# All-in-One Cashu Mint Manager

Guides and references for setting up and running Orchard, the all-in-one Cashu mint manager. Your sovereign bank in cyberspace.

<p class="lead">
  Explore guides and references for setting up, running, and tending your own
  Cashu mint with Orchard, your sovereign bank in cyberspace.
</p>

<div class="not-content cta-row">
  <LinkButton href="/install/installation/" class="cta-primary">Install Orchard</LinkButton>
  <LinkButton href="/new-mint/" variant="secondary" class="cta-secondary">New mint</LinkButton>
</div>

## Who it's for

Orchard is for anyone who runs, or wants to run, their own mint on hardware they
control.

- **Individuals:** you'd rather operate the mint than rely on a custodian.
- **Communities & projects:** you want to issue ecash for your community.
- **Companies:** you want to offer ecash as part of your product.

You don't have to be a Lightning wizard to start, just willing to tend your own
setup. Orchard helps you manage the day-to-day with a single web application spanning Bitcoin, Lightning, and Cashu.

<Aside type="tip" title="Brand new?">
  Cashu is private, instant, low-fee digital cash with no accounts and no
  surveillance. If that's unfamiliar, visit [cashu.space](https://cashu.space).
</Aside>

## What Orchard does

A sovereign Cashu mint is more than the mint itself: it's a Bitcoin node, a
Lightning node, and the mint that settles between them. The hard part is keeping
all three online and healthy at once. Orchard wraps the whole stack in one manager:

- **Bitcoin:** node health and mempool activity at a glance.
- **Lightning:** live updates on payments and activity (channel management coming soon).
- **Mint:** info, keysets, activity events, and trends in one place.
- **Server:** health and metrics for the machine (or machines) it all runs on.
- **AI Agent:** an agent harness that watches your services so you don't have
  to live in the logs.

## What you'll need

<Steps>

1. **A Cashu mint to manage.** Orchard manages a mint. It doesn't replace one.
   You'll point it at your mint's backend.

2. **A payment backend.** Your mint settles through a payment processor —
   usually Lightning, but Spark, Ark, Stripe, and others work too. Orchard
   connects to whichever your mint uses.

3. **Somewhere to run it.** Orchard is self-hosted: a VPS, a home server, or any
   box you control and can keep online.

</Steps>

## Choose your path

How you set Orchard up depends on where you're starting. Two paths:

<CardGrid>
  <LinkCard
    title="Install Orchard"
    href="/install/installation/"
    description="Already running parts of the stack? Install Orchard and connect it to your existing Bitcoin, Lightning, and mint."
  />
  <LinkCard
    title="New Mint"
    href="/new-mint/"
    description="Starting from nothing. Stand up Bitcoin, Lightning, and your mint from scratch, then install Orchard."
  />
</CardGrid>

## Community & support

Running a mint is easier with people to ask. Bring questions, share what you've
built, and tell us what's broken.

<CardGrid>
  <LinkCard
    title="Signal group"
    href="https://signal.group/#CjQKIBWaTZhfeNGH0DwXO9igq_M-m9XBDHi9uKC9_hDOlDVoEhDP8PfIsyugGeP8DpvA2jIV"
    description="Join the chat for discussion and questions about running Orchard."
  />
  <LinkCard
    title="Issues & feature requests"
    href="https://github.com/cashubtc/orchard/issues"
    description="Request a feature or report a bug you've found on the GitHub issue tracker."
  />
</CardGrid>

## More

<CardGrid>
  <LinkCard
    title="Orchard on GitHub"
    href="https://github.com/cashubtc/orchard"
    description="The source code, releases, and issue tracker for the project."
  />
  <LinkCard
    title="orchard.space"
    href="https://orchard.space"
    description="The product site: what Orchard is and who it's for."
  />
</CardGrid>

<Aside type="note">
  Spotted something missing or wrong? These docs are open source, so open an issue
  or a pull request on the [Orchard Docs repository](https://github.com/cashubtc/orchard-docs).
</Aside>