Mainstay
A dependable place for keys, records, payments, and community continuity.
A unified local-first application that keeps essential information and value understandable and usable when conditions change.
Mainstay is the application. Lockbox is the appliance. Continuity is the capability.
When distant infrastructure disappears
A satellite link goes down. A distant cloud service starts behaving unpredictably. A tornado takes out the local registry office and bank. Solar power and backup systems are keeping the electricity on, but the community has lost access to much of what it needs to function: payment services, critical records, local evidence, and the remote systems used to coordinate them.
The people, funds, and records have not disappeared. The paths used to reach them have. Mainstay is intended to provide a local point of continuity: keeping nearby records and payment capabilities understandable and usable, supporting community coordination, and reconciling with external systems when connectivity returns.
Local-first, not local-only
Mainstay can use helpful hosted services in ordinary conditions. It is designed so the user experience can also move toward local infrastructure when a provider, mint, satellite link, or wider network becomes unavailable.
The goal is not isolation. It is practical control over the records, keys, funds, evidence, and local services people need to continue operating.
Connected
Use hosted services, public relays, external mints, and ordinary internet connectivity.
Local
Reach nearby Lockbox services directly when upstream access is unavailable.
Mobile
Use a phone or nearby device as a temporary bridge while local authority stays close.
Community
Exchange records, events, and value across a local network or participating mesh.
A family with clear responsibilities
Each sibling product remains independently useful. Mainstay coordinates them without becoming the authority or collapsing them into a monolith.
Good boundaries, not barriers
Continuity depends on knowing which component holds which responsibility and which authority. Clear boundaries keep a relay from becoming a mint, an application from becoming the system of record, and one failure from silently changing the meaning of another component's state.
Those boundaries should not become walls. Open protocols let keys, records, funds, and signed evidence move across compatible applications, operators, and infrastructure. Mainstay coordinates the family at those boundaries so each product remains independently useful while the overall experience remains coherent.
Safebox WebUser app
AcornPortable authority
StromaNostr wire format
GroveEncrypted blobs
SpurlineLocal events
ClearLocal currencies
See how the family fits together
Continuity without ambiguity
Mainstay should always distinguish what is available now, what is confirmed, what remains pending, and what can be finalized later. A locally reachable Clear mint can confirm its own currency inside a community network, while proofs from an unreachable external mint remain pending until reconciliation.
Records follow the same principle: local copies preserve continuity, signed events preserve evidence, and synchronization reconnects local work to the wider network when available.
A local home when it matters
Lockbox
Lockbox is the hardware-first appliance direction for Mainstay. It provides a dedicated local home for the family on a small, durable platform with local storage, service supervision, hardware-backed controls, and physical presence.
The initial target is FreeBSD on Raspberry Pi 4 with a keypad and TROPIC01 HSM.
An emerging product
Mainstay is currently a product vision and integration direction. The sibling components are being built and proven independently before the unified application and Lockbox appliance profile are assembled.