Product Family
Mainstay brings together a set of independently useful products. Their clear boundaries are a strength: each component can be deployed, tested, replaced, and understood on its own.
Safebox Web
The current standalone user app for records, payments, recovery, handles, and everyday wallet workflows. It is the practical application foundation for Mainstay.
Acorn
The protocol-first component for safeguarding user-controlled keys, funds, and records. Acorn keeps portable signing, recovery, and wallet authority below the application layer.
Stroma
The narrow Nostr wire-format library beneath Acorn. Stroma owns keys and event encoding, signatures, NIP-44 encryption, NIP-59 gift wrapping, and bounded relay exchange without taking ownership of wallet, record, or payment meaning.
Grove
A local-first Blossom server for opaque, content-addressed encrypted blobs and attachments. Grove preserves bytes without needing to understand plaintext.
Spurline
A local-first Nostr relay for event continuity, selective synchronization, and future community mesh operation.
Clear
An optional local-first Cashu mint for independently governed points, vouchers, and internal economies without Bitcoin or Lightning settlement.
Mainstay
The unified application and primary user entry point. Mainstay coordinates the family without replacing their protocol boundaries.
OpenETR
The control and provenance layer for records. OpenETR provides a way to examine where a record originated, who issued or attested it, whether it remains unchanged, and how control has moved or ended over time.
Mainstay is being designed to work in conjunction with OpenETR so records can be assessed for legitimacy rather than merely stored and retrieved. This relationship also enables digital trade documentation and other workflows in which provenance, integrity, presentation, and control history matter.
How the pieces fit
Mainstay
unified user application
|
+----------------+----------------+
| | |
Safebox Web Acorn Clear
user flows portable authority local mint
|
+-----+-----+
| |
Stroma Grove
Nostr wire blobs
|
Spurline
event relay
Lockbox runs the stack locally
Mainstay <----> OpenETR
record legitimacy
provenance, control history, digital trade
Mainstay should discover available services and explain their state in plain language. It must keep different mints, currencies, issuers, relays, and storage providers visible enough that convenience never becomes false equivalence.
OpenETR is not another storage provider or system of record. It complements Mainstay with a control graph: signed evidence about record origin, attestation, transfer, and termination. Mainstay can present that evidence alongside a safeguarded record while leaving the legitimacy judgment with the people, organizations, and authorities that recognize it.
Stroma is not another application or hosted infrastructure service. It is the small protocol layer Acorn uses to speak Nostr without importing social-client behavior into the wallet kernel. Spurline and other compatible relays remain independent services on the other side of that wire boundary.
Clear and local economies
Clear adds an optional local economic layer. A church, food-bank network, campus, event, emergency operation, or resort can operate a bounded currency recognized by participating people and providers.
A resort could issue guest credits, staff allowances, activity vouchers, or emergency value on its own network. Acorn holds the proofs, Mainstay presents the experience, Spurline carries signed local events, and Lockbox can host the runtime. The resort treasury remains responsible for issuance and provider settlement.
These currencies are voluntary, limited-recognition instruments rather than legal tender. Mainstay must keep every currency and its governing organization distinct.