The Book of

The
Book of
Fermat

By Tom Lyons “It was when I was in the

Graphic Design by Ignacio Figueroa
midst of solving another
problem that I discovered a
new space — a realm of pos-
sibilities that heretofore had
been a vacuum.”
Luis Fernando Molina

Copyright Fermat
May, 2017 Edition 1

2
Contents

Welcome to the Internet of People 4

Part I: Building the Internet of People 5

The Internet: Death and birth of a dream 6
A new alternative 7
Fermat: A practical vision for a better way 8
Graphchain – the open social graph 9
Redtooth – the direct connection 11
Person-to-person apps – the Internet in our pocket, not theirs 12
The IoP token – our key to governing ourselves 13

Part II: Living in the Internet of People 14

A cyberspace for all 15
As it was supposed to be – The Internet of People for individuals 15
Open for business – The Internet of People for entrepreneurs 16
Makers make their mark – The Internet of People for developers 17
An interesting proposition – The Internet of People for investors  17
A more just society – The Internet of People for everyone 19

Part III: Fermat yesterday, today and tomorrow 20

The early days 21
The project moves out into the world 22
Fermat today and tomorrow 24
Appendices 25

3
Introduction
Welcome to the Internet of
People
Our world is at a crossroads. The digital
technologies we have developed over the past
30 years have provided unprecedented levels
of freedom and autonomy to individuals all over
the globe. But these same technologies can be
used for unprecedented levels of surveillance
and control – and often are.
Our technologies allow us to find, create, and
share information on an unprecedented scale,
and give individuals the tools to accomplish
things previous generations could not have
imagined. But these same tools can and
are used for propaganda, theft and fraud of
unimaginable proportions, and for new forms of
aggression, espionage, and war.
The technologies themselves are agnostic. As
always, it’s people who decide if tools are to be
used for good or ill.
Fermat is an ambitious project to use the digital
tools at our disposal to build a new and more
human-friendly cyberspace alongside the
corporate and government-run cyberspace we
have now. A cyberspace in which individuals and
organizations can interact freely, independently,
autonomously, safely and, if they choose,
privately.
It’s a simple idea, but with important implications.
If it works, the result will be a true Internet of the
people, by the people, and for the people. That
could change a lot of things, we think for the
better.
This is no utopian fantasy or political manifesto.
Rather it is a practical effort by some very smart
and talented people who are concerned about
how the current Internet is developing, and who
want to correct the imbalances by providing a
new option alongside the old.
Our goal is to ensure that the fantastic
technologies we have built serve us and not
the other way around. This is a natural desire
shared by millions of people.
Whether you are an investor or farmer, artist
or entrepreneur, the Internet of People has
something to offer you. In this paper we lay out
the vision for this new world, and show you how
it is already becoming a reality.
If this sounds like a place for you, we invite you
to join us. It’s easy, it’s free, and it’s open to all.
5
4
 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.

5
The Internet: Death and birth
of a dream

Whenever we venture out into the Internet

today, our digital selves are almost completely
dependent on the services of private companies.

Whether we intend to share our thoughts with

friends, get information, send a message,
arrange a trip, or find true love, we are forced to
use a private platform of some kind. That means
entering a commercialized zone of the net and
relying on a third party to do our business for us. Internet of People
When we venture out into the Internet today,
our digital selves are also almost completely
exposed. There is hardly any path we can walk
through cyberspace where someone is not
watching what we do, where we go, who we talk controlling and censoring the Internet for
to, the things we say, and what we buy or sell. national aims 2.

