We are thrilled to announce that Collab+Currency will be joining as investment partners in the TachyonX program.

Consensys Mesh’s Tachyon program has backed some of the decentralized internet’s most innovative founders since 2017 and now with the expertise of the Collab+Currency team, we can provide the best strategic and technical advice to teams building at the intersection of AI, cryptography and digital governance. TachyonX teams will have access to not only Consensys Mesh’s network of 250+ founders, but also Collab+Currency’s expansive community.

In addition to their investment, Collab+Currency will be joining our Decentralized Investment Network as participants. Karen Shen, investor at Collab+Currency, will join our investment committee and the organization will receive Tachyon Points (and future $TACHYON work tokens) for their contributions to the Tachyon ecosystem.

Interested in joining the Decentralized Investment Network? Please email us at tachyon@mesh.xyz.

Check out Tachyon.xyz to learn more about the TachyonX program and apply now.

About Consensys Mesh

Tachyon is backed by Consensys Mesh, a network of 5,000+ founders and builders including Gitcoin, Gnosis, and Tribute Labs, founded in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.

About Collab+Currency

Collab+Currency is a seed-stage venture fund investing since 2018 in the convergence of three consumer technologies: crypto, artificial intelligence and extended reality. Since founding, the firm has invested into over 150 companies in nearly every blockchain and distributed intelligence vertical.

Tachyon has backed some of the decentralized internet’s most innovative founders since 2017. Now, we’re investing in exceptional technical teams building at the intersection of AI, cryptography and digital governance. Our rolling admissions process means founders can start building immediately, backed by Consensys Mesh’s network of 250+ founders and direct access to core developers from leading protocols and projects.

Founder Benefits

• $250,000 investment (SAFE and token side letter)
• Immediate program start from admission date
• Weekly 1:1s with dedicated advisors
• In-person Demo Day at major industry conferences
• $TACHYON token eligibility (see more below)

In Partnership With Consensys and Linea

Exclusive to this cohort, TachyonX is proud to partner with Linea, a zkEVM Layer-2 (L2) blockchain powered by Consensys Software, built to scale Ethereum while preserving its security and decentralization. Teams keen to build on Linea will enjoy direct technical mentorship, as well as access to tooling and infrastructure.

Focus Areas

While TachyonX welcomes all builders at the intersection of crypto x AI, we’re particularly excited about projects advancing these key areas:‍

AI-Native Infrastructure:

• Decentralized compute for AI training and inference
• Privacy-preserving ML using zero knowledge proofs
• Infrastructure for AI model verification and specification
• Token systems for coordinating AI resources and governance

Intent-Based Systems:

• AI agents for autonomous economic activity
• Agent coordination and orchestration protocols
• Smart contract systems for intent execution
• Context-aware user interfaces and experiences

Machine to machine commerce:

• Agent-based market makers and trading systems
• Autonomous treasury and resource management
• Cross-chain AI model deployment and monetization
• Machine-readable asset representation standards

Sovereign Identity & Verification:

• Self-sovereign identity and credentialing systems
• Privacy-preserving reputation frameworks
• Agent authentication and authorization protocols
• Zero-knowledge verification systems

Decentralized data infrastructure:

• Data marketplaces and training datasets
• Privacy-preserving data-sharing protocols
• Decentralized model governance
• Cross-chain intelligence and analytics

Why TachyonX

Unlike traditional accelerators, TachyonX combines deep Web3 expertise with a focused vision for AI integration. Our program provides not just capital, but access to a thriving ecosystem of technical founders pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when AI meets cryptography.

$TACHYON

Concurrently with this cohort debut, we will launch the first-of-its-kind token system to align founders, mentors, and the broader ecosystem alongside each cohort’s ecosystem partners, ensuring projects secure the best technical mentorship, code reviews, ML/AI consults, audits, architecture reviews, GTM advice and more. We are building the future of decentralized investments. Subscribe to our newsletter here and follow us on X for updates.

Take Action

Apply now at http://tachyon.xyz/ Participation slots are limited. To attend 2025 Demo Day, please apply before May 31, 2025.

‍About Consensys Mesh

Tachyon is backed by Consensys Mesh, a network of 5,000+ founders and builders including Gitcoin, Gnosis, and Tribute Labs, founded in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.‍

About Linea

Linea is the home network for the world, powered by ZK technology that makes Ethereum effortless and empowers users with secure digital sovereignty.‍

About Consensys Software

Consensys is the leading blockchain and web3 software company. Since 2014, Consensys has been at the forefront of innovation, pioneering technological developments within the web3 ecosystem, including the MetaMask platform, Infura, Linea, Diligence, and their NFT platform, Phosphor.

Originally published at mesh.xyz.

