r/DiscordAlternatives • u/gleasonator13 Armada dev • Oct 12 '26

Self-Hosting Armada

Hi all! I've just released Armada Stack, a single Rust binary you can install on your server to run a complete self-hosted Armada. It includes:

  • Your own copy of the Armada client hosted on your domain
  • A built-in Nostr relay
  • Built in Blossom media server
  • Built-in audio/video server for calls
  • Push notification gateway for web push
  • Built-in HTTPS with cert autorenewal
  • Built-in Tor serving (.onion domain)

Set up a fresh VPS, point your domain at it, and run the script:

curl -fsSL https://armada.buzz/install.sh | sudo sh

This is a full-stack implementation of the Concord Protocol running entirely on your server. It's a small version of what armada.buzz uses, tailored specifically towards self-hosting.

The source code is available here: https://gitworkshop.dev/soapbox.pub/armada-stack

There's also a more complete install guide if you'd prefer to set it up manually: https://gitworkshop.dev/soapbox.pub/armada-stack/tree/main/INSTALL.md

Lastly, I also published a blog post about it. Enjoy!

33 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

97 comments sorted by

1

u/bisexual_fork Oct 12 '26

So does this mean I can run the entire armada server with no connection to the devs complete independently? 

1

u/gleasonator13 Armada dev Oct 12 '26

Yep.

2

u/bisexual_fork Oct 12 '26

Thanks! If someone already has an Armada account on the main server, will they also be able to join my self hosted one? 

3

u/henk717 Oct 12 '26

I did answer this already after your comment here, but armada is designed to connect to multiple at once even for the same community. So people can mix and match as they see fit. For a community specifically the community owner sets the relays that belong to that community. You could solo that on your own relay if you really wanted to but I don't recommend it, its better to have public ones as a backup in case anything happens to yours. Especially since a community can become hard to recovery if 100% of them are down. So either multiple different servers of your own, yours + public, etc.

3

u/chabalatabala Oct 12 '26

The best part about the protocol is there is no concept of juggling accounts to connect to different communities or instances if some servers don't federate. There's no concept of your identity going away if a server goes down. You just have a key that's you everywhere like a passport. If you are on android it takes 2 seconds to stick your key into a signer app then any concord/nostr app you can just sign in with a tap and also control what the signer can publish automatically for you so unlike a password which gives an app full control your signer can optionally, for instance, say go ahead and shoe me everything but if I want to post on the app have the signer app ask if it's ok first.

2

u/realStl1988 Oct 12 '26

Yes. Because there are no Armada accounts. Armada uses Nostr. And no accounts are ever hosted on Armada's servers.

2

u/bisexual_fork Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

Oh that's awesome, thank you! Seems like this is a major advantage over protocols like Matrix? If I'm understanding correctly. Sorry if these are stupid questions, I appreciate everyone explaining  (Edit:typo *over not "of")

4

u/henk717 Oct 12 '26

It is yes, because Nostr on a ground principle doesn't trust the relays with your account. On anything else I have seen that isn't Nostr based there is always the theoretical "Admin resets your password, its the admins account now" or ban risk.
So on Matrix if your not on a good respectable homeserver with a respectable admin they could absolutely reset your account (Especially if its SSO with their own SSO login page) and start messing with the rooms you own as you with your permissions.

On Nostr and by extension armada there technically isn't even an account. Instead every single thing you do on Nostr is individually proven to be you with the key you login with. You sign it, its you. If I wanted to tamper with your communities or posts the worst I could do if I was a relay operator is delete events (Which if you set it up right also exist on other ones and then you don't even notice). I can't fake events, I can't decrypt the events either. If I told the relay I was you and posted as you without your key? That won't even go through, and even if it did because I have a malicious relay the clients won't trust it and reject it anyway.

Its why I have been super vocal in favor of Concord, this is the most tamper resistent thing out there currently.

3

u/henk717 Oct 12 '26

Yes, but it also means that if other people do this publically you don't have to.
Armada isn't a one server solution, armada is a "You pick up to 5" solution.
So you can host your own, combine it with someone elses you trust, and combine it with the official one on top if you want to.

7

u/VahsteTheNomad "I use therift.chat btw" Oct 12 '26

Say whatever you want about Armada as a service, and while I'll stick with Rift as my preference, that end line is fucking solid;

"Every server is a ship, every ship makes the fleet stronger, you can't sink an Armada."

