An open-source environmental DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) on the Chia blockchain. Plant a low-cost ESP32-S3 Tree, harvest verifiable environmental data, earn $JUICE.
Status: Proof of concept. Pre-alpha. Things will break. Help us fix them.
The first Tree — Freenove ESP32-S3 + MQ-135 + GPS in a clear ABS enclosure, Mount Washington, KY.
The first end-to-end loop is up — flash a Tree from your browser, then claim it with your Chia wallet:
- 🌐 theorchard.network — start here (overview + get-started)
- ⚡ Flash a Tree — install firmware onto an ESP32 from the browser (desktop Chrome/Edge — uses Web Serial — no toolchain)
- 🌳 Claim a Tree — connect a Chia wallet (Sage/Goby), prove your Orchard Pass, and bind the Tree to you
Pre-alpha, so expect rough edges. Flashing needs desktop Chromium; claiming needs a Chia wallet holding an Orchard Pass. Found a bug? That's the point — open an issue.
The Orchard turns inexpensive ESP32-based hardware into verifiable environmental sensing Trees. Each Tree:
- Measures the world around it (air quality, temperature, humidity, pressure, light, particulates, GPS, more later).
- Signs and submits readings to a local oracle service.
- Has its uptime attested every Season to the Chia DataLayer (a verifiable on-chain key/value store).
- Earns $JUICE — a Chia CAT token — proportional to verified uptime.
- Is bound to a wallet via an Orchard Pass (NFT credential) that proves ownership.
The goal is a community-buildable network of climate / air-quality / location-verified sensors that anyone can deploy, extend, and earn from. Hardware design, firmware, dashboards, oracle, and reward logic are all open source.
The token supports the ecosystem instead of being the ecosystem. See docs/VISION.md for the long-term direction.
┌──────────────┐ sensor JSON ┌───────────────┐ Season attest. ┌──────────────┐
│ Tree │ ───── HTTPS ───▶ │ Local Oracle │ ────RPC────────▶ │ Chia │
│ (ESP32-S3) │ │ (FastAPI + │ │ DataLayer │
│ │ ◀── OTA / WiFi ──│ SQLite) │ │ │
└──────────────┘ provisioning └───────────────┘ └──────────────┘
▲ ▲ │
│ │ live readings │
│ USB-serial │ ▼
│ ┌───────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐
└───── scan / config ──────│ Orchard View │ │ Season │
│ (Flask, run │ │ harvest │
│ on your PC) │ │ script │
└───────────────┘ │ → $JUICE │
│ spend │
└──────────────┘
│
▼
┌──────────────┐
│ Tree-owner │
│ wallets │
└──────────────┘
| Component | What it does | Path |
|---|---|---|
| firmware/ | Tree firmware (ESP32-S3). Modular sensor drivers. WiFi, GPS, signed POSTs, OTA. | firmware/ |
| oracle/ | FastAPI service. Receives readings, stores in SQLite, tracks Season uptime. | oracle/ |
| dashboard/ | Orchard View — local Flask web UI. Scan, view readings, push WiFi/OTA, register Tree. | dashboard/ |
| orchard_chia/ | DataLayer writer + Chia wallet client + manual $JUICE Season-harvest script. | orchard_chia/ |
| nft/ | Orchard Pass NFT collection (CHIP-7 metadata) + mint script. | nft/ |
| docs/ | Wiring diagrams, decision records (ADRs), VISION, LOG of successes & failures. | docs/ |
| examples/ | Copy/paste templates so novices can extend (new sensors, new node types). | examples/ |
See docs/decisions/0001-v1-architecture.md for the v1 design decisions and why they were made. See docs/VISION.md for where we're heading long term.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | $JUICE |
| Type | CAT (Chia Asset Token) |
| Network | Chia mainnet |
| Asset ID | 285164e6af80202d2b07fa3cc6ae47ff2906029365a83c50fcab25a56b937121 |
| Eve Coin ID | 2ff338ed6fb3161d48eed7f112d3c6077e90c517dc4534bfba8ad3975b7f5e63 |
| Total supply | 100,000,000 JUICE |
| Issuance | Single issuance |
Full token reference: docs/token/JUICE.md. The Asset ID also lives in orchard_chia/config.example.yaml — copy to orchard_chia/config.yaml, fill in your local wallet details, and don't commit your local copy (it's in .gitignore).
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Daily rate | Superseded — see docs/token/EMISSION.md. The network has a fixed daily ceiling that Trees divide; more Trees never raise it. |
| Accrual | 1/24 $JUICE per verified hour of uptime |
| Season length | 4608 Chia blocks (~24h) |
| Credential | 1 Orchard Pass per wallet |
| Payout method | Manual batched $JUICE CAT spend bundle (Phase 7) |
All of these are config, not constants — they will scale up after initial testing.
