Sovereignty

Run TinyCloud your own way

TinyCloud should be usable sovereignly. If TinyCloud Labs as an organization goes away, you should still be able to use the technology, without interference from anyone, and stay fully in control of where your data lives and who has access to it.

We use the same tools as crypto, which already lets people use money in a sovereign way. This is how we apply them to data.

Three parts

1. Use your own key

There's an old saying in crypto: not your keys, not your crypto. We think the same is true of data. Sovereignty means holding the keys that control it.

Most people would rather not think about key custody, and they don't have to. OpenKey holds a key for you, and TinyCloud acts as the custodian of your data.

If you want to hold your own key, TinyCloud is built on the same crypto infrastructure that protects trillions of dollars in digital assets for tens of millions of people. Sign in with your own Ethereum key. MetaMask works today; if you'd like another wallet supported, tell us.

2. Run your own node

The node's source code and container image are public. Run it on your own server, with your own domain and your own node key, and you don't need to pay us.

We're making it easy: a few commands get a node running. See Get started below.

3. Keep a copy of your data

Setting up for the first time? You don't need to think about replication. Point TinyCloud at your node and sign in with your own Ethereum key, and your data lives on your node from the start.

Moving from TinyCloud's hosted service? Replication to your own node is coming soon. Until then, you can keep a local copy of your data with the TinyCloud CLI or SDK.

How you connect

By default, apps and agents reach TinyCloud's hosted nodes through Cloudflare, which protects the service from denial-of-service attacks and keeps it fast for everyone.

Coming next: an opt-in lockdown mode that connects straight to the hosted node instead, so the connection stays encrypted all the way to the node and Cloudflare can't read it. Running your own node gives you that control today.

Get started

  1. 1. Get a key

    Any Ethereum wallet you control. MetaMask works today.

  2. 2. Start a node

    On a Linux server with Docker, and a domain pointing at it:

    git clone https://github.com/TinyCloudLabs/tinycloud-node
cd tinycloud-node
npm ci --prefix test/probe
export NODE_HOME="$HOME/personal-tinycloud"
bash deploy/personal-node/node.sh init node.example.com
bash deploy/personal-node/node.sh check-missing-key
bash deploy/personal-node/node.sh start

  3. 3. Sign in with your key

    Prove your key owns a space on your node, and that your data survives a restart:

    bash deploy/personal-node/node.sh seed /secure/path/owner.key
bash deploy/personal-node/node.sh restart
bash deploy/personal-node/node.sh verify /secure/path/owner.key

  4. 4. Coming next

    One command to install and run a node from the TinyCloud CLI, a registry where your key records where your nodes live, and replication between your hosts.

Replace node.example.com with your domain. Keep your Ethereum key in its own private file, outside the node's folder. The full guide covers what you need, backups and what happens if you lose a key.