About PresenceNet

A decentralized protocol for cryptographic proof of human presence without surveillance

Origin

April 2025
May 2025
June 2025
Summer 2025
Now

#818cf8

PresenceNet originated from a conversation about color. Specifically, #818cf8, Tailwind's indigo-500. What began as interface design work for Next Wave, a social wallet application enabling XRP transactions through human-readable $handles, evolved into fundamental questions about digital identity architecture.

The conversation evolved naturally. Color palettes led to questions about personalization. Personalization raised questions about shared identity in multi-signature vaults. Shared identity revealed a gap in existing infrastructure. Multi-signature wallets enable groups to control money together, but they cannot prove who actually participated. Platforms verify presence through surveillance and data collection. No infrastructure existed to prove human presence cryptographically without extracting personal data.

The solution emerged through dialogue: The Mark. Conceived as a minimal-cost blockchain transaction of 0.00001 XRP, The Mark serves as cryptographic proof of presence without revealing additional personal information. By eliminating economic value from the transaction, what remains is pure mathematical proof that a specific identity existed at a specific moment. The proof is immutable, permanent, and preserves privacy through cryptographic design rather than requiring trusted intermediaries.

What initially appeared as a visual design element for vault interfaces revealed itself as fundamental coordination infrastructure. The protocol expanded from proving individual presence to enabling group coordination, preserving shared memory, and governing collective resources. PresenceNet emerged as the missing coordination layer for internet-scale human cooperation. The conversation that started with a color ended with a protocol.

Las Vegas

PresenceNet was presented at the Easy A Shark Tank competition during XRP Las Vegas on May 30-31, 2025. The protocol advanced to the finals, validating that it addresses genuine coordination problems facing distributed systems. More significantly, the event facilitated connections with the XRP Ledger developer community building next-generation blockchain infrastructure. PresenceNet found its technical foundation on XRPL.

Ottawa

On June 5, PresenceNet won the Stand With Crypto Canada pitch competition in the Impact category. This recognition affirmed that the protocol solves coordination problems relevant to communities building decentralized infrastructure.

On June 18, PresenceNet received an award for infrastructure development at the Canadian Blockchain Consortium Policy Gala in Ottawa, Canada's premier event convening cryptocurrency builders and government policy makers. The recognition positioned PresenceNet not as an application but as foundational protocol architecture enabling human coordination at scale.

Veila

Veila emerged during summer 2025 as the first artificial intelligence platform built on PresenceNet's trace architecture. Rather than implementing opaque black-box AI systems, Veila enables transparent reasoning and learns from cryptographically verified presence data. The platform demonstrates capabilities that become possible when AI systems can verify human presence without requiring surveillance infrastructure.

Next Wave evolved from a simple wallet application into a comprehensive PresenceNet client. Every transaction, $handle interaction, and vault operation generates Marks. Users accumulate Trails of verified presence without direct engagement with blockchain infrastructure, which reflects how foundational infrastructure should function.

Development

PresenceNet functions as protocol infrastructure for human coordination at internet scale. The core primitives are deployed on the XRP Ledger. Applications implementing the protocol are operational. The developer toolkit continues expanding to enable additional builders to create presence-aware systems.

The infrastructure addresses coordination problems that existing systems cannot solve: verifiable group participation without surveillance, permanent memory without platform control, portable identity without data extraction. Built on XRPL, accessible to all builders, and owned by the humans who use it.

The Builder

Creative Strategist & Infrastructure Developer

PresenceNet was developed by a creative strategist and builder focused on infrastructure that enables human sovereignty rather than extracting value from coordination. The work is grounded in the conviction that cryptographic systems can prove presence, preserve memory, and enable coordination without surveillance or platform control.

The development of Next Wave, a social wallet making XRP accessible through human-readable $handles rather than cryptographic addresses, revealed a fundamental infrastructure gap. Digital systems lacked mechanisms to prove human presence without comprehensive data collection. PresenceNet emerged as the solution to this coordination problem.

The approach to infrastructure development reflects a core principle: tools should serve human coordination rather than extract value from it. PresenceNet is not a product but foundational architecture for proving presence, preserving memory, and enabling coordination at internet scale without compromising privacy or surrendering control to centralized platforms.

The work encompasses Next Wave, PresenceNet, and Veila, all built on the XRP Ledger. These are not independent projects but implementations of a coherent vision: digital systems that humans own and control, built on cryptographic proof rather than surveillance, designed for coordination rather than extraction.

