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Privately find & message your undiscovered peers with Speakeasy

The problem with the web

People use the web to find each other and communicate. But in 2024, our online social worlds are disintegrating.

  • Broadcast platforms like X are too open - they’re diluted by low-quality interactions.
  • Private spaces like group chats are too closed - people can only reach those they already know.

Occasionally, a noble community manager steps up to actively cultivate an open meetup, subreddit or mailing list so that it’s both (a) high quality and (b) grows beyond the limits of any one person’s social group.

But this is expensive, time-consuming and rare.

What if there was an easy way to find and message people in a targeted, private way, without needing prior knowledge of who they are?

Introducing Speakeasy

We’re building Speakeasy so that you can privately find and message your undiscovered peers.

Speakeasies are a special new type of private space on the web that you can join - not because you’re invited - but because you’re already qualified.


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Here's some examples:

Lots of Speakeasies are theoretically possible:

Which Speakeasies will you join, and who will you connect with?


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How Speakeasy works

Every day, you travel the web, and leave a digital footprint.

  • You purchase books on Amazon,
  • Contribute to the lore in Fred Again’s Discord,
  • Pay off credit card debt,
  • Win a round of Among Us,
  • And much more.

In 2024, your digital footprint is very comprehensive. Normally you’d need permission from external platforms to share this information, but no longer. Thanks to new progress in advanced cryptography, you can discreetly share information about yourself, without relying on big tech companies.

This lets us create private groups to connect strangers who have lots in common.

Who Speakeasy is for

  • Gaming guilds use Speakeasy to add new members without leaking secret missions to rival guilds.
  • Artists and tastemakers could use Speakeasy as protected greenhouses for culture to pollinate among embryonic scenes online.
  • Blockchain scaling solutions could use Speakeasy to filter out untrustworthy strangers who require heavier security guarantees.
  • Political activists could use Speakeasy so that likeminded citizens can privately communicate and coordinate.

Is Speakeasy for you?

  • If you’re searching for people with whom you have a great deal in common,
  • If you’re discreetly looking to be found by special profiles,
  • If you’re building a community from within,
  • If you’re targeting a group from outside,

Speakeasy is designed to make it easy.


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Speakeasy introduced at Modular Summit - July 2024

How this will make the web feel different

Disintermediating technologies like cryptography make the web feel really different, and it takes some getting used to. We are hurtling towards the final, universal API.

A Speakeasy is a new kind of space on the web that’s never existed before.

  • They are private, but open.
  • They are hard to break into, but cosy on the inside.
  • We join Speakeasies not by knowing the “right person”, or purporting to have the “right interests”, but by demonstrating particular behaviours.

Speakeasies introduce the notion of “walls” to the internet, and therefore extend cyberspace with locality. In physical space, we’ve always relied on locality as an invaluable way to structure human communication, and now we’re adding it to the web.

The result will indeed feel like a web, but a decentralised web of agents rather than a web of sites.

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