Mission: the World Computer

“You can’t truly own anything unless you, as the owner, have an execution environment you can trust with your data.”

— Rong Chen, founder of Elastos

ElastOS is your home on the World Computer. Your files, identity, money and AI belong at home, not on a platform you rent. Elacity is the shop beside that home: the market between ElastOS computers.

The problem

Today, most of your digital life runs on computers that other companies own.

Your files live in a cloud you rent. If the company closes your account or goes down, you can lose access.
Your identity is an account that a platform gives you. The platform can suspend it, delete it, or let someone else act as you.
Your AI runs on someone else’s servers. They see what you ask and what you share.
Your apps can usually reach far more of your data and your network than they need.

When someone else runs the computer, they decide the rules. Ownership means little if you do not control the place where your data and software run.

The idea: the World Computer

The World Computer is the long-term goal of Elastos. It is not one big server. It is many independent computers, one for each person, that connect to each other directly. Each one is owned by the person who uses it. The aim is millions of them.

Each part has one job:

Home is your own computer, the one you actually use: a desktop for your apps, files, identity, wallet and AI.
Runtime is the trusted core under Home. It checks every app’s signed permissions before the app can act. An app gets only what you grant.
Carrier connects Homes to each other, peer to peer, with no central server in the middle.
The blockchain is the trust layer. It anchors identity, signatures and governance, so no single company sets the rules.

How ElastOS works explains each part in more detail.

Today in v2: Homes connect over Carrier for Community chat, contact requests and sharing files with contacts. The Runtime checks each app’s signed access before it acts. Releases are signed, and your identities are created on your own computer from your own keys.

Where it is headed: people reach each other by identity (from one DID to another), identities can be anchored on the Elastos identity chain, and every app and AI agent becomes a sealed capsule that holds only the access you give it. See the roadmap.

Three rules

When the Elastos community approved the World Computer Initiative on 31 January 2025, it set three simple rules:

Ownership. You own your data and your identity.
Simplicity. Using it should be as easy as opening a web address.
Decentralization. Control is spread out. No single company holds it.

ElastOS v2 applies these rules on a computer you own. The device belongs to its owner.

Where the idea comes from

The idea is older than Bitcoin. In 1992, at Microsoft Research, Rong Chen conceived a network operating system where applications run in sandboxes, isolated from the internet. He left Microsoft in 2000 to build it. In 2017 he co-founded the Elastos Foundation and launched the Elastos SmartWeb.

The goal stays the same: an internet where software never gets between you and what is yours. Read the full story on elastos.org/about and the vision on elastos.org/elastos.

Who builds it, and who pays for it

Elacity Labs builds ElastOS under a mandate from the Elastos DAO.
The Elastos DAO funds the work in the open. Holders of ELA, the Elastos token, elect its council every year and vote on what gets built.
ElastOS is open source under the MIT licence. Anyone can read, run, change and share the code.

The DAO votes and the weekly delivery reports are public. See elastos.org/about.

ElastOS in stages: how v1, v2 and v3 fit together.
How ElastOS works: the technology in plain words.
Install ElastOS: run your own Home.

Introduction ElastOS in stages