A Chromium-based browser that resolves Bitcoin Cash names on the
device itself. No OS-level daemon, no DNS shim, no root-store install. Type
silentmode.bch, get the on-chain answer, see which registry &
which storage served it.
Theseus is a browser built around the assumption that names should be resolved by the person using them, not by an intermediary. It ships an embedded resolver (Ariadne) that watches the Bitcoin Cash chain directly and answers name lookups locally — the app is both the browser and the resolver. Every page carries a badge showing which registry produced the record (BCNR, ICANN) and which backend served the bytes (on-chain, Sia, direct IP, or a plain HTTPS fallback).
Every dotted host is asked of BCNR before anything else. If the chain answers, that answer wins — no matter what any DNS operator says. If BCNR has no record, Theseus falls through to the clearnet.
The app is the trust boundary. No daemon, no root cert, no proxy in the middle. Uninstall it and BCNR is gone from that machine — nothing lingers in the OS.
A bundled beacon snapshot loads before the first navigation can fire; a background delta refresh keeps the index current every 30 s; a Sia snapshot pull on boot catches long-idle installs up in one HTTP call.
Everything a mainstream browser has, plus what the chain enables.
Type a name, get the on-chain record. h serves from the chain,
s3 from Sia storage, ip direct-connects, u
redirects. TLS fingerprint pinning against the on-chain tls record
for ip hops.
Every page can call window.bcnr.resolveName(…),
isRegistered(…), getBcnrTlds(), and
getRecordVersion(…). dApps don't need to ship their own resolver.
Local vault, deterministic derivation from a BIP-39 seed. Same seed on a different device produces the same passwords. Autofill on demand — never watches the page for you.
One click routes everything through a bundled Tor client — pluggable transports included for hostile networks. Off by default; nothing is proxied without your say-so.
Timezone / locale / language / geolocation can be shown, hidden, spoofed
with a plausible decoy, or set manually. Media-device labels blanked by
default so enumerateDevices can't leak an audiooutput ID.
Cookies, cache, storage, and history clear on quit unless you opt in. Camera and microphone denied by default. WebRTC IP policy set to public-only.
Theseus's resolver is in-process by default — nothing else on the machine is touched. The Windows installer offers Ariadne's Thread as a recommended-on checkbox: one click also installs a system-wide resolver so Chrome, Edge, and every other browser resolve BCNR too. Uninstalling Theseus asks whether to remove it. Skip the checkbox and Theseus is still fully self-contained.
Under 100 MB, Electron + a few kilobytes of BCNR glue. Source at
silentmode.st. Reproducible builds
with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH.
Latest is 0.0.9. Windows installer + portable, and an Android build (Ariadne mobile — same brand, phone form factor).
Full-window desktop browser with Tor toggle and the multi-source BNS warm-start.
6dd510184a3c1488ac93b7fd0194ddd239fe4e31083705afcc3c7bde0f530107346be24804db0d8a00cd76a2c89cd3bd2b9af17e5505b25ec326f30c3ceec6adPhone-sized browser with tap-to-verify provenance — the block and transaction behind each name are one tap away.
8a655081782ecc17a50a7fcd67c28625ccb0c905cf6b583bdd703a128b2b9b1046ebbbe5dc73148d66410fd0337b1e6683472128c983e8e2578200b9e3ca548cThe hashes above are the same ones published at
silentmode.bch/releases (Sia
mirror, name-anchored) and inside the on-chain
releases.silentmode.bch pointer. Three independent surfaces —
they should all agree.
Windows PowerShell: Get-FileHash TheseusNavigator-Setup-0.0.9.exe -Algorithm SHA256 macOS / Linux: sha256sum TheseusNavigator-Setup-0.0.9.exe Expected: 5452a34f211176cf04b7ea77a70fb838f0031b6ea0faed2cd270eae989b20c60