From zero to your first chat in five minutes.
About $5–10 in starter crypto, bought once. The MOR you stake to chat releases back to your wallet when the session ends — the same MOR funds the next chat, and the next, indefinitely. No subscription, no monthly bill, no email signup, no “account” to create. The whole point is that you don't have one.
Calm, plain-language walkthrough: what self-custody really means, how to buy a few dollars of ETH on Base, how to swap for MOR. Defangs the fear, then sends you back here.
New to crypto? Start here →The 4 steps below assume you know your way around a wallet. Install, create (or import) your Node Neo wallet, fund it, chat. That's it.
Continue here ↓- ✓ A Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel), an iPhone (iOS 16+), or an iPad (iPadOS 16+)
- ✓ A debit card or bank account, if you don't already have crypto
- ✓ About $5–10 in MOR + ETH — a one-time acquisition, not a monthly bill
- ✓ 5 minutes
Install Node Neo
Free. Signed and notarized. No telemetry.
On macOS: open the .dmg, drag Node Neo
to Applications, launch.
On iPhone or iPad: install Apple's free
TestFlight
app from the App Store, then tap the iOS (beta) button
above on the device you'll use. Tap Accept, then Install.
You're in. (TestFlight technically also supports Mac, but on a Mac you'll
get a better experience from the .dmg — no 90-day build
expiry and no BETA badge.)
Create your wallet
One tap in the app. Keys never leave your device.
Open Node Neo and tap Create wallet. The app generates a fresh Ethereum/Base wallet locally and stores the private key in your device's secure enclave (Keychain on Mac/iOS). You'll be prompted to view and back up that key immediately — do it on day one. There is no “forgot password” flow. There is no support email that can recover your wallet for you. That's the whole point.
Already have a wallet? Tap Import wallet and paste your private
key (raw 0x-prefixed hex). Re-importing the same wallet on another
device restores your encrypted conversation history too — the database key
is derived from the wallet itself.
Your wallet isn't trapped in Node Neo. It's a standard Ethereum/Base wallet (a single hex private key — nothing proprietary). The same key opens in MetaMask, Rainbow, Coinbase Wallet, Frame, or any other standard wallet — and any private key from those wallets imports straight into Node Neo. Your MOR and ETH live on the Base network; Node Neo just lets you spend them. If we ever shipped a build you didn't like (or TestFlight expired and you couldn't wait for the next push), your funds are an import-key away in any wallet you trust.
Read this before you do anything else: your wallet is yours alone.
- Lose the private key → funds gone, forever. No "forgot password," no support team, no recovery. Not us, not Apple, not Vitalik himself.
- Back it up on day one. Settings → Wallet → Export. Save to paper and an encrypted password manager (1Password, Bitwarden).
- Treat it like a bank password, stricter. Don't screenshot to your camera roll. Don't email it. Don't paste it into ChatGPT.
Why is there no recovery?
The trade-off — nobody can suspend your account, freeze your funds, or read your prompts — only works because nobody, including us, holds your key for you. That's the deal: total control, total responsibility.
Fund your Node Neo wallet
~$5 of MOR + ~$2 of ETH on the Base network.
MOR funds your chat sessions (locked per session, returned on close — recycles indefinitely). ETH on Base pays for the on-chain transactions that open and close those sessions (a few cents each). In one line: ETH = postage stamps you use up; MOR = library card you keep.
Already have ETH and MOR in another wallet?
- In Node Neo: Settings → Wallet → Receive. Copy your address.
- In your other wallet (Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, Rainbow, etc.), send your MOR and ~$2 of ETH to that address. Use the Base network.
- Wait ~10–30 seconds. Both balances appear on Node Neo's home screen.
Verify the address before you send.
- Match the first 4 and last 4 characters exactly. Wrong address = funds gone, no “cancel.”
- Stay on Base. Same address shape on every network — Base is the only one that lands here.
- Nervous? Send $1 first. Confirm it lands in Node Neo, then send the rest.
Don't have ETH or MOR yet?
Read New to crypto? Start here — a calm ~25-minute walkthrough that covers buying ETH on Base, swapping for MOR, and sending it here. Then come back to step 4.
