Welcome
Railroad Network is a way for a community to run its own economy, identity, and decision-making on hardware it owns, and to keep doing so when the internet, the grid, or the institutions around it stop working.
Members trade in a shared credit called the Common. Nobody issues it and nobody can print more of it: when you pay a neighbour, your balance goes down and theirs goes up, and the community as a whole always sums to zero. Who you are is a key on your own phone, backed by people who vouch for you, not by an account on someone’s server. Rules are written in a Charter the founders sign, changed by votes, and enforced by juries drawn by lot. When the network is gone, payments travel by radio, by text message, or on a printed sheet in someone’s pocket, and settle when they arrive. (Today that last part works from the command-line wallet; the phone app still needs the station in reach. Status and roadmap keeps the honest list.)
The name is a nod to the Underground Railroad: a network of trusted people, under hostile conditions, with no central authority, whose real strength was its human trust architecture. This software tries to encode those principles.
Do not use this with real value. Railroad Network is research-stage software. The cryptography has had an internal review but no independent professional audit. Run a pilot with play stakes, not livelihoods. See Security and audits for exactly where things stand.
Who these pages are for
This site is written for people, not for the code. Pick the door that fits:
| You are… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Someone who wants to use the app, pay people, and take part | For members |
| Someone founding or stewarding a community: charter, votes, disputes | For organizers |
| Someone running the station computer that the community’s phones talk to | For operators |
| Someone who wants the exact commands, the glossary, or the design record | Reference |
Not sure? Read Start here.
Where the software lives
The code is public and dual-licensed (Apache-2.0 or MIT):
station: the Rust daemon and command-line client, and the engineering record (design overview, decision records, threat model, audits).mobile: the Android app.
When this site and a decision record in station disagree, the decision
record is right and this site has a bug. Tell us.