In thousands upon thousands of corporate

and government databases, organizations are
keeping dossiers on us, trying to construct
pictures of who we are and what we want so
they can sell us things, or just because they
think they ought to know.
And instead of being free to use, the Internet
has become exceedingly expensive: the fee
most often being intimate information about
ourselves that we provide willingly or, all too
often, without knowing it.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the World
Wide Web appeared in the 1990s, people saw
how the Internet could be a tool to empower the
individual, a channel for spreading knowledge
and speaking truth to power. They hoped to use
it as a pathway to new and decentralized social
and political structures. Some cyber citizens
even declared their complete independence
from government 1.
These dreams have not come true.
Today, tech giants like Google and Facebook
have become the gatekeepers to cyberspace.
Services like Amazon, Uber or Airbnb have
become quasi-monopolistic providers of
services. Governments are increasingly
The net is also far from secure, as evidenced by
the almost daily barrage of news about hacks,
security breaches, and cyber-espionage. And
while it remains a potent channel for spreading
knowledge, it has at the same time become
the greatest mechanism for disseminating
lies and propaganda the world has ever seen.
Many people – including those instrumental
in designing today’s Internet – are extremely
concerned 3.
1 A Declaration of the Independence of
Cyberspace.
2 The open, universal internet is over. But did it
ever really exist?
3 The Web’s Creator Looks to Reinvent It

6
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.

One problem is centralization. As the Internet This is the dream of Fermat.

grew in popularity, large companies built
platforms to provide services. The best of
them became quasi-monopolists. This was
almost inevitable: from a technical and scale
perspective, one global social network or one
global search engine makes sense. But giving
so much control to just a handful of companies
can also be dangerous.

The other problem is that the Internet was not

designed with individual privacy and safety in
mind. It is in the nature of today’s technology to
leave traces, for instance our IP addresses or the
headers in our emails; or to expose our private
information, whether in transit on insecure lines
or in the leaky and often insecure databases of
the companies to whom we entrust our data.

But what if there was an alternative?

What if it was possible to build a parallel

cyberspace where people were more important
than companies? Where our digital selves
could wander safely, knowing they were not
being spied on, and were in control of their own
information?

The good news is, the technologies and

techniques already exist to develop such an
Internet.

The Fermat project was started almost three

years ago by a small group of visionaries,
developers, and investors who saw this
opportunity for change and felt compelled to
take it.

Since then they have been working behind the

scenes to get the ball rolling. Now the time has
come to open the project to the public. This
is important, because Fermat is meant to be
a public good – a tool to create a completely

7
Fermat: A practical vision for
a better way
The Internet of People vision turns the current
Internet paradigm on its head. Instead of massive
centralization, we offer radical decentralization. In
place of overexposed data, we offer individuals
almost complete control over their personal
information.
The Internet of People is based on the principles
that:
•
without having to sign up for private networks.
Connect, interact, and securely transact with
others directly, without having to rely on third
parties to bring them together or worry about
being spied on or having their data mined.
• Run the Internet services they want
themselves, on their own devices, instead of
doing their business on servers outside their
control.
• Access the necessary Internet infrastructure
freely as a publicly available service.
• Democratically decide how the network is
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.

To do this, the project is building a decentralized,

open-source, community-built-and-run network
that will allow people to do all the things they
do now on the Internet – from social media
and instant messaging to hailing cabs, finding
dates, booking trips, and buying houses – but
without the need for a Facebook, an Uber, an
eBay, a WhatsApp, or any other business in the
middle. And we are doing it in a way that is safe
and secure and gives people back control over
their data.

Our vision for this new cyberspace is based on

a number of core beliefs. We believe people
should be able to:

• Have complete control over their personal

information and find each other directly

8
Graphchain – the open
social graph
Today when we want to find each other on
the Internet, we have to register with a private
network.
If we want to share our private thoughts and
experiences with friends, we have to register
with a social network like Facebook – which
then owns and can do what it wants with the
information we provide about ourselves as well
as the records of everything we post and with
whom we share. If we want to book a room in
another city we have to register with a service like
Airbnb, which likewise keeps our information for
itself, including where we went and when and –
through reviews – how we behaved while there.
There is no doubt that companies like Facebook
and Airbnb provide valuable services. They not
only connect us with like-minded individuals,
but also vet and vouch for who we are. But there
is also no doubt that all this registering is both
redundant and highly insecure. We simply have
no control over what these companies do with
the intimate details of our lives.
In the Internet of People, this approach is turned
around. Instead of registering with private
networks to help us find each other, we post our
own profiles, which we control, and so find each
other directly.
To make this possible, the Fermat project is
developing a new technology called graphchain.
This will be used to create a single global, open
social graph onto which people can upload
information about themselves. It’s a bit like a
giant digital bulletin board where people can
advertise their interests and let themselves be
found, either by other people or by businesses.
9
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.

