Quickstart
Ship a site to a network no host can read, change, or take down — in about ten minutes.
You build and preview for free. Scaffolding and previewing cost nothing; you spend a flat 100 DIG only at the moment you publish a capsule on-chain. Iterate for free, publish when it's ready.
Two ways to do it. Most people start on the web.
- A. Publish from the web — in DIGHub, connect a wallet at the end. Best for sites and frontends. ~10 min.
- B. Publish from the CLI —
digstoreon your machine, scriptable and CI-ready. Best for devs and automation.
A. Publish from the web
The fastest path: build and preview in the browser, fund a wallet only at the final step.
1. Open DIGHub and start a draft — free, no wallet
Start a new project in DIGHub ↗. Drop in your built site (a folder of static files — your dist/ or build/). DIGHub gives you a free draft preview of exactly how it will serve, with nothing on-chain and no DIG spent.
You don't need a wallet yet. Iterate on the draft as many times as you like — re-upload, re-preview — entirely for free.
2. Preview it on the real read path — still free
The preview renders your site through the genuine DIG pipeline (encrypt → compile → verify → decrypt), so what you see is what visitors get. Click around, check assets and routing. Nothing is published and nothing is spent until you choose to.
3. Publish — fund and connect a wallet (100 DIG)
When the draft looks right, hit Publish. This is the only step that costs anything:
- Connect a Chia wallet (your wallet is your account — no email, no password).
- Approve the on-chain spend: a flat 100 DIG + a small XCH fee, in one signature.
- DIGHub mints your store and publishes the first capsule on Chia mainnet.
Short on DIG? The publish screen shows your balance and where to top up. See Where to get DIG — TibetSwap, dexie.space, or 9mm.pro.
4. You're live
Your capsule is now anchored on-chain and immediately readable over the dig RPC — anyone can fetch and verify it by its urn:dig: URN or dig:// address, no registration and nothing more to pay. The URN is both the address and the key; share it to share the content. The read path is universal and free; it's live the moment the capsule confirms.
Want a human-friendly *.on.dig.net address? That's optional. A store gets a *.on.dig.net subdomain only when you register a handle for it in DIGHub — a separate, paid registration that pins the store to that name. Until you register one, there's no *.on.dig.net URL (the URN / dig:// address above is always the canonical way to reach it). See Can I use my own domain?.
To ship an update later: edit, preview the new draft for free, and Publish again. Each published update is a new capsule and costs another 100 DIG — you only pay when you promote a draft to a permanent on-chain version.
Once your store exists, wire up Deploy from GitHub Actions so every push to main publishes a new capsule — git-push-to-deploy.
B. Publish from the CLI
The same flow from your terminal — scriptable and the basis for CI. The CLI mirrors the web path: build and preview cost nothing; publishing a capsule costs 100 DIG.
1. Install
# download the installer for your OS from the Releases page, then:
digstore --version
See Installing the CLI for per-OS installers and build-from-source.
2. Scaffold and preview — free, no chain, no spend
Scaffold a project and preview it locally — free, no mint, no chain — before you ever spend:
digstore new <template> # scaffold a wallet-wired project (static · vite-react · next-static · nft-drop · dapp-window-chia) — free, no mint
digstore dev # watch + compile-on-save + serve the real dig:// read path, with an injected window.chia — free, live-reload
new writes a runnable project (a dig.toml + a starter app); dev serves it over the genuine DIG read path (compile → verify → decrypt) with live reload. You spend the 100 DIG only when you publish (next steps). Or build with your usual toolchain (npm run build → dist/) and publish that output.
create-dig-appIf you live in the Node world, npm create dig-app@latest my-app -- --template vite-react scaffolds the same templates straight from npm — no digstore install needed to start. See Scaffold an app.
3. Set up a wallet (only needed to publish)
Publishing spends real funds, so you need a seed and a funded wallet first:
digstore seed generate # generate a fresh mnemonic (shown once — back it up)
digstore balance # show your receive address; fund it with XCH + DIG
See On-chain anchoring for import, funding, and TTL details.
4. Publish your first capsule (100 DIG)
digstore init site --dir dist # mint the store's first capsule (100 DIG + XCH fee)
init mints a Chia singleton on mainnet — the launcher id becomes your store id — and blocks until confirmed.
5. Ship updates
npm run build # produce dist/
digstore add -A # stage the whole content root
digstore commit -m "v1.1" # publish a new capsule (100 DIG + XCH fee)
For CI, one command does add → commit → push and prints the URL:
digstore deploy --output-dir dist --json # advance an existing store from CI; never mints
See Deploy from GitHub Actions.
6. Read it back
digstore cat urn:dig:chia:<storeId>/readme # a URN both locates AND decrypts
What it costs
| You're doing | Cost |
|---|---|
| Scaffolding, building, previewing a draft | Free |
Publishing your first capsule (init / DIGHub Publish) | 100 DIG + small XCH fee |
Publishing each update (commit / re-Publish) | 100 DIG + small XCH fee |
The price is a flat 100 DIG per capsule everywhere — see why the price is flat.
Stuck?
- Troubleshooting — the common failures and their fixes.
- FAQ — quick answers.
- Get help — the community and how to file a good report.
Related
- Concepts & glossary — capsule, store, URN, and DIG payment defined
- Scaffold an app (create-dig-app) — start a deployable project in one command (npm or CLI)
- Installing the CLI — get
digstoreon your machine - On-chain anchoring — wallet setup, funding, and costs
- Deploy from GitHub Actions — push-to-publish in CI
- CLI tutorial — the full create-commit-read walkthrough