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Verus Relay

A network that carries your calls and cannot hear them

Calls on Verus travel through a Verus Relay. That is the everyday route, not a backup. It means the person you call never learns where you are. A relay passes on sealed audio it has no key to open. It holds nothing about who is talking. It has to prove it is alive every minute to stay on this map.

–relays online
–areas covered
–countries

Apply to host a relay Get Verus

Reading the network…

Live. Glowing hexes have a relay reporting in right now. Click one to fly down to the city it is in. Relays are placed from their internet address, which is good to about ten kilometres, so close in the map shows where they are roughly and never on a particular building.

What a relay is for

A courier for calls, built to know nothing

A call on Verus does not go straight from one phone to the other, because that would hand each of you the other's internet address, which says roughly where you are. It meets in the middle, at a Verus Relay. It is designed so that being one tells it nothing.

01

It carries sealed audio

The call is encrypted on the phones at each end. The relay receives packets it has no key for and forwards them to the other side, as it came. It cannot listen in, record the words or tell one voice from another.

02

It holds nothing about you

A relay has no database and no account list. It is told only which two short-lived tokens belong to the same call. It forgets them a minute after the call goes quiet. There is no call log on it to steal.

03

It proves it is alive

Every relay checks in once a minute. Miss three and it stops being given calls, so a relay that has gone quiet can never leave you ringing into silence. It also drops off this map, which only ever shows relays that are working.

Three kinds of relay

Whatever you have, it can carry calls

Every relay carries calls. Some can do more. The map shows each kind in its own colour. A radio relay is known by the radio it reports, so nobody can simply claim to be one.

Radio relay

A small computer with a radio hat, like the old Helium hotspots. It carries calls, and it is the kind that passes on messages when there is no signal: by Bluetooth from a phone nearby, and by long range radio to other radio relays.

Verus user relay

Run by somebody who uses Verus: a spare laptop, a desktop or a server they already have, given a second job. It carries calls for the people around it.

Verus official relay

Run by Verus itself, most of them in data centres with fast, steady connections. They carry calls at scale and keep the network up while the rest grows.

Where they came from

Old hotspots, a new job

The first Verus Relays were not bought. They were Helium hotspots, the small boxes people put in their windows a few years ago to earn crypto for carrying radio data. Most went quiet in drawers when the rewards dried up. Inside each one is a small, capable computer on a good power supply, which is exactly what a relay needs.

We wiped them, removed the original software (which let its makers log in remotely) and gave them one job. Verus Relay - 001 was a Helium hotspot until September. Now it carries calls.

Helium drew its network as hexagons on a map. So do we, with two differences. A hex here lights only while a relay in it is actually reporting in, not because somebody said one was there. And every hex covers about 250 km², larger than a town, so the map shows where the network reaches without showing anybody's house.

Community relays

Every relay has a name

A relay names itself when it joins: a Roman name ending in Verus, after Lucius Verus, whose name means true. It is known by that name and a number, never by where it is.

  • Reading the network…

What comes next

Beyond the internet

Every day, a relay does its work over the internet. The hotspots these relays were built from also have radios the internet never needed. We are putting them to work as the fallback for when the internet or the signal is gone. We will say plainly what is running and what is not.

Running

Calls through relays

Relayed calls on Verus go through the relays on this map today, spread across whichever are online.

Running

Messages with no signal

A phone with no mobile signal hands a sealed message to a Verus Relay nearby over Bluetooth, and the relay sends it on. It works: an iPhone in Airplane mode sent a Verus message this way and an Android phone received it. Carrying a phone's message on by long range radio, relay to relay, comes next.

Running

Relay to relay by radio

Relays with a radio pass signed messages to each other with no internet in the path, encrypted whenever they carry a phone's message, and the one receiving signs a receipt back in two to three seconds. A message from a key it does not know is refused. So a street, a village or a festival field can stay in touch when the network does not.

Host a Verus Relay

Put a box in your window, carry the network

A Verus Relay is a small computer and a broadband connection. It uses a little of your upload while calls pass through it and next to nothing when they do not. It never sees what is said or who is saying it.

You add a relay yourself. Plug it in, scan its code in Verus, check the code it shows you and approve it once with Confrmo. It then joins under its own name, with no settings to change and no router to configure.

We are bringing hosts on a few at a time while the network grows. If you have an old Helium hotspot, a spare computer or a server, apply below and we will send you the set-up guide.

Running

What you get

Every day your relay stays online earns you Verus Points. So do the calls it carries for other people. Points go towards Verus Plus.

Your relay also keeps you informed. It sits in your Verus chats like any other contact: it tells you how it is doing, sends you a short summary each day and tells you its points whenever you ask.

Points are live. Each relay seals a signed record of its day at midnight, with the points it earned. Spending them on Verus Plus from the app comes next.

Apply to host a Verus Relay

What would you host?

We keep what you type here for up to a year to handle your application, then delete it. A Verus address keeps you anonymous: we reply in Verus and never learn who you are. Privacy

How Verus is built

Questions about Verus Relay

Can whoever runs a relay listen to my calls?
No. The audio is encrypted on your phone before it leaves and only the phone at the other end holds the key. The relay forwards packets it cannot open. Nothing about running one gives it a way to.
Does a relay know who I am or who I am calling?
No. It never sees an address, a name or a number. It is told that two short-lived tokens belong to the same call and nothing more. It forgets them a minute after the call goes quiet.
Why does the map not show exactly where each relay is?
Because many relays are run by Verus users. Where they are is theirs to keep. Every hex covers about 250 km². The map never pairs a relay's name with its place. A relay that stops reporting disappears from it within minutes.
Do all my calls go through a relay?
Yes, as a rule. The relay is the normal route for a call, not a backup: it keeps your internet address, which says roughly where you are, from the person you are calling. The radio is different. It is only the fallback, for messages when there is no internet or signal.