The graphchain is cryptographically secure,

so nobody can alter or misuse your data. With
this technology you can choose to interact
anonymously, pseudonymously, or openly with
others in all sorts of different contexts. You can
control who has access to your information and
revoke this access if you are not happy with
how they use it.

The graphchain solves one of the main problems

of today’s Internet: lack of control over our
personal information. In the Internet of People,
our digital selves can travel through cyberspace
wearing any costume they like, being whomever
they choose to be with whomever they choose.

10
Redtooth – the direct
connection
Today, when we want to connect with each other,
we must rely on private companies. If we want
to chat with our friends and family, we sign up
with WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. If we
want to share photos and videos, we register
with Instagram or Pinterest. If we want to make
video calls, we create an account on Skype. All
of these are useful services. But in order to enjoy
them, we must surrender the intimate details of
who we are, who we talk to, and what we say
and do to a third party we do not really know.
In the Internet of People, we will no longer need
The Book of Fermat
third parties to connect us. Instead, we will
connect our devices directly and securely to
each other and share things privately among
ourselves.
To make this possible the project is building a
technology it is calling Redtooth, which is like a
global version of Bluetooth. Redtooth allows two
devices to “pair” over the Internet the same way
Bluetooth allows two devices to pair over radio
waves.
Like Bluetooth, Redtooth opens up a direct
connection between devices without any
intermediary. Unlike Bluetooth, however, one
device can pair with as many other devices as
required. Once the devices have been paired
they can communicate, transact, or do almost
anything else with each other.
Redtooth solves another great problem of
today’s Internet: that of the digital breadcrumbs
of information we leave lying around when we
travel through it. With Redtooth we can create
safe and secure pathways through cyberspace
that lead directly to our destination of choice,
pathways our digital selves can travel with no
fear of being spied on or tracked.
11
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-

12
The IoP token – our key to
governing ourselves
Most of the technologies mentioned above
already exist, and where they do not the
project is inventing the missing pieces. But if
we are building a new infrastructure, with its
own technologies and servers, aren’t we just
substituting a new private intermediary for the
old ones?
The answer is “No” on several counts.
For one, the Internet of People infrastructure
is open source and free to use. It is being
conceived as a public good. In the same
way that Tim Berners-Lee made HTML freely
available and so created the World Wide Web,
the Fermat project will make the necessary
infrastructure freely available and so create the
Internet of People. And just like with HTML, no
single entity will own or control the technology.
Secondly, the Internet of People is decentralized.
Instead of a monolithic entity building huge
data centers to control all the processing, the
infrastructure of the Internet of People is run by
its users. Like other decentralized networks, it
provides incentives for people to make their
own computing available to the network to run
the necessary services. In place of corporate
investment, we have community power.
Where do these incentives come from?
We have taken our cue from successful
cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin and
Ethereum, and created our own medium of
exchange: the IoP token. This will be the unit
of value in our new Internet, digital money
that people can earn for helping to run the
infrastructure, for supporting the community, or
when interacting with each other. It is a digital
currency that is secure, inflation proof and –
importantly – freely exchangeable for “real”
money.
All of this will be developed and run by the
community. While in the early phases the project
built the basic infrastructure on its own, the
governance of the infrastructure is now being
made public. Increasingly the community is
making decisions on how the Internet of People
should be further developed and who will do the
work of building and maintaining it.
This may sound like a recipe for chaos. But
starting with Linux we have seen how open
source projects can be very successful, and
how the power of the community can be
harnessed to create amazing things. Thanks
to the open source movement and to more
recent cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin or
Ethereum, we have also learned a lot about how
such projects can be collectively managed.
As with the existing technologies we are using
to build our infrastructure, when it comes to
governing our new cyberspace, many of the
concepts needed to make it work already exist
and have been proven to be effective. To these
we are adding a number of important innovations
of our own to help ensure we reach our ultimate
goal – a free Internet for all.
14
13
 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.

