Building an Internet of Truth at Verafy
The last two weeks have involved more rapid learning than at any time in my life. What began with a 5 minute tech demo demonstrating how it is possible to build a Community Notes for LLMs resulted in a memecoin launch, validator, LST and agent for fact checking social media posts, as well as a Truth Terminal for the same purposes.
Verafy was born. And now we have had a few moments to take a look around and discover what our mission and purpose is in the emerging DePin, and DeFAI landscape.
Agent technologies such as ElizaOS are proliferating, along with many new DePin and other innovation tools. Our objective is to combined these tools together, work with a broad ecosystem of innovators, to protect humans from AI using Good AI.
The majority of trading on Solana today is done by autonomous bots. We are now seeing bots enabled by LLMs creeping steadily into the public and cultural discourse. At this time they are mostly making semi-incoherent stochastic parrot comments and replies, but increasingly they are gaining followings of their own and finding ways to add value. We believe this process will only accelerate as we approach an “Internet of Agents.”
This Internet of Agents will be rife with fraud and abuse. AI will fool other AI and more. To combat the growing problems presented by this technology, our solution is to explore using good AI to check bad AI.
There are many dimensions to this problem.
Who we will work with:
Chapter 0:
We have rapidly accelerated through chapter 0 of our initial phase over the last two weeks.
Here is what is coming next
Verafied Document Stores
The core innovation of Verafy is "Atomic Document Stores Verified via AI Consensus." These will be used to store fact-checked truth units on chain.
Business Model
We are a hybrid DeFi-enabled AI Innovation project. Our business model is as follows:
We will explore generating an open source and DeFi ecosystem around Verafy which helps accrue value to the
token via mechanisms such as buyback and burn.
We will explore horizontal partnerships with peer technology partners looking to enable their networks with our technology.
We are expecting to find other methods along the way.
Memecoins
We believe in Memecoins as a method for highly innovative alternative teams to pursue more radical visions of technology. Launching a memecoin is a massive risk because it comes with extensive stigma caused by industry bad actors. However, teams like IQ, DAO AI and others have embraced using memecoin technology to bootstrap a community. This is how Verafy got started.
Key challenges around the dynamics of memecoin pricing, how memecoins graduate and liquidity / volatilty of doing memelaunches are a factor in every memecoin project. Once launched, most memecoins peter off as hype moves around.
Memecoins are an excellent tool for early bootstrapping, however, tokenomics of memecoins tend to be different from previous "industry standard" approaches involving years of locking, vesting etc.
Projects like Pippin for example, attempt to make no utility around their memecoin while a core developer builds technology frameworks. We are seeing an explosion of open source teams innovating in memecoins and encountering variations of the same challenges faced by previous eras of token launches.
Our solution is a hybrid approach which combines infrastructure and DeFi ecosystem tools in addition to the memecoin itself. Memecoin investors are fundementally a different type of investor who are looking for "runners" aka memecoins that rapidly go viral and then graduate successively into exchange listings where they can then finance market makers to sustain their price.
Market Makers cost money - engaging them might involve $500K+ if not more. Alternative solutions involve bots like Orbit which can be fed Solana and then steadily pump the price over time.
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Memecoins are one tool in a set of instruments that are required to actually sustain operations around a utility / technology play. Generally speaking, most community members prefer a single token launch rather than more innovative approaches such as using tokens to bootstrap hackathons, as project milestones, or to test ideas for market fit.
In the near future we are likely to see memecoins being used more experimentally in a range of areas. The current batch of crypto startups and developers tend to view memecoins the same way web2 companies view crypto as a whole.
Memecoins are fast-moving, real time, require 7 day management (some of the top projects manage their project charts down to the minute, timing announcements and liquidity to keep prices moving in the right direction). Others launch a single memecoin and then focus on technology while the memecoin tends to drift.
There is still significant confusion around what memecoins are and are meant to do compared to other forms of crypto assets. In some ways I want to view them as "project mascots" which simply tend to follow attention on the project and are best separated from utility. I dont see the confusion around how they should be used and integrated to reside anytime soon.
Lean Startup
The typical approach in crypto is to create a white paper and then find various ways to protract the inevitable process of listing on an exchange, dumping on retail and then protracting the unlocks of tokens over time.
I believe this is overly planned and tends to fail for the same reason that central planning doesn't work. Lean startup methodologies in the crypto space have tended not to be used for a variety of reasons - mostly due to formalities around what tokens are which have restricted the range of experimentation possible.
