Acorn

A protocol-first component for safeguarding user-controlled keys, funds and records.

Portable cryptographic authority, private records, value, recovery, and continuity across replaceable infrastructure.

How Acorn works View the source

Why Acorn exists

People increasingly depend on platforms, services, devices, and applications to hold the things that matter to them. The convenience is real, but keys, records, value, and recovery can become inseparable from a particular product or provider.

Acorn is designed around a simple user need: the ability to change those surrounding systems without starting over. Applications can provide excellent experiences and trusted operators can provide dependable services, while the Acorn protocol state remains portable and recoverable.

The goal is practical independence, not isolation.

One component, three responsibilities

Keys

Acorn safeguards and exercises a public/private keypair. The keys provide continuity and cryptographic authority across compatible applications and environments without claiming to define the identity of the controller.

Funds

Acorn supports user-controlled ecash and Lightning workflows while keeping the wallet's recovery path independent from any single application interface. Mints continue to determine the validity and spend state of the value they issue.

Records

Private records are encrypted before being stored on relay infrastructure. Users can retrieve, replicate, migrate, and recover their record state through compatible Acorn environments.

Keys are not identity

An Acorn uses a cryptographic public/private keypair:

private key (nsec) -> signing, decryption, and authorization
public key (npub)  -> addressing, verification, and encryption to Acorn
seed phrase        -> recovery material when Acorn generated or derived the wallet key

The keypair supplies authority and a stable protocol identifier, but it is not identity itself. A counterparty may form an identity judgment from an amalgam of NIP-05 names, kind 0 profiles, Lightning addresses, credentials, relationships, prior interactions, and other context. Acorn can carry or resolve some of those claims; it does not decide what they mean to another party.

Protocol-first continuity

Acorn separates the parts that conventional applications often bind together:

keys  -> continuity and authority
code  -> execution environment
data  -> encrypted state on relays
mint  -> value issuance and spend state
app   -> experience and workflows

Because these layers are distinct, an application, device, relay, operator, or deployment can be replaced without automatically replacing the Acorn keys, authority, and controlled state.

This design supports individual use, trusted service providers, community infrastructure, and appliance-style deployments without requiring every user to become a full-time infrastructure operator.

Reciprocal resilience

Acorn is designed for continuity that people and communities can help provide to one another without sharing plaintext data or surrendering control.

One Acorn node gives encrypted state a home. A community of nodes creates continuity.

The model is closer to reciprocal safes than a shared folder: participants can host encrypted Acorn state for each other while each keyholder retains control over their own contents.

Security posture

Acorn handles private keys, encrypted records, and spendable ecash, so security is treated as part of the component contract rather than an implied property. The project documents what is protected, what must still be trusted, which safeguards are implemented, and which risks remain.

Acorn is currently unaudited developer-stage software. It should be used only with small test balances and non-critical records while fund-safety, concurrency, packaging, and pilot release gates are completed.

Read the security statement Full technical security policy

Project status

Acorn is under active development as a standalone component extracted from Safebox. It has demonstrated encrypted private records, ecash and Lightning flows, relay replication, recovery interoperability, and operation against independently operated relays and mints.

The current focus is hardening fund safety, recovery behavior, packaging, FreeBSD deployment, stable interfaces, and release automation. Until those release gates are complete, Acorn should be treated as developer-stage software and used only with small test balances.

The detailed specifications, design notes, operational runbooks, and project roadmap remain maintained as reference material in the repository documentation.