Liberate the web from platform overhead

Tonk is a London-based startup building a sovereign data network. Our mission is to tear down the internet and build a better one. We were frustrated with the growing cost and inconvenience of a web centred around platforms, so in 2022 we committed to find a better answer. Since then we have drawn on progress in zero-knowledge proofs, digital signatures, blockchain, local-first software & programmable cryptography.

We have spent 3 years building apps with ZK and other frontier cryptography, including toys, games, social apps, and developer tools. The team has a background at UC Berkeley, Cambridge University, Airbnb, Epic Games and successful startups. Outside of tech the team has experience in theatre, music, risography & design.

Tonk is supported by Electric Capital, Bankless Ventures, Entrepreneur First and a community of angels leading many of the most exciting decentralised innovations today.

Read more about our journey on Substack.

Careers

We want Tonk to be an amazing place for creative, autonomous people to build awesome technology together. If you believe in our mission, we'd love you to come liberate the web alongside us.

Hiring: Software Engineer

Apply via the link above or send your profile and a few words to our CEO, harry@tonk.xyz.

Our vision

The web today is defined by the extraordinary success of platforms and their private network effects. This gave humanity great products but also a quasi-feudalistic system where information is locked within walled gardens & where humans have less agency.

This "platform overhead" - the cost and inconvenience of our dependency on centralised parties - is temporary. Recent progress in frontier cryptography & distributed systems make it easier than ever to build a web where users have a more intimate relationship with their data and businesses are less beholden to platforms.

This dream is not new or even unique to Tonk, but new technologies & the AI platform shift give it fresh vigour. When you squint, a maximally interoperable network for grassroots AI-built apps starts to look a bit like a new communications network - perhaps even a new internet, free from platform overhead.

Why does this matter? Because it helps real people:

• Education & entertainment: students and audiences will pick their own recommendation and safety algorithms, and have disintermediated economic relationships with creators (i.e. creators will literally make more money)
• Ecommerce: complex flows (e.g. for mortgage applications) will be incredibly fast thanks to highly flexible digital credentials.
• Enterprise: a shift to doing more on-prem (or on clients' edge devices) brings down cloud costs and better protects sensitive corporate information.
• Entrepreneurs: the barrier to innovating on top of existing products is no longer the cost of joining a big tech company to influence their product roadmap (or starting a competitor) - rather, once grassroots apps are powerful and easy to build, the cost of innovation is just the cost of having a good idea.

In the long run we see an internet that better fulfils the promise of amplifying humanity's ability to create, communicate & coordinate over our shared problems. We see a future in which tight-knit groups form across physical barriers, create awesome stuff, and have fun.