Written by Ali Smith, Portfolio Manager, Consensys Mesh

Summary

Despark is a user research platform for Web3 companies. Co-founders Amar Kher and Greg Eusden view better UX as the key hurdle in onboarding the next one billion users. Despark makes it easy for Web3 companies to get feedback from their target audiences. Companies define their audience by both demographics and on-chain activity and can quickly get feedback from them within Despark’s network of 7,000+ Web3 users. The platform combines traditional tech product research methods — including interviews, surveys, and product demos — with blockchain analytics to augment subjective feedback with objective data. Despark offers Web3 companies unprecedented insight not just into their users’ actions, but their thinking.

Team

The team consists of co-founders Amar Kher and Greg Eusden. Amar has over a decade of experience scaling new products and GTM functions. His prior role was the Global Head of Advertising Business Operations at Uber, where he successfully launched Uber’s billion-dollar-plus advertising business. Greg is a full-stack engineer who specializes in integrating new technology with real-world business applications. Before co-founding Despark, he was Director of Product at SimpliSafe. He has over a decade of experience working with user research tooling.

How does Despark work?

Despark uses three proven research methods to collect user insights:

1. Surveys: Customizable questions allow for detailed feedback from large groups.
2. Self-Guided Feedback: Users participate in unmoderated usability studies and feedback sessions, providing valuable input on specific features.
3. Live Feedback: This method includes one-on-one interviews, marketing strategy testing, and product demos, offering in depth feedback through conversations with users.

Despark builds on these time-tested methods by incorporating Web3 tools and on-chain data into its approach. Audiences are filtered using their wallet characteristics and demographics. Once collected, customer feedback is then augmented by blockchain analytics.
This integration brings objective data and context into user research for the first time.

As blockchain technology gains broader adoption, we anticipate that user feedback that incorporates both on-chain and off-chain data will become increasingly valuable. Despark is at the forefront, working with Web3 leaders, like CoW, Runtime Verification, and API3 and developing the infrastructure to support this evolution.

What is an example use case?

With Despark, product managers, marketers, and builders developing Web3 products can collect user feedback across a wide range of use cases.

Examples include:

• Developers tested a new UX in a sandbox environment through Despark, observing users’ real-time interactions to make informed changes before official launch.
• A gaming company used Despark to test a new game level. Despark verified players’ wallets, ensuring that only qualified users could participate in the test. This approach guaranteed that feedback came exclusively from the target audience, allowing the company to refine the game level based on precise user interactions before officially releasing the new level.
• A product design lead for a Web3 wallet is updating the transaction flow and uses Despark to A/B test their designs with key users.

Opportunities

If you are interested in the project and would like to learn more, please reach out to tachyon@mesh.xyz.

Additional information

Website: https://www.despark.io/

X: https://x.com/Desparkweb3

Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/despark

Originally published at mesh.xyz.

At first glance, the landscape of crypto exchanges may appear saturated, with many prominent players already active in the industry for several years. However, a deeper dive shows that there is still a large niche that remains unaddressed. The increasing number of banks and financial institutions that are active in the crypto market are faced with significant challenges to confidently do business with cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

That is because institutional-grade trading venues that really meet the exacting standards of banks, securities firms and their institutional clients are virtually non-existent in the market today. Not to mention the lack of trading venues that offer both the transparency of a central limit order book and the ultra-low latency that high-volume traders are looking for.

Between the requirements for stringent compliance, institutional account structures, reporting — not to mention low-latency, capital efficiency and general market integrity — financial institutions are looking for much more from a trading venue than retail investors.

RULEMATCH, a Consensys Mesh portfolio company, has recognized the importance of meeting these exacting specifications. Founder and CEO David Riegelnig, together with co-founders Rolf Gätzi, Stefan Lütolf and Helena Schöni, set out in 2021 to do just that. One major element is that RULEMATCH leverages the pre-trade risk, matching engine and market surveillance technology of Nasdaq as a technical foundation for the RULEMATCH trading venue.

While many existing crypto exchanges play to the masses and target retail traders, RULEMATCH is focused on serving a much more professional niche of high-volume, discerning market participants.

Even though popular retail exchanges traditionally serve a much larger number of clients, the deficiencies of their tech stack — not to mention compliance controls and processes — make it extremely difficult to serve both retail and institutional clients at the same time. RULEMATCH’s extreme focus on banks and financial institutions means that it is built from “the ground up” to meet their needs.

The focus on high-value, trading-affine clients means that RULEMATCH has optimized its venue for performance. With millions of orders processed daily using the matching engine technology from Nasdaq and at speeds down to 30 microseconds — significantly faster than the current top crypto exchanges — plus strong technical deployment in Swiss data centers, RULEMATCH has built an extremely robust tech stack.

