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Book-Of-Fermat Project PDF
Book-Of-Fermat Project PDF
The
Book of
Fermat
Copyright Fermat
May, 2017 Edition 1
2
Contents
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Introduction have now. A cyberspace in which individuals and
organizations can interact freely, independently,
Welcome to the Internet of autonomously, safely and, if they choose,
privately.
People
It’s a simple idea, but with important implications.
Our world is at a crossroads. The digital If it works, the result will be a true Internet of the
technologies we have developed over the past people, by the people, and for the people. That
30 years have provided unprecedented levels could change a lot of things, we think for the
of freedom and autonomy to individuals all over better.
the globe. But these same technologies can be
used for unprecedented levels of surveillance This is no utopian fantasy or political manifesto.
and control – and often are. Rather it is a practical effort by some very smart
and talented people who are concerned about
Our technologies allow us to find, create, and how the current Internet is developing, and who
share information on an unprecedented scale, want to correct the imbalances by providing a
and give individuals the tools to accomplish new option alongside the old.
things previous generations could not have
imagined. But these same tools can and Our goal is to ensure that the fantastic
are used for propaganda, theft and fraud of technologies we have built serve us and not
unimaginable proportions, and for new forms of the other way around. This is a natural desire
aggression, espionage, and war. shared by millions of people.
The technologies themselves are agnostic. As Whether you are an investor or farmer, artist
always, it’s people who decide if tools are to be or entrepreneur, the Internet of People has
used for good or ill. something to offer you. In this paper we lay out
the vision for this new world, and show you how
Fermat is an ambitious project to use the digital it is already becoming a reality.
tools at our disposal to build a new and more
human-friendly cyberspace alongside the If this sounds like a place for you, we invite you
corporate and government-run cyberspace we to join us. It’s easy, it’s free, and it’s open to all.
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Part I
Building the
Internet of People
Cyberspace has been colonized by corporations and governments. What
started out as a vibrant and powerful tool for individuals has increasingly
become a hostile environment for our digital selves. It need not be.
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The Internet: Death and birth
of a dream
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the World The net is also far from secure, as evidenced by
Wide Web appeared in the 1990s, people saw the almost daily barrage of news about hacks,
how the Internet could be a tool to empower the security breaches, and cyber-espionage. And
individual, a channel for spreading knowledge while it remains a potent channel for spreading
and speaking truth to power. They hoped to use knowledge, it has at the same time become
it as a pathway to new and decentralized social the greatest mechanism for disseminating
and political structures. Some cyber citizens lies and propaganda the world has ever seen.
even declared their complete independence Many people – including those instrumental
from government 1. in designing today’s Internet – are extremely
concerned 3.
These dreams have not come true.
1 A Declaration of the Independence of
Today, tech giants like Google and Facebook
Cyberspace.
have become the gatekeepers to cyberspace.
2 The open, universal internet is over. But did it
Services like Amazon, Uber or Airbnb have
ever really exist?
become quasi-monopolistic providers of
3 The Web’s Creator Looks to Reinvent It
services. Governments are increasingly
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A new alternative open Internet that is managed by its users,
freely available for all, and a safe haven for our
What happened? digital selves.
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Fermat: A practical vision for •
without having to sign up for private networks.
Connect, interact, and securely transact with
a better way others directly, without having to rely on third
parties to bring them together or worry about
The Internet of People vision turns the current being spied on or having their data mined.
Internet paradigm on its head. Instead of massive • Run the Internet services they want
centralization, we offer radical decentralization. In themselves, on their own devices, instead of
place of overexposed data, we offer individuals doing their business on servers outside their
almost complete control over their personal control.
information. • Access the necessary Internet infrastructure
freely as a publicly available service.
The Internet of People is based on the principles • Democratically decide how the network is
that: developed and managed.
• Instead of countless gatekeepers, there To put these principles into practice, the project
should be no unnecessary middlemen in the is working on a set of core technologies that will
Internet. form the basic Internet of People infrastructure.
• Instead of a network of companies that The most important of these are described
connect us to others and handle our below.
transactions for us, we should be able to
connect directly to each other, and do the
transactions ourselves.
• Instead of having to move through a
cyberspace in which our personal data is
constantly at the mercy of others, our digital
selves should be in control of their own
destinies.
