Silent Mode
Two internets. Twice over.
The web you use every day is owned — companies decide which names exist, which pages load, and whose voice carries. There is a second web running on the same wires, with no registrar and no gatekeeper. Whether you want to use it or build on it, it starts the same way: something you install, and a name that is actually yours.
The web you browse
Where you read, post, and are read. Pick the one you want to live in.
The blue one
Stay where it is easy.
- Your account is a permission. It exists while the platform allows it, under terms they rewrite when they like.
- What you publish stays up until it does not. Moderation is theirs, appeals go to them, and the reasons need not be given.
- You are the measured product. Attention is the business model, so being watched is not a bug in the system — it is the system.
- The reach you built is not portable. Leave, and the audience stays behind.
The red one
Step outside it.
- No account, anywhere. No email, no sign-up, no password to reset. Nothing to suspend, because nothing was granted.
- A name that is yours by key, not by permission. Held on a public ledger; no registrar stands between you and it.
- Pages nobody can pull. On your own server, spread across strangers who are paid to keep it, or inside a transaction the whole network stores.
- Nobody to petition, because nobody is in charge. That cuts both ways, and it is the honest trade.
The web you build on
If you ship things, the question repeats one layer down — and this time the gatekeepers have invoices.
The blue one
Rent it, like everyone.
- A domain is a lease, not a title. You rent it yearly at whatever the registrar charges next time, and forgetting once can lose it.
- Suspension is a supported feature. Registrars act on court orders, UDRP rulings and their own policy — by design, not by failure.
- Every layer keeps a veto. The host has terms of service. The CDN has an acceptable-use policy. The certificate authority can revoke.
- It is genuinely good infrastructure. Fast, cheap, supported, and someone answers the phone. That is the deal you are making.
The red one
Own the name outright.
- The name is a certificate you hold. A CashToken on Bitcoin Cash — your key controls it, and there is no company in the middle to ask.
- Host it however you like. Your own server, the Sia storage network, or on-chain for something small. Repoint it whenever, for free.
- No API key and no account. Names are CashTokens, records are OP_RETURN, and one beacon address enumerates the whole registry. No sidechain, no fork.
- Run every part of it yourself. A node plus a small BNS-only indexer fits a one-core VPS. Any TLD works — the protocol has no allowlist.
Running on Bitcoin Cash chipnet — an alpha on a test network, free to try, and
honest about being early.
You are reading this on silentmode.st, the
ordinary-web face of the project. The same pages served the other way live at
silentmode.bch.