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Title: Mandalorian Project: Building a Phone That Cannot Betray You

Abstract

In an age of surveillance, even “secure” phones contain backdoors—by design or coercion. We present Mandalorian Project: an open, betrayal-resistant mobile foundation built on RISC-V and seL4 that eliminates the possibility of betrayal, even by its creators. We’ll demo a working v1.0, explain how cryptographic user identity and on-device Merkle ledgers enforce sovereignty, and show how anyone can audit or rebuild the system. This is not theory—it’s code that halts rather than betrays.

Outline

  1. The Problem: Why “secure phones” still betray (5 min)
  2. Apple/Google lock-in
  3. Backdoors by legal coercion

  4. Trust as the enemy of sovereignty

  5. The Vow: The Mandate of the Sovereign (3 min)

  6. “No backdoors. Not ever. Not for anyone.”

  7. Inspired by Bitcoin’s trust-minimization

  8. The Architecture: Mandalorian Project v1.0 (10 min)

  9. Verified boot (SHA3 + ed25519)
  10. Shield Ledger (on-device Merkle log)
  11. seL4 capability isolation

  12. Demo: Booting on VisionFive 2

  13. The Future: Aegis + VeridianOS (5 min)

  14. Real-time privacy agent

  15. Android/iOS app compatibility without surrender

  16. Call to Action: Join The Watch (2 min)

  17. Audit our code
  18. Contribute to libre hardware
  19. Build the unbribable future

Why FOSDEM?

  • Directly advances FOSDEM’s mission: libre software, hardware, and user freedom
  • Uses RISC-V, seL4, and open standards
  • Live demo of working betrayal-resistant system

Speaker Bio

Themba Mpehle is the creator of the Mandalorian project — building the first phone that cannot betray its user. Previously contributed to [mention relevant work, or “open-source privacy advocacy”].