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Graphchain – the open only connect us with like-minded individuals,
but also vet and vouch for who we are. But there
social graph is also no doubt that all this registering is both
redundant and highly insecure. We simply have
Today when we want to find each other on no control over what these companies do with
the Internet, we have to register with a private the intimate details of our lives.
network.
In the Internet of People, this approach is turned
If we want to share our private thoughts and around. Instead of registering with private
experiences with friends, we have to register networks to help us find each other, we post our
with a social network like Facebook – which own profiles, which we control, and so find each
then owns and can do what it wants with the other directly.
information we provide about ourselves as well
as the records of everything we post and with To make this possible, the Fermat project is
whom we share. If we want to book a room in developing a new technology called graphchain.
another city we have to register with a service like This will be used to create a single global, open
Airbnb, which likewise keeps our information for social graph onto which people can upload
itself, including where we went and when and – information about themselves. It’s a bit like a
through reviews – how we behaved while there. giant digital bulletin board where people can
advertise their interests and let themselves be
There is no doubt that companies like Facebook found, either by other people or by businesses.
and Airbnb provide valuable services. They not
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The big difference between this approach
and the databases of the Facebooks, Twitters,
LinkedIns, or Googles of the world is that users
have complete control of their information. You
can upload as much or as little about yourself
as you want. You can also upload as many
versions of yourself as you want, in the form
of different profiles: one for social networking,
another for business dealings, and so on.
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Redtooth – the direct global version of Bluetooth. Redtooth allows two
devices to “pair” over the Internet the same way
connection Bluetooth allows two devices to pair over radio
waves.
Today, when we want to connect with each other,
we must rely on private companies. If we want Like Bluetooth, Redtooth opens up a direct
to chat with our friends and family, we sign up connection between devices without any
with WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. If we intermediary. Unlike Bluetooth, however, one
want to share photos and videos, we register device can pair with as many other devices as
with Instagram or Pinterest. If we want to make required. Once the devices have been paired
video calls, we create an account on Skype. All they can communicate, transact, or do almost
of these are useful services. But in order to enjoy anything else with each other.
them, we must surrender the intimate details of
who we are, who we talk to, and what we say Redtooth solves another great problem of
and do to a third party we do not really know. today’s Internet: that of the digital breadcrumbs
of information we leave lying around when we
In the Internet of People, we will no longer need travel through it. With Redtooth we can create
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Person-to-person apps – the to-person apps, which will be the key to the
person-to-person economy that the Internet of
Internet in our pocket, not People will make possible.
theirs In the world of person-to-person apps, we
download the services we want to use directly
Today’s Internet provides limitless possibilities
to our devices, and run them there, in an
to do things. We can order taxis and food, watch
environment under our control.
movies and share videos, create things, build
things, make music, publish novels. We can
Here too the project is addressing a key
book flights, find answers, read news, make
problem of today’s Internet: that of having to
news or fake news. But whatever it is we do,
enter the private domain of a private company
we are dependent on the servers of third-party
to make use of an online product or service. In
providers – in other words, on machines owned
our new world, the private companies will send
by someone else with the ultimate power to do
their products and services to us, and our digital
whatever they like with our data.
selves will make use of them, so to speak, “at
home.”
Thanks to advances in our technology, especially
in the power of devices like our smartphones,
we no longer need to use this paradigm. We
can now be our own servers. This has led
the project to develop the concept of person-
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The IoP token – our key to Ethereum, and created our own medium of
exchange: the IoP token. This will be the unit
governing ourselves of value in our new Internet, digital money
that people can earn for helping to run the
Most of the technologies mentioned above infrastructure, for supporting the community, or
already exist, and where they do not the when interacting with each other. It is a digital
project is inventing the missing pieces. But if currency that is secure, inflation proof and –
we are building a new infrastructure, with its importantly – freely exchangeable for “real”
own technologies and servers, aren’t we just money.
substituting a new private intermediary for the
old ones? All of this will be developed and run by the
community. While in the early phases the project
The answer is “No” on several counts. built the basic infrastructure on its own, the
governance of the infrastructure is now being
For one, the Internet of People infrastructure made public. Increasingly the community is
is open source and free to use. It is being making decisions on how the Internet of People
conceived as a public good. In the same should be further developed and who will do the
way that Tim Berners-Lee made HTML freely work of building and maintaining it.
