Blockchain Commons advocates for the creation of open, interoperable, secure & compassionate digital infrastructure
To enable people to control their own digital destiny and to maintain their human dignity online

Blockchain Commons works with developer communities to design, build, and maintain secure & compassionate decentralized architectures & tools for digital assets & digital identity based on responsible key management; based on our Gordian Principles of independence, privacy, resilience, and openness; and based on our Self-Sovereign Identity Principles. Our goal is to reclaim human dignity & authority in the digital world. We also strive to educate & grow the blockchain community through online courses and our work with legislators and regulators.

Blockchain Commons is proudly a “not-for-profit” social benefit corporation, domiciled in Wyoming but operating world-wide. We have a strong commitment to open source and a defensive patent strategy: anyone can use or improve our tools, and no one can take them away.

Read more about Blockchain Commons’ vision & objectives.

News

See the Complete Posts Archive.

• 2023-01-31: Musings of a Trust Architect: Data Minimization & Selective Disclosure
• 2023-01-18: Blockchain Commons 2022 Overview
• 2022-12-27: Why CBOR?
• 2022-12-27: Gordian Envelope Use Cases Overview
• 2022-12-13: Musings of a Trust Architect: Progressive Trust
• 2022-11-30: Silicon Salon 3 Call for Contributions
• 2022-11-03: An Introduction to Gordian Envelopes

Projects

Our current projects include:

• Gordian Products & Technologies — reference apps that demonstrate the Gordian Principles.
  • Gordian Seed Tool — our premiere reference app, demonstrating how to closely hold a seed and still use it for active management of keys.
• Web demos — demonstrations of specs and apps such as Lifehash and Seedtool.
• Research — Technical descriptions and docs for our interoperable and open infrastructural and architectural specifications, such as Uniform Resources (URs), Sharded Secret Key Reconstruction (SSKR), Bytewords, and Lifehash.
• Crypto Commons Libraries — reference libraries providing access to interoperable and open infrastructural and architectural specifications, including Shamir’s Secret Sharing, Sharded Secret Key Reconstruction (SSKR), Uniform Resources (URs), Lifehash, Bytewords, and more.
• Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line — our educational course introducing blockchains and Bitcoin development.
• #SmartCustody — our educational course laying out the foundation of responsible key management.
• Non-partisan Advocacy — promotion of legislation protecting technology & digital civil rights to ensure secure & compassionate digital infrastructure.

This video overviews many of our specifications and other initiatives:

We also offer services to the improve the security and infrastructure of the larger blockchain ecosystem:

• Infrastructure — support of Tor exit nodes and other blockchain infrastructure & software.
• Security Reviews — risk-based assessments of custody methodologies, operational security procedures, and layer-2 protocols such as payment channels.
• Project Support — contractual support of our open-source projects such as Gordian Seed Tool and for our specs and libraries.

If you are interested in working with us directly on a Security Review or Support for using a project with your business, please contact us.

These are just the beginning! Blockchain Commons is also working on other cryptographic research, cryptographic & privacy protocol implementations, architecture & code reviews, industry standards, and documentation. Our more future-looking research includes work on identity wallets, social-recovery techniques, zero-knowledge curve-operation proofs, advanced cryptographic primitives such as Schnorr, MuSig, and scriptless scripts, and in general establishing multi- and cross-blockchain standards.

If you support the goals and projects of Blockchain Commons, please consider becoming a Sponsor.

More Info

For more information, see our Posts and GitHub, including the following discussions areas:

• Gordian Developer Community. For standards and open-source developers who want to talk about interoperable wallet specifications, please use the Discussions area of the Gordian Developer Community repo. This is where you talk about Gordian specifications such as Gordian Envelope, bc-shamir, Sharded Secret Key Reconstruction, and bc-ur as well as the larger Gordian Architecture, its Principles of independence, privacy, resilience, and openness, and its macro-architectural ideas such as functional partition (including airgapping, the original name of this community).
• Gordian User Community. For users of the Gordian reference apps, including Gordian Coordinator, Gordian Seed Tool, Gordian Server, Gordian Wallet, and SpotBit as well as our whole series of CLI apps. This is a place to talk about bug reports and feature requests as well as to explore how our reference apps embody the Gordian Principles.
• Blockchain Commons Discussions — for developers, interns, and patrons of Blockchain Commons, please use the discussions area of the Community repo to talk about general Blockchain Commons issues, the intern program, or topics other than Gordian Development or Usage.

Sustaining Sponsors

Thank you to the following sponsors who have become sustaining sponsors of Blockchain Commons.

Learn more about them.

Please support Blockchain Commons by becoming a GitHub sponsor or making a BTCPay donation.

Organization Membership

We are a member of COPA , the Crypto Open Patent Alliance. We believe in open software and open access to patents covering foundational cryptocurrency techniques.