Open Node Neo, pick a model, chat
You're done with the boring part.
Back in Node Neo:
- Tap Models. Browse the active model list. First time? Just pick GLM-4.6 — a balanced general-purpose model from Z.ai that handles most everyday questions well; perfect for kicking the tires. (Plain-language model labels are coming to the app soon.) If you want to be strict about privacy, flip the MAX Privacy filter on — that limits the list to TEE-attested providers only.
- Tap your model and Open session. The app shows you the exact MOR stake before you confirm (typically a few cents) and opens the session on-chain in a few seconds.
- Type. Stream. Chat. Your messages are encrypted at rest with a wallet-derived key — nothing in the local database is readable without your wallet.
- When you're done, close the session and any unused MOR comes back to your wallet immediately. Forget to close it? Don't worry — Node Neo runs a background maintenance loop that scans for expired sessions every 15 minutes and closes them for you. Your stake always finds its way home as long as you launch the app once in a while.
We know “buy crypto first” is real friction. We're building free starter credits so you can try Node Neo before you ever touch an exchange.
Watch the GitHub repo for the announcement →Common questions
Two pieces, and only one of them is recurring (in pennies):
- MOR — your library card on the Morpheus network. Each session locks a few cents' worth of MOR as a "right-to-use" deposit; it returns to your wallet when the session closes. The same MOR funds chat after chat, indefinitely. $5 of MOR is enough for most users to chat for a long, long time — it isn't a budget that depletes, it's a stake that recycles.
- ETH — network gas. A few cents of ETH per on-chain action (open session, close session, transfer) on Base. $2 of ETH lasts weeks of normal use; this is the only piece that genuinely depletes.
What you don't pay: a $20/month subscription that resets your access the moment you stop. The more sessions you want running concurrently, the more MOR you'll need locked at once — but for one-chat-at-a-time use, your starter MOR keeps working. (See the Morpheus pricing & staking calculator to model heavier use.) You always see the stake quote before you open a session, so there are no surprises.
Then your funds and your encrypted chat history are gone, permanently. Nobody — not us, not Apple, not the Morpheus team — can recover them. That's the cost of self-custody, and it's also the whole reason the privacy guarantee works (no key custodian = no one to subpoena, breach, or pressure). Back up the key on day one (Settings → Wallet → Export) and store it somewhere safe: paper, an encrypted password manager (1Password / Bitwarden), ideally both.
Yes — bridge.base.org is the official Coinbase bridge. Cheaper than buying for users who already hold significant ETH on L1.
Not for Node Neo itself — the app has its own wallet baked in. You'll only need an external wallet to connect to Uniswap for the ETH→MOR swap (most people use Coinbase Wallet's built-in browser, or MetaMask, or Rainbow). After the swap, send the MOR to your Node Neo address and you're done with external wallets.
That said: your Node Neo wallet is a standard Ethereum/Base wallet. Export the private key from Settings → Wallet and you can import it into MetaMask, Rainbow, Coinbase Wallet, Frame, a hardware wallet — anywhere that takes a raw private key. Your MOR and ETH live on Base, not "inside Node Neo," so you're never locked in.
Apple expires every TestFlight build 90 days after upload — not our choice, just how TestFlight works. Before then we'll push a new build and TestFlight will prompt you to update (or auto-install if you've enabled automatic updates in TestFlight's settings). When the App Store version ships, TestFlight will hand you off to the App Store version.
Your wallet survives every transition — as long as you backed up your private key. Re-import it on the next TestFlight build, on the App Store version, or, if you don't want to wait, drop it into MetaMask or any other standard wallet right now. The wallet (and the funds in it) live on the Base network, not in any one app.
Node Neo itself has no KYC, no signup, and no geographic restriction — it's just an app talking to a public protocol. The on-ramp services (Coinbase, MoonPay) have their own KYC and country restrictions. If you already have ETH on Base from anywhere, you can skip on-ramps entirely.
Open an issue on GitHub — that's where every bug report, feature request, and "is this normal?" question lives. Public, searchable, and the fastest way to get an answer.