available and so created the World Wide Web,
the Fermat project will make the necessary This may sound like a recipe for chaos. But
infrastructure freely available and so create the starting with Linux we have seen how open
Internet of People. And just like with HTML, no source projects can be very successful, and
single entity will own or control the technology. how the power of the community can be
harnessed to create amazing things. Thanks
Secondly, the Internet of People is decentralized. to the open source movement and to more
Instead of a monolithic entity building huge recent cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin or
data centers to control all the processing, the Ethereum, we have also learned a lot about how
infrastructure of the Internet of People is run by such projects can be collectively managed.
its users. Like other decentralized networks, it
provides incentives for people to make their As with the existing technologies we are using
own computing available to the network to run to build our infrastructure, when it comes to
the necessary services. In place of corporate governing our new cyberspace, many of the
investment, we have community power. concepts needed to make it work already exist
and have been proven to be effective. To these
Where do these incentives come from? we are adding a number of important innovations
of our own to help ensure we reach our ultimate
We have taken our cue from successful goal – a free Internet for all.
cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin and
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Part II
Living in the
Internet of People
The Internet of People offers a radical new vision of online life. It is a cyberspace
in which people are more important than companies or machines, but where
there is plenty of opportunity for all.
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A cyberspace for all with private platforms to enjoy these services,
companies and platforms will register with us –
The original dream of democracy was to create and only with the version of ourselves we want
a world in which every person was free and them to see.
all were equally important – politically and
socially. It was to create a society in which the That’s because the open social graph that
community governed itself, and where everyone forms the backbone of the Internet of People
was guaranteed basic rights and respect, but is designed to let you create and upload any
where citizenship also carried with it a set of number of different profiles for any number of
basic responsibilities. purposes. You can have one digital self for friends
and family, one for business and career. You can
This dream has yet to be fully realized in the have digital selves that contain information about
real world. With the Internet of People we are your “real world” self, and others that allow you
building a section of cyberspace where we think to travel through cyberspace anonymously.
the conditions are right to create such a world
online. In this new part of the Internet your digital life will
be much easier: instead of constantly re-entering
What will this world look like? the same information for every website you want
to join or use, you can share a single profile with
any number of apps. You will also have more
control over your data: instead of providing
irrelevant or unnecessary pieces of information
As it was supposed to be – about yourself every time you register on a new
The Internet of People for platform, you only share the information really
needed for a given transaction.
individuals
This new cyberspace will be far safer too. On
the open social graph your identity information
is cryptographically secure, so no one can steal
it. And you can trace where it goes, so no one
can abuse it.
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There is much more we could say about the
new possibilities in this self-sovereign digital
Open for business –
identity paradigm 4 that the Internet of People The Internet of People for
is implementing – more than we can fit into
this paper. But there are two other points worth
entrepreneurs
mentioning.
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apps, businesses will have new possibilities something most of them yearn for: a level playing
to create truly personal relationships with their field against the giant, quasi-monopolists who
customers, relationships built on trust and are colonizing ever-larger chunks of today’s
designed to last over extended periods of time. cyberspace and reaping the spoils.
Freed from reliance on the unsure nature Not only is the Internet of People business-
of pay-per-click ads or dubious customer friendly, it offers businesses a much better
profiling, businesses will be able to spend their chance of competing on the strength of their
advertising budgets where they have the most ideas and the quality of their products, as
clout: directly at their customers’ doors. opposed to the size of their war chests, their
legal clout, or their government and industry
By only approaching those people who have connections.
already expressed an interest, businesses can
get off on the right foot with their prospects.
By offering those with promising profiles small
sums to read their ads, businesses can launch
highly effective direct marketing campaigns
– campaigns that can generate higher levels
of attention and higher conversion rates than
currently seen today.
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Makers make their mark – An interesting proposition
The Internet of People for – The Internet of People for
developers investors
The same things that make the Internet of Bitcoin was worth almost nothing when it was
People interesting for entrepreneurs make released in 2009. Since then its value has
it interesting for developers and the digitally increased a thousandfold, making millionaires
creative too. The Internet of People gives of early adopters who held on to their coins.
you the chance to work with cutting-edge On the other hand, Bitcoin and other new
technology to build fantastic new capabilities. cryptocurrencies have been and remain
By leveraging its ready-made, permissionless extremely volatile, and only a small proportion
infrastructure, with standard protocols for of them have risen in value in a meaningful
locating, connecting to, and transacting with way. This hasn’t stopped cryptocurrencies from
people, you can greatly reduce development becoming a very intriguing investment theme for
time and cost, freeing up resources for many.
developing great ideas.
