A decentralized protocol for intentional data connection — where users decide what to share, with whom, and when.
Monas is adecentralized protocol and its implementation that gives users true sovereignty over their data.
Rather than storing or managing data on behalf of users, Monas defines how content behaves: how it is encrypted, versioned, and kept consistent across a distributed network — without trusting any single node.
End users interact with Monas through applications built on top of the protocol. Everything is open. Explore freely 👋
Three fundamental problems exist in today's data infrastructure:
| Problem | Description |
|---|---|
| Authenticity | Tampering detection and history verification are insufficient; data integrity cannot be trusted |
| Consistency | Data fragments across services and environments, creating contradictions with no resolution |
| True self-sovereignty | Self-sovereign identity efforts exist, but platform dependency persists — real user control remains elusive |
Monas addresses all three through a protocol that guarantees state consistency and content authenticity, while enabling users to intentionally connect their data across applications and services.
The key principle: state-node manages state — but never sees plaintext. Actual content is encrypted client-side and stored separately. The node only knows the Content ID (CID), version history, and access policies — never the content itself.
Content is addressed by CID (a SHA-256-based identifier). Because CIDs are derived from content hashes, they are storage-agnostic and tamper-evident — any modification changes the CID.
Each piece of content has its own Content Network: a P2P cluster of state-nodes selected by XOR distance (Kademlia DHT), ensuring no single party can control which nodes are chosen. CRDT-based state management keeps the network consistent even under Byzantine conditions.
The core protocol implementation. Contains the client-side components for key management (monas-account), content encryption and sharing (monas-content), distributed state management (monas-state-node), and the storage abstraction layer (monas-filesync).
A CID-native DAG CRDT library. Enables conflict-free distributed state synchronization across state-nodes, where every operation is identified by its CID. Designed to be Byzantine-fault tolerant and extensible toward future capabilities like FHE-based encrypted merging.
Monas currently defines the behavior of individual content units — encryption, storage, and Content Network management. The next layer is Space: a user-controlled data domain that allows grouping content, delegating access, and connecting with external applications at a granular level.
This will be realized through an encrypted logical filesystem based on an evolution of Cryptree — with an open protocol specification so anyone can build their own implementation.
