Luis Fernando Molina, the chief executive and founder of Fermat.org, has released a whitepaper on the “Internet of People”. The concept offers an alternative way for content creators to stay in control of their work.
Fermat.org is a platform that enables decentralised applications. The latter connect users directly to each other without any need for an intermediary. Developers can be paid modularly for app components that they create.
Evolution from social to peer-to-peer
Operating in stealth mode for the last two years, the platform already has more than 60 full-time contributors collaborating from around the world on the system using similar technology to that of bitcoin transactions on the blockchain.
Molina says that Fermat will give users direct control of their personal digital footprint as well as more privacy and compares the project to the file sharing service BitTorrent because they both use a device-to-device-based network saying: “We will see an evolution from social to peer-to-peer”.
The platform enables atomised, modular creation of apps which makes sure that developers don’t end up duplicating work as well as each component in the Fermat system being “white labeled” in which each product is created generically and can be packaged, branded and sold by other companies.
So if a developer creates an app that another developer wants to incorporate into his or her app, a micropayment will go to the original developer.
Copyright enforcement and digital asset
Another use case the system enables is copyright enforcement in which an author or journalist can publish something on the blockchain and use the platform to automatically handle copyright transfer and sales as well as giving consumers access to their content while enabling bitcoin micropayment fees for readership.
Molina explains:
“Laura, as a journalist, might be writing blogs, and you cannot prevent in the current web someone from taking some of the things you write and republishing it somewhere else, without even referring to you. We are currently creating an artist platform on which you can publish things and create your content as a digital asset, something that in our system is a combination of three things: a multimedia element such as a picture, a video, a song or an article or an ebook or whatever.”
The second thing is a digital contract or the terms and conditions to use that digital asset, and the third part is a little piece of cryptocurrency that allows you to have ownership of the rights and transfer ownership of the rights or sell that digital asset.
Airbnb, Uber, job search, online dating and other services
Include all this with being able to set up a peer-to-peer version of Airbnb or Uber with hosts and guests and drivers and riders being able to connect to each other directly through their smartphones removing companies as middlemen as well as their fees, and you can see the potential.
Fermat also provides a similar function of the crucial reputation management and background checks that companies like Airbnb rely on in which users can build up their reputation in several ways by the use of services like online dating, freelance work or as an Airbnb host and combining these together so that one reputation connects all the profiles to each other, or if preferred separately.
Other types of services that can be created using the Fermat system are classified ads, online dating, coupons, vouchers, discounts, job search and apartment rental to name just a few, and you can see the direction this is going in, which is a massive disruption of so many services that rely on intermediaries and middlemen just like digital currencies are doing in the financial world.