Besides speed, capital efficiency is also an often-forgotten feature that financial institutions are looking for. RULEMATCH has built custom systems that offer:

• Post-trade clearing and settlement: Unique post-trade settlement and clearing system using delivery vs. payment principle
• Proprietary algorithm: Own-developed algorithm created for optimized payments and transfers among trading participants during the settlement process
• Multilateral netting: Capital-efficient netting to support high-volume traders

As more institutional investors push into the space, at Mesh we believe RULEMATCH’s targeted strategy and strong technology will result in them becoming one of the top platform options.

Mesh participated in RULEMATCH’s seed round in September 2022 with a recent follow-on investment in 2023 as they continue their focus on the technology, talent, and compliance. Keep up with RULEMATCH with their socials here.

Twitter/X

LinkedIn

Originally published at mesh.xyz.

Written by Ali Smith, Portfolio Manager, Consensys Mesh

Summary

Surreal is a one-stop mobile app for all on-chain content including art, music, videos, podcasts, 3D visuals, and written pieces. Through its sleek user interface anyone can mint, manage, and showcase their NFTs seamlessly across multiple chains and wallets. Watch the video below for a closer look.

Team

The company was started by Artiom Ignatyev, a New York-based designer and entrepreneur with a passion for enhancing the crypto user experience. Prior to starting Surreal, Artiom co-founded Linkdrop, a NFT marketing platform that helps companies create and deliver NFTs to their communities. Linkdrop was a part of our second ever Tachyon accelerator cohort and graduated back in 2019! The company serves a range of clients, including Coinbase, Ledger, eBay, and Binance. The core Surreal team consists of four developers and one designer, in addition to Artiom. Surreal is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.

How does Surreal work?

Major brands are embracing Web3, rolling out projects that span marketing, loyalty programs, customer experiences, and address existing business challenges. Yet, the success of these ventures and the overall expansion of the crypto industry is contingent on the availability of intuitive onboarding platforms and applications.

Surreal originated from a group of friends’ shared experience: the group, passionate about NFT collecting, was limited by the subpar user interfaces of existing crypto mobile applications. These apps were often slow, fragmented and failed to provide users with the utility to share and display their on-chain assets.

Surreal has been meticulously designed to address these issues. The app supports a range of on-chain content and allows users to manage and use their NFTs with ease. With compatibility across numerous wallets and L2s (e.g., Base, Zora, Optimism, and Arbitrum) Surreal accommodates a broad range of users, offering them an easy-to-use platform to mint, hold and engage with their on-chain assets.

Additionally, Surreal is launching an in-app minting experience where users can mint NFTs natively on mobile with the option of paying via Apple Pay. Payments that are made using Apple Pay will not require transaction signatures. This feature will offer a secure, intuitive, and web2-familiar experience for users.‍

What are example use cases?

• Browse your collection: Navigate through your NFT collection on mobile with ease. Simply open a collectible and swipe to view the rest. If there are items you’d rather keep out of sight, Surreal’s Bag feature has you covered — just a long press, and they’re hidden from view.

• Utilize on-chain media: Surreal supports a variety of on-chain media, such as music and videos through a seamless user experience. Listen to your on-chain podcasts on-the-go, and even when your screen is locked the audio is uninterrupted.

• Share with friends: With Surreal, you can easily share art, music covers, 3D visuals, and video snippets. Generate a preview of your collectibles in just two taps, and even highlight specific frames from exceptional video artworks. Then, share these snippets across your preferred social platforms.

• Collect Mirror articles: Experience Mirror posts seamlessly in the Surreal app. Discover and collect articles from @viamirror and enjoy reading them conveniently on your smartphone through the Surreal app.

• Coming soon — In-app minting: Surreal is gearing up to roll out their new in-app minting feature. This feature will allow users to mint NFTs directly on mobile with the option of payment via Apple Pay, eliminating the need to sign any transactions.‍

Opportunities‍

If you are interested in the project and would like to learn more, please reach out to tachyon@mesh.xyz.‍

Additional information

Website: https://surr.app/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/surrealapp

Download the app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/surreal-app/id6443731990

Originally published at mesh.xyz.

Written by Ali Smith, Portfolio Manager, Consensys Mesh

Summary

Web discovery tools have fallen short when it comes to connecting users with meaningful information online. Problems like ineffective filtering, lack of context, algorithmic biases towards certain monetization goals, and insufficient human curation are making it harder for people to find relevant information.

Enter Index Network. Harnessing the power of AI and decentralization, Index Network empowers individuals to build and use custom search engines without compromising data ownership, composability, collaboration, or monetization.

We are proud to welcome Index Network to the TachyonX Program!

Team

The team consists of co-founders Seref Yarar and Seren Sandikci. Seref holds a degree in Software Engineering and has experience working across a range of engineering roles. Notably, he served as the Head of Engineering at Genart Medya, one of Turkey’s leading independent digital brand and media agencies. Seren graduated with a degree in Industrial Design and worked as a UX Designer at QNB Finansbank before starting Index Network. Currently, the team is based in Barcelona, Spain.‍

How does Index Network work?

