// about

nSealr is not a product.

It is a non-profit, open-source program for Nostr signing devices, companion software, shared specs, and build documentation. The work lives in seven repositories on GitHub. There is no commercial entity behind it.

What we are building

One companion (host-side, secretless) plus five signer solutions (Raspberry/Pi QR vault, ESP32 QR vault, ESP32 USB/NIP-46, smartcard, custom hardware wallet). The five solutions are not parallel experiments — they share contract_ids from nSealr/specs, so a feature like approval_digest behaves identically wherever it is implemented.

Who it is for

• You are a Nostr user who wants to take your private key off your daily browser.
• You are a developer integrating signers into clients, relays, or services.
• You are a builder who wants to assemble or modify open hardware.
• You are a security reviewer evaluating Nostr signing architecture.

What it is not

• A closed hardware wallet product. The hardware files are open.
• A custodial service. The companion is secretless; it never holds keys.
• A relay implementation. NIP-46 relay sessions are upstream.
• A funded company. There is no commercial entity, no token, no sale.
• A "drop-in production signer". Real signing stays gated until hardening lands.

Governance

There is no company, no foundation, no incorporated entity behind nSealr today. Each repository accepts pull requests under MIT (code) or CC0-1.0 (content); the conformance test corpus in nSealr/specs is the source of truth for cross-solution behavior. Disagreements are resolved by the spec, not by precedent in any one firmware tree.

Repositories

• specs — Protocol, conformance vectors, signer feature matrix.
• companion — Host-side software (CLI, SDK, extension, app, service, NIP-46 bridge).
• raspberry — Raspberry/Pi stateless QR vault software.
• esp32 — ESP32-S3 firmware for both QR vault and USB/NIP-46 lines.
• smartcard — JavaCard/NFC smartcard signer research, simulator, APDU codec.
• hardware — Open hardware kit requirements, BOM, KiCad files, enclosures, jigs.
• lab — Source-backed research, threat modelling, status tracking.

License

Code is MIT-licensed. Documentation and content will move to CC0-1.0 when published. Hardware artifacts under nSealr/hardware ship under CERN Open Hardware Licence v2 (permissive). Each repository declares the licence in its LICENSE file.

How to get involved

Read Contributing, pick a repository that fits the area you care about, and open an issue or PR. The easiest place to start is reading nSealr/specs — everything else hangs off it.