Johnathan Corgan
b4e9bfbc08
An ephemeral node wrote the private key of an identity it discards on every restart to fips.key, and overwrote any key already at that path, including an operator's key in the case where persistent: true was forgotten. It now writes only fips.pub, so the running npub stays visible, and holds the private key in memory only. A fips.key found at an ephemeral start is moved aside to fips.key.unused with a warning rather than used or overwritten, so an operator's key is recoverable and a stale key from an earlier release stops being read by fipsctl address. If that name is already taken or the rename fails, the file is left in place, a warning says so, and the start continues. Persistent and explicit-nsec identities are unchanged. The keygen note, the Windows service installer's closing note, and the documentation that described the old write are corrected, including the persistent identity how-to, which told operators to start once in ephemeral mode and then pin the key it wrote.
FIPS Documentation
FIPS (Free Internetworking Peering System) is a self-organizing encrypted mesh network built on Nostr identities, capable of operating over arbitrary transports — local networks, the public internet, Tor, Bluetooth, or point-to-point links — without central infrastructure.
With FIPS, your machine becomes a node in the mesh with a self-generated cryptographic identity. There are two ways to deploy it.
As an overlay on top of existing IP networks, FIPS lets your node reach any other FIPS node wherever it sits — behind a NAT, on a different ISP, on a phone over cellular, on a laptop with only Bluetooth in range, or behind a Tor onion. The mesh forwards IPv6 traffic transparently and end-to-end encrypted, with no central VPN concentrator or coordinating server.
From the ground up over raw Ethernet, WiFi, or Bluetooth, FIPS provides a complete permissionless network without any pre-existing IP infrastructure, ISP, or DNS. Any node that joins the link gets routable IPv6 addresses, peer discovery, and a path to every other node automatically.
Either way, existing networking software runs over it unchanged: SSH, HTTP servers, file transfer, anything IPv6-native works the same way it would on a local network.
New to FIPS? Start with the Getting Started guide.
Documentation Sections
Tutorials
If you are starting from scratch and want a guided path to a working mesh, go here.
How-To Guides
If you have a specific task in mind — enabling a feature, deploying a component, diagnosing a problem — go here.
Reference
If you need to look up wire formats, configuration keys, command flags, or counter inventories, go here.
Design
If you want to understand how the mesh self-organizes, why FIPS makes the choices it does, or how the pieces fit together, go here.
Releases
If you want the notes for a particular version — what changed, what broke, and what to do about it on upgrade — go here.