Index Network lets users create and design custom search engines, known as indexes. Rather than relying on broad-based tools like Google or ChatGPT to scan the entire web, each index focuses only on the content (web pages, PDFs, word documents, etc.) specified by the user.

These indexes are searchable and filterable, functioning as specialized topic-based search engines. AI-driven insights offer further enhancement, with features like predictive search and semantic comprehension, fostering richer, more contextually relevant search results.

Using Lit Protocol’s decentralized access control, creators can establish on-chain access criteria, which can also be linked to collaboration and monetization. Users can set conditions such as membership in a DAO, owning a particular NFT, possessing a certain amount of ETH, or meeting any smart contract function’s criteria to manage access. These access controls offer additional support for a range of users, including companies, communities, and DAOs, and ensure creators retain content access control and ownership rights.

Via the Ceramic Network, Index Network offers data interoperability and composability and allows discoverability of different data models such as attestations, events and products. Utilizing IPFS, Ceramic guarantees indexes are housed on a decentralized network, letting users construct, own, and store their data independent of centralized third parties. This decentralization ensures users retain data ownership.

‍What is an example use case?

Meet Aria, an avid book enthusiast who has spent years researching and curating lists of books across various genres, themes, and authors. She’s known among her community as someone who has a keen eye for discovering hidden gems and creating thematic lists, such as “Feminist Sci-Fi Novels of the 21st Century” or “Detective Novels Set in Victorian London.”

Aria hears about Index Network and thinks this could be a platform where she can compile, curate, and share her specialized book lists with the broader online community. Here’s how she uses it:‍

• Creating Indexes: Aria starts by creating a unique index for “Feminist Sci-Fi Novels of the 21st Century.” She adds detailed information, reviews, links to author interviews, and more to each book entry. This index is more than just a list; it’s a rich tapestry of interconnected knowledge that offers depth to readers.
• Decentralized Control: Her index is stored on the Ceramic Network through IPFS, meaning that she maintains full ownership and control over it.
• Monetizing Access: Given the time and effort she puts into her curations, Aria decides to monetize access. She sets up a criteria using the Lit Protocol: Access to her full index is granted to anyone who holds one of her limited-edition NFTs, which she has minted as a representation of her brand and expertise. Those without the NFT can still see a teaser or a smaller subset of her list, but full access requires the NFT.
• Community Engagement: Aria’s indexes gain popularity, and soon, she’s approached by other book enthusiasts who want to collaborate. Together, they form a DAO that curates lists collectively, hosts virtual book discussions, and organizes author interviews. Their combined efforts draw even more attention, and the value of their NFTs — and thus the access to their exclusive content — increases.
• Continued Expansion: With the earnings from her NFT sales and her growing reputation as a top curator on Index Network, Aria expands her curatorial efforts. She starts creating indexes on related themes like sci-fi movie recommendations, interviews with prominent sci-fi authors, and more.

‍Index Network offers Aria a platform where her passion, expertise, and curatorial skills can be translated into valuable, owned, and monetizable content.

Additional example use cases include:

• Developers can explore developer documents and integrations using composable discovery engines to retrieve real-time data.
• Index network empowers decentralized media and allows for journalists to create composable queries and explore a range of perspectives ensuring thorough and accurate reporting.
• Financial analysts can query data across companies to identify sector trends and market opportunities.

Opportunities

If you are interested in the project and would like to learn more, please reach out to tachyon@mesh.xyz.

‍Additional information

Website: https://index.network/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/indexnetwork_

Originally posted at mesh.xyz.

Today we announced the donation of the Veramo project to the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), a Linux Foundation non-profit organization dedicated to advancing decentralized identity solutions.This donation underscores the commitment of Consensys Mesh and DIF to foster innovation, collaboration, and interoperability within the decentralized identity space.

Veramo, developed by VeramoLabs, a Mesh R&D team, is a modular framework for decentralized identity and verifiable data. It has garnered recognition for its capacity to facilitate secure and user-centric identity solutions. By bringing Veramo into the DIF ecosystem, the project will benefit from DIF’s diverse community of experts, ensuring its continued growth and development.

“Veramo was always intended to be a community-led project and this donation will serve to prove Consensys Mesh’s commitment to decentralization, not just through the implementation of decentralized technologies but by building with a decentralized engineering process” says Nick Reynolds, VeramoLabs team lead.

“We are thrilled to welcome Veramo into the DIF family” says Decentralized Identity Foundation Executive Director, Clare Nelson. “This donation represents a significant milestone in our mission to advance decentralized identity standards and technologies. We believe that Veramo’s capabilities will complement our existing projects and further accelerate the adoption of decentralized identity solutions worldwide.”

