The Atrium Mission·Phase 0 — Founding Circle

A public square built for the people who use it.

Social media owned by its users. No algorithmic manipulation. No data brokering. End-to-end encryption where it matters. Community-governed rules. Open source & auditable. Resistant by architecture, not by promise.

0data sold
E2EEby default
Co-opfuture structure
Opensource
Core Non-Negotiables

Ten principles. None of them optional.

These are written into the founding charter — legally embedded so they survive future leadership, acquisition, or pressure. If we ever break one, we have to amend the charter publicly, and the community has to vote on it.

01

No algorithmic manipulation

Chronological or fully user-defined feeds. No black-box ranking. Ever.

02

End-to-end encryption

We never see your keys. They live on your device. If you opt into encrypted cloud backup, they're encrypted with a passphrase only you hold — still mathematically inaccessible to us.

03

Open moderation

Community-driven juries. Every action logged, reasoned, and publicly appealable.

04

Anti-addiction by design

No infinite scroll. No engagement bait. Notifications off by default. 30-min break prompts.

05

Open source

Fully auditable codebase. Trust through math, not marketing.

06

No data brokering

Zero user data sold or shared with third parties. Legally binding in our charter.

07

Government independence

Architecture limits what can be produced under legal compulsion. The math does the protecting.

08

Full opt-in

Only the data required for the app to function is collected by default. Everything else is opt-in.

09

Freedom of expression

NSFW and Sensitive flags replace suppression. Content is labeled, not removed.

10

No shadowbanning

Every action communicated to the user with a written reason. If we can't justify it publicly, we don't do it.

Opt-in, never opt-out

Your account does nothing until you tell it to.

When you sign up, you get an account — and that's it. Atrium and Sentinel are both off until you choose to activate them. No surprise feeds. No surprise messaging inbox. No "you forgot to disable this." Activate one, both, or neither. Change your mind any time.

01 — SIGN UP

Four questions, that's it

Email. Username. Are you 13+? How should Sentinel store your keys? You're done. Nothing else is collected, nothing else is on.

02 — ACTIVATE WHAT YOU WANT

Atrium, Sentinel, or both

Want the social platform? Opt in to Atrium. Want encrypted messaging? Opt in to Sentinel. Want both? Opt in to both. Each is independent.

03 — TRY TO USE IT BEFORE OPTING IN

We tell you, plainly

If you visit a service you haven't activated, we show a short notice pointing you to the opt-in flow. No silent rerouting. No dark patterns. Account settings work either way.

What we're building

A platform, an infrastructure, and a guardian.

Three products under one mission. Each independently auditable. Each designed to be useless to anyone who would corrupt it.

01 — ATRIUM

The public square

Five feeds, community-governed rules, no shadowbans, full data portability. Web first, then mobile. Co-op governance phased in as the founding base grows.

02 — MYCELIUM

The community network

Distributed media hosting on volunteer nodes. Cryptographic hashes pinned to a signed ledger. Files sharded across hosts so no single one holds a complete copy.

03 — SENTINEL

The guardian

Signal-protocol messaging. Keys generated on your device — we never see them, even with opt-in encrypted cloud backup. Under subpoena, we can produce only encrypted noise.

The Atrium Platform

Five tabs. One principle: you stay in control.

Every feed is chronological by default. If you want personalization on For You, opt in — the model runs entirely on your device, never on our servers. Trending uses a four-signal fraud-resistant model that's never raw popularity. News & Media enforces multi-source corroboration and geographic diversity. Sentinel has no feed at all.

For You

Your choice

Chronological by default. Opt-in personalization runs locally on your device — never on our servers.

Trending

Volume + velocity

Diversity-weighted. Coordinated-posting flagged. Discovery slot reserved.

News & Media

Verified sources

Multi-source corroboration. Geographic quotas. Fact-check flags visible.

Community

Self-governed

Jury voting. Rule proposals. Transparent moderation logs.

Sentinel

Pure E2EE

No algorithm. No server-side decryption. Ever.