14
A cyberspace for all
The original dream of democracy was to create
a world in which every person was free and
all were equally important – politically and
socially. It was to create a society in which the
community governed itself, and where everyone
was guaranteed basic rights and respect, but
where citizenship also carried with it a set of
basic responsibilities.
This dream has yet to be fully realized in the
real world. With the Internet of People we are
building a section of cyberspace where we think
the conditions are right to create such a world
online.
What will this world look like?
As it was supposed to be –
The Internet of People for
individuals
For users, the Internet of People will be very
much like the Internet we have now – while
at the same time being completely different
underneath.
It will have just as many interesting and useful
products and services to choose from as we
have today. But instead of having to register
with private platforms to enjoy these services,
companies and platforms will register with us –
and only with the version of ourselves we want
them to see.
That’s because the open social graph that
forms the backbone of the Internet of People
is designed to let you create and upload any
number of different profiles for any number of
purposes. You can have one digital self for friends
and family, one for business and career. You can
have digital selves that contain information about
your “real world” self, and others that allow you
to travel through cyberspace anonymously.
In this new part of the Internet your digital life will
be much easier: instead of constantly re-entering
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
about yourself every time you register on a new
platform, you only share the information really
needed for a given transaction.
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.
Because the graphchain maintains a secure
record of the relationships between people, it
creates a world where it is easier to establish
trust. In the Internet of People, if you encounter
a stranger online who says he knows a friend of
yours, you will be able to easily verify this fact.
Similarly, if the Department of Motor Vehicles
certifies that you have a driver’s license and
are over 18, you can reuse this information in
other apps without having to provide a copy of
your license or give away your birthdate. And
because Redtooth is cryptographically secure
as well, when you connect with someone else,
you can be sure that no one is spying or listening
in.
15
There is much more we could say about the
new possibilities in this self-sovereign digital
identity paradigm 4 that the Internet of People
is implementing – more than we can fit into
this paper. But there are two other points worth
mentioning.
Since the infrastructure for connecting people
is now a public good, and we no longer need
to pay for services with our private data, the
Internet of People will be far cheaper to use than
the Internet we have now. In fact, it can even
make us money. That’s because, as we explain
below, in this new world businesses will have a
strong incentive to pay us to read their ads and
consider their proposals.
This is not farfetched. Large corporations have
long understood the value of our personal data,
which is why they are so happy to provide us
seemingly free services in order to get their
hands on it. In the Internet of People, we also
think personal data is very valuable. We just
believe that value should belong to the person
whose data it is.
Because the Internet of People is public and
community run, as a member you will also be
a part owner. As opposed to today’s Internet of
anonymous corporations, our new cyberspace
is a collective run on democratic principles. All
of us can have a say in how it is built, and all of
us can help maintain it, promote it, improve it,
and keep the dream alive.
4 Self-sovereign digital identity, in which the user
holds and controls his or her personal data, has been
a goal of many in the digital identity community for
some time now. Fermat is one of the first projects to
make it possible on a global scale. See http://www.
coindesk.com/path-self-sovereign-identity/ for more.
Open for business –
The Internet of People for
entrepreneurs
While we believe strongly in decentralization,
and do not trust large, monolithic and quasi-
monopolistic organizations, that doesn’t mean
we are against commerce. Quite the contrary, we
believe the Internet of People will be an excellent
place to do business – for entrepreneurs,
startups, and established concerns alike.
With the open social graph, businesses will have
a global database of potential customers at
their fingertips – one in which they can find and
directly reach out to people who have willingly
expressed interest in the kinds of products or
services they offer. This will be a boon to startups,
which often struggle to develop their user base,
as well as for established companies, which
face equal challenges in growing it.
With its cryptographic proof of relationships and
in many cases attested identities, businesses
can be far more confident that they are reaching
out to bona fide customers and prospects, and
can have high confidence in the information these
people disclose. That means less time wasted
sifting through erroneous or incomplete data, or
chasing bogus leads. And with its direct device-
to-device connections and person-to-person
16
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.

As anyone who has tried it can attest, growing

a global online business is complicated and
expensive. Expanding user bases mean
increasing infrastructure investment just to
maintain the connections and process the
requests.

