Ariadne.X

Ariadne Navigator is a mobile web browser that explores Bitcoin Cash Domain Names without asking anyone's permission. Live on-chain BNS TLDs resolve on-device — no custom DNS, no root store install, no server between you and the chain.

Download for Android How it works

Android 5.0+ · self-signed release key · ~150 KB

What Ariadne actually does

You type hello.bch in the address bar. Ariadne looks the name up on the Bitcoin Cash chain, reads the record the owner published, and loads the page — from Sia, from an ip record, or from a tiny on-chain payload. There is no gateway you have to trust, no operator who can rewrite the answer, no ISP resolver to blame when a page moves.

Two sources in parallel

Every lookup queries the on-device snapshot and a live Electrum server, then takes whichever answers first. If either disagrees, the chain wins.

Sia-hosted pages, without a gateway

A name's s3 record points at a Sia bucket. Ariadne fetches the bucket directly, so no operator sits between you and the file.

Ariadne's Thread — system-wide

A one-tap VPN service resolves BNS names for every app on the phone, not just this browser. No root, no signed profile, nothing installed at OS level.

Alpha software on a test network. Ariadne is unsigned, self-distributed and moves fast. Verify the SHA-256 of every APK against silentmode.st/releases before installing.

Get it — Android

Sideloaded APK; the auto-updater takes over once installed. Uninstall the old Theseus-labelled build first — Android's launcher caches its name.

Android 5.0+

Ariadne for Android 0.57

Self-signed release key · 2026-10-26 · ~327 KB · SHA-256 canonical here
ariadne-v0.72.apk Sia mirror

Latest release note. Tab switcher got two usability tweaks: a List | Grid pill toggle in the middle of the header row flips layout with one tap (no round-trip through Settings), and the activity's bottom nav now stays visible while the switcher is open so AI / Saved / + / Tabs / Settings are one tap away. Also: the New-tab row in list mode now matches the real tab card height, and the Tabs bottom-nav icon shows "1" when a single tab is open instead of hiding the badge.

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Also recent. LLM provider icons are now bundled into the APK, so neither the Settings LLM list nor the bottom-nav AI button has to wait on a Google-s2 round-trip (which was taking 2–3 s on first paint). Seven PNGs under app/assets/ai-icons/ cover ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Phind, Duck AI and Alisa; the bottom-nav button loads them straight from AssetManager, and the Settings page fetches them from ariadne.internal/ai-icons/<slug>.png. About 24 KB total APK bloat for zero-latency rendering.

Previously. The Ariadne Thread chip in the address bar is now a live plasma sphere. A radial gradient cycles smoothly through gold → teal → cyan → violet → pink → back over six seconds while the Thread VPN is running; when it's off, the animator cancels and the chip sits as a cool muted glow. The sphere pauses itself when the drawable isn't visible, so there's no main-thread cost while Ariadne is backgrounded.

Previously. Short-tap on a LIVE row card finally lands on the right CoinSpectrum page. CoinSpectrum serves asset pages at /assets/<slug>/, not /<SYMBOL>, so every short-tap was 404ing. The slug is now derived from the display name — lowercase, hyphenated, non-alphanumerics stripped — matching the API's own slug column ("Bitcoin Cash" → bitcoin-cash, "DigiByte" → digibyte). Verified 200 for all five defaults.

Previously. Favorites tiles get real branded favicons for more sites. Theseus desktop was rendering proper per-site favicons where Ariadne mobile fell back to a plain colour + letter tile — the probe only tried /favicon.svg and /favicon.ico, while Silent Mode sites put theirs in a couple of other common spots: Prometheus.X at /static/favicon.svg, Pithos.sia and Ariadne.X at /assets/favicon.svg. Ariadne's probe now also tries those two paths plus /apple-touch-icon.png, so brand favicons show up without each site having to add a root-level copy. Deviant.X's own favicon was also deployed to its site root.

Also recent. Ariadne's own pages now render in the address bar and tab switcher as ariadne://home, ariadne://settings, ariadne://welcome and so on, instead of the empty string the previous rewriter returned for https://ariadne.internal/. Favorites rewritten to a BNS-only default set: Hello.bch, Sia.Coin, Pithos.Sia, Sirius.X, Prometheus.X, Deviant.X, Hermes.X. The old defaults (YouTube, Facebook, X, Discord, GitHub, bitcoincash.org, Ariadne.X itself) are out — those either have native apps installed already or are tautological. A one-shot defaults-version bump reseeds the tile list on upgrade so existing users see the new set without hunting for Reset Favorites in Settings; user-added tiles are overwritten in that one reseed. Start-page info cards pruned to drop the entries that now live in Favorites.

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How to verify. Compute the SHA-256 of the downloaded APK on a computer — any file-hashing tool works — and compare it to the value above. Nothing here is signed by an authority your phone already trusts, by design; the checksum is the real check. The signing certificate's own SHA-256 is on the releases page, and every future build carries the same signature.

How the lookup actually resolves

One query, two workers, first answer wins. Everything happens on the device.

1 · Type hello.bch

The address bar decides: bare word → search. Anything with a dot goes to the resolver. The old .bch.bch.bch compounding bug is history.

2 · Two workers race

A. The bundled snapshot answers instantly from disk. B. A WebSocket Electrum client asks the chain for the same name in parallel. Whichever finishes first serves the tab.

3 · Fetch by record type

An ip record → direct HTTPS. An s3 record → Sia bucket. An on-chain payload → served from the chain itself. No gateway.

4 · Verify + render

Signed DNS records are verified against the name owner. TLDs on cosign / hidden lists require the TLD certificate. Then the page loads.

Names Ariadne already speaks

Every TLD on the public registry, plus ICANN-collision TLDs (.cash, .gt, .sc, .sm) that stay with the normal DNS.

.bch

The oldest BNS TLD. Every early name lives here.

.x

Silent Mode's own TLD. theseus.x, sirius.x, hermes.x, hephaestus.x.

.p2p · .nav · .sia

Community-run TLDs — anyone can register a name in them.

.deviant · .nt · .dgb · .lm

Project-scoped TLDs with their own policies.

.asm · .dea · .hub · .os · …

The full live list refreshes from the on-chain TLD registry every launch.

Register your own

Pick a name at sirius.x — one Bitcoin Cash transaction, no registrar.

Pantheon — the .X family

Ariadne is the mobile end of the thread. Each sibling site owns its own .x name and its own build; they read the same BNS registry and the same TLD certificates.

Theseus.X

The desktop browser. Electron / Chromium, tab groups, extensions, wallet + Shield add-ons. Same resolver, bigger keyboard.

Sirius.X

The BCNR registrar. Pick a name, publish records, transfer ownership — one Bitcoin Cash transaction per action.

⚒️Hephaestus.X

The forge. Where Silent Mode's own source code lives, plus the developer docs and the CI that ships every release.

Why Ariadne

Ariadne, Cretan princess.

She gave Theseus a spool of thread and told him to unroll it as he walked into the labyrinth, so he could find his way out afterwards.

Ariadne's Thread is what both browsers use to find their way home — the on-device resolver that answers name lookups directly from the Bitcoin Cash chain. Theseus Navigator carries it on the desktop; Ariadne Navigator carries it in your pocket. Same resolver, same registry, same signature checks — different device, different hand.

— Silent Mode