Rapidly testing, iterating and learning was the standard for web2 startups and somehow got lost in crypto, buried underneath an entire industry of "researchers" producing abstract white papers, mostly subsidized by the ability to launch a token, float it on an exchange and continue an otherwise marketing-driven pseudo-technology approach to solving problems.
I prefer the lean startup approach.
Our Technology
We began with Community Notes for LLMs, a technique using batched API calls to compare outputs from LLMs. Next we will explore plugin customization and further innovation around how to use DePin to host and share trusted neutral LLMs.
Our vision is a blockchain ecosystem which has native intelligence that is proven to be neutral and unbiased which can be used to perform tasks on behalf of end users.
Blockchain native factchecking, search, information sources, and more.
Agent Memory
We believe that the next frontier of innovation in blockchain will be agent memory. On chain fact storage and analysis, starting currently with OriginTrail, IQ, Xandeum and others will enable agents which not only remember but are also fed information known to be true.
Trusted Neutral LLMs
A core element of what we think ultimately will happen is that blockchain networks will increasingly have native intelligence installed in them. As of today, the only way to get uncensored LLMs is via Grok, otherwise Google, Claude and OpenAI provide varying approaches (which seem to change depending on who is in power in the government).
Storing trusted neutral LLMs in blockchain adjacent storage, or using blockchains as a way to host verified facts are all different potential pathways.
Ultimately, verbal / factual data ledgers cross-checked by LLMs seem to be a pathway for the idea of Community Notes to actually scale in the agent x internet era we are moving into.
Building the Internet of Truth
The Internet of Truth is our vision of the future. You should be able to search and find unbiased information built from the ground up on units of atomic verifiable facts.
The politicization of the Internet and institutions over the last few decades has shown the dire consequences of political tampering with information and structures. AI will supercharge the fight.
It is necessary to inoculate and rebuild the internet from first principals up. Rather than having Community Notes or Snopes or a corrupted media or WikiPedia to “fact check,” AI which is trusted and verifiably unbiased which is able to cite specific facts and evidence should be developed.
Our vision is a bank of atomic provable facts locked to the blockchain which can be used to reconstitute articles and information. This is the long term goal.
Bitcoin’s singular innovation is the solving of the Byzantine Generals problem where a set of nodes agree upon the state of a shared ledger.
We believe this innovation is identical to what is needed to create a pure and verified information ledger.
In the same way Bankers and accountants used to “check the books” to prove a set of transactions occurred before being replaced with blockchain technology, we believe that fact checkers and media editors and Wikipedia contributors will be replaced by networks of AI x Agent x Human editors.
New consensus algorithms are needed for the verbal / factual layer of the internet, only now possible due to improvements in AI. The alternative is the current state of the world: Individual companies and governments produce LLMs trained to be biased in various ways. AI consensus powered by open source is the alternative pathway.
Likewise, law codes and juries are Sortition and ruling methods of the past. In the same way that judges rule on legal ledgers (precedent), agent juries will rule on facts using consensus and fact ledgers.
We believe the solution to the problem of information politicization will be to use blockchains and evolve them in the direction of fact storage and verification tools.
Satoshi created the blockchain
Vitalik added smart contracts
We plan to add verbal / factual verification
That’s the goal.
Director at Mayman Aerospace, Senior Advisor at JERA
2moInteresting premise. Admirable even. Using AI consensus and blockchain to combat misinformation. Devil's in the detail I suspect. It seems to me that having several AI models agree on something doesn't necessarily make it true. AI models can share similar training biases or limitations, creating an echo chamber rather than genuine verification. Second, while blockchain storage ensures immutability, is it scalable and cost effective? Third, it doesn't fully address the critical question of authority and initial truth determination. Even with AI consensus, someone needs to make fundamental decisions about what gets verified and how. This creates potential centralization points in an otherwise decentralized system does it not? Finally, while the memecoin launch strategy may help with initial funding and community, does it not risk overshadowing the project's core mission? Historically speaking, memecoins are volatile and distract from the serious technological and social challenges the project aims to solve. I've not seen examples to the contrary but I'm open to the idea. Just my 2c worth.
Aspiring Chartered Accountant | Experienced Trader | Senior Business Consultant At Alibaba.com Global Sales Partner
2moCool