In the Internet of People, this infrastructure is

provided to you free of charge:

• With graphchain you no longer need your

own complex user databases.
• With Redtooth, you no longer need to build
your own communications infrastructure.
• With person-to-person apps, customers can
run your processes on their devices and
manage their own data, reducing the scale
of data centers and sometimes eliminating
the need for them entirely.

Better yet, this infrastructure is global and

infinitely scalable – bounded only by the limits
of the Internet of People itself.

All this offers entrepreneurs, startups, small

businesses, and established enterprises

17
Makers make their mark –
The Internet of People for
developers
The same things that make the Internet of
People interesting for entrepreneurs make
it interesting for developers and the digitally
creative too. The Internet of People gives
you the chance to work with cutting-edge
technology to build fantastic new capabilities.
By leveraging its ready-made, permissionless
infrastructure, with standard protocols for
locating, connecting to, and transacting with
people, you can greatly reduce development
time and cost, freeing up resources for
developing great ideas.
As mentioned above, because most of the
processing in the Internet of People typically
occurs on the end user’s device, the growth
of an application’s infrastructure is decoupled
from the cost of servicing its user base. We
believe this will be a great catalyst for new
ideas and possibilities, making it possible for
more people to get more apps and platforms
from the drawing board to production and
from there to viable, sustainable usage.
An interesting proposition
– The Internet of People for
investors
Bitcoin was worth almost nothing when it was
released in 2009. Since then its value has
increased a thousandfold, making millionaires
of early adopters who held on to their coins.
On the other hand, Bitcoin and other new
cryptocurrencies have been and remain
extremely volatile, and only a small proportion
of them have risen in value in a meaningful
way. This hasn’t stopped cryptocurrencies from
becoming a very intriguing investment theme for
many.
While Bitcoin was introduced specifically to be
money, most cryptocurrencies today are being
introduced not primarily as currencies but as a
means of fueling and governing some online,
decentralized platform. This is the case with
ether, which provides the “gas” for Ethereum.
And it is the case with the IoP token, which
will be the medium of exchange, the source of
incentive, and the fuel that powers the Internet
of People.
How can you get tokens? There are many
different ways.
As a direct investor, you can simply buy them.
18
If you are an entrepreneur, you will earn IoP
tokens by running your business, as they are the
medium of exchange (though they can be traded
for fiat currencies if you wish). Alternatively, if you
have a good business idea you can “sell” it to
the project directly for tokens, and so become an
investor. This is a particularly good way to earn a
lot of tokens in these early days, when their value
is still relatively low compared to their potential.
As a user of the Internet of People, you will
have many chances to earn tokens as well. As
explained above, you may be able to earn tokens
by reading ads.
You may also be able to sell or rent information
about yourself to companies that are interested
in it, and so directly monetize your private data
(instead of giving it away free to Google or
Facebook for them to monetize).
You can also earn tokens by contributing to
the community: you can become a miner,
offering your computing power to the network
in exchange for tokens; or, through the Fermat
Contributions app, you can offer your services to
the community, for example in marketing, public
relations, or design, getting paid in tokens for
your work.

A more just society –

The Internet of People for everyone

Finally, we think the Internet of People offers

something for the world at large simply by
providing a “reset” of the Internet.

By solving the problems that have arisen

with today’s Internet, and addressing its
current limitations, while keeping and
even reinforcing all the good things it once
promised, we are helping people return to
the original dream. This will, we hope, be to
the benefit of all who choose to join.

20
19
 Part III

Fermat yesterday, today and

tomorrow
Like many similar projects in the history of technology, Fermat started with a
single person and a vision. Over the past three years it has steadily grown, and
now has chapters in countries around the world. Here we offer a short history
of where the project has been, for those who are interested in its roots, and a
vision for where we would like it to go, for those who are interested in helping
shape its future.

