September 2026: Verus reaches Google Play and Verus Relay goes live

September was the month the work reached people's phones. Confrmo and Verus both arrived on Google Play, I filed more than twenty more patent applications and I turned a shelf of retired radio hotspots into part of a live network.

On Google Play

On 14 September the Confrmo app reached Google Play, joining the iPhone version. On 23 September Verus followed on Android, with the iPhone app in Apple's review.

Verus: private from the first message

Early in the month I made sure every new Verus conversation has forward secrecy from its very first message, however many new people someone meets. Later came calls that reach a locked, dozing Android phone without keeping the app running all the time. Then came pairing a new device that carries every chat, contact and group across, sealed inside the pairing itself.

Confrmo: passports and personal addresses

Confrmo now accepts passport evidence only from reader software it has been told to trust. The iPhone reader joined Android's. The shared certificate behind every Confrmo personal address now renews on its own, so no address ever loses its security.

Verus Relay: old hotspots, a new job

When two phones cannot reach each other directly, a Verus call passes through a relay that carries sealed audio it has no way to open. On 26 September the first relays went live in London. Two days later I rebuilt the first of my old Helium hotspots as Verus Relay 001. By 29 September a network of relays was live, with boxes that set themselves up wherever they are plugged in. The radios inside two of them now announce themselves to each other over the air, with no internet in the path. You can see the relays online right now on the live Verus Relay map.

Stuck, then a patent

Long-range radio has a hard limit: the rules for the band allow each transmitter only a few seconds on air an hour, so anyone who can make a relay repeat their messages can use that up for everyone else. Working out how a relay decides what to pass on, without a network connection and without learning who sent anything, became patent application GB2621375.1, one of more than twenty I filed in September.