The key benefits of this collaboration include:

1. Accelerated Innovation: Veramo will benefit from DIF’s extensive network of experts and contributors, accelerating its development and enhancing its feature set.
2. Interoperability: DIF’s focus on standards and interoperability aligns perfectly with Veramo’s mission to create a seamless and universally compatible decentralized identity framework.
3. Community Growth: This donation expands the DIF community, enabling more individuals and organizations to engage in collaborative efforts to advance decentralized identity technologies.
4. User-Centric Solutions: Veramo’s user-centric design philosophy aligns with DIF’s commitment to putting individuals in control of their digital identities, ensuring privacy and security.

Consensys Mesh Founder and Chairman Joseph Lubin shared his enthusiasm about the donation, saying, “Consensys Mesh is committed to promoting open-source initiatives that empower individuals and organizations to take control of their digital identities. We believe that DIF is the perfect home for Veramo, where it can flourish and continue to make meaningful contributions to the decentralized identity ecosystem.”

The Decentralized Identity Foundation and Consensys Mesh look forward to working closely together to ensure a smooth transition of Veramo into the DIF ecosystem. DIF welcomes developers, contributors, and organizations to participate in the ongoing development of Veramo.

To learn more about the Decentralized Identity Foundation, please contact press@identity.foundation.

To connect with the VeramoLabs team, please contact hello@veramo.io.

Originally published at mesh.xyz.

In today’s rapidly evolving digital business environment, organizations in every sector face the challenge of efficiently managing increasingly complex billing and settlement processes. Historically, these processes were restricted to interactions between two businesses. They were time-consuming, error-prone, and demanded significant manual intervention. However, the situation is now more complex, as digital products have evolved to cater to multiple users simultaneously. These products have extended digital supply chains, and their delivery often involves multiple parties rather than just one. As a result, the billing and settlement of these products must not only be automated but also equipped to handle multi-party transactions.

With the advent of the Baseline Protocol, businesses now have an opportunity to automate and streamline their billing and settlement operations in a multi-party, synchronized fashion. In this article, we will explore how the Baseline Protocol is poised to revolutionize these core business functions through its integration of zero-knowledge technology, zero-trust principles, W3C decentralized identifiers (DIDs), and W3C verifiable credentials. As we will see, the revolutionary features of the Baseline Protocol enable businesses to enhance their efficiency, accuracy, transparency, compliance, and privacy.

Understanding the Baseline Protocol and Its Components

The Baseline Protocol is an open-source initiative combining blockchain technology, zero-knowledge technology, zero-trust principles, and traditional enterprise IT concepts. It establishes a common frame of reference for businesses, allowing them to synchronize their data and business processes. This protocol enables secure and private collaboration between organizations while ensuring data consistency without exposing sensitive information. The Baseline Protocol’s key components of zero-trust, zero-knowledge, decentralized identity and blockchain technology drive its capacity to automate billing and settlement processes across industries. It also addresses the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the Digital Business Trilemma. Before delving into the trilemma, let’s unpack the components of the Baseline Protocol and their relevance to billing and settlement.

Zero-Knowledge Technology and Privacy

One of the significant advantages of the Baseline Protocol is its integration of zero-knowledge technology, specifically zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). ZKPs allow information verification without disclosing the data itself — a groundbreaking cryptographic method ensuring both privacy and proof of specific knowledge. In the context of billing and settlement, ZKPs can play a crucial role in protecting sensitive business data and maintaining confidentiality during transactions.

By utilizing zero-knowledge proofs, organizations can securely collaborate on billing and settlement processes without exposing sensitive details to unauthorized parties. This enhances privacy and confidentiality while ensuring accurate verification and validation of transactions. Zero-knowledge technology enables businesses to maintain control over their data while securely interacting with other entities in the network.

Zero-Trust Principles and Security

The Baseline Protocol embraces zero-trust principles to enhance security in billing and settlement processes. Zero trust is a security framework that assumes no implicit trust within the network. Instead, it verifies and validates every request and transaction, regardless of the source. By implementing zero-trust principles, the Baseline Protocol ensures that access controls and authentication mechanisms are consistently enforced, thus reducing the risk of unauthorized access and improving the overall security of billing and settlement operations.

W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and W3C Verifiable Credentials

In addition to privacy and security, the Baseline Protocol incorporates decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials to establish trusted identities and enable secure interactions between entities. DIDs provide a self-sovereign identity framework, ensuring that individuals and organizations have control over their identities without relying on centralized identity management systems. Verifiable credentials, on the other hand, are digital certificates that serve as proof of specific attributes or qualifications issued by trusted parties.