20
The early days
Fermat is the brainchild of Luis Fernando Molina,
who was born in 1974 in Córdoba, Argentina.
As a teenager Molina became fascinated with
computers, and taught himself to program
from scratch. After studying physics at
FAMAF University, Molina left Argentina for the
Dominican Republic, where his computer skills
caught the attention of a company building core
banking systems for Latin American banks.
Eventually he built up a company of his own,
sold it, and went on to pursue various projects
in different parts of the world. In 2013, he was
in Dubai starting a new technology company to
use computer algorithms to create geometric
Islamic art when he came across Bitcoin. As
with so many others, the encounter with the
world´s first viable decentralized digital curreny
changed his life.
But while Molina quickly understood the
power of the Bitcoin idea, he also saw some
of its flaws. Much Bitcoin development at that
time centered around wallets and exchanges,
which Molina saw as just new types of
centralized structures. He wondered if he
could use Bitcoin-like techniques to build a
decentralized, open source, community-built-
and-run network where people could transact
directly between their devices, without any
unnecessary middlemen, and so go back to
the original Bitcoin vision. With this in mind he
sat down with his old mentor and long-time
friend Guillermo Villanueva to figure out how to
do it.
They had no illusions about the complexity
of the task, which was why they named their
project Fermat – after the French mathematician
Pierre de Fermat, whose famous last theorem
took over 300 years and 600 attempts to finally
solve.
Like the creator of Bitcoin before them, Molina
and Villanueva aimed to use as much existing
technology as possible – the pieces of the
puzzle that were already out there – but were
prepared to invent new technology if needed.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, they were
seeing a vision of a new and better world. They
were also slowly starting a movement.
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The project moves out into
the world
At first, Molina and Villanueva worked alone. But
soon they began to look for others who might
want to get involved. Molina pitched the idea
to investors, but had no luck until he spoke
to Lan Tschirky, a Swiss-based Vietnamese
Angel Investor who had supported his previous
business in Dubai and whose record of
successful technology investments includes
Powergetic (now Stem), the world’s largest
intelligent energy storage network, and Avaloq,
today one of Switzerland’s largest and most
successful bank software solution providers.
Tschirky liked the idea, and provided seed
funding to get Fermat off the ground.
Molina’s first priority was to hire developers. But
while the seed funding was a welcome lifeline,
it was not enough to splurge on a large team.
So instead Molina organized a competition in
his native Argentina, the first prize of which was
a chance to spend the summer in Budapest,
where Molina was living at the time, and work on
the project in exchange for room and board. This
was 2014, and he received 180 applications.
From these he chose six people to join Fermat,
flew them all to Budapest, and set them up in a
big, communal flat in the city. Their task: start
prototyping the client-side infrastructure.
After that first summer Molina asked the group if
they wanted to stay on. He offered to pay them
either in national currencies or in the yet-to-be-
invented IoP token. It was a measure of the early
group’s belief in the project that they all chose
to have significant portions of their salaries paid
in the tokens (which, since the project did not
yet have a blockchain on which to create the
tokens, were accounted for in a spreadsheet).
Two of the original set of developers were from
Venezuela, not Argentina, and they began talking
about their work back home. This sparked what
Molina calls a “chain reaction” in the country,
with large numbers of talented developers,
worried about the uncertain economic situation
in their home country, willing to work only for
tokens. In this way the project grew during
the fall of 2014 and throughout 2015, adding
some four to five new people every month and
carrying out a great deal of experimentation and
development work.
In December 2015 Molina travelled to a
conference in Mexico, where he spoke about
Fermat in public for the first time. From that
moment, the project spread outside of Latin
America, gaining adherents in the US, Europe,
and Australia. One of the most important of
these was Philip Farah, a Fintech innovator,
ex-McKinsey consultant and Cisco Systems
Managing Partner based in Houston, Texas,
whom Molina met in January 2016.
Molina credits Farah with helping him expand
the Fermat vision from a project to enable
device-to-device monetary transactions, which
had been its initial goal, to the idea of enabling
direct connections for any type of application.
It was then that the full vision of the Internet of
People was born.
Around that time the project published its first
white paper, which was a mostly technical piece
describing the client-side infrastructure. It also
began reaching out to the general public, with
articles in the press.
More importantly, by the end of 2016 the project
was ready to start going live with key components
and concepts. On the infrastructure side this
began with alpha versions of the components
needed to create the open social graph,
including the profile server, the location-based
