Theseus Navigator

A Chromium-based browser that resolves Bitcoin Cash names on the device itself. The Ariadne resolver is built in, so the app is both browser and resolver: no daemon, no DNS shim, no root certificate. Type silentmode.bch, get the on-chain answer, and see which registry and which storage served it.

Download for Windows Android APK How it works

Theseus.X is the browser's sovereign site, served from its own on-chain name. Mirror: silentmode.st/theseus-x/ · gateway: navigate.st/bns/theseus.x/ · native with a resolver: https://theseus.x/

Theseus Navigator showing https://hello.bch, a page served from a Bitcoin Cash transaction, with the BCNR badge in the address bar
hello.bch opened in Theseus. The page bytes come from a Bitcoin Cash transaction; the badge next to the address says so.

What it is

Theseus is built on one assumption: names should be resolved by the person using them, not by an intermediary. Every page carries a badge showing which registry produced the record (BCNR or ICANN) and which backend served the bytes (on-chain, Sia, direct IP, or a plain HTTPS fallback).

On-chain first

Every dotted host is asked of BCNR before anything else. If the chain answers, that answer wins, whatever any DNS operator says. If BCNR has no record, Theseus falls through to the clearnet.

Trust one thing

The app is the trust boundary. No daemon, no root certificate, no proxy in the middle. Uninstall it and BCNR is gone from that machine; nothing lingers in the OS.

Warm from the first click

A bundled beacon snapshot loads before the first navigation can fire. A background refresh keeps the index current every 30 seconds, and a Sia snapshot pull on boot catches a long-idle install up in one request.

What's inside

Everything a mainstream browser has, plus what the chain enables.

Native BCNR

Type a name, get the on-chain record. h serves from the chain, s3 from Sia, ip connects directly with TLS pinned to the on-chain fingerprint, u redirects.

window.bcnr API

Pages can call resolveName, isRegistered, getBcnrTlds and getRecordVersion. dApps need not ship their own resolver.

Password manager

Local vault with deterministic derivation from a BIP-39 seed. The same seed on another device produces the same passwords. Autofill on demand only.

Tor toggle

One click routes everything through a bundled Tor client, pluggable transports included. Off by default; nothing is proxied without your say-so.

Anti-fingerprinting

Timezone, locale, language and geolocation can each be shown, hidden, spoofed with a plausible decoy, or set by hand. Media-device labels are blanked by default.

Privacy by default

Cookies, cache, storage and history clear on quit unless you opt in. Camera and microphone denied by default. WebRTC limited to public addresses.

Extensions and plug-ins

Bundled add-ons such as Aegis, plus community extensions anyone can publish under a BCNR name. Catalog at theseus.x/extensions.

Small, auditable

Electron plus a few kilobytes of BCNR glue. Reproducible builds with SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. Source on Hephaestus.

Download

One brand, two platforms. Both builds are alpha software on a test network. Check the SHA-256 before you install; that check is the real one.

Desktop · Windows 64-bit

Theseus for Windows

Full-window desktop browser with Tor toggle, search bar, password vault and add-ons. macOS and Linux not yet packaged.

v0.3.50 · installer ~133 MB · portable ~133 MB · unsigned
Installer Portable .exe
SHA-256 — verify before running
Installer790c0ab0412d19b1cd03bd297c10d927f2792d0bc7d3cc5ad45f22f10ffb68fc
Portableb727636f66c998611d1eeafb7a39a5d2bf6c3b7897206b22c60e3f3bad319502
Mobile · Android 5.0+ (API 21)

Theseus for Android

Phone-sized browser with tap-to-verify provenance: the block and transaction behind each name are one tap away. Still packaged as ariadne-v0.19.apk; same app, same signing key.

v0.19 · ~146 KB · self-signed release key · in-app auto-update
Download APK
SHA-256 — verify before installing
APKd2f4ad359e7ac36c1d0729100aef613be968cd17b153e94e124f8500fcbfc711
Signing key46ebbbe5dc73148d66410fd0337b1e6683472128c983e8e2578200b9e3ca548c
Ariadne's Thread is bundled. The Windows installer prompts once during setup, recommended-on, to also install the system-wide resolver so BNS names work in Chrome, Edge and every other browser on the machine. Uninstalling Theseus asks whether to remove it too. Skip the prompt and Theseus is still fully self-contained. Want only the resolver? It is a separate download on the tools page.
Always current. The dl.silentmode.st/latest/… links redirect to the newest build. Version history and every hash: releases · machine-readable releases-manifest.json.
Not in a store. Neither version is on the Microsoft Store, Google Play or the App Store. Distributing there requires a legal identity and the store's permission, the two things this project exists to do without. You will have to allow the install once, and your OS will warn about an unrecognized app. The SHA-256 (and, on Android, the signing-key fingerprint) is the real check.

Verify what you downloaded

Windows

Compute the SHA-256 and compare it to the value above: certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256. Builds carry no code-signing certificate, so Windows will warn about an unrecognized app. That warning is expected; the hash is the check.

Android

Hash the .apk on a computer before moving it to the phone, or use any file-hashing app. The signing-certificate fingerprint matters most: every future update is signed with the same key, and Android refuses an update signed by anyone else.

On chain

The canonical checksum list is pinned by the name releases.silentmode.bch, so a tampered mirror cannot change what you check against. Human-readable page: silentmode.st/releases.