System overview
SPECTER is a Rust backend + React frontend with a clean separation between cryptographic operations, API surface, and storage.The Rust workspace
SPECTER’s backend is organized as a Cargo workspace with 12 crates. Each crate has a single responsibility:| Crate | Purpose |
|---|---|
| specter-core | Shared types (KeyPair, MetaAddress, Announcement), error types, constants |
| specter-crypto | ML-KEM-768 encapsulation/decapsulation, view tags, SHAKE-256 derivation |
| specter-stealth | Payment creation (create_stealth_payment) and discovery (scan_announcement) |
| specter-scanner | Batch scanning with progress callbacks, resumable scans |
| specter-registry | Announcement storage: in-memory (dev) or Turso/libSQL (production) |
| specter-cache | Lock-free concurrent caching via dashmap |
| specter-ens | ENS name resolution to IPFS-hosted meta-addresses |
| specter-suins | SuiNS name resolution |
| specter-ipfs | IPFS meta-address storage via Pinata gateway |
| specter-yellow | Yellow Network private channel integration |
| specter-api | Axum REST server, route handlers, middleware, DTOs |
| specter-cli | CLI tool for generate, create, scan, bench, serve |
Data flow
Sending a payment
Scanning for payments
Frontend
The React frontend (SPECTER-web/) provides:
- Generate Keys page - Create ML-KEM keypairs and save encrypted to browser
- Send Payment page - Resolve names, create stealth payments
- Scan Payments page - Discover incoming payments
- Yellow page - Private channel management
Deployment
The backend runs on Google Cloud Run:- Docker multi-stage build (Rust 1.88 builder + Debian slim runtime)
- Auto-scaling: 0-10 instances
- 512Mi memory, 1 CPU per instance
- Concurrency: 80 requests per instance
- Turso (libSQL) for production announcement storage
- Secrets managed via Google Secret Manager
Registry backends
| Backend | Use case | Config |
|---|---|---|
| Memory | Development, testing | REGISTRY_BACKEND=memory (default) |
| Turso | Production | REGISTRY_BACKEND=turso + TURSO_DATABASE_URL |
AnnouncementRegistry trait, so the rest of the system doesn’t care which one is active.
Development setup
Set up the backend and frontend locally.
API reference
Full endpoint documentation.