The architecture
of agency.
What we do
We fund and build open infrastructure that the people after us can still run, understand and repair.
01We fund tools, protocols and institutions meant to outlast any single product or company.
02We focus on the layers underneath: how people coordinate, how data is kept, how trust is established. Everything else depends on them.
03We measure success over decades. If the next generation can’t use it, it wasn’t infrastructure.
Decades, not quarters.
The long viewLatest essays
View allMobilenormativityThe phone in every hand, and why we no longer see it.
The North StarA toolkit that authors, deploys, and maintains bespoke, sovereign systems, and the near-empty machine it may lead to.
Ethereum FlakesHow Nix’s declarative, reproducible builds could let families, DAOs, and Ethereum itself become truly generational infrastructure.
The Charter
Five properties of generational infrastructure
The criteria we apply to everything we build or fund. More on the About page
- 01Minimal base layerIt rests on a small foundation that its users own, not rent.
- 02Provable integrityAnyone can verify it against a fixed standard, without asking permission or trusting the maker.
- 03InheritabilitySomeone who wasn’t there when it was built can learn how to use it, how to change it, and why it was built this way.
- 04Credible exitThere is always a way to keep using it without an intermediary or a forced dependency.
- 05Respect for agencyIt serves the people who use it and respects their decisions rather than steering them.
Our projects
Projects we build and supportAll projects
- SOSSpacesOSAn operating system you describe in a configuration instead of installing step by step. Software agents help assemble it; you own the result.
- PPMPeer.pmA package manager for installing software, shared between peers and addressed by content, so no central provider controls it.
- CLNClanA framework, built on Nix, for running your own machines as one private, self-managed network, without a cloud provider in between.
- DVTLDVTLTooling for distributed validators: several machines share one Ethereum validator, so it keeps running if one fails. The aim is a setup close to one click.
- ETHEthereum.nixEthereum clients and tools packaged with Nix, so the same setup builds identically on any machine.
Proposal 01Idea stage
Historical StablecoinsA stablecoin pegged to historical purchasing power rather than to today’s dollar.
Proposal 02Idea stage
GI LexiconFixed definitions for five key words, so later shifts in their meaning can be noticed and checked.
Proposal 03Idea stage
LacquerArchiving analog media such as records, tapes and film as immutable masters, preserved peer to peer.