The open-source protocol for decentralized commerce.
Website · About · Download Beacon
Today's online marketplaces charge sellers 10-20% in fees, harvest your data, and dictate what you can sell. Reffo is the alternative: an open protocol that lets anyone trade directly with anyone else — no platform taking a cut.
Think of it like email for commerce. Anyone can run a node, anyone can trade with anyone, regardless of provider.
- Run a beacon — Download the app or run
npx create-reffo-beacon. Your beacon is your personal storefront on the open network. - List your items — Products, rentals, services, things to trade. Your inventory, your rules.
- Trade directly — Buyers discover your items through search, send offers, and you negotiate peer-to-peer.
| Repo | Description | License |
|---|---|---|
| reffo-protocol | Shared type system, Schema.org extensions, and category schemas that let beacons speak the same language. | CC0-1.0 |
| reffo-beacon | Self-hosted inventory server. SQLite database, Express API, Hyperswarm DHT peer discovery. | AGPL-3.0 |
| reffo-webapp | Search and discovery layer at reffo.ai. Next.js, React, Supabase. | Proprietary |
| create-reffo-beacon | One-command scaffold: npx create-reffo-beacon — sets up a beacon project in seconds. |
AGPL-3.0 |
npx create-reffo-beacon
cd my-reffo-beacon
npm run devOpen http://localhost:3000 — your beacon is live.
Grab the latest release from reffo-beacon/releases — extract, double-click, done. Includes an embedded Node.js runtime so nothing else is needed.
Generate an API key at reffo.ai/account and paste it into your beacon's Settings page. This syncs your listings to the Reffo.ai discovery network. It's entirely optional — your beacon works independently without it.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ @reffo/protocol (CC0) │
│ Shared types, schemas, utilities │
└────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────┘
│ │
┌───────▼───────┐ ┌──────▼──────┐
│ reffo-beacon │ │ reffo-webapp │
│ Self-hosted │ │ Discovery │
│ Express + │ │ Next.js + │
│ SQLite + │ │ Supabase │
│ Hyperswarm │ │ │
└───────┬───────┘ └──────────────┘
│
▼
Hyperswarm DHT
(peer-to-peer network)
- The protocol, beacon, and core tooling are free and open source — always.
- Peer-to-peer trading will never require a Reffo.ai account or fee.
- Optional Reffo.ai services (API, managed integrations, enhanced search) are always opt-in.
- We will never insert ourselves into transactions between independent beacons.
Reffo is in early alpha. Star the repos to follow progress.
We welcome contributions to all Reffo projects. See our Contributing Guide and Code of Conduct.
Each project is licensed independently — see the table above. The protocol is CC0 (public domain). The beacon and CLI are AGPL-3.0. The webapp is proprietary.