While Bitcoin was introduced specifically to be
As mentioned above, because most of the money, most cryptocurrencies today are being
processing in the Internet of People typically introduced not primarily as currencies but as a
occurs on the end user’s device, the growth means of fueling and governing some online,
of an application’s infrastructure is decoupled decentralized platform. This is the case with
from the cost of servicing its user base. We ether, which provides the “gas” for Ethereum.
believe this will be a great catalyst for new And it is the case with the IoP token, which
ideas and possibilities, making it possible for will be the medium of exchange, the source of
more people to get more apps and platforms incentive, and the fuel that powers the Internet
from the drawing board to production and of People.
from there to viable, sustainable usage.
How can you get tokens? There are many
different ways.
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If you are an entrepreneur, you will earn IoP You may also be able to sell or rent information
tokens by running your business, as they are the about yourself to companies that are interested
medium of exchange (though they can be traded in it, and so directly monetize your private data
for fiat currencies if you wish). Alternatively, if you (instead of giving it away free to Google or
have a good business idea you can “sell” it to Facebook for them to monetize).
the project directly for tokens, and so become an
investor. This is a particularly good way to earn a You can also earn tokens by contributing to
lot of tokens in these early days, when their value the community: you can become a miner,
is still relatively low compared to their potential. offering your computing power to the network
in exchange for tokens; or, through the Fermat
As a user of the Internet of People, you will Contributions app, you can offer your services to
have many chances to earn tokens as well. As the community, for example in marketing, public
explained above, you may be able to earn tokens relations, or design, getting paid in tokens for
by reading ads. your work.
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Part III
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The early days centralized structures. He wondered if he
could use Bitcoin-like techniques to build a
Fermat is the brainchild of Luis Fernando Molina, decentralized, open source, community-built-
who was born in 1974 in Córdoba, Argentina. and-run network where people could transact
directly between their devices, without any
As a teenager Molina became fascinated with unnecessary middlemen, and so go back to
computers, and taught himself to program the original Bitcoin vision. With this in mind he
from scratch. After studying physics at sat down with his old mentor and long-time
FAMAF University, Molina left Argentina for the friend Guillermo Villanueva to figure out how to
Dominican Republic, where his computer skills do it.
caught the attention of a company building core
banking systems for Latin American banks. They had no illusions about the complexity
Eventually he built up a company of his own, of the task, which was why they named their
sold it, and went on to pursue various projects project Fermat – after the French mathematician
in different parts of the world. In 2013, he was Pierre de Fermat, whose famous last theorem
in Dubai starting a new technology company to took over 300 years and 600 attempts to finally
use computer algorithms to create geometric solve.
Islamic art when he came across Bitcoin. As
with so many others, the encounter with the Like the creator of Bitcoin before them, Molina
world´s first viable decentralized digital curreny and Villanueva aimed to use as much existing
changed his life. technology as possible – the pieces of the
puzzle that were already out there – but were
But while Molina quickly understood the prepared to invent new technology if needed.
power of the Bitcoin idea, he also saw some
of its flaws. Much Bitcoin development at that Standing on the shoulders of giants, they were
time centered around wallets and exchanges, seeing a vision of a new and better world. They
which Molina saw as just new types of were also slowly starting a movement.
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The project moves out into worried about the uncertain economic situation
in their home country, willing to work only for
the world tokens. In this way the project grew during
the fall of 2014 and throughout 2015, adding
At first, Molina and Villanueva worked alone. But some four to five new people every month and
soon they began to look for others who might carrying out a great deal of experimentation and
want to get involved. Molina pitched the idea development work.
to investors, but had no luck until he spoke
to Lan Tschirky, a Swiss-based Vietnamese In December 2015 Molina travelled to a
Angel Investor who had supported his previous conference in Mexico, where he spoke about
business in Dubai and whose record of Fermat in public for the first time. From that
successful technology investments includes moment, the project spread outside of Latin
Powergetic (now Stem), the world’s largest America, gaining adherents in the US, Europe,
intelligent energy storage network, and Avaloq, and Australia. One of the most important of
today one of Switzerland’s largest and most these was Philip Farah, a Fintech innovator,
successful bank software solution providers. ex-McKinsey consultant and Cisco Systems
Tschirky liked the idea, and provided seed Managing Partner based in Houston, Texas,
funding to get Fermat off the ground. whom Molina met in January 2016.