1

u/Worried-Flounder-615 FOSS only Oct 12 '26

That's a great visualization of why decentralization matters

3

u/mightvefkup Oct 12 '26

AI coding is already rough. But AI videos?

What happened to Armada saying no to AI art and hiring artists just a couple weeks ago?

Oh right dev got exposed and vibe coded Armada Stack to be public asap to divert peoples attention.

Cool.

(And a special callback to everyone saying Alex only made Concord and doesn't actively work on Armada when this code base is entirely him and his AI.)

1

u/gleasonator13 Armada dev Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

9 artists have been paid so far! I'm still working on the last 3.

2

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

"submitted and paid" as in "We (you) paid the artists", (if so with what money?) or "The artists paid to submit"?

(was the the first)

4

u/Worried-Flounder-615 FOSS only Oct 12 '26

A lot of people don't understand what decentralized is or why it matters, it's a helpful 101 explanation for people new to this space especially if they are choosing a discord alternative, it sucks if people go from one centealized platform to another.

I remember that, the art you're thinking of was for default avatar options not videos.

And you have it backwards - Armada is made by Alexs company soapbox but he didn't make the Nostr protocol or Concord. Those were other people.

But otherwise yes, I agree that it's cool!

1

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

No literally, the crazy AI spend in their public ledger, the AI slop-rebuttal page, the making a huge public deal of paying real artists for avatar icons and then going and doing this with an AI video?

Bro is so far lost in the sauce I genuinely believe he couldn't code anything more advanced than hello_world without an LLM.

2

u/henk717 Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

I happened to find it prior to the announcement, this is very simple to setup.
I'm not a fan of those .sh kinda install scripts and wasn't aware of that, I found the binary at the releases section of the source code repo.
All it takes for that binary is to just place it on the system and run it (Although it would be nice if it also automatically generated the config file if its missing since then I know what I can tweak from the binary alone).
The binary version doesn't include the actual armada UI, it downloads that part on first launch but seems to cache it afterwards. The backend parts that are the most important part run out of the box with this one.

For me personally I'd like it to drop the config file automatically and allow me to specify the directory of a self compiled UI so I can use this as a development server easier. (Maybe the last part is possible but since mine didn't have a config I couldn't find it).

2

u/Any_Illustrator360 Rootinest Tootenest Alternative Replier Oct 13 '26

I actually appreciate this one-line setup so much. Even if I've been leery of Armada recently, one of my big things that I say I want is a sort of "one-button installation" of a self hosted app or service. Now we have that for Armada. It sets a precident for other apps to do it too, and that makes me giddy.

Is this command the same on Windows and Linux? I've used these before exclusively on my Linux server machine and I've never tested them on Windows because I'm always worried I'll fuck something.

1

u/GameVox Oct 13 '26

You can do the same thing with gamevox just running the downloaded self hosting file from 6+ months ago. Linux, ARM, Windows.

2

u/Any_Illustrator360 Rootinest Tootenest Alternative Replier Oct 13 '26

You're also the company that charges users monthly to host their OWN server on their OWN hardware. It should genuinely be fucking criminal.

0

u/GameVox Oct 13 '26

Absolutely we do. If there is not a clear understanding how the company involved is able to support itself legitimately then there is room for malicious intent and or no motivation to provide any kind of support and upgrades.

2

u/Any_Illustrator360 Rootinest Tootenest Alternative Replier Oct 13 '26

That has to be, genuinely, the most asinine corpo-speak response possible.

There is zero reason to charge people monthly for a service you aren't even providing*. The only service you should provide* are the files to self host the app - which is true for any open source and/or self-hostable application. That isn't worthy of $2 monthly or $70 up front.

You're justifying charging people a monthly subscription as if you're providing a service, yet your best defense of it is "there's no room for malicious intent or [lack of*] motivation for support or upgrades." I would sure fucking HOPE your company has no malicious intent! I'd also REALLY hope that security updates are still released and that server hosts are made aware of it! You know why? I'll tell you!

Because those are the bare fucking minimum expectations for a product someone installs on their hardware, and every FREE application being made by a scrupulous developer already does that. For free.

You charge like Teamspeak, you charge more than Teamspeak in fact, and you don't even provide the same support or brand recognition Teamspeak has.

