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What is Pombo?

Pombo is an open-source, peer-to-peer messaging and social media app, built on open infrastructure instead of a company's servers.

  • Your account is a keypair on your device. No email, no phone number, no approval step.
  • Direct messages are end-to-end encrypted and sealed, so not even the network learns who wrote.
  • Channels can be open, password-protected, allowlisted, token-gated or paid, and a paid channel's price goes straight to its owner.

Everything below follows from how Pombo is built, not from a policy someone maintains.

Nobody has to let you in​

No record of you is created anywhere, so there is no account to suspend, rate-limit or lock out. Creating a channel is the same: you register it and it is yours. Accounts are free and instant, which is also Pombo's answer to pseudonymity: separate identities for separate parts of your life cost nothing.

Anyone can run the infrastructure​

Messages travel peer-to-peer across the Streamr Network. History is kept by storage nodes: Pombo runs a default cluster, but a channel's owner can point it elsewhere, and anyone can run one. The same is true of the relay behind push notifications.

Your channels outlive the app​

Channel ownership and access rules are records on Polygon PoS, registered to your address. Nobody, Pombo included, can take a channel from you or change who may read it. Any client speaking the protocol reads the same channels, so this interface is replaceable.

Encrypted before it leaves your device​

All cryptography runs locally, on web and Android alike. DMs are end-to-end encrypted and sealed. Protected and contract-backed channels are encrypted under keys only members hold, and in every channel you publish under a pseudonym rather than your account unless you chose otherwise. None of this is absolute, and the threat model says exactly where it stops.

Creators keep the whole price​

A channel can charge for entry: a token or NFT to hold, or a subscription at a price its owner sets. Each payment is a single transfer to the owner's address. No fee, no revenue share, no Pombo account in between.

Everything else is free. Actions that write to the blockchain, such as creating a channel, cost a few cents in POL paid to the network.

Where to start​

You want to…Start here
Try itInstall, then first steps
Run a channelChannels
Look something upChannel types · Limits and defaults · Glossary
Understand itArchitecture · Encryption · Publisher identity
Check our claimsPrivacy at a glance · Threat model
Run infrastructureStorage node · Push relay

Platforms​

Web (PWA) at app.pombo.cc, installable from any modern browser, and Android, a native app speaking the same protocol, so the two interoperate exactly.