Squishiness + Snarkiness + Privyness

The affordances of the next internet

In February 2025 Goblin Oats, the Tonk CTO, presented Tonk’s recent work at the Real World Cryptography conference in Paris.

The talk was special because Goblin threaded a clear line through the bubbling ecosystem of disparate innovations in distributed systems & cryptography. There’s so much ongoing work across so may teams, but when we squint just right, we can see how it makes a new & better internet inevitable.

Mentioned technologies:

• PCDs & PODs

• Signed data

• SNARKs

• ZKVMs

• OCAP + UCANs

• zkCreds

• 2-party MPC

• LLMs

Goblin showed how these primitives make computers that are “squishy, snarky and privy”. This basically means that users can have a far more intimate relationship with their data, and an internet that is interoperable, private, secure, flexible, cheap and cosy. Think:

• An open market for recommendation & safety algorithms,

• Cross platform / cross institution repuation,

• A place to store information that’s truly private,

• Dramatically reduced cloud hosting costs,

• Cheap & effective tools for community spaces & social coordination.

Check out the slides here and stay tuned on our socials to catch us at future events.

- Baz 💫