I never did any work on Eternal September since sending it to Preethi and AFAIK nobody is (if you want to work on it, let me know). She is, instead, building something completely different and in a ways, more important. While the problem I started with was “my subreddit isn’t what it used to be”, hers is the Fake News™ issue, or “how can we prevent the most important network of free speech ever built to be used as vector of false stories that undermine the society that built it?”. When I met her, she had a lot of the basics of stake-voting and tokenizing reputation, but through our talks she started considering many elements of TCRs, bonded curves and off-chain disputes.

I am very passionate about the issue of the rapid proliferation of untrue but outrageous content on social networks: it’s a real problem affecting democracies everywhere, one that arises directly from values I deeply believe in (that everyone in the world should have access to a global network for free speech), yet the “solutions” currently proposed are methods I deeply dissaprove of (giving central authorities–be them private corporations or governments–tools to censor and control the flow of information). In short: it’s an issue we created with the tools we built (a free Internet) and we need to solve them ourselves without risking fundamental freedoms or someone else will.

After talking multiple times over the phone I decided to accept an invitation to be a technical advisor for TruStory. What that means is that I am in contact with the team and offer advice on how to deal with technical challenges, as well as voice my opinion about many issues. Which is sort of what I already do unofficially for many other teams. This does not mean I am aware of every decision made, audit their finances or every line of code, it does not mean that I endorse any sort of investment in the company or any token they might launch. I might be compensated in some form for my work (honestly I have no idea about values) so it only means that if it all goes bust, we’re doing this together. This also doesn’t mean that I will publicize the project: in fact I actually avoid talking about it online because of my connection to them, and this very post is an attempt to put that on the record.

I am a fan of the project and root for it, like I root for many other projects in the space. And while I avoid being “advisor” as much as I can, I do like giving advice to people who need it, so if you find me in a conference, feel free to tell me about your project.