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About Tonk

What's the mission?

Tonk’s mission is to liberate the web by helping people communicate in new and powerful ways to transform how we live, work and play.

“Liberating the web” is a broad conceptual umbrella under which you can choose how you hang your hat, so to speak. But in general, liberating the web means reorganising the distribution of power so that when we hang out, transact and build on the web, it feels less like a web in which we are connected at the behest of a (hopefully benevolent) dictator, and more like a world in which we are just connected with each other.

At Tonk we understand that liberating the web isn’t a wishy-washy dream - it’s also about reorganising key economic communication resources so that strong markets are free to germinate and grow on a robust, reliable foundation. We understand that prosperity requires sovereignty, and we know that the internet is not nearly as prosperous a place as it could be.

In this quest we are not alone. Tonk is part of a wider evolution to liberate humanity from externally-owned networks that tend to be expensive, unreliable and user-hostile. Consider:

  • The transition from ancient banking to programmable money,
  • The movement from sclerotic nation states to network states,
  • Young people & creators opting out of ad-funded social media algorithms of deteriorating quality.

In a sense, much of the panic about increasingly-powerful AI and the spiritual viability of “startups” in this brave new world, is just another iteration of the same trend.

New problems

The world feels really weird right now, but at Tonk, when we smell that “weird”, we get excited, because we know that something spectacular is coming round the corner. In particular, we can see a future web coming, in which:

  1. Friends have a space to hang out without roping in a whole social media platform,
  2. Creators and businesses can succeed without exorbitant platform taxes,
  3. Digital isolation gives way to the warmth of finding your people,
  4. People selectively reveal facts rather than exposing everything all at once,
  5. Fragile centralised architectures give way to antifragile P2P networks,
  6. Digital monocultures are rewilded by grassroots ecosystems.

These problems share a common cause - that our communication systems today (primarily, the “internet of platforms”) has scaled to peak platform fatigue. Accordingly, they also share a common solution, with tools that help us communicate in powerful new ways, transforming how we live, work and play together.

New technologies

Thanks to ongoing breakthroughs in cryptography, distributed systems, peer-to-peer software & game theory, the suite of communication technologies is getting stronger and stronger. Today and in the future, we can build with:

  • Signed data that is interoperable, portable and verifiable
  • Zero-knowledge proofs
  • High-speed blockchains
  • Programmable money
  • Credible commitments
  • Web proofs
  • Verifiable oblivious compute
  • Multiparty operations
  • Trusted execution environments
  • Conflict-free replicated data types for serverless multiplayer apps (a.k.a. “hallucinated” servers)
  • And much more.

New affordances

Coupled with recent advances in AI and longstanding trends in software maturation, these tools help us to communicate in new and powerful ways, such as:

  • The ability to export trustworthy data about our digital footprint without needing any platform’s cooperation,
  • The ability to prove facts about ourselves without leaking auxiliary information,
  • The ability to make things on the internet that are impossible to reproduce,
  • The ability to find and connect with strangers on sensitive and meaningful criteria,
  • The ability to build “smart gates” on internet highways so that information, content, events, and communities are accessible to all and only the people who deserve it,
  • The ability to make promises to pay anyone (friend or foe), any amount, in response to doing anything, where such promises are enforced by mathematics,
  • The ability to quickly and cheaply spin up an interface and backend for chats, wikis, whiteboards and community treasuries, without writing a line of code.

Our determination is to discover, build and propagate the new social experiences uniquely enabled by these affordances, as well as the new networks and services that power them.

Our vision - what these new “interpersonal” networks will feel like

Not only will these affordances disrupt the platforms that dominated the 2010s, they will usher in a new kind of user-defined interpersonal network that sits on top of the internet, absorbs information, abstracts away platform-specific idiosyncrasies, and connects people.

  • Just as the internet sat atop and abstracted communication away from telephone, fiberoptic & cable networks, so will interpersonal networks sit atop and abstract our identities away from web platforms.
  • Just as the convenience of personal computers disrupted mainframe computing, so too will the convenience of interpersonal networks disrupt internet platforms.

Projecting out, we suspect these interpersonal networks will demonstrate a new “social mode” for organising and powering communities. It will feel:

  • Cosier,
  • Friendlier,
  • More secure,
  • More private,
  • And more conducive to social coordination.

Again, our determination is to discover, build and proliferate communities that demonstrate this new social mode.

What progress have you made?

Our flagship product so far is Speakeasy, a new way to privately find and message your undiscovered peers. Speakeasy filters group members into private groups that are designed to be the first social space of their kind on the web, with a uniquely cosy vibe that's only possible because it brings together strangers based on hyperspecific shared behaviours, who otherwise would never meet online or offline. Advanced cryptography lets people express the full richness of their digital footprint without relying on external platforms.

Speakeasy is already in private beta with select design partners. You can apply to join the beta here.

Speakeasy is the latest iteration in a multi-year design process that's seen us prototype novel social experiences & powerful communications tools. Some of the work we're responsible for includes the Gribi SDK, Dappicom, Tonk Attack, Snarky Monsters, the Privacy Playgrounds Wiki and much else besides. Most work (but not all) is documented at our blog. Others cover it too.

Who's behind it?

We're a team of ambitious engineers, designers and schemers that straddle the dynamic space between advanced cryptography and effective product design.

The founding team was fortunate to be part of the first generation in history to grew up on the internet. This has blessed us with a powerful intuition on where internet culture is headed.

Between stints as dancers, poets and graphic novellists, members of the team have completed sidequests at Epic Games, Yahoo, Airbnb and the University of Cambridge. At various times we have enjoyed collaborations with Aztec, Scroll, Polygon and Ethereum PSE.

Baz is generally happy to speak.

Who's supporting this?

Tonk Labs is backed by some of the world's best investors, cryptographers and entrepreneurs. Our latest financing was led by Electric Capital, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Entrepreneur First and a community of angels with representation from leaders at Eigen Labs, Axelar, Succinct, Aleo, Polygon, Magic Eden, Ledger, Gensyn, Voltz & many more amazing projects.

Are you hiring?

You can see open roles here.