3.5 KiB
| title | sidebar_position |
|---|---|
| About | 1 |
Nomos is an innovative blockchain platform designed to address the critical requirements of the network state. It aims to provide developers with secure, flexible, and scalable infrastructure for building a wide range of applications while respecting the privacy and sovereignty of its users.
Nomos serves as the trustless agreement layer of the Logos tech stack. Alongside the communications layer, Waku, and the storage layer, Codex, it is one of the Logos Collective's foundational projects.
We believe that blockchain technology has the potential to lay the foundations of a fairer, less corruptible and, ultimately, freer society. However, its most successful implementations to date fall short of achieving this.
Network-level privacy, network-level sovereignty
Bitcoin and Ethereum emerged from the cypherpunk tradition. As Eric Hughes wrote in his seminal 1993 essay, "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto":
"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age."
Yet, neither network protects the right to privacy by default. Without network-level privacy, these technologies are, in fact, the perfect tool for surveillance because every on-chain interaction is recorded publicly forever.
We believe that such absolute transparency massively limits the scope of the technology's adoption, and therefore its revolutionary potential. We cannot expect individuals to voluntarily exit the current system into one in which their every interaction (both financial and social) is forever available for the entire world to see. When we buy a coffee, for example, there is no need for the seller to see our salary, other purchase history, or political leanings.
Consent of the governed
Furthermore, we believe consent to be a critical element of any governance system. We find the nation-state's claims of governance via implied consent to be extremely contrived. And we believe blockchain-based systems represent an improvement because every on-chain action is voluntary and requires an individual to digitally sign, therefore, providing explicit consent.
While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it does not go far enough. If an individual no longer aligns with the on-chain institutions of which they were once a part, today's blockchains offer a means of exiting the system to recreate something new. However, the cost to do so successfully can be prohibitively expensive.
There have been numerous occasions in history where an on-chain community has been divided on some issue, resulting in a hard fork that creates two independent chains. In such situations, both networks suffer in terms of their overall security, making them more vulnerable to external attacks.
Nomos leverages a novel architecture to avoid this situation. We believe that a simple disagreement over a community's path forward should not threaten the existence of either party. The Nomos network enables the creation of numerous semi-autonomous execution zones that share the main network's security while retaining the freedom to follow their own rulesets, and eventually become fully independent if they so choose.
History
Work on Nomos began among a small subgroup of Status core contributors in June, 2021. The network takes its name from the ancient Greek concept of law, while alluding to the protection of its users’ autonomy.
Nomos was first announced as a core Logos project in June 2023.