pkarr
PKARR
Own your identity. No registrars. No platforms. Just your keys.
PKARR turns Ed25519 public keys into domain names that you truly own. Publish DNS records to the Bittorrent peer-to-peer network with 10+ million nodes. No registrar can seize your domain. No platform can deplatform your identity.
Where we are going, this https://o4dksfbqk85ogzdb5osziw6befigbuxmuxkuxq8434q89uj56uyy resolves everywhere!
Quick Start
cargo add pkarr
use pkarr::{Client, Keypair, SignedPacket};
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
// Generate your identity
let keypair = Keypair::random();
println!("Your public key: {}", keypair.public_key());
// Create and sign DNS records
let packet = SignedPacket::builder()
.txt("_hello".try_into()?, "world".try_into()?, 3600)
.sign(&keypair)?;
// Publish to the network
let client = Client::builder().build()?;
client.publish(&packet, None).await?;
println!("Published! Resolve at: https://pkdns.net/?id={}", keypair.public_key());
Ok(())
}
Documentation
| Guide | Description |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Philosophy, concepts, and why PKARR exists |
| Quickstart | Get started in 5 minutes |
| Integration Guide | Embedding Pkarr in your application |
| Feature Reference | Cargo feature flags and configurations |
| API Reference | Full Rust API documentation |
| Examples | Code samples |
| Specifications | Protocol design documents |
Demo
Try the web app to resolve records in your browser.
How It Works
- Generate a keypair — Your public key becomes your domain name
- Sign DNS records — Standard A, AAAA, TXT, CNAME records, self-signed
- Publish to the DHT — Records stored on the Mainline DHT (10M+ nodes)
- Resolve anywhere — Anyone can query and verify your records
sequenceDiagram
participant Client
participant Relay
participant DHT
Client->>Relay: Publish signed packet
Relay->>DHT: Store (BEP44)
Client->>Relay: Resolve public key
Relay->>DHT: Query
DHT->>Relay: Signed packet
Relay->>Client: Verified response
The Network
PKARR uses the Mainline DHT, the same peer-to-peer network that powers BitTorrent. Records are stored using BEP44 (mutable items). With 15 years of proven reliability and 10+ million active nodes, there’s no need to bootstrap a new network.
Key Points
- Records are ephemeral — The DHT drops records after hours; republish periodically
- 1000-byte limit — PKARR is for discovery, not storage
- Caching everywhere — Clients and relays cache aggressively for performance
- Relays for browsers — Web apps use HTTP relays since browsers cannot open UDP sockets
PKARR is the I/O library that reads and writes DNS records to the DHT.