Our Vision

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.

Objectives

To accomplish this Vision, Blockchain Commons has laid out four objectives:

1. Blockchain Commons. Create a specific commons that is dedicated to the realization of open infrastructure for secure, compassionate, decentralized systems.

   • We reach out to user & developer communities to identify problems and assess needs in current decentralized blockchain systems.
   • We focus on interoperable solutions and open architecture that allow companies to cooperate with individuals while staying focused on what makes their own business or projects unique.
   • Our Airgapped Wallet Community brings together a community focused on working to create this commons.

2. Architecture: Research, define, and evangelize an interoperable architecture for secure decentralized systems that supports independence, privacy, resilience, and openness and that encourages responsible key management.

   • We design, build and maintain secure & compassionate decentralized architectures & tools for digital assets and digital identity.
   • We ensure that everyone can use our tools, anyone can improve them, and no one can take them away.
   • We focus on the best practices of responsible key management, Smart Custody, and the Self-Sovereign Identity Principles as well as the Gordian Principles of independence, privacy, resilience, and openness.
   • Our Gordian Architecture, our Research Papers, our Gordian reference apps, and our Crypto Commons libraries represent our architectural work. They provide a foundation that developer communities such as the Bitcoin Airgapped Wallet Community can use to create wallets and other tool that embody these best practices.

3. Demand: Define and advocate a new techno-social contract of decentralized infrastructure, based on human dignity, respect for the individual, and mutual benefit for all contributors.

   • We work with regulators & legislators to support policies that enable compassionate decentralized approaches to cryptographic assets and digital identity through testimony and technical advice.
   • Our advocacy is non-partisan and focuses on technological and digital civil rights.
   • Our Testimony to various agencies records much of our work to date.

4. Peers: Increase the demand for, and population of, people who understand the effective development, and use of, secure decentralized systems.

   • We strive to grow the blockchain developer community through educational courses that help students to effectively develop and use secure decentralized systems and to be aware of the threats to human dignity that require compassionate solutions.
   • We offer mentorships and internships to personally advance the field.
   • Our Learning Bitcoin from the Command Line and SmartCustody projects as well as our own documentation work toward this objective.

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.

Gordian Principles

Blockchain Commons’ interoperable specifications are meant to support four core principles that support our Vision, putting the user first and enabling responsible key management:

• Independence. Gordian improves user freedom from involuntary oversight or external control.
• Privacy. Gordian protects against coercion with non-correlation, privacy, and pseudonymity.
• Resilience. Gordian protects users to decrease the likelihood of them losing their funds via any means.
• Openness. Gordian supports open infrastructure that allows developers to create their own applications.

Look at our individual reference apps for guidance on how each acts as a model for these principles.