Digital space with real locality enforced by thermodynamics. Decentralized spatial protocol on Nostr.
Bitcoin captured time. Cyberspace captures space.
Mathematical fabric creates digital terrain explorable through computation. Cyberspace brings space and locality to digital systems.
Use Cases
Cyberspace Protocol enables applications that require verifiable spatial presence and location-based access control. Build on math, not infrastructure.
AI with a Physical Presence
Give AI agents a location in digital space. They can only interact with things and other agents at their coordinates — like physical objects, but digital. No API keys. No servers. Just math.
AR That Works Everywhere
One coordinate system for all AR apps. Place digital objects in the real world and anyone can see them — regardless of which app they use. Persistent AR that survives app boundaries.
Secrets Hidden in Plain Sight
Encrypt messages that can only be read if you're standing at the right coordinates. No key management, no infrastructure. Like chalk on a sidewalk — visible to anyone who walks by, invisible to everyone else.
Why Locality Matters
Communities With Boundaries
Physical communities have natural membership: you must be there. Online communities lack these constraints. Locality reintroduces the constraint of presence, making membership require traversal.
Hiding Without Trust
Like chalk on a sidewalk: anyone who walks by can read it, but you cannot read it without walking there. No keys, no admins, no infrastructure. Only presence.
How It Works
Mathematical Coordinates
Cyberspace uses 256-bit coordinates to define location in digital space. Each coordinate is a unique mathematical object — like an address, but for digital reality.
Three 85-bit axes (X, Y, Z) plus a plane bit create a 256-bit coordinate. The structure enables efficient proximity proofs and range queries.
Proof of Travel
To move in cyberspace, you must do computational work. The farther you travel, the more work required. This prevents teleporting, cache attacks, and fake presence claims.
Proof-of-work enforces thermodynamic continuity. Travel takes time and energy — just like walking somewhere in physical space.
Public Verification
Every movement is published as a Nostr event, creating a globally verifiable history of where you've been. Your identity is just a keypair — you own your presence, no platform controls it.
Nostr provides identity and propagation. Cyberspace adds where, distance, and locality.
Work Equivalence: The Key Property
In almost every digital system, observers have advantages over participants. Cyberspace achieves a rare property: computing a region's preimage costs the same whether you traveled there via movement chain or computed it directly. You cannot know what is somewhere without doing the work.
This is the difference between digging a hole (arbitrary hashing) and following a path (structured traversal). Both cost energy, but only one has spatial semantics.
Who Uses Cyberspace?
Developers
Build location-aware apps without backend infrastructure. Prove user presence, enable location-gated content, create spatial experiences.
Communities
Create digital spaces with actual boundaries. Members must travel to participate — like physical meetups, but in cyberspace.
Researchers
Study digital locality, spatial computation, and thermodynamic constraints in protocol design. A new primitive for decentralized systems.
Privacy Advocates
Hide data in location instead of passwords. Access control without surveillance. No keys to steal, no servers to compromise.
The Chalk on the Sidewalk
Consider a message written in chalk on a sidewalk:
- ▸ It is not "encrypted" in any technical sense
- ▸ Anyone who walks by can read it
- ▸ But you cannot read it without walking there
- ▸ Even if someone tells you about it, they had to walk there to know
This is location-gated access that requires no keys, no permissions, no infrastructure. Only presence.
# Encrypt a message at a specific location (X, Y, Z)
$ cyberspace encrypt --at 42,17,3 --message "Meet me here at dawn"
✓ Encrypted for coordinate (42, 17, 3)
✓ Published ciphertext event
✓ Ciphertext: 0x8f2a1b...e9c4
# Travel to the location (requires proof-of-work)
$ cyberspace move --to 42,17,3
✓ Computed hop proof (LCA height: 3)
✓ New position: (42, 17, 3)
# Decrypt from the correct location
$ cyberspace decrypt --event 0x8f2a1b...e9c4
✓ Presence verified
✓ Decrypted: "Meet me here at dawn"Ecosystem
Cyberspace is an open source protocol with a growing ecosystem of specifications, tools, and communities.
Ready to explore?
Cyberspace has layers. Explore at your own pace. Start with the basics, then dive deep into the mathematical foundations.