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title: Roughly page-by-page outline

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# Roughly page-by-page outline

## Off-chain composability: the key to opening new Web3 frontiers

1. **Problem: Web3 is stuck inside itself.** *Reword this*
	- Most protocols exist to serve other Web3 protocols --- usually, DeFi protocols. "Web3 all the way down" is disconnected from real world use-cases, especially non-financial ones.
	- Even for these protocols, the interface of web3 to the outside world often undermines key Web3 selling points
	    - Bad censorship resistance
	    - Bad decentralization 
	    - Cannot compete with Web2 UX and usability
	- This needs to be fixed if we want mass adoption of truly socially transformative use cases of Web3, because that means bringing Web3's revolution in trust outside Web3 protocols themselves.
2. **Solution: a new paradigm of *off-chain composability***
    - Web3's revolutionary security, trust, and neutrality powering decentralized non-blockchain, non-finanical protocols that compose to next-generation off-chain apps. 
    - Even core "web3" apps like DeFi will be transformed.
        - Censorship-resistant frontends, 
        - Client-side integration with L2s/state channels to preserve decentralization
        - *Better than Web2* UX and usability while delivering features that Web2 cannot
    - This is how we get an Internet of mechanism-based trust and mass adoption of Web3.


## How Themelio achieves off-chain composability

3. **Minimal, governance-free L1 focused on what only L1s can do** 
    - Endogenous trust crucial for any L1, especially for supporting off-chain security.
    - This is only possible if we build a minimal blockchain decoupled with apps.
    - Robust synergy with off-chain composability: IPv4 is ungovernable
    
4. **Powerful execution and embeddable thin clients**
    - Validate L2s on-chain and *revalidate proofs off-chain*
    - Extremely easy to integrate thin clients talking to live mainnet
    - Crucial for composing on-chain security with off-chain protocols

5. **Finally, sound cryptoeconomics with sound money**
    - Native currency is revolutionary: trustless+low-volatility. 
    - Achieves the Bitcoin decentralized money dream while supercharging mechanism design
    - Important for powering incentives of sophisticated off-chain protocols

## Go-to-market (fix this title)
    
6. **Why "Web3" users would want Themelio**
	- Everyone in the crypto ecosystem recognizes that the web3 interface is problematic
	    - Devs will be attracted by ecosystem that lets them build decentralized, censorship-resistant, and usable apps

7. **Why the rest of the world would want Themelio**
    - Ton of interest in removing centralized trust
        - e2ee messaging: becoming more and more mainstream, but has huge security and usability issues
        - "fixing social media"
    - Current generation of decentralized protocols cannot compete against web2's unified UX and simpler trust model
    - An off-chain composable ecosystem fixes this
7. **Why *only* Themelio can deliver on this vision**
    - "Modular blockchains": simulate the blockchain somewhere else. Doesn't escape the "on-chain composability" mindset.
    - "Build stuff on bitcoin": misses the whole point of composability, which is to confer L1-rooted trust and security to apps. 
	- My own experience: deep knowledge of what people building high-security decentralized apps in adversarial environments actually need


## Project logistics (fix this title)

8. **About me**
	- Passionate about Web3's vision: longtime cypherpunk from China \& Canada; Themelio grew out of PhD research at UW to solve root of trust
	- Successful founder: bootstrapped Geph from hobby to successful commercial open-source VPN, applying cutting-edge research
	- Sole founder of Themelio, designed and laid the foundations pre-team and pre-funding
9. **Milestones up to now**
    - Backed by Polychain in 2020
	- Beta mainnet last year, gradually built out tooling
	- Production-ready tookit this year
	- All under stealth mode with a lean, 5-person team of engineers
10. **Next steps**
	- Solidify highly ergonomic off-chain composability toolkit
		- PKI, state channels, trustless p2p communication
		- Developers will be *ready to build off-chain composable apps*.
	- Come out of "stealth" by a rapid go-to-market push
		- Take full advantage of the current market to greatly expand team
		- Use current network and new partnerships to focus on reaching out to developers (made easy by a very developer-friendly toolkit)
		- Hire a C-level head of bd 
11. **Round info**
	- Raising $3M in SAFE+SAFT to fund the go-to-market roadmap
	- Target: achieve Celestia-like interest and value before the next round
			- We *already* have more mature tech and a stronger vision
    - Next round is likely to be the first round of the public sale: maximizes decentralization and aligns incentives with community-building

## Brainstorming
Key message: Themelio opens new frontiers in Web3, through endogenous trust + off-chain composability

Current web3 good at apps that operate on things within the web3 tech stack (mostly, defi). Bad at composing this with things in the "real world". The result is usually weak both in usability and in preserving the security and censorship resistance of the blockchain. This problem becomes worse the less defi and more "non-finanical" the application becomes.

Examples:
- Prediction market
- NFT gallery / trust-minimizing decentralized OTC market for non-defi assets
- Decentralized reputation systems
- Decentralized communication/social media

But a new paradigm based on *off-chain composability* --- a interoperable ecosystem of non-blockchain protocols with blockchain-backed trust and security --- can fix this.

Examples:
- Prediction market
	- Markets run in a federated network operated by settlers (who we need to trust in any system)
	- Settlers identified by an ENS/UD-like system
	- Tor-like anonymous and secure communications thoroughly blockchain-enhanced:
		- Naming-system-backed PKI for e2e encryption
		- Sybil-resistant routing network based on cryptoeconomics
	- Extremely efficient micropayments for betting on markets
	- Everything required for access packaged neatly into a browser extension
	- This is a much brighter picture than the current world!
		- Censorship resistance
		- Organic, competitive marketplace
		- Essentially no L1-related UX friction

But this cannot be built current paradigm of on-chain composability and scaling the chain itself. Instead, we need a new sort of blockchain focused on off-chain composability --- Themelio. And the solution to off-chain composability turns out to also fix endogenous trust, the most important/unique property of blockchains, and there's a fascinating synergy between the ossification and credible neutrality that secure blockchains require, and the "social layer" of a protocol highly composable with diverse ecosystems.

(standard 3-point discussion of Themelio's specific design here)