**I spent a year building a censorship-resistant community communications network. Here is what I built and why.** My name is Kim Stock. I am 70 years old, a lifelong independent technologist, and I have spent the past year building something I want to share with this community. It is called the Sovereign Stack. **What it is** A community-owned communications network built in two layers. The physical layer combines Starlink satellite, HF shortwave radio using JS8Call, and LoRa mesh radio using Meshtastic — automatically routing messages to whatever channel is available when the internet goes dark. No human intervention required. It degrades gracefully and never goes silent. The governance layer uses self-sovereign Nostr identity, a Signum blockchain-anchored reputation system, and a token economy that rewards honest community participation. Five pillars: Identity, Contribution, Validation, Reputation, and Incentives. **What is actually built** This is not a whitepaper project. Eight GitHub repositories are complete and published: - sovereign-stack-blueprint — master design document and shared constants - sovereign-stack-initiative — coordination, roadmap, SDK integration - sovereign-stack-protocol — contribution flow, validation, rewards - sovereign-stack-capabilities — capability registry, peer verification - sovereign-stack-governance — reputation, staking, disputes, governance - sovereign-stack-ai — local AI participant layer using llama.cpp - sovereign-stack-sdk — unified SDK and CLI - sovereign-stack-documents — all founding documents readable in browser The governance layer is fully implemented in TypeScript using the Signum blockchain. The AI layer runs locally on modest hardware — llama.cpp with Llama 3.1 8B Q4, two threads, 512 token context, nice +15 priority so communications infrastructure always takes precedence. The SST token has a complete design — no pre-mine, no founder allocation, 100 million maximum supply, earned only through real network contribution. **Why self-hosted matters here** The whole point is that no one owns this but the community running it. Every node is hardware you own, software you run, identity you hold. The founding node is a mini PC running Linux Mint, a Starlink Mini for primary connectivity, a LoRa mesh node for emergency communications, and a solar and LiFePO4 battery system so it draws nothing from the grid. The Sovereign Switchboard — a Python daemon — monitors signal quality and battery state and routes communications automatically. When the internet goes down the node does not wait for a human. It moves to HF radio. When HF degrades it moves to LoRa mesh. Red Alert mode suspends the AI, dedicates every resource to the mesh, and broadcasts an emergency alert to all visible nodes. **What I am looking for** Honest feedback. People who have built similar things and can tell me what I got wrong. Developers who want to contribute. Ham radio operators who want to run a node. Anyone who has thought about what happens to their community when the infrastructure they depend on stops working. This is public domain. Take it, use it, build with it, extend it. No permission required. Documentation and all repositories: https://github.com/KimStock147 Conceptual paper — readable in browser, no download needed: https://github.com/KimStock147/sovereign-stack-documents/blob/main/CONCEPTUAL-PAPER.md Built in the spirit of the United States 250th Anniversary. Communicate freely and prosper. 🖖