By integrating DIDs and verifiable credentials, the Baseline Protocol enables secure and trusted interactions in billing and settlement processes. Entities can establish their identities and share relevant information securely, thus facilitating accurate verification and validation. This enhances trust among participants and enables seamless collaboration, even in multi-party settlement scenarios.

Enabling Regulatory Compliance

Meeting compliance requirements is a critical aspect of billing and settlement processes, especially in industries where Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations are stringent. With its integration of zero-knowledge technology, zero-trust principles, DIDs, and verifiable credentials, the Baseline Protocol provides a robust framework for ensuring compliance in these areas.

By leveraging zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials, organizations can securely verify customer identities and validate transaction details without exposing sensitive information. For instance, the Baseline Protocol enables accurate compliance with KYC and AML regulations while maintaining privacy and confidentiality. The Baseline Protocol’s secure collaboration framework and adherence to zero-trust principles further contribute to regulatory compliance and reduce the risk of non-compliance and associated penalties.

Understanding the Digital Business Trilemma

To understand how the Baseline Protocol can alleviate constraints placed upon billing and settlement by the digital business trilemma, we first have to unpack the concept itself. The digital business dilemma states that digital business transactions can at most fulfill two of these three characteristics: decentralization, security, and performance. This trilemma suggests an inherent compromise in any digital business setting. For example, centralized systems may provide better performance and security but compromise on decentralization. Conversely, decentralized systems may prioritize decentralization and security but sacrifice performance.

Impact of the Digital Business Trilemma on Billing and Settlement

The digital business trilemma impacts all digital business processes that cross company boundaries. As such, it has a significant impact on billing and settlement processes.

Let’s consider a sample scenario in the finance industry:

A centralized billing and settlement system can provide high performance, ensuring fast and efficient transactions. However, this centralized approach raises security concerns, as a single point of failure or a breach in the system can result in unauthorized access or manipulation of sensitive financial data. On the other hand, a decentralized billing and settlement system can enhance security by distributing data across multiple nodes. However, this may lead to performance challenges due to the need for consensus among the participating nodes, resulting in slower transaction processing.

To address the digital business trilemma in billing and settlement, organizations can leverage the Baseline Protocol. By integrating its key components in automated billing and settlement processes between two or more counterparties, the Baseline Protocol provides a solution that strikes a balance between decentralization, security, and performance. It enables organizations to automate their billing and settlement processes while maintaining data integrity, privacy, and efficiency.

Enabling Multi-Party Zero Trust Under Zero Knowledge

By design, the Baseline Protocol achieves multi-party coordination in a zero-trust under zero-knowledge environment. This ensures the authenticity, integrity, and accuracy of every digital service transaction and its data supply chain. Let’s delve into the three characteristics that enable this coordination:

• Authenticate and authorize every transaction participant at all times: In a zero-trust under zero-knowledge setting, every participant involved in a transaction is authenticated and authorized to perform the necessary actions in billing and settlements. This ensures that only trusted entities can access and engage in the billing and settlement processes. The Baseline Protocol establishes a secure and trusted identity framework by utilizing decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials, reducing the risk of unauthorized access or fraudulent activities.
• Prove and verify the authenticity, integrity, and correctness of every digital service transaction and its data supply chain: The Baseline Protocol utilizes zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to prove the authenticity, integrity, and accuracy of transactions without revealing the underlying data. This cryptographic technique enables parties to validate the transaction details while maintaining privacy and confidentiality. By leveraging zero-knowledge technology, organizations can securely collaborate on billing and settlement processes, thus ensuring accurate verification and validation of transactions.
• Minimize sensitive data exchange at all times, ideally to zero: In a zero-trust under zero-knowledge environment, the Baseline Protocol minimizes the exchange of sensitive data. It achieves this by utilizing zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials incorporating these proofs, allowing entities to share, validate, and synchronize information without exposing the underlying sensitive data. This approach enhances privacy and confidentiality while ensuring the accuracy and transparency of billing and settlement processes.

By incorporating these characteristics, the Baseline Protocol enables multi-party coordination in a zero-trust, and zero-knowledge environment. This ensures secure, efficient, and trustworthy processes such as billing and settlement operations.

Billing and Settlement Examples Across Industries

After setting a fairly abstract stage, we shall now explore some concrete examples and their value propositions.

Telecom

In the telecommunications industry, accurate billing and settlement processes are essential for service providers, network operators, and content providers. This is especially true when it comes to revenue assurance, which is a multibillion-dollar-a-year problem. The Baseline Protocol can automate the verification of service usage, ensure accurate billing, and streamline settlement processes. By utilizing the Baseline Protocol’s core components like zero-knowledge technology and verifiable credentials, sensitive customer information (such as call records, data usage, or data circuit reliability) can be securely shared between stakeholders while maintaining privacy, data integrity, and data provenance.

