The Metanet At a Glance

Think of the Metanet as a secure, value-aware upgrade path for today’s Web: every packet can be signed, every action can move money, and every user controls a provable identity anchored to Bitcoin SV (BSV). Project Babbage’s stack turns those ideas into running code, so developers can ship apps with built-in payments, certificates, and fine-grained consent instead of bolting them on later.

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Why the Metanet Exists

• Native micropayments – BSV’s tiny fees let you set prices measured in satoshis, opening pay-per-API-call and pay-per-message patterns impossible on traditional rails.

• Self-sovereign identity – Every wallet creates a unique “identity key,” so users prove who they are without handing PII to your server.

• Granular trust & permissions – Protocol registries (ProtoMap) and certificate registries (CertMap) expose exactly what data an app wants and why, right in the UI.

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Core Building Blocks

• BRC-100 Wallet Interface — One open API so any app can talk to any wallet.

• Metanet Desktop — Cross-platform reference wallet; runs a JSON API on TCP 3321 so your code can sign, pay, and encrypt.

• Apps on the Metanet Front-ends that orchestrate wallet calls; users interact here, not at raw addresses.

• Overlay Services Engine Topic-specific indexers (UTXO lookups, identity resolution, content hosting, etc.) that scale off-chain while keeping proofs on-chain. (GitHub)

• ProtoMap / CertMap Registry overlays that publish protocol & certificate metadata so wallets can display meaningful consent dialogs.

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Five-Minute Crash Course for New Devs

1. Install a wallet
   Clone & run the alpha reference wallet:

git clone https://github.com/bitcoin-sv/metanet-desktop.git  
cd metanet-desktop && npm i && npm run tauri dev

1. Choose Stageline (testnet) while you experiment.

2. Talk to the wallet: npm i @bsv/sdk

import { WalletClient } from '@bsv/sdk'

const wallet = new WalletClient()           // auto-detects Desktop on 127.0.0.1:3321
const { txid } = await wallet.createAction({
  outputs: [{
    outputDescription: 'My first UTXO',
    lockingScript: '016a',
    satoshis: 1000
  }],
  description: 'Hello, Metanet!'
})
console.log('Paid 🎉', txid)

1. That one call signs the TX, broadcasts it, and returns the txid.

2. Secure endpoints & monetize them
   Drop in @bsv/auth-express-middleware and @bsv/payment-express-middleware to require mutual authentication and on-the-fly micropayments for any REST route.

3. Expose only the data you really need

   • Register custom protocols with ProtoMap so wallets display a plain-English tooltip (“This app wants read-only access to your public profile photo”).

   • If you issue identity certificates, declare their schema in CertMap.

4. Scale with overlays
   Use LARS for a local dev stack, then push to CARS for cloud. Each overlay keeps its own DB but anchors proofs on-chain, so you stay horizontally scalable without losing Bitcoin’s audit trail. (GitHub)

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Where to Dive Deeper

• docs.projectbabbage.com – Concept articles, quick-starts (micropayments, secure messaging), and full API reference.

• projectbabbage.com – Vision papers and live app gallery.

• GitHub / bitcoin-sv – BRC specs, overlay-service code, and the Metanet Desktop source.

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Let’s Build the Value-Web Together

The Metanet is still early—exactly the right moment for inventive devs to plant flags. Got questions, feature ideas, or a side-project you’d like feedback on? Reach out on X (@ProjectBabbage), hop into our Slack, or drop us an email at dev-relations@projectbabbage.com. We’re happy to pair-program, review PRs, or just trade crazy micropayment business models.

See you on-chain! 🚀