network, and the content address network.
At the same time the project started its
blockchain and began mining IoP tokens,
the essential element of the incentive system
intended to catalyze the build out of the Internet
of People. IoP tokens were soon listed on various
cryptocurrency exchanges.
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During the fall of 2016 the project had also begun
organizing itself into chapters. Thanks above all
to the work of Markus Maiwald, who developed
the chapter structure, and Sarah Klostermair,
who was responsible for social media and
community management, the project began to
open chapters and win adherents all over the
world. By early 2017 it could count chapters in
over 80 countries. The two also worked together
to manage and support the growing community
of IoP token miners.
Another key milestone in early 2017 was the
release of the Fermat Contributions App and
the Fermat Voting App, two key parts of the
nascent community governance system. With
these apps the project began implementing its
distributed governance model, moving away
from Molina’s “benevolent dictatorship” (as he
put it) to a true self-governing community.
Using the Contributions App, anyone can now
submit a Contribution Contract to the community
– that is, an offer of a service that would be of
value to the project, including a suggested fee
for the work expressed in IoP tokens. Posted in
the Contributions Forum, the contract can be
viewed by the rest of the community and, using
the Voting App, community members can vote
for or against the idea. If the contract is accepted,
the contributor is guaranteed payment in IoP
tokens from the system upon completion of the
work.
At the moment, this represents a rather simple
governance system. Looking to the future,
the project has a roadmap for a sophisticated
decentralized, self-governing model, taking the
best ideas and learning from the experiences of
similar projects in the past.
All of these are significant achievements for the
small group of people who have been working
over the last three years to get the vision going.
Together, they represent the project’s first steps
towards independence and self-sustainability.
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Fermat today and tomorrow
So now that it is here, where is Fermat going?
The project’s present goals are clear, and can
be divided into three categories.
Continue to build the infrastructure.
On the infrastructure side, there is a detailed
technical roadmap that lays out the different
components that still need to be built, as
well as the continued development of the
existing components in order to reach full
scale and capability. This includes building out
the special servers needed to complete the
desired functionality of graphchain, Redtooth
and the person-to-person apps, as well as
the IoP tokens and the governance system,
while continuing to conceive and plan the
development of new functionality.
Continue to build the community.
Having built this exciting new cyberspace, we
are now inviting everyone to come join us here.
Markus and Sarah are continuing to work to
found and support new chapters around the
world. The project is also talking to investors
and others who want to invest directly in IoP
tokens and so support the growth of the Internet
of People. The project is also talking to and
working with several visionary entrepreneurs
and developers who are excited to play a
pioneering role in developing businesses and
apps for this new cyberspace, individuals like
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
is open to all individuals looking for a better,
safer and more inviting home for their digital
selves.
Begin to work with partner projects
that share the same vision. They say
there is nothing as powerful as an idea whose
time has come. And often in history, when an
idea’s moment has arrived, it will spontaneously
come to life in many places at the same time.
There seem to be movements arising all over
the world of people who believe in individual
freedom, privacy, decentralization, diversity, and
collaboration, and like Fermat, many people are
taking things into their own hands and building
platforms where these ideas can flourish. That’s
why Fermat is increasingly partnering with like-
minded projects such as Cicada, Personal Data
Locker, and the PIVX community, joining forces
in a bid to build something better in cyberspace.
But of course we are not just looking for
likeminded projects, but above all for likeminded
individuals. The Internet of People is in its early
days. We invite all of you to join us and help
make it come alive.
www.fermat.org
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Appendices
Further reading
Fermat’s Inception

Fermat, the Internet of People and the Person to Person Economy

The Web of People

Bitcoin, Ethereum and the Internet of People

The Profile Server

Introducing the Graphchain

Introducing Redtooth

Contribution Contracts

Fermat Distributed Governance Model

The Location Based Network

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

Software Requirements Specification

Road-maps
Fermat Road-Map

Contributions Governance System Road-map

Mining Governance System Road-map

Profile Server Road-map

IoP Wallets Road-map

Fermat Framework Road-map

Networks Statistics Road-map

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www.fermat.org

Mattermost: https://fermat.world/signup_email

web@fermat.org

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