Business Value: By automating billing and settlement processes using the Baseline Protocol, telecom companies can reduce billing errors, enhance transparency, and improve customer satisfaction. Studies have shown that efficient billing processes can result in cost savings across different revenue categories — for example, up to 9% improvement in a company’s recurring revenue.

Healthcare

In the healthcare sector, accurate billing and settlement processes are equally crucial for the industry’s main participants, insurance providers, healthcare providers, and patients. The Baseline Protocol can automate the verification of insurance coverage, streamline claims processing, and subsequently enable accurate billing and settlement similar to the telecom industry. It does this by leveraging the same core components of the Baseline Procol — zero-trust, zero-knowledge, DIDs, verifiable credentials, and blockchains — to securely share sensitive patient data and its multi-origin data supply chain while adhering to privacy regulations.

Business Value: Efficient billing and settlement processes in healthcare can reduce administrative costs and improve revenue cycle management. A study by McKinsey & Company found that optimizing billing management can result in cost savings of more than $100bn annually across US healthcare service providers.

Supply Chain

By its very nature, supply chain management involves multiple stakeholders, including suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The Baseline Protocol can automate billing and settlement processes in this industry by using the same approach and core components as in telecommunications and healthcare. This ensures trusted and efficient transactions between the industries key entities. In addition, the components enable the validation and provenance of supply chain data without revealing sensitive information. This enhances trust and reduces the risk of fraud.

Business Value: Streamlining billing and settlement processes in the supply chain can reduce administrative costs, minimize disputes, and enhance overall supply chain efficiency. According to a study by Deloitte, organizations that effectively manage their process automation can achieve cost savings of over 30%.

Conclusion

The Baseline Protocol presents a potentially transformative approach to automating and streamlining billing and settlement processes across industries. This is made possible by the Baseline Protocol’s integration of zero-knowledge technology, zero-trust principles, blockchain technology, decentralized identifiers, and verifiable credentials. By leveraging these components, businesses can enhance efficiency, accuracy, transparency, compliance, and privacy in their core business functions.

The Baseline Protocol’s secure and private collaboration framework enables efficient and accurate billing and settlement, while zero-knowledge technology ensures privacy and confidentiality. Additionally, the integration of DIDs and verifiable credentials strengthens identity management, authentication, and trust within the ecosystem, thus enabling multi-party settlements among different entities.

As organizations start adopting the Baseline Protocol and the technology framework it leverages, the billing and settlement landscape will likely undergo a significant transformation, especially around multi-party arrangements. Automation, efficiency, accuracy, trust, compliance, and privacy become the pillars of these core business functions that drive enhanced productivity, customer satisfaction, and regulatory adherence.

By embracing these innovative solutions, businesses can stay ahead in a rapidly evolving digital business landscape, challenged by regulations and driven by generative AI. With the help of the Baseline Protocol, they can ensure that their billing and settlement processes are optimized for future success.

Originally published on mesh.xyz.

The Traditional art market has long been associated with exclusivity and limited opportunities for emerging artists to gain recognition. Prohibition.Art challenges this status quo by providing a platform that welcomes creators from all backgrounds. By eliminating the need for gatekeepers and intermediaries, you can just start. No need to ask for permission before you begin. No matter where you were born, these digital primitives will be more and more programmable, composable and useful for creative self-expression for the next generation of artists.‍

What distinguishes the past from the present movements in Art is the openness and programmability of work published on public blockchains for all to see and know who created it. Using code to create art has been around since the 1960s and has seen various contributions, iterations and builds over the last half century ushering us towards the current movement around generative art.

‍The next wave of experimentation will be led by projects such as Prohibition, an open, on-chain generative art platform built on the Art Blocks Engine and deployed on Arbitrum, one of the leading Ethereum Layer 2s. This project is created out of the brilliant team at VenturePunk, a Mesh portfolio company building at the bleeding edge projects to harness the most timely developments in the space. Jordan Lyall, the Founder and CEO, has a knack for finding the path to work that resonates with so many in Web3.‍

Art Blocks Engine (ABE) was born in 2021 when the Art Blocks’ team saw an opportunity outside of their own platform that could serve both Web2 and Web3 communities. The tool offers two kinds of licensing for both fully on-chain art as well as off-chain libraries: Engine and Engine Flex. Using these libraries gives teams access to their tech, partnerships and direct support. In this way, ABE is offering a custom solution through a streamlined process. The technology provided includes generative scripts stored and secured on-chain through the Ethereum Blockchain. Creators are also able to use IPFS or Arweave to store their assets which opens up the capability to use off-chain assets like photography, AI, GAN, machine learning and many other tools. Other networks can be used like Arbitrum and Palm for Engine projects as well as support for EVM-compatible solutions like Polygon, Base and Optimism.

