You use OpenVTC to take part in one or more VTCs. You'll run a Personal VTA that holds your keys, drive it from the OpenVTC CLI/TUI, and present credentials when communities ask for them.
You do not run the community's infrastructure. That's the sysop. You don't bootstrap or administer a community — that's a community manager.
Work through these in order. Each one verifies before you move on.
- 01 — Personal VTA — spin up a VTA on the VTA Farm (the streamlined default), or self-host one on a server you control if you want to run it the hard way. At the end you have a running VTA holding your master keys.
- 02 — OpenVTC TUI Setup — install the TUI and bind it to the Personal VTA from step 1. This is your everyday interface.
- 03 — Joining a Community — your first community: mint an M-DID, collect VRCs from two existing members, submit a join request, receive your VMC.
Unless you use the VTA Farm, you will need the following:
- A host for your Personal VTA. Cheapest realistic option is a small Ubuntu VPS — see Ubuntu Server in sysop.
local-devis fine for trying things out but don't keep a real identity on it. - HTTPS-capable static hosting somewhere (GitHub Pages, your own site, S3+CDN) for the
did.jsonlfile of your VTA DID. Covered in 01 — Personal VTA Step 2.
After joining a community you graduate to the Member Developer flow — minting role-scoped credentials, presenting them to verifiers, rotating M-DIDs. (Not yet written.)