Privacy by design

We collect almost nothing.

The only mandatory field at signup is an email address — and that's only for account recovery. No phone number, no real name, no date of birth. Age verification is a single yes/no check. Your contact list, if you keep one, is encrypted with your public key on our servers — we can't read it either.

Email
Required — the only mandatory field. Used for account recovery and critical notices.
Phone
Optional. Never required. Used for 2FA only if you choose to enable it.
Real name
Never collected. Use any handle you want.
Date of birth
Never collected. The age gate is a single 13+ yes/no at signup, self-declared.
Private key
Generated on your device. We never see it. If you opt into encrypted cloud backup, it's encrypted with a passphrase only you hold — still mathematically inaccessible to anyone but you.
Contact list
Encrypted with your public key on the server. Only your private key can read it.
Data sold
Zero. The charter legally prohibits any sale or sharing of user data.
Anti-addiction by design

Designed to respect your time, not extract it.

Every mechanic that hooks you to a conventional feed — infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, engagement-bait ranking — is structurally absent. Not a setting you have to find. Absent.

  • Chronological feedsNo algorithm pushing content engineered to maximize session time.
  • No infinite scrollFeeds have a natural endpoint. We don't extend the rope.
  • No autoplayVideo does not roll into the next video. You decide what plays.
  • No engagement baitNo algorithmic promotion of rage, outrage, or controversy.
  • Notifications off by defaultYou enable specifically what you want — nothing pre-checked.
  • 30-minute scroll promptA gentle nudge after long sessions. Adjustable, dismissible, or off entirely.
We protect our team's personal privacy for the same reason we protect yours — because privacy is a right, not a privilege. Judge us by what we do, not by who we are. — Founding Charter
By the numbers

The shape of the commitment.

0
User data sold or shared
1
Mandatory signup field — email
5
Independent feed tabs
90days
Data export window if we shut down

Help shape the platform before it ships. Phase 0 is open.

Join the Founding Circle
Sentinel·Encrypted Messaging

Keys you hold. Messages we can't read.

Sentinel uses the Signal Protocol. Private keys are generated on your device, and we never see them. If you opt into encrypted cloud backup, they remain mathematically inaccessible to us — encrypted with a passphrase only you hold. Under subpoena, the only thing we can hand over is unreadable encrypted noise.

Why centralized — and not federated

Federation introduces trust variables we won't take on.

A bad-actor node in a federated network can intercept metadata even without reading message content. Sentinel runs on a centralized, transparent infrastructure with zero ability to read your keys — independently audited, with a public warrant canary maintained on a fixed schedule.

Protocol
Signal Protocol. Open source, peer-reviewed, battle-tested. We don't roll our own crypto.
Private keys
Generated on your device. We never see them. With opt-in encrypted cloud backup, they're encrypted with a passphrase only you hold — still mathematically inaccessible to anyone but you.
Public keys
Stored on the server so others can encrypt to you. The only thing we keep.
Encryption at rest
All messages encrypted on every device. The platform sees encrypted blobs only.
Cross-device sync
Direct device-to-device handshake via QR or pairing code. Beta feature. The server only routes encrypted envelopes it cannot open.
Audits
Third-party security audits published in full. Warrant canary maintained on a fixed cadence.
Group chats
Available in Beta. Voice and video calls land Post-Beta.

Storage tiers — you choose at first launch.

TIER 01 — LOCAL ONLY

Single device

Messages live encrypted on your device. No cross-device. Zero platform access.

TIER 02 — LOCAL + CLOUD

Encrypted backup

Cross-device works. We store an encrypted blob we cannot read.

TIER 03 — CLOUD

Full sync

Web + all devices. Encrypted blob only. Same zero-access guarantee.

We will never see your keypair. We will never possess a readable copy of it. We will never want to. It is yours — kept on your device, or encrypted in storage only you can unlock. — ToS Commitment

Sentinel ships with the Open Beta. Founding Circle members get early access.

Apply
Mycelium·Community Hosting

Infrastructure that belongs to everyone.