‍Prohibition.Art stands at the intersection of art and technology, harnessing the potential of blockchain to build new creation and consumption mechanisms within the vibrant art world. By leveraging the transparency, security, and immutability blockchain offers, the platform can ensure the authenticity and provenance of digital artworks. The lines between artist, gallery collector, consumer can be blurred and because these things can be published on an immutable blockchain, a public record of all the changes, remixes, and editions is open for anyone to contribute.

‍Imagine a young child stumbling upon squiggle #9,999 at LACMA by the La Brea Tar Pits during a class field trip. As she finishes her pb&j by the dinosaurs with her friends she can’t stop thinking about the full spectrum of color animating through a seemingly random line on the wall in the museum. She decides to find it on-chain, download and remix it on the class Roblox server. She scales the piece to the size of a skyscraper that can slide up and down, creating a living sculpture that changes with each interaction! This is what we are on the precipice of, and artists like Snowfro, Claire Silver, Bryan Brinkman will be able to decide what and how people use their inspired work.

‍At the heart of Prohibition.Art’s product lies the concept of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These unique digital assets enable creators to tokenize their artwork, representing it as a digital certificate of ownership and creation on the blockchain. By minting their creations as NFTs, artists can establish their provenance, track the history of ownership, and even earn royalties on future sales. This newfound control and financial empowerment open up a world of possibilities for creators, encouraging them to explore innovative ways of monetizing their work.

‍Generative Artists are paving the way for even more remixing of work and allowing for pieces to be changed over time. Most art or content we consume has set time for when the creator says it is “finished.” However, with programmable art we are living through a period of time where the lines between creator and consumer are blurred. People don’t need to only be passive participants in the creative process but can now leave their own fingerprints and adjustments to pieces. One of the most celebrated and distinct examples of this is Terraforms but the Spacial Computing Studio, Mathcastles. This studio is comprised of a duo, @0x113d and @Xalgeist who have become known for pushing the boundaries of what is possible on chain like below.

ಠ~ಠ on Twitter: "Beyond stoked to finally pick up a Terraform by @mathcastles. pic.twitter.com/hgv7SViwT6 / Twitter"

Beyond stoked to finally pick up a Terraform by @mathcastles. pic.twitter.com/hgv7SViwT6

If you’re making tools or gathering creators around this space, we would love to partner with you on what is being built next. We are happy to introduce generative artists to Prohibition.Art or share more about our investment programs like Tachyon.

Shawn Cheng, ConsenSys Mesh | DMs open @shacheng

Originally published at Mesh.xyz.

Today we are thrilled to announce the launch of TachyonX. A new program supporting innovative Web3 founders, at the very beginning of their journey, a $150,000 investment and access to the Consensys Mesh network.

Our mission at MESH is to champion the global adoption of Web3. We do this by supporting founders who are passionate about decentralization and advancing the Ethereum ecosystem. Since 2015, we have partnered with 250+ Web3 founders across 190+ companies, including MetaMask, Gnosis, Tribute Labs, Consensys Software, and others.

Many of these projects are alumni of our Tachyon Accelerator program. Founded in 2017, Tachyon Accelerator was the first accelerator program exclusively for Web3 founders. Six cohorts and 90 projects later, we are evolving the program with TachyonX.

The goal of the program is to give founders access to the resources they need early on so they can position their companies for long-term success. TachyonX is not an accelerator, notable differences and program highlights include:

• Rolling admissions: With no fixed cohorts, applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and programming is tailored to meet the needs of each individual team.
• Transparent terms: MESH invests $150,000 with a SAFE and token side letter for 4% equity and pro rata token right to insider token allocation.
• Low touch, high impact advice: Designed to support founders as they focus on building — no classroom time required. Founders can draw upon MESH’s collective expertise for advice on key decisions.
• Mentorship from Web3 leaders: We are tapping into our network across the crypto ecosystem to develop curated mentor matches for founders.

We’ve lined up some fantastic mentors, including MESH Founder, Consensys Software Inc CEO, and Ethereum Co-Founder Joseph Lubin, Kevin Owocki (Gitcoin), Stefan George (Gnosis), Aaron Wright (Tribute Labs), Lisa Cuesta Bunin (Aztec Network), and many more. The MESH team will also be mentoring accepted projects and will be available to provide expertise and insights across operations, marketing, token design, and other relevant topics.

What kind of founder should apply for TachyonX? We’re looking for founders who are eager to solve some of the biggest challenges in Web3, are technically minded, and are ready to move fast. TachyonX is for self-starters who want to collaborate with the MESH network and access the best investors, advisors, and mentors as they build and grow their business.

Through TachyonX we plan to continue to support the next generation of builders in a way that meets their needs.

To learn more about the program or apply, please visit Tachyon.xyz and check out our FAQs.

Originally published at mesh.xyz.