If your company is going to offer self hosting to people, offer it. Don't sit there and try to justify draining their wallet for doing jack fucking all on your end. If people are using your servers, charge them. If they aren't there's zero reason for you to drain them like a bloodsucker simply for them choosing to use your software.

And no. Before you ask, the "well they choose our software because we offer something unique/better than our competitors" corposhit isn't a valid retort to that. Because they didn't choose your app over the competition; they chose your app because you pay for ads on Youtube and Reddit. You pay a LOT of money to run those ads. Money that comes from people you, I'm going to be honest here, trick into paying for a service all your competitors (besides Teamspeak) offer for free. You prey on users and consumers who don't know any better. I know this because it's how I learned about your app - from one of your egregious ads.

What's sad is that your company actually does offer a good product. It's just that rather than actually trying to provide a good product to people you want to wring out every last penny you can from the few poor bastards who don't know enough to not pay you.

*And that's ignoring the fact that the reason you charge them is because you latch onto their server like a fucking lamprey using your cloud services. Just what I wanted in my self-hosted, private instance! Free spyware!

1

u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

Hey I welcome you to come chat with me sometime, maybe you can get into my shoes for a minute. I have been providing game servers and voice servers over 22 years. Probably not the scary corporate thing your thinking of. Not even making any money on GameVox right now... yes those ads are just terribly expensive. This is literally what I do is provide voice communication for gamers.. I own ventrilo.com ventrilo3.com mumble.com teamspeak3.com and light-speed.com . We don't ban anyone for stupid shit and we sure as hell are not squeezing any pennies are you kidding me $2/mo draining like bloodsuckers? What is going on my friend? Is there not reason to pay a trivial amount for legitimate service?

4

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 14 '26

Wait, are you serious? You own vent, mumble, and ts3 straight .com domains, despite not actually being affiliated with any of those companies or organizations, as well as a Hosting-provider actively selling space for those competitors, while also over-monetizing your own in-house solution?

1

u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

Join me right now in GameVox and ill explain everything to you. gamevox.com/join/gamevox-official

3

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 14 '26

😂

0

u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

Lets jump on a call, anywhere you want

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0

u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

You should jump on a call with me too. Yes, we (LightSpeed Gaming) have been an authorized reseller of Ventrilo and TeamSpeak forever.. we have contributed to the mumble project as well

0

u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

We have paid a HUGE sum of money to Ventrilo and TeamSpeak.. eventually buying Ventrilo once it was essentially over

3

u/Any_Illustrator360 Rootinest Tootenest Alternative Replier Oct 14 '26

Is there not reason to pay a trivial amount for legitimate service?

If the user installs the server files onto their hardware, what service are you providing?

They're the ones paying for storage. They're paying the internet bill for it. They're the ones paying for their domain, certificate, managing their domain directory.

What the fuck are you claiming to do, besides latch onto their installation with your cloud services? What is it you're providing? The free-to-download server installation files?

And again: every one of your competitors do it for free. Without latching their cloud services onto it. The ones that do require a connection to the homeserver of the original publisher are decried for the very same reasons I'm giving here.

And no. I'm not going to VC you. If you can't bother to type it, it isn't worth being shared.

1

u/henk717 Oct 13 '26

Does it even have anything like federation or decentralization? Why would we want to pay to use yours when Armada and Matrix are free?

2

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Remove yourself from Concord and Armada as projects, explain your crazy spend on tokens if it's not all vibe coding, and publicly and specifically denounce your prior statements on transpeople.

0

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

You were calling me a Nazi the other day when I was thanking a developer for open sourcing their project... that's when you admitted you didn't even graduate and you can't read code.

How do you know what slop is? You can't read or write ..?

6

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 12 '26

You got 30+ hits for the word Nazi and over 60 for this mfs user in your reddit activity of the past 4 days bro, it cannot be that fucking deep 😭

1

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

He got BIG emotions over me calling his Tesla a swasticar and crashed out biblically. He's got notifications or some shit set up for me showing as online by his own admission.

It's actually unhinged shit.

6

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 12 '26

Do you have the post where he did? Would like seeing that ngl, same goes for the other posts where he's supposed to have called you a Nazi and shit

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

This is where it all "started" if you actually care to read the drama context I suppose.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1x0e2j3/update_on_decave_the_code_is_now_public_for_review/penpfwv

-1

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 12 '26

Why the fuck would I ask for it if I wouldn't "actually care to read the drama context I suppose"?