User-facing copy uses brand names. Code uses technical equivalents. This table is the mapping.
| Brand name | In code | Description |
|---|---|---|
| The Orchard | orchard |
The ecosystem |
| $JUICE | juice / CAT asset id |
Reward token |
| Tree | node, node_id |
A deployed sensing device |
| Grove | grove, grove_id |
A cluster of Trees |
| Season | season, season_blocks |
A reward cycle (4608 Chia blocks ≈ 24h) |
| Harvest | readings, harvest_batch |
Data collection / payout event |
| Keeper | keeper, validator |
A submission validator (v2+; not implemented v1) |
| Orchard View | dashboard |
The local Flask UI |
| Orchard Pass | pass, pass_id |
NFT credential proving Tree ownership |
📖 End-to-end runbook: docs/OPERATOR_QUICKSTART.md walks from "I have a box of parts" → "first signed reading on my dashboard" in about an hour. Start there if this is your first Tree.
The TL;DR for someone already comfortable with PlatformIO + Python:
# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/FlipThisCrypto/the-orchard.git
cd the-orchard
# 2. Install dashboard + oracle + chia integration (Python 3.11+).
# Hash-pinned lockfiles (*.lock, committed) are the production-safe
# install — every transitive dep is pinned to an exact version
# and SHA-256 hash, closing supply-chain risk.
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate # Windows
# source .venv/bin/activate # macOS / Linux
pip install --require-hashes -r oracle/requirements.lock \
--require-hashes -r dashboard/requirements.lock \
--require-hashes -r orchard_chia/requirements.lock
# To regenerate the lockfiles after a deliberate dep bump. Universal
# locks: one file is valid on Windows + Linux + macOS, Python 3.11+
# (pip-compile only locked for the OS it ran on, which broke Linux
# installs of uvicorn[standard] — uvloop was never pinned):
# pip install uv
# uv pip compile --universal --generate-hashes --python-version 3.11 -o oracle/requirements.lock oracle/requirements.txt
# uv pip compile --universal --generate-hashes --python-version 3.11 -o dashboard/requirements.lock dashboard/requirements.txt
# uv pip compile --universal --generate-hashes --python-version 3.11 -o orchard_chia/requirements.lock orchard_chia/requirements.txt
# 3. Flash a Tree (in a separate shell, from firmware/)
cd firmware
pio run -t upload --upload-port COM4 # WROOM-32U is the default env
# 4. Start the local oracle
python -m oracle.app.main # default: http://localhost:8000
# 5. Start Orchard View (new shell)
python -m dashboard.app # default: http://localhost:5000
# 6. Open http://localhost:5000 → Plant a Tree → follow the wizard.Full setup, sensor wiring, Windows-specific gotchas, troubleshooting, and what to expect at the end: docs/OPERATOR_QUICKSTART.md. Per-component deep dives in firmware/README.md, oracle/README.md, dashboard/README.md, orchard_chia/README.md.
- Freenove ESP32-S3 dev board (on Freenove breakout)
- MQ-135 air quality sensor (analog)
- NEO-6M / 7M / 8M GPS module with corded active antenna
- WiFi/Bluetooth antenna (~4")
- Clear ABS waterproof enclosure
- USB-C cable for power + dev
Sensors planned (drivers will be modular so you can add or skip any):
- AHT20 (temp + humidity, I2C)
- BMP280 (pressure, I2C)
- BH1750 (light, I2C)
- PMS5003 (PM2.5 particulate, UART)
- Current transformers + voltage sensors (power monitoring)
- CO2, geophone, weather sensors (future — see VISION.md)
See docs/wiring/ for per-sensor wiring tables.
If you want to plant a Tree, contribute a sensor driver, or fork the whole thing for your own DePIN: please do. The whole point is to be forkable. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
If you want to read what worked and what didn't during development (and learn from our mistakes): see docs/LOG.md.
If you want to know where this is heading over the next few years: see docs/VISION.md.
Apache License 2.0 — the single, canonical license for this project. Includes an explicit patent grant — important for an infrastructure project. See docs/LICENSING.md (an earlier draft license is retained, superseded and non-binding, under docs/historical/).
Proof of concept — all v1 components exist end-to-end and the test suite is green; the work now is hardening for testers and the move toward a serverless architecture (see below).
- Phase 1 — Repo skeleton, license, docs scaffold, vision documented
- Phase 2 — Tree firmware v1 (ESP32 WROOM + S3, modular sensors, signed POSTs, OTA)
- Phase 3 — Oracle service (FastAPI + SQLite)
- Phase 4 — Orchard View (local Flask dashboard)
- Phase 5 — Season attestation writer (DataLayer, ADR-0003)
- Phase 6 — Orchard Pass NFT collection mint
- Phase 7 — Season harvest ($JUICE payout, manual dry-run-by-default)
In flight (hardening + decentralization): device keys moved to secp256r1
(ADR-0007) so signatures are
on-chain-verifiable; seq replay protection landed behind a staged flag;
signed OTA, claim-code provisioning, and flash/NVS encryption are the
tester-readiness gate. The full task list lives in
docs/HANDOVER_2026-06-11.md.
v1 ships with a central oracle the project runs — Trees just sign readings and POST them; operators need zero extra hardware (ADR-0004). That oracle is an explicit transitional bridge: the North Star (ADR-0008) is a serverless Orchard where each Tree is an on-chain singleton proving uptime via timelocked heartbeat spends, rewards are claimed from on-chain epoch vaults, and all clients are static pages — no server to run, nothing to keep alive. The bridge prioritizes exactly the work that carries over (device keys, the seq→heartbeat counter, signed OTA), and is designed to be deleted, not maintained.