Technology That Disappears
A shared mesh. Your own trusted circle. Devices that cooperate, even when connections come and go. When technology works for you instead of harvesting your data, it gets out of the way.
In development · a protocol for devices that come and go
What is Reality2?
Reality2 is a decentralised protocol for devices that cooperate over changing connections. Small sensors, phones and servers can take part in a shared mesh, while cryptographic trust groups govern membership and access. The design starts with a simple fact: devices move, radios sleep, and messages get lost.
Your Own Trust Group
Membership is established through cryptographic identity and deliberate enrolment. A device stays a member when it goes offline. Sensitive actions require the appropriate authority.
Small Devices Welcome
The protocol is designed for constrained sensors as well as larger computers. Each device declares its facilities; cooperation does not assume that every peer has the same power, storage or connectivity.
Connections Come and Go
Different communication media share a common protocol. Devices use local observations to choose where to forward messages, while allowing for loss, sleeping neighbours and paths that disappear.
No Cloud Dependency
Devices can relay messages for groups they do not belong to. Carrying a message grants no membership or authority, and relays do not need the keys to read encrypted payloads. The design requires no central service.
People and Planet
Reality2 isn't only about protecting your data. It's about technology in symbiosis with the world it lives in - distributed intelligence that serves people and the natural world, instead of extracting from them.
Symbiosis, not extraction
The mesh exists because your devices create it - not because a company monetises it. Intelligence lives at the edge, where things actually happen: sensing, deciding and acting locally. Your data has value, and you decide whether and how it's shared. Nothing is harvested by default.
Sovereignty for people and nature
A person wearing a watch, ring and phone forms a sovereign trust group. Sensors across a river catchment can form one too, governed by the community that looks after it. Reality2 extends digital sovereignty beyond people to the living world - rivers, forests and mountains - cared for through the people and groups who act as their guardians.
On-grid and off
Distributed senses and intelligence carried over BLE, WiFi and LoRa - working whether or not there's internet. When a storm takes the cell towers down, the mesh is designed to keep watching the river and keep people connected. Resilience is the point.
Where R2 Fits
The design connects small, local interactions with longer-lived networks. These are illustrative uses, not a catalogue of available apps.
Everyday Cooperation
A presenter and a room's display can agree on a temporary relationship, limited to the task at hand. Devices can cooperate without handing over control of their whole group.
People on the Move
In a crowd, devices encounter new neighbours and lose old ones. The mesh is designed around those brief encounters; membership and permissions remain separate from who happens to be nearby.
Mariko EarthGrids
Environmental sensing illustrates the longer view: devices with limited power, intermittent links, and communities deciding how observations are shared. Explore Mariko EarthGrids.
Earlier Projects
Reality2 has moved from the earlier specifications to the R2 Standard. Several experimental apps have been archived. Their source remains useful as history, but these projects are not demonstrations of conformance to the current standard.
- NotekeeperPrivate notes experimentArchived
- R2 HiveEarlier runtime and relayArchived
- AnthillAI reasoning experimentArchived
R2 Workshop is a separate sensor project from the earlier ecosystem. Its repository is not archived; check its own documentation for its status and requirements.
For Developers
The R2 Standard is the source of truth for the protocol. Development is organised around explicit layer contracts and evidence of conformance. Earlier apps and implementation details should not be used as the current specification.
One Layered Design
The design separates transport, discovery, routing and framing from trust, management and applications. Implementations meet the contracts at each boundary.
Evidence Matters
Requirements, byte-level formats and test vectors make behaviour checkable. A successful demo alone does not establish conformance across the protocol.
Interested in building with R2?
Get in touch to discuss the standard, implementations, or a use case.
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