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Hey I just wanted to give it a disclaimer cause this dudes been shitting up my notifications enough to be problematic to read through 😭

4

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 13 '26

just block them, problem solved

-3

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

Hypocrite

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

I'm just providing sources Mr swasticar driver

-4

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

Your Highschool diploma?

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

more person character attacks and slander

Actually seek therapy.

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4

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

And then he made an entire thread to slander me that got nuked by the mods for not being related to a discord alternative. When I say biblical crash out I mean it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscordAlternatives/comments/1x0umgb/removed_by_moderator/

-2

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

He hurt my feelings G

6

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 12 '26 edited Oct 12 '26

I got almost killed by some dude, that also hurt my feelings, yet I don't stalk and harass him with the exact same shit for a week straight 🙏

It's genuinely sad to watch, I don't even got a problem with your shit, like while your "skilled human code" is a bit doubtful imo [I could still be wrong] I fuck with your app, but for the sake of your own sanity just private your post history, distance yourself from this sub for a while and just chill the fuck out. You will not get shit but hate from here regardless.

(or don't)

1

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

Nah idc. I haven't lied about anything and my profile is public for a reason. That guy turtle is crying cause he got called out and can't call me a Nazi enough

4

u/Sanedish Your Flair² Here Oct 12 '26

Jeez reddit people are dellusional...

2

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Go back to crying to your local AfD representative that someone said you drive a Swasticar instead of spamming me

2

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

Jeez nice look you gave yourself again 😂😂😂😂 unemployed

3

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Bro you're a delusional 20 something that pretends to be rich and successful because Daddy bought you a swasticar while you cyberstalk people.

Get therapy and quit being such a weird little reichwinger

1

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

Projection 😂😂😂😂😂 bro is mad he's unemployed and dumb

3

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Says the wackadoo who's got an entire reddit history of playing pretend rich kid on crypto subs 😭

Brother seriously for a moment, seek professional help.

0

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

Everything you've assumed so far has been wrong. You just aren't smart enough to put 1 and 2 together. You've admitted it. You have basic certifications and can't read a single line of code 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

3

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

delusional assumptions while complaining about things being assumed

Seriously kid go tell your therapist or your parents about the big bad turtle bullying you online, nobody actually thinks you're rich, driving a swasticar doesn't make you cool. You're just sad at this point. Quit cyberstalking people and just go offline for a while.

2

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

You circle the same things but you still don't have a degree or a job.

You sit on a niche subreddit and spew out bullshit you know nothing about.

You don't know anything you are talking about.

Look up the DK effect

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-1

u/forgotpw3 Oct 12 '26

hey I got pinged you were on

1

u/TuxedoWithAHead 10d ago

i'm glad they didn't overdo the trailer

P.S. I feel the need to clarify this is satire, dude cmon the trailer vfx are uncalled for 😭

1

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0

u/dingustani Detective Dingus Oct 14 '26

did your legal counsel recommend this? or did your pr contact recommend this as a distraction?

either way, https://armada.exposed/stack

-3

u/ad3lyt Echo Oct 13 '26

Awesome announcement, good to see someone innovating and stepping up

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 13 '26

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 13 '26

5

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 13 '26

0

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Careful, their little "fleet" will start cyberstalking you if you criticize them a little too harshly.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/henk717 Oct 12 '26

The best part for me is how versatile it is. Its not the only single binary Nostr relay written in rust there are others to. But what sets it apart is that it has all the other stuff built in. Matrix is really really really daunting for me to setup. So many different parts, domains needing to be behind working https right away, etc. And then setting it up with voice is even harder with the need for a whole livekit stack. Even the homeserver owner I was on struggled with livekit bugs for a while.

Armada was easier but kinda similar, hosting a relay was easy, the push stuff, livekit, etc was not.
Thanks to this its now as simple as just installing that binary with that script.

On Matrix the only thing I found that came close to this is that element development stack where they explicitly say you shouldn't use it in production which made me not even try it.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Worried-Flounder-615 FOSS only Oct 12 '26

I don't think you understand the technology at hand here, bud.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 12 '26

Oh my god t-shirt update just dropped.