Messenger Guide

Morana Messenger is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that runs over an encrypted relay swarm. This guide takes you from install to your first message.

Public tmor testnet, invited / controlled access. This is foundation-operated and not yet an open,

audited, anonymous network — do not rely on it for high-risk communication yet.

1. Install

Download the desktop build from the download page and verify it before running. First launch creates a local, encrypted profile — nothing is sent anywhere until you choose to.

2. Two identities

Morana does not put you in one account with privacy switches. It gives you two independent identities, and you switch between them with the profile chip in the top bar:

• Morana — your full identity. Messages, contacts, groups, calls, channels, wallet, MORID, relay and staking. It can route either normally or onion-only, as you choose.
• Shadow — a deliberately narrow identity for when nothing should point back at you. It does messages, contacts and groups and nothing else.

Shadow is a separate identity, not a mode. It has its own independent 24-word recovery phrase, generated in its own ceremony and unrelated to your Morana phrase. You can create a Shadow without ever creating a Morana identity.

What Shadow deliberately does not do:

Shadow still has an address, and you can write to it. This row said "local-only, messaging-only" until 2026-08-09, which read as nobody can reach a Shadow — the opposite of the point. Both identities carry a mori1… contact address; the suite byte is what differs (0x01 Morana, 0x02 Shadow), and the same three prefixes serve both — mori, tmori, rmori. So you reach either one the same way: paste the address. What a Shadow has no key for is the wallet, and the code refuses rather than improvises — asking for a payment address or a wallet binding on a Shadow suite returns GhostHasNoWallet instead of quietly minting one. "No MORID" in the table means no registered name; it never meant no address.

A registered name is perpetual. There is no renewal, no rent, no lease and no expiry — the renew action was removed from consensus outright rather than left switched off, and registration is the only identity action the parser now accepts. A name can also be handed over or sold: transfer and sale are the same state change to the chain, and the price, if any, is paid between the two of you, not enforced by the network. And because messages are addressed by that mori1… string, a name is a convenience on top of it, never the thing that makes you reachable.

Shadow is fail-closed: it never falls back to a direct route. If no onion route is available, the message is not sent rather than leaked. That is intended behaviour, not a fault.

3. Connect to the swarm

Your app finds relays from a release-signed relay list — you do not add relays by hand. You only provide two things once, in Settings → Network:

1. the registry URL (e.g. https://registry.morana.network) 2. the Root public key to pin (published with the release)

After that, the app discovers the current relay set from the signed list and derives which relays hold a given mailbox automatically. A hostile server cannot substitute relays: the list is signed by the pinned Root key.

4. Add a contact

• By QR: open your card, have the other person scan it (or scan theirs).
• By address: paste their address; the app resolves and cryptographically verifies the registration on-chain before you can message them.

5. Send

Open a chat and type. Delivery ticks confirm the relay accepted the message; the recipient's device decrypts it end-to-end. Attachments, voice notes and groups work in both identities. Calls and channels are Morana-only — see the table above.

Privacy notes

• The app does not put message text or the sender's name in system notifications.
• Use Shadow when nothing should link the conversation back to you.
• The panic lock (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+L) instantly hides the window and returns to the unlock screen. It is registered as a global hotkey, so it works even when the app is not focused — unless another application already holds that combination.

Troubleshooting

• "No relays" / messages stuck — check the registry URL and that the Root key is pinned correctly in Settings → Network; re-sync.
• Shadow won't send — that is fail-closed behaviour when no onion route is available. Start the onion engine and try again; there is deliberately no direct fallback.
• A button is missing under Shadow — calls, channels and wallet are not available in that identity by design. Switch to Morana with the profile chip if you need them.