'The internet as we know it has died'

In a world where tech giants like Google and Apple increasingly dictate what we do online, one visionary is on a mission to rebuild the internet from the ground up. Cassie Heart, founder and CEO of Quilibrium, is determined to create a decentralized network that hands power back to its users.

"The internet as we know it has died," Heart told The Crypto Radio. "This all-out assault on the values of what this open internet is has reached a fever pitch".

Heart’s journey began with a simple goal: creating an alternative to messaging platform Discord after witnessing communities banned for their language choices. But as she delved deeper, she realized the issue ran far deeper.

"I need to reinvent the internet from scratch," she declared.

"There's a lot of other institutional barriers that can get in the way," she explained. "There is almost this oligarchy of corporations that are deciding to be the arbiters of content, whether it's from pressure from marketers or government influence."

A network that can't be shut down

Heart’s solution is bold: a censorship-resistant, decentralized network that remains operational regardless of external pressures. Using peer-to-peer technology, Quilibrium aims to ensure data could flow over any medium—be it Bluetooth, long-range radio, or even offline protocols.

"Using peer-to-peer technology that has the kind of resiliency in place that it can go over different ports, it can go over different protocols, it can use long-range radio, it can use Bluetooth, it can basically network over anything," Heart said.

The challenge, however, lay in creating a user-friendly application layer. Many decentralized projects had faltered here, but Quilibrium leveraged multi-party computation (MPC), a cryptographic approach that allows secure collaboration without revealing data.

As you'd expect, a project of this sheer scale and size will take time. Quilibrium has been a work in progress for several years, with significant progress made in 2022.

Real results and bigger goals

This strategy has already borne fruit with Quilibrium’s first app, Quorum—a decentralized alternative to Discord. In just two weeks, Quorum grew to host 250 communities and 10,000 active users.

Fighting for freedom of speech

Heart acknowledged the potential resistance from powerful tech players, but she remained undeterred.

"If it's truly decentralized, if it's truly secure, you end up with... instead of Google's policy that they redacted of 'don't be evil,' you end up with protocols that can't be evil," she said.

As Quilibrium’s team prepared for the 2.1 release, their mission remained clear: to empower users and safeguard freedom of speech.

"The most important thing is freedom of speech, because at the end of the day, a free society is able to become self-immunized to things like propaganda," she said.

With Heart at the helm, Quilibrium’s vision of a decentralized internet may be the bold solution the digital world has been waiting for.

 

Listen to the whole interview on The Crypto Radio's live player or in the Bigger Picture podcast.