# How Komms works

Your device encrypts, independent operators deliver and store, Kaspa keeps the order, and Bittensor subnet 27 pays the operators.

Komms is built on open networks rather than one company's data centre. Each part has one job.

| Part | Its job |
| --- | --- |
| **Your device** | Encrypts and signs everything you send. Keeps your keys. |
| **Relays** | Deliver messages to everyone in a conversation, straight away. |
| **Storage** | Holds encrypted files and backups, starting with Hippius. |
| **Kaspa** | Records your identity and fingerprints of your messages, so their order and authorship can be checked. |
| **Bittensor subnet 27** | Recruits the operators who run relays, indexes and storage, checks their work, and pays them. |
| **Komms Systems** | The company: builds the apps, sells plans and runs the services listed in [What the team still runs](what-we-run). |

## Two lanes: fast delivery, slow proof

Komms keeps two lanes separate:

- **Messages, replies, edits, reactions and moderation** travel off-chain through relays, so they're instant. They reach Kaspa only as fingerprints, in batches. See [Message delivery and anchoring](delivery-and-anchoring).
- **Identity changes and membership of private conversations** go on Kaspa itself, where everyone sees one agreed order.

## Your identity lives on Kaspa

Your account's identity is a small contract on the Kaspa network that only your keys can change. Komms can't take it over or edit it. Your history is a chain of anchors that anyone can check against that identity.

## Who runs the network

Operators run Komms services and are paid through [Bittensor subnet 27](https://taostats.io/subnets/27):

- **Miners** run a Kaspa node plus Komms services: indexing (tracking identities and anchors), storing, and relaying messages.
- **Validators** check miners' work against Kaspa, with test messages and spot checks, and set how rewards are shared.

A miner that sponsors an anchor pays the small Kaspa fee up front. At least a quarter of subscription revenue purchases subnet 27 alpha, and miners are repaid from that alpha at the cost of the fees they paid. The subnet's emissions are a separate reward for scored work. Paying customers fund the fee repayment. Emissions are not Komms revenue. See [Mining on Komms](mining).

## Checking for yourself

Your app doesn't trust any single operator. It reads from more than one and checks the answers against Kaspa. A message only shows as **Verified** when your own node, or nodes run by two independent operators, agree.

## Going deeper

- [Whitepaper and papers](papers)
- [Roadmap](roadmap)
- [Network status](network-status)