Open Value

Open Value is an open research initiative to make value native to the Internet: a neutral root of trust that records what happened and in what order, never asking what it means. Open Value coordinates work on standards, protocols, and reference implementations.

Figure 1. Meaning stops at the dashed line. Below it, the base layer keeps only bytes and their position.

1.Thesis

The Internet natively transports information, not value. Blockchains proved strangers can coordinate at scale. Each network still couples recording, ordering, and execution under its own token and rules. Open Value unbundles these roles: a neutral and content-blind root of trust, a new internet service, sequences and maintains internet value events, allowing sovereign domains above to manage their own execution and meaning. Whether that root of trust can run without a native token is an open research question.

2.The Development That Creates Urgency

More value is moving across the Internet between parties with no shared record to point to. Trust and safety still have to come from somewhere. Open Value is working on safe, neutral value coordination at that scale.

3.Key Research Questions

3.1Neutrality without a token. How can the base layer operate neutrally (no censorship) and safely (high security and data availability guarantees) at internet scale without a token? 3.2Native exchange between semantic layers. What must be true for different and untrusted semantic layers to natively exchange value on the Internet using the base layer as a trusted and neutral value coordinator?

4.How to participate

Propose a topic connected to the realization of the thesis. Open Value will launch a research program with open calls for proposals to identify and address the most important research questions for the Open Value thesis to be realized. The program is open to builders, researchers, standards bodies, and enterprises. Everything published is open, citable, and credited.

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