Run a relay for your community

Every relay stands alone: it holds only its own users' identities and their inbound queues, and it never connects to another relay. When one of your users writes to someone on another relay, their app posts the sealed message straight to that relay over Tor, and your relay never sees it. Messages from elsewhere arrive at your relay sealed, just like local ones, and what reaches another operator's relay from your users is a sealed envelope with no sender on it. If you'd rather not receive messages from other relays, one switch in your operator portal asks the official app to stop sending them.

An ordinary Aphotic license works on any relay. People bring their own, and checking a license never tells us which relay somebody is on.

Relays appear in the app's server list through a directory we sign, and the key that checks the signature is built into the app, so a relay can't fake its way onto the list. We also issue every license centrally, which means a rogue operator can't hand out access of their own.

You need an operator license from the store, a Linux machine that can run Docker and reach Tor, and one setup script. The installer asks for your operator license key and the main relay's address, then starts everything, the relay's own Tor address included. In the operator portal you manage the listing: its name, and whether it's visible or findable by search only.