The proof is public.
The content is private.

Ed25519 signed DAGs · content-addressed CIDs · W3C DIDs · MIT License

Install the CLI Read the spec
T O P O L O G Y

Two surfaces.

The proof surface is public — signed chains of cryptographic commitments, verifiable by anyone with a public key and any standard Ed25519 library. The content surface is private — documents live in member-governed spaces, visible only to participants.

The protocol defines the proof surface. It sees hashes, never documents. You can prove you authored something without revealing what it is.

S T R U C T U R E

Signed DAGs.

Identity is a directed acyclic graph of Ed25519-signed operations — key rotations, content commitments, recoveries — rooted at a genesis. Forks are valid. Convergence is deterministic: highest timestamp, lexicographic CID tiebreaker. No consensus needed.

The did:dfos identifier derives from the genesis hash — self-certifying. Content chains use the same mechanics. The protocol doesn't know what a "post" is. Application semantics are a separate concern.

N E T W O R K

Verifying relays.

Web relays are HTTP endpoints that independently verify every operation on ingestion. No trust between relays. Three peering behaviors compose the network: gossip, read-through, and sync. There are no relay roles or hierarchy — topology is emergent.

Verification is a pure function. Given a chain and a public key, any Ed25519 library returns valid or invalid. Offline, in any language. The reference implementation is verified across TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, and Swift.

genesis
rotate
commit
commit
head
G E T   S T A R T E D

Install the CLI.

One binary. Keys in your OS keychain. Local-first by default. Full documentation.

curl -sSL https://protocol.dfos.com/install.sh | sh

Also available via brew install metalabel/tap/dfos and docker pull ghcr.io/metalabel/dfos

Quickstart
# create your identity
dfos identity create --name myname

# publish your first post
echo '{"body":"gm"}' | dfos content create -

# see it
dfos content list

# run a relay
dfos serve
S P E C I F I C A T I O N S

Read the protocol.

Protocol Specification Chains, beacons, merkle trees, CID derivation, verification rules, test vectors DID Method W3C did:dfos — self-certifying, transport-agnostic identifiers Content Model JSON Schema content types committed via content-addressed CIDs Web Relay Verifying HTTP relay with gossip, read-through, and sync peering CLI Identities, content chains, credentials, relays — Linux, macOS, Windows Deploy Run a relay with Docker, Caddy auto-TLS, peering, and container images Overview Why the protocol exists, design principles, chain topology