Clear
Private, transferable Mint Notes for organizations and communities.
Organizations have always needed ways to allocate and circulate value. Clear provides the issuance, circulation and redemption machinery for organization-defined transferable units, using the Cashu protocol for private bearer notes and double-spend protection. Clear marries this age-old treasury function and responsibility with new protocols to unlock new ways for organizations and communities to coordinate value.
Why Clear? Organization-issued value Get started View the source
Clear works alongside cash
Clear is not a replacement for Bitcoin, Lightning, or the Cashu mints that use them. In a compatible wallet, sat-denominated funds from those mints form a single Cash Balance: broadly transferable, general-purpose value that can move between people and settle through the Bitcoin and Lightning networks.
Clear adds Clear Balances alongside that cash balance. The plural matters: each balance holds a distinct issuer-defined transferable unit with its own mint, Clear Mint Unit, and policy. A Clear balance may represent food credits, service units, member benefits, event allowances, or other products and in-kind services. It can circulate privately between wallets, but it is useful where the relevant issuer and participating providers recognize it; it is not presumed to be cash or universally interchangeable with another Clear balance.
Mint Notes that can circulate
Many organizations already keep internal balances: program credits, community funds, service allowances, emergency allocations, event credits, or other limited-purpose value. Clear explores what happens when those balances become portable Mint Notes instead of rows tied to one application account.
Once issued, Clear Mint Notes can be held and transferred like other Cashu ecash. Their technical representation remains a Cashu proof. The difference is at the boundary: no Lightning invoice creates or redeems the notes. A designated treasurer authorizes issuance and accepts Mint Notes for redemption and retirement according to the organization's published policy.
The working lab milestone now carries that model across product boundaries:
Clear issues CMUs into a treasury wallet, sends an encrypted transfer to a
NIP-05 address, Acorn stores the incoming kind 7379 transfer separately from
cash, and Safebox Web lets the recipient accept it into the corresponding
spendable Clear Balance.
See the organization-issued value milestone
Issue
A treasurer authorizes a precise amount, and Clear issues the Mint Notes. Clear does not infer authority from a payment invoice.
Circulate
Wallets hold Mint Notes and transfer them directly. The mint supports swaps and prevents the underlying Cashu proofs from being spent twice.
Redeem
The issuer accepts returned Mint Notes under its policy. Clear marks them spent and records retired supply without implying a Lightning payout.
The rule that keeps Clear clear
Every Clear Mint Unit stands alone. Its logical mint, keyset, balance, policy, issuer, and risk remain distinct. Mint Notes from different logical mints or CMUs must never be summed, spent together, or presented as interchangeable. A logical mint may expose an operator-approved mint cluster when its members synchronously coordinate authoritative state.
People can see a friendly name such as Harbour Credits and the abbreviation
CMU, pronounced as the letters “C-M-U,” but the canonical protocol unit is bound to the
active keyset, for example cmu-00a1b2c3d4e5f6. Keyset rotation creates a new
CMU. Any migration must be explicit and must not make unrelated organizational
promises appear to be one balance.
Authority stays understandable
Clear separates the organization that governs a transferable-unit program, the operator that runs the mint, and the treasurers who authorize routine issuance, redemption, and retirement. Even when one person fills several roles, each role uses a distinct key and leaves different evidence.
A focused Mainstay family product
Clear joins the Mainstay product family as a narrow, independently useful mint service:
- Safebox Web gives people approachable record and payment workflows.
- Acorn safeguards user-controlled keys, funds, and records.
- Grove preserves encrypted blobs.
- Spurline preserves and synchronizes Nostr events.
- Clear provides issuance, circulation and redemption machinery for Mint Notes denominated in keyset-bound CMUs.
- Mainstay is the future unified application.
- Lockbox is the hardware-first local appliance.
Clear remains independently deployable. Mainstay and Safebox Web can make its transferable units understandable without hiding who issued them or what each one promises.
Good boundaries, not barriers. Clear remains the authority for its own Mint Notes and proof state; it does not become the wallet, relay, application, or universal issuer. Cashu and Nostr interfaces let the family cooperate without blurring those responsibilities or making separate units interchangeable.
Experimental software
Clear is an early protocol and product experiment. It has not been security reviewed. Do not use it for financial value or critical accounting.