hearth. node.hearth.software
Where we're going

Building the sovereign internet

No cloud. No accounts. No middlemen. Hearth is an identity and payments platform built on the principle that your data belongs to you — and only you.

Overall progress
32%
Phase 1 shipped · Phase 2 — 4 in progress · Phase 7+ vision
Status taxonomy
Live Shipped, in production
In Testing Dogfooded, not yet declared stable
Building Actively under development
Stubbed Scaffold exists, no logic yet
DB Ready Schema defined, no UI
Designed Spec written, not started
R&D Research / exploration phase
Planned On roadmap, not yet specced
Vision Long-term aspiration
Phase 1 Identity & Infrastructure Complete Shipped April 2026
🔑IRK — Identity Root Key

Ed25519 keypair generated on your phone. Never transmitted. Never stored anywhere else. Your identity is a key, not an account.

Live
📱HAP Pairing — Phone to Desktop

QR-based pairing over the public internet. Phone in Perth, node in Genesis, desktop in Perth. No USB. No LAN required.

Live
🌐Genesis Node — Helsinki

Sovereign relay node running on Hetzner. Docker, Caddy, HTTPS, WebSocket, IPFS. No AWS. No Cloudflare. No Google.

Live
🖥️Hearth Desktop — Windows

Frameless Tauri app with Discord/Opera-style shell. Left rail, omnibar, right panel, dark/light theme, persona switcher.

Live
📡Live Explorer

Real-time node dashboard showing connected devices, message relay stats, and activity log. Anonymised — no personal data exposed.

Live
🔒Security Hardening

Rate limiting, body size caps, UUID validation, CSP headers, X-Frame-Options, HSTS, fail2ban, signed node identity manifest.

Hardened
Phase 2 Wallet & Payments In Progress Q3 2026
💳Persona Wallet

Wallet address derived deterministically from the IRK via HKDF-SHA256. No separate wallet setup. One key — identity, wallet, everything. Per-chain Ed25519 + raw scalars for EVM/XRPL.

Building
💸HAP Payments

Address-to-address payments. No Visa. No Stripe. No middleman. Token agnostic — any currency, any chain. Works over LAN without internet.

Stubbed
Yield — SOL Staking

Passive yield on held SOL. Displayed live in the desktop topbar. Non-custodial — you hold the keys.

Planned
🪐Yield — ATOM Staking + Restake

Auto-compounding ATOM via Restake. ICS consumer chain validators (Neutron, Stride) for additional rewards. Optional stATOM liquid staking.

R&D
🔐Real Encryption — X25519 + ChaCha20-Poly1305

X25519 ECDH key exchange, ChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD, Blake3 nonce derivation, Ed25519 envelope signatures. Phone↔Desktop confirmed end-to-end.

Live
💱x402 / HAP Payment Protocol

HTTP 402-based stablecoin payment protocol integrated with Stellar/Soroban. Single Ed25519 persona key = HAP signer + Stellar G-account + AP2-compatible did:key.

In Testing
Phase 3 Business Layer In Progress Q4 2026
📄Invoicing

Create, send and settle invoices persona-to-persona. Replaces Xero, MYOB, FreshBooks. No subscription fee. Your data stays local.

DB Ready
🛒Point of Sale

Phone-based POS. Customer scans QR, pays with Hearth. Instant settlement, no card terminal, no 1.5% merchant fee.

DB Ready
🔁Subscriptions

Recurring payments between personas. Replaces Stripe subscriptions. Creator sets the plan — subscriber approves with their phone.

DB Ready
👥CRM — Persona-scoped Contacts

Contact management linked to persona addresses. Persona-isolated address book on mobile + desktop. Purchase history, deal pipeline, notes.

Live
🌐HearthSync — WordPress Plugin

Manage WordPress sites from Hearth Desktop. First commercial use: West Coast Power Equipment migration to static + IPFS + Web2 hybrid.

Live
🫂HearthFund — Crowdfunding

GoFundMe alternative. Zero-fee donations via Stellar USDC. Milestone Soroban escrow. Donation NFT receipts. Persona-verified campaigns.

