About
Six open protocols on Bitcoin, and a small company that builds on them.
The protocols are free for anyone to use and implement. The company runs one product on them, ochk.app: one account, with Bitcoin behind it.
The idea
Most proof online rests on a company’s word.
A platform’s timestamp. A login provider’s say-so. A vendor’s log of what happened. When the company changes its mind, or goes away, the proof goes with it.
Bitcoin offers three things no company issues:
- 01
An address anyone can check a signature against.
No registrar hands it out, and anyone can verify what it signed.
- 02
Coins whose amount and age are public.
Holding them costs a real person little. Faking them a thousand times costs a lot.
- 03
Blocks, as a clock.
Nobody can wind it back.
So each protocol works the same way. You sign with a Bitcoin address. Anyone checks the result against Bitcoin, on their own machine, without asking us. Our sites are a convenience on top. They are never the authority.
We hold ourselves to one test. If an idea works just as well with a plain keypair and no Bitcoin, it does not belong here.
What we make
Protocols first, then a product on them.
- Six protocols
- Identity, confidentiality, legitimacy, provenance, authority, commitment. Each has a public spec, free tools, and open-source packages.
- ochk.app (opens in a new tab)
- The product. Sign in the way you already do, back your account with bitcoin you hold, which stays in your wallet, and get paid in sats by the apps that choose to pay. Signing in and backing work today; getting paid is in testing.
- Apps
- Working apps that show the protocols in use, and two free public goods.
- Docs
- For anyone building on any of it.
The company
Small, and honest about it.
- Not incorporated yet.
- orangecheck operates under the name OrangeCheck, as an unincorporated project. When a company is formed, the terms will name it.
- Built by one developer, since September 2025.
- That is a real risk, and it is why the specs, the test vectors and the verifier packages are public and permissively licensed. If the work stopped tomorrow, anyone could still implement and check every protocol.
- Pre-launch.
- The protocols are open and the tools work. The public launch comes when the product is ready.
How it pays for itself
Free to use. Paid in sats.
- The protocol tools are free, and stay free. That is a written commitment.
- ochk.app is free to sign in with, for people and for apps. Apps that pay their users pay a fixed 20% platform fee on those events. Payouts are in testing, so no sats move yet.
- vault.ochk.io sells cloud sync, priced in sats and paid on-chain.
- Sats only. No token, ever. No card. No investors.
Funding
Open-source work on orangecheck is supported by OpenSats, a nonprofit. The grant runs for twelve months from September 2026. It funds the open layer: the specs, the test vectors, the offline verifier, the packages, and an open reference for the sign-in flow. It does not fund the hosted product. Its plan ends with an independent security review of the signing and verification code.
The charter
Eight commitments, in writing.
Changing one takes a public proposal and a public review.
- 01No token. Ever.
- 02No custody you didn’t choose. The protocols hold nothing. ochk.app is the named exception while it is in testing, and its custody page says who holds what today.
- 03The protocols stay open.
- 04The protocol sites stay free.
- 05Every receipt and record can be checked without us.
- 06We build tools that give people authority, not agents sold as a way to replace people.
- 07Sats first.
- 08How the specs are looked after is public.
What orangecheck is not
The short list.
- Not a token,
- and never will be.
- Not KYC.
- The protocols ask for no ID.
- Not proof of personhood.
- One person can hold many addresses. We make fakes cost money, not impossible.
- Not a wallet.
- The protocols never hold your coins. ochk.app is the one exception, named, while it is in testing.
- Not a seventh verb waiting to happen.
- Six protocols, on purpose. A new need is usually a mode of one of them.
Contact
Talk to us.
- Everything else
- The contact form, or contact@ochk.io
- Security
- security@ochk.io. See Trust.
- Code and specs
- github.com/orangecheck (opens in a new tab)
- Nostr
_@ochk.io