# EchoForge > EchoForge is a trust infrastructure company building sovereign identity, verifiable credentials, and governance tooling on Cardano, with a privacy-first second line on the Midnight network. ## Products ### EchoFamily (Cardano line) - [EchoCert](https://cert.echoforgeef.com): On-chain certificate issuance. Mint verifiable NFT certificates anchored on Cardano for courses, achievements, and institutional recognition. PlutusV3 smart contract, $1 USD per certificate (paid in ADA via Charli3 oracle, CoinGecko fallback). Optional domain verification removes the "Unverified Issuer" watermark, $50 USD/year. - [EchoUploader](https://uploader.echoforgeef.com): ANCHOR-first on-chain file anchoring. Compute file hashes locally in your browser and anchor them directly on Cardano. Supports individual (Per) and organizational (Org) modes. $1 USD per ANCHOR operation (paid in ADA via Charli3 oracle), independent of any storage subscription. Anchoring contributes +1 EUP for EchoID tier progression. - [EchoDash](https://dash.echoforgeef.com): Identity and credential dashboard. Connect a Cardano wallet to view your EchoID profile, tier progression, issued certificates, and organizational memberships in real time. - [EchoID](https://www.echoforgeef.com/products/id): Decentralized identity and reputation protocol. Individuals and organizations accumulate ADA spend, Contribution Credits, and Ecosystem Usage Points into a five-tier ForgeCard — Shadow to Infinity for individuals, Startup to Nexus for institutions. EchoID has no standalone app of its own; it is surfaced entirely through EchoDash. - EchoVote (planned): On-chain governance. Sybil-resistant voting weighted by EchoID tier and organizational membership. ### Midnight line - [EchoForge Midnight](https://m.echoforgeef.com): The second line of EchoForge, built on the Midnight network. Same credential guarantees as the Cardano line, private by default — zero-knowledge proofs with per-field selective disclosure. Currently ships three things: - MIDNIGHT_KB (live, at https://m.echoforgeef.com): Bilingual (EN/ZH) knowledge base distilling the official Midnight documentation into verified sections. - [EchoMKB](https://github.com/EchoForge-Dev/EchoMKB) (live): The knowledge base packaged as an installable AI agent skill, with claims sourced from docs.midnight.network. - EchoCert Midnight (demo): Privacy-preserving certificates — an issuer can prove individual fields of a credential without revealing the document holder or the issuer registry. A demo, not yet a production module. ### ForgeCard - [ForgeCard V0](https://forgecard.echoforgeef.com) (live): A local-first NFC identity kiosk. Tap a card on the Raspberry Pi reader and the screen shows that person's live EchoID — tier, role, days since joined — in seconds. Bridges EchoForge's digital identity layer into physical space. Open source under Apache-2.0. ### Independent products - [EchoWatch](https://watch.echoforgeef.com) (live): A dependency and environment sentinel for Cardano builders. AI-triaged alerts on hard forks and breaking changes across Lucid, Aiken, Ogmios and more, delivered only when they hit your stack. - [EchoForge OS](https://github.com/EchoForge-Dev/EchoForge-OS) (open source): A declarative NixOS distribution for the full Cardano stack. One hardened base, four profiles: desktop wallet, dApp dev sandbox, stake-pool operator, DePIN edge node. Apache-2.0. ## Website - [EchoForge Home](https://www.echoforgeef.com) - [EchoForge Midnight](https://m.echoforgeef.com) - [Blog / Engineering Articles](https://www.echoforgeef.com/blog) — each post has its own URL at /blog/ - [Changelog](https://www.echoforgeef.com/changelog) — every update that ships, newest first; Cardano dependencies are checked against EchoWatch every morning - [Sitemap](https://www.echoforgeef.com/sitemap.xml) - [Credits](https://www.echoforgeef.com/credits) ## About EchoForge EchoForge is a trust infrastructure startup on Cardano and Midnight, founded by Charles Tao. It is a one-person company: I create simple tools that help people prove what they have created, achieved, and contributed. My philosophy is: **All for simple. Long-termism.** Technology should reduce complexity, not create it. Every product I build aims to make decentralized systems more accessible without sacrificing security or ownership. ### Mission How can trust survive in an increasingly digital and AI-generated world? As information becomes easier to generate, trust becomes more valuable. I am building tools that help individuals, communities, and organizations create verifiable signals of authenticity, contribution, and reputation — one proof at a time. ## Founder - **Charles Tao**: Student builder and writer. Founder of the Stickman Charles personal brand (https://stickmancharles.com). Work focuses on systems thinking, long-term learning, and the future of trust in a digital world. ## Key Technical Details - Blockchain: Cardano (Preprod testnet + Mainnet); Midnight for the privacy line - Smart Contract Languages: Aiken (PlutusV3) on Cardano; Compact on Midnight - Frontend: Next.js, deployed on Vercel (Midnight line site on Cloudflare Workers) - Backend: Node.js / Express, deployed on netcup (Germany) - Identity Storage: Supabase (off-chain metadata), Cardano ledger (on-chain anchors) - Wallet Support: Eternl, Nami, Flint, and other CIP-30 compatible wallets ## Philosophy EchoForge believes trust in Web3 should not depend on trusting any single company. Every EchoID profile hash, every EchoCert NFT, and every organizational affiliation is permanently readable from the Cardano ledger — independent of EchoForge's continued existence. ## Community & Contact - Organization: EchoForge - Website: https://www.echoforgeef.com - Midnight line: https://m.echoforgeef.com - Email: simple@echoforgeef.com - GitHub: https://github.com/EchoForge-Dev - X / Twitter: https://x.com/EchoForgeEF - Discord: https://discord.gg/W8rw4gFtwN - Telegram: https://t.me/c/3871325796/1 - YouTube: https://youtube.com/@echoforgeef - Substack: https://substack.com/@echoforge - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/echoforgeef.bsky.social