Cash and Clear

Safebox Web can hold two kinds of value without pretending they are the same.

Both are concrete examples of the uniform record model. Their underlying proofs or mint notes are individually identifiable records; Safebox presents compatible quantities as balances only within one explicit equivalence domain. Individually meaningful non-fungible resources continue to appear under Manage Records.

Cash Balance

The singular Cash Balance contains sat-denominated funds from Bitcoin- and Lightning-backed Cashu mints. It is used for payments and intended to be broadly transferable.

Safebox distinguishes a pending cash payment from the spendable cash balance until Acorn has completed the required mint checks.

Clear Balances

The plural Clear Balances contain organization-issued credits. Each balance belongs to one exact mint and Clear Mint Unit (CMU).

Examples may include:

• community food credits;
• member benefits;
• service or facility units;
• event allowances;
• local vouchers; and
• organization-defined reimbursements.

Clear activity is described as a transfer, not a cash payment. A transfer may be an allocation, gift, benefit, exchange, or treasury disbursement under the issuer's program.

The Clear Transactions screen keeps the readable alias, spendable amount, canonical CMU, and issuing mint together. Pending transfers remain visibly separate until they are accepted into the matching balance.

Why the balances stay separate

Cash Balance
  9,836 sats

Clear Balances
  Clear Lab Credits: 100 credits
  Harbour Lab Credits: 25 smiles

The two Clear balances cannot be added together merely because both use Cashu proofs. Their complete CMUs and mint URLs identify different issuers, policies, and obligations.

Friendly aliases make balances readable. Canonical identifiers keep them honest.

Clear Transactions

A Clear Transaction moves units associated with one specific Clear Balance. Its amount only has meaning together with the issuing mint and CMU. Safebox Web therefore keeps Clear transaction activity out of Cash history and does not combine activity from unrelated Clear balances.

The Clear Transactions page presents three distinct states:

• spendable units already held in each Clear Balance;
• pending transfers discovered on the relay; and
• completed Clear transaction history for that exact mint and CMU.

Receiving a Clear transfer

A sender delivers a private kind 7379 Clear transfer to the NIP-05 address associated with the wallet. On the Clear Transactions page, the recipient selects Check for Clear Transfers.

Acorn retrieves and validates the encrypted transfer. Safebox Web then shows it as pending under the correct Clear Balance.

Pending means the transfer arrived, not that it has already become spendable Clear proof state. The user may retain it for future acceptance or delete it. A deleted transfer does not return on the next relay check.

Acceptance can involve a mint refresh and several verified relay writes, so it runs in the background. Safebox immediately reports that acceptance has started; the user can leave and return to see whether the balance is confirmed or needs attention. The coordination record contains no wallet key or bearer token, and an interrupted acceptance can resume from relay-backed state.

Paying from a Clear balance

The Transfer a Balance page lists Cash and every spendable Clear balance as separate transfer sources. Selecting Clear carries the exact issuing mint and canonical CMU through the request; a friendly program name is display metadata, not a currency identifier.

The word payment remains useful when a transfer supplies the value or settlement leg of an economic transaction. It is not the umbrella term for every movement of a balance: allocations, gifts, benefits, refunds, and treasury disbursements are transfers too.

Safebox Web resolves the recipient's NIP-05 document and requires compatible Clear transfer support before Acorn exports any bearer value. It then asks Acorn to select and swap proofs from that exact balance and deliver the result as a private NIP-59 transfer. It does not combine balances, convert the units, or fall back to Cash or Lightning.

A new organizational capability

This working flow means an organization can now:

1. operate a Clear mint;
2. define and name a keyset-bound CMU;
3. issue units into a treasury wallet;
4. send an exact amount to a person's address; and
5. let the person see and control the transfer beside their cash wallet.

Recipient acceptance and exact-balance onward wallet spending are now implemented. Outgoing delivery recovery, wider interoperability testing, and security review remain; Clear should therefore still be used only for test units with no promise of financial value.

Read the technical milestone How Safebox treats balances Project status