neighbor results without ever seeing the plaintext. Your data stays yours, even during search. Your Machine XTrace Server ┌────────────────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ Documents + Queries │ │ Stores only ciphertext │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ▼ │ │ Searches over │ │ Embed + Encrypt │── ciphertext ─▶│ encrypted vectors │ │ (keys…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey everyone! This is XTrace. Wanted to share what we’ve been working on for the past year. We built a private vector database from the ground up that performs similarity search on encrypted vectors. The server never sees your plaintext embeddings or documents. The problem we’re trying to solve: every vector DB today…
Does a similar job
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HelixDB – Open-source vector-graph database for AI applications (Rust)2025 · github.com · ▲237Hey HN, we want to share HelixDB (https://github.com/HelixDB/helix-db/), a project a college friend and I are working on. It’s a new database that natively intertwines graph and vector types, without sacrificing performance. It’s written in Rust and our initial focus is on supporting RAG. Here’s a video runthrough: https://screen.studio/share/szgQu3yq. Why a hybrid? Vector databases are useful for similarity queries, while graph databases are useful for relationship queries. Each stores data in a way that’s best for its main type of query (e.g.…
Use Claude Code to Query 600 GB Indexes over Hacker News, ArXiv, etc.Dec 2025 · exopriors.com · ▲397Paste in my prompt to Claude Code with an embedded API key for accessing my public readonly SQL+vector database, and you have a state-of-the-art research tool over Hacker News, arXiv, LessWrong, and dozens of other high-quality public commons sites. Claude whips up the monster SQL queries that safely run on my machine, to answer your most nuanced questions. There's also an Alerts functionality, where you can just ask Claude to submit a SQL query as an alert, and you'll be emailed when the ultra nuanced criteria is met (and the output changes). Like I want to know when somebody posts about…
- RWRead Wikipedia privately using homomorphic encryption2022 · spiralwiki.com · ▲331
Hi, creator here. This is a demo of our recent work presented at Oakland (IEEE S&P): https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/368. The server and client code are written in Rust and available here: https://github.com/menonsamir/spiral-rs. The general aim of our work is to show that homomorphic encryption is practical today for real-world applications. The server we use to serve this costs $35/month! A quick overview: the client uses homomorphic encryption to encrypt the article number that they would like to retrieve. The server processes the query and…

Epsilla – Open-source vector database with low query latency2023 · github.com · ▲111Hey HN! We are building Epsilla (https://github.com/epsilla-cloud/vectordb), an open-source, self-hostable vector database for semantic similarity search that specializes in low query latency. When do we need a vector database? For example, GPT-3.5 has a 16k context window limit. If we want to let it answer a question about a 300 page book, we cannot put the whole book content into the context. We have to choose the sections of the book that are most relevant to the question. Vector database is specialized at ranking and picking the most relevant content from a large pool…
OctaneDB – Fast, Open-Source Vector Database for Python2025 · github.com · ▲33OctaneDB is an open-source vector database for Python that focuses on ultra-fast similarity search for high-dimensional data—perfect for AI/ML, semantic search, and large-scale document or embedding retrieval. What does it do? Store, index, and search millions of embeddings (text, images, etc.) with sub-millisecond query time. Supports in-memory and efficient HDF5 persistent storage. Integrates seamlessly with sentence-transformers for automatic text embedding. Key Features: 10x faster than Pinecone or ChromaDB for vector search and batch insertions. Advanced indexing: HNSW (approximate…
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