Designed
Phase 4 Sovereign Messaging In Progress Q3 2026
✉️End-to-end Encrypted Messages

Address-to-address messaging. X25519 ECDH + ChaCha20-Poly1305 AEAD. Signed by sender's persona key. Genesis relay deletes after delivery — never sees plaintext.

Live
📞Voice & Video

Peer-to-peer calls over LAN or relayed via node. WebRTC transport, Genesis signalling. No Zoom. No Teams. No server recording.

Building
📡LAN Direct Delivery

When both parties are on the same network, messages route directly without touching the Genesis Node at all.

Building
Phase 5 Web Layer & App Store In Progress Q4 2026 — Q1 2027
🏠Mini Node — Persona Hosting

Every Hearth user can serve a website from their persona. HTTP host shipped, serves persona-branded site. IPFS publishing arriving in Phase 5.2.

In Testing
🛍️Hearth App Store

First-party and third-party apps distributed via HAP. App ID = Ed25519 pubkey. Persona-scoped install by default. Sovereign-by-default — any node can host an alt store.

Building
🔭Sovereign Browser

Built-in browser panel in Hearth Desktop. Web2 sites, Web3 dApps, IPFS content, Hearth-native sites — all in one shell. No Chrome. No tracking.

Stubbed
📺HearthMedia — Watch · Listen · Live · Discover

Sovereign media app. Four-pillar UI shipped as desktop Tauri + Flutter mobile/TV monorepo. Distributed via Hearth App Store. TV target is the lean-back home.

Building
📣Broadcaster — Sovereign Social Publisher

Cross-platform publishing: Nostr (native), Farcaster (Neynar), Bluesky (atproto), X (manual). One persona, every network. First app in the Hearth App Store.

Stubbed
🎬SMURF Series + EMBERFALL Game

Flagship vertical microdrama series for HearthMedia. Identity-sovereignty as plot. 80 episodes, paywall at ep 12, S1 finale tied to a real esports match.

Designed
Phase 6 Genesis Cohort & Network Resilience Next Up 2027
🏛️Genesis Cohort — 5–10 Nodes

Expand from one node to a cohort of 5–10 globally distributed nodes. One Active Genesis at a time. Automatic failover. Signed node identity manifest already shipped.

In Testing
Transaction Validation

Multi-node signature requirement for transaction finality. 0.1% validator fee. Permissionless — anyone can run a validator node.

Planned
🕸️Household Relay — Mini Node Mesh

TVs and desktops become household-level relays. mDNS discovery, WebSocket HAP relay, IPFS pin set, stream fan-out. Plex/Jellyfin without the server box.

Designed
🛡️Post-Quantum Migration — ML-DSA-65

NIST-finalized ML-DSA-65 added alongside Ed25519. Dual-signing for long-lived artifacts from day one — harvest-now-decrypt-later defence. Aligns with Stellar's QPP.

R&D
Phase 7+ The Long Game Vision
💻HearthOS + Hearth Linux

A full operating system with Hearth identity baked in at the kernel level. Your OS knows who you are without asking Google.

Vision
🔩Hearth Key — Hardware Device

Physical hardware key. IRK stored in secure enclave. Works like a YubiKey but for the entire Hearth ecosystem — identity, payments, signing.

Vision
🏛️Government Identity Layer

Verifiable credentials anchored to Hearth personas. Land titles, licences, passports — verified without a central database.

Vision
📶Community Mesh ISP

Neighbourhood-owned internet infrastructure. Hearth nodes form the backbone. No Telstra. No Optus. No ISP reading your traffic.

Vision
🎭Likeness & Synthetic Media Consent

Persona-signed likeness grants. Scoped, revocable, time-bound. T0-T3 trust tiers for synthetic media provenance. Ethics baked into the protocol.

Vision
🎮EEFT — Esports Economy

Kaspa-inspired proof-of-work token for the Hearth gaming ecosystem. Skill-only Ladder + free Prediction rounds. No pay-to-win - money is opt-in, gated, separate.

Vision

Why we're building this

The internet was built on the assumption that identity would be solved later. It wasn't. Instead we got passwords, data brokers, surveillance capitalism, and trillion-dollar companies whose entire business model is knowing everything about you. Hearth is the alternative. Your identity is a key. Your key never leaves your device. Everything else follows from that.