Lightning · BitTorrent · Nostr

Pay to download.
Earn to seed.

Bitswarm keeps open models and open datasets alive with Lightning incentives. Find files on Nostr, pay seeders in sats, move bytes over BitTorrent. Not piracy.

Live demo How it works Docs Protocol on Gitkey

MIT protocol SPDX allowlist CC0 dual-bot seed ✓ No illegal index

Live demo network

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Pulled from the public demo API (/api/stats). Marketing www has no JSON /api/*. Box demo host — not a WAN multi-machine fleet.

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Catalog

allowlisted files

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LN seeder regs

sum of registers

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BT peers

this demo host

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Recent pays

file_paid on demo

Recent demo pays (live)

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Open live demo Full demo stats

Latest swarm activity

Verified dual-bot cross-get on the box (2026-09-27 ~8:59 PM PT). Two agents, two Lexe wallets, two CC0 tracks. Hash-verified unlocks. Not a WAN multi-machine claim.

Seed · Grok → erudite-jellyfish@lexe.app

CC0 Songpeas (MP3)

CC0-1.0 1.16 MiB 5 pieces

In public demo catalog cc0-songpeas on bitswarm-demo
Get New Bot paid 21 sats · unlocked · SHA-256 matched
Infohash acdb5ce2cf3e…

Seed · New Bot → desirable-loon@lexe.app

CC0 What Child Is This (MP3)

CC0-1.0 ~1.0 MiB 129 pieces

Fixture cc0-what-child (IA various-sound-effects)
Get Grok paid 129 sats · unlocked · SHA-256 matched
New Bot earned ~129 sats on that reverse Get

Cross-get strip

New Bot Seeded cc0-what-child · Got cc0-songpeas for 21 sats · Earned ~129 sats when Grok fetched What Child
Grok Seeded cc0-songpeas on :8765 · Paid 129 sats for What Child · Earned 21 sats when New Bot fetched Songpeas
Both sides Now hold both MP3s (hash-verified). Legal: CC0-1.0 only.
Sats exchanged 150 (21 + 129) real Lightning, whole-file invoices, claim-gated unlock.

Evidence: dual-songs FINAL_REPORT · demo API shows Songpeas file_paid 21-sat events live. What Child ran on New Bot’s :8766 node (not currently proxied by the public demo Worker, which points at :8765).

Three lanes. Each stays in its lane.

Find — Nostr

Listings and seeder ads. Gossip who has what, at what price. No file bytes on the relay.

Pay — Lightning

Pay the seeder’s lud16. Piece or whole-file invoices. Sats land with the person seeding.

Move — BitTorrent

WebTorrent / BT moves the payload. Hash-verify every piece. Money and bytes never mix.

Nostr does not carry files. Lightning does not carry files. Torrents do not settle sats.

Two modes

Public demo (Get / Seed over real Lightning): bitswarm-demo.steadfast-modem.workers.dev (proxies the box demo API). Marketing site www is docs + activity — /api/* there is HTML, not JSON.

Get file Pick an allowlisted listing → pay Lightning (QR / Alby / NWC) → unlock → download. Min floor in demos is ~21 sat for whole-file UX.
Earn as a seeder Register with your Lightning address, set a rate, seed via WebTorrent or the thick CLI. Copy a Nostr seeder ad so peers can find and pay you.

Thick client (CLI)

Python CLI under thick-client/ — catalog, seeder register, invoice-only, optional local NWC pay. Not an Electron app.

python thick-client/seed_cli.py catalog
python thick-client/seed_cli.py seed --lud16 you@wallet.example

Legal shelf, not a pirate index

Hosted catalogs use a hard SPDX allowlist:

MIT · Apache-2.0 · BSD-2-Clause · BSD-3-Clause · CC0-1.0 · CC-BY-4.0 · Unlicense

In scope Open weights, open datasets, tiny demo fixtures, CC0 IA sound effects.
Out of scope for hosted indexes Copyrighted movies, music, TV, games, warez. Magnets for those are never ingested into the server catalog.
Clients may Seed user-chosen magnets locally. The public shelf stays boring and allowlisted on purpose.

Name note: Bitswarm is the public brand. Unrelated projects (e.g. SuRGeoNix/BitSwarm .NET, bitwebs/bitswarm) are different software. Internal paths may still say satswarm / open-swarm.

Source & protocol

Protocol pack v0.2.0 is published on Gitkey (agent-native Nostr git forge).

Open Gitkey repo Read the docs

# Clone via Gitkey (Nostr announce + content-addressed bundle)
./bin/gitkey clone \
  https://www.gitkey.dev/r/bitswarm/announce.json \
  ./bitswarm