Publishers' walkthrough

Pick a name, host the binary, write the manifest, sign the listing, verify it resolves, ship an update when it's time. Here's the whole shape.

Publishing an app on Prometheus is a sequence of signed records pointing at files stored where you keep them. The whole thing — identity, hosting, the listing itself — is yours; nothing here grants anyone else permission to pull your app down, raise your price, or take a cut of what people pay you for it.

Steps are tagged available today or designed so it is clear what you can do now and what is waiting on the APS1 record format landing.

What you need before you start

available today

A BNS name

Any name registered through Sirius works. The name is what signs the listing, so it is also what readers trust the listing by. Fractions of a cent to register, no monthly bill.

available today

Somewhere to put the binary

Prometheus can host for you — upload here and we put it on Sia, signed and scanned. If you'd rather self-host on your own URL, the listing just records the URL and the hash and will fetch from wherever you say.

available today

A signing key

The private key for the BNS name. If the name is in a wallet you already use for Bitcoin Cash, that key already exists; publishing re-uses it.

available today

A pinch of BCH

One listing is one transaction. The transaction fee is cents, denominated in sats. During the free wave, that is the only cost. Later, a flat listing fee covers the Sia storage.

The walkthrough

  1. 1. Register a name — or use one you already own. The listing is signed by the name's key. A reader who follows your name will see your listing with the publisher chip set to that name; a reader who does not will see it marked unsigned by anyone they trust. One name can carry any number of listings, so a studio with three games publishes under one identity.
  2. 2. Upload the binary (or point us at your URL). Prometheus runs a malware scan on upload. If it passes, the file goes into a Sia bucket Silent Mode controls, the signed scan report is prepared, and the manifest fields are prefilled. If you'd rather host the file yourself, give us the URL and the expected SHA-256; the manifest records both, the scan still runs against whatever the URL serves, and the client refuses to install a byte-mismatched download.
  3. 3. Fill in the manifest. Name, description, category, version, icon, download URL, sha256, and the signing-cert fingerprint when the binary itself is signed (it should be, if the platform supports it). Icons are referenced by URL, not embedded. A 2 KB manifest with a 500 KB icon beside it is the right shape; a 500 KB manifest is not.
  4. 4. Sign the APS1 record with your BNS key. One transaction. The on-chain record carries the manifest hash, the category label, and the signature from your name's key. From the moment the transaction confirms, every client that follows the chain can see your listing — no approval queue, no editorial review, no publisher dashboard waiting for a human on the other end.
  5. 5. Verify it resolves. Open one of the Ariadne clients and look for your listing in the category you labelled it under. The client should pull the manifest from Sia, show the fields you wrote, surface the scan report, and offer the download. Clicking install should fetch the binary, check the SHA-256, check the signing certificate, and only then run.
  6. 6. Ship updates with another signed record. A new version is another APS1 transaction referencing the same app id, signed by the same key, pointing at a new manifest hash. Clients already following the app see the update offered the next time they check. Nobody can push a hostile update unless they have your key.
  7. 7. Withdraw a listing when it is time. A withdrawal is a signed record that marks the app id as retired. Clients hide the listing from browse and refuse to install it, though anyone with the manifest hash and the binary can still side-load it — the chain is a signal, not a lock.

A note on endorsements

A listing is one signed record. An endorsement is another — a short on-chain statement from any name saying "I vouch for this app." Readers whose trust list includes the endorser's name will see your listing marked as endorsed by them; readers who do not follow that name will not. Endorsements are not reviews, and the client does not aggregate them into a star rating. They are statements: who said what, when, signed.

You can endorse too. Any name can publish an endorsement of any listing, and most publishers end up endorsing a handful of apps they use themselves. The trust graph that emerges is the directory's real curation layer; the categories are just filing.

What this costs

Per listing

One Bitcoin Cash transaction. Fractions of a cent at current rates. Paid once, lives on chain.

Per update

Another transaction. Same shape, same cost. There is no "update bundle" discount because there is no central party to collect one.

Per month of hosting

Free during the opening wave while Prometheus underwrites the storage. Afterwards, a flat per-listing fee (planned around $1 at current rates) covers Sia storage for the typical binary. Your own HTTPS host costs what it costs you.

Per download

Zero to the directory. The reader pulls the binary from wherever the manifest points; Prometheus never meters the traffic.

Where this stands today. Names, Sia hosting and BCH signing exist and are in use. The APS1 record format and the client-side browse/install flow are being wired. This page describes the end state; the first live listings will go up as soon as the submit path lands on this site and the Ariadne clients learn to read it.