Mycelium is the storage layer for public media on Atrium — hosted by volunteer operators on Linux and Windows. Files are sharded across hosts and hash-verified at every delivery, so no single host can read, alter, or steal what they're holding.

Tamper-proof by design

Mathematically useless to a bad-actor host.

The cryptographic ledger is the source of truth. Hosts serve content but cannot meaningfully modify it. Files arrive sharded — a single host never sees a complete usable copy of anything.

01 — HASH

Pinned at upload

Every file gets a cryptographic fingerprint stored on a signed central ledger. Hosts cannot rewrite the ledger.

02 — SHARD

No complete copies

Files are split across multiple hosts. No single operator holds enough to reassemble the original.

03 — VERIFY

Checked at delivery

Every fetch is hash-verified before playback. Altered files are auto-rejected at the client edge.

Supported OS
Linux (all major distros) and Windows desktop / server. Targeting the homelab and self-hosting community first.
Host accountability
Verified registration. Signed legal hosting agreement with tampering liability clauses on record.
Compensation
Non-monetary at this stage: profile badge, host title, early-access perks, public recognition. Co-op revenue share is on the longer roadmap.
Onboarding
Full tutorial video and documentation drop with the Mycelium alpha. Hosts onboard before users depend on them.
Content liability
Hosts are insulated by the sharding model — you do not hold complete files and you cannot read what you store.
Don't trust us. Verify us. — Atrium principle #6

Mycelium alpha opens with Phase 1. Register interest now and we'll reach out.

Register as a host
Roadmap·Honest about where we are

Phase 0. We're early on purpose.

We'd rather build slowly with the people who care than launch loudly to the people who don't. Here's what's done, what's next, and what we're not promising yet.

The Phases

Five phases. One commitment per phase.

Phase 0 — Now

Founding Circle & infrastructure design

50–200 people from the originating community shape the platform. Infrastructure design begins. Outreach quietly opens. This is the only phase where the people involved can fundamentally change what the platform becomes.

Phase 1 — Next

Mycelium host recruitment & alpha

Recruit and onboard the first wave of host operators. Stress-test the infrastructure before users depend on it.

Phase 2

Open Beta — web app

Public web launch. Five feeds, posting, open moderation dashboard, Sentinel one-to-one messaging. Radical transparency about what is and isn't yet built.

Phase 3

Mobile + group chats

iOS and Android launch. Sentinel group chats. Cross-device key sync via P2P pairing. Developer API.

Post-Beta

Voice, video & co-op transition

Sentinel voice and video. Full public API. Creator tools. Legal restructure into a full platform co-operative — users become partial owners.

What we're NOT promising yet

The list of things we won't claim until we've shipped them.

Honesty about scope is part of the trust. Here's what's intentionally outside Phase 0 and Phase 1:

DEFERRED

Voice & video

Sentinel voice and video calls. Post-Beta only.

DEFERRED

Creator tools & articles

Long-form, monetization-adjacent features. After core platform stabilises.

DEFERRED

Full public API

Limited Developer API in Beta. Full API later, once governance is clear.

We'd rather under-promise and ship than build a backlog of marketing claims we can't keep. — Internal Build Note
Join·Founding Circle & Hosts

Help us build this in the open.

Two ways to get involved during Phase 0: apply to the Founding Circle to help shape the platform's earliest decisions, or register interest in running a Mycelium host node when alpha opens.

Why Phase 0 matters

A small group, real influence.

Founding Circle members aren't beta testers — they're co-authors of the rule system that ships with Open Beta. Vote on early proposals. Stress-test moderation policy. Help define what "community-governed" actually means in practice.

01

Shape the rules

Vote on the first set of platform rules before they ship to the public.

02

Test the architecture

Early access to alpha builds. Direct line to the team for feedback.

03

Be on the record

Founding Circle members are credited in the platform's public history. Permanent.

Sign-ups

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We're not collecting any data yet. The forms below are visual placeholders — disabled on purpose until our infrastructure and email handling are properly verified. Watch this space.