Molina’s first priority was to hire developers. But Molina credits Farah with helping him expand
while the seed funding was a welcome lifeline, the Fermat vision from a project to enable
it was not enough to splurge on a large team. device-to-device monetary transactions, which
So instead Molina organized a competition in had been its initial goal, to the idea of enabling
his native Argentina, the first prize of which was direct connections for any type of application.
a chance to spend the summer in Budapest, It was then that the full vision of the Internet of
where Molina was living at the time, and work on People was born.
the project in exchange for room and board. This
was 2014, and he received 180 applications. Around that time the project published its first
From these he chose six people to join Fermat, white paper, which was a mostly technical piece
flew them all to Budapest, and set them up in a describing the client-side infrastructure. It also
big, communal flat in the city. Their task: start began reaching out to the general public, with
prototyping the client-side infrastructure. articles in the press.
After that first summer Molina asked the group if More importantly, by the end of 2016 the project
they wanted to stay on. He offered to pay them was ready to start going live with key components
either in national currencies or in the yet-to-be- and concepts. On the infrastructure side this
invented IoP token. It was a measure of the early began with alpha versions of the components
group’s belief in the project that they all chose needed to create the open social graph,
to have significant portions of their salaries paid including the profile server, the location-based
in the tokens (which, since the project did not network, and the content address network.
yet have a blockchain on which to create the
tokens, were accounted for in a spreadsheet). At the same time the project started its
blockchain and began mining IoP tokens,
Two of the original set of developers were from the essential element of the incentive system
Venezuela, not Argentina, and they began talking intended to catalyze the build out of the Internet
about their work back home. This sparked what of People. IoP tokens were soon listed on various
Molina calls a “chain reaction” in the country, cryptocurrency exchanges.
with large numbers of talented developers,
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During the fall of 2016 the project had also begun – that is, an offer of a service that would be of
organizing itself into chapters. Thanks above all value to the project, including a suggested fee
to the work of Markus Maiwald, who developed for the work expressed in IoP tokens. Posted in
the chapter structure, and Sarah Klostermair, the Contributions Forum, the contract can be
who was responsible for social media and viewed by the rest of the community and, using
community management, the project began to the Voting App, community members can vote
open chapters and win adherents all over the for or against the idea. If the contract is accepted,
world. By early 2017 it could count chapters in the contributor is guaranteed payment in IoP
over 80 countries. The two also worked together tokens from the system upon completion of the
to manage and support the growing community work.
of IoP token miners.
At the moment, this represents a rather simple
Another key milestone in early 2017 was the governance system. Looking to the future,
release of the Fermat Contributions App and the project has a roadmap for a sophisticated
the Fermat Voting App, two key parts of the decentralized, self-governing model, taking the
nascent community governance system. With best ideas and learning from the experiences of
these apps the project began implementing its similar projects in the past.
distributed governance model, moving away
from Molina’s “benevolent dictatorship” (as he All of these are significant achievements for the
put it) to a true self-governing community. small group of people who have been working
over the last three years to get the vision going.
Using the Contributions App, anyone can now Together, they represent the project’s first steps
submit a Contribution Contract to the community towards independence and self-sustainability.
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Fermat today and tomorrow Adam Gelencser, the CEO of Virtual Planet, who
is building his 3D virtual world on the Internet of
People infrastructure. And of course the project
So now that it is here, where is Fermat going? is open to all individuals looking for a better,
The project’s present goals are clear, and can safer and more inviting home for their digital
be divided into three categories. selves.
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Appendices
Further reading
Fermat’s Inception
Introducing Redtooth
Contribution Contracts
Technical reading
First white paper: A Modular App Platform To Develop “Internet of People”
Apps. Second white paper: A Public and Open Peer-to-Peer Network of People
Road-maps
Fermat Road-Map
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www.fermat.org
Mattermost: https://fermat.world/signup_email
web@fermat.org
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