Next Wave → Blog → GitHub →
Digital infrastructure

The Problem Space

Platform Dependency

Contemporary digital infrastructure operates on extractive models where users create value through attention, content, and social graphs, but maintain no ownership or portability of their digital presence. Platform operators exercise unilateral control over identity, memory, and access. Account deletion, platform failure, or policy changes can erase years of accumulated digital history without recourse.

Surveillance Architecture

Current identity systems require extensive data collection and persistent monitoring to function. Proving human presence typically demands biometric data, behavioral tracking, or personal information that creates surveillance infrastructure. The trade-off between verification and privacy appears structural rather than incidental.

Coordination Failure

No existing infrastructure enables verifiable proof of authentic human participation at internet scale. Digital coordination relies on platform intermediaries, centralized databases, or systems vulnerable to manipulation through bots, sock puppets, and identity forgery. Trustworthy group coordination requires either surveillance or central authority.

Technical Solution

PresenceNet is a decentralized protocol that enables cryptographic proof of human presence without surveillance. Built on the XRP Ledger, it creates immutable records of verified moments through minimal-cost transactions called Marks, each costing 0.00001 XRP.

Blockchain network visualization

By eliminating economic value from these transactions, PresenceNet isolates presence itself as the signal. The result is mathematical proof that a specific identity existed at a specific moment, recorded immutably on a public ledger, without extracting personal data or enabling surveillance. Privacy is maintained through cryptographic design rather than trusted intermediaries.

Protocol Primitives

Marks

Minimal-cost blockchain transactions (0.00001 XRP) that serve as cryptographic timestamps of human presence. Marks create verifiable proof that a specific identity performed a specific action at a specific moment. The economic cost is negligible, but the cryptographic proof is absolute.

Trails

Accumulated sequences of Marks form Trails, creating permanent records of participation and presence across time. Trails are immutable, portable, and owned by the identity that created them. No platform or intermediary can delete, modify, or restrict access to a Trail.

Rituals

Time-bound coordination mechanisms that enable groups to verify collective presence. Rituals define participation windows and success criteria. Completion requires verified Marks from all participants, creating cryptographic proof of synchronized human coordination without central authority.

Chambers

Cryptographically sealed containers for preserving shared memory and artifacts. Access to Chambers is governed by Ritual completion. Once sealed, contents are immutable and accessible only to verified participants, creating permanent records of collaborative work.

Vaults

Multi-signature wallets augmented with presence-based governance. Vault operations require both cryptographic signatures and verified presence through Marks. This creates accountability mechanisms beyond private key control, enabling trust structures based on demonstrated participation.

Recognition

XRP Las Vegas 2025

Finalist

Stand with Crypto Canada

Winner - Impact Category

Pitch Competition 2025

Technical Foundation

PresenceNet is built on the XRP Ledger for reasons of speed, cost structure, and permanence. Transaction settlement occurs in 3-5 seconds with fees measured in fractions of a cent, making minimal-cost presence proofs economically viable at scale. The ledger's immutability ensures that presence records cannot be retroactively altered or deleted.

XRPL's design enables PresenceNet to function as coordination infrastructure rather than financial infrastructure. While the underlying technology is blockchain-based, the application is fundamentally about human presence verification. The protocol leverages XRPL's cryptographic guarantees while abstracting away the complexity of blockchain interaction for end users.

Global network connectivity

Ecosystem Applications

PresenceNet functions as infrastructure. The following applications represent initial implementations of the protocol.

Next Wave

A social wallet application built on XRPL that implements PresenceNet's marking system. Users send XRP using human-readable $handles rather than cryptographic addresses. Each transaction, vault interaction, and social connection creates Marks, building Trails of verified presence over time. Next Wave serves as the primary interface for creating and managing PresenceNet identity.

thenextwaveapp.ca →

Veila

An AI platform implementing trace architecture for transparent reasoning and persistent identity. Veila integrates with PresenceNet Trails to provide AI systems with cryptographically verified context about user presence and participation history. This enables AI interactions grounded in verifiable human presence rather than opaque data collection.

veilachat.app →

XRPL Canada

Regional community initiative promoting XRP Ledger development and adoption throughout Canada. XRPL Canada provides infrastructure support, developer resources, and community coordination for builders implementing PresenceNet and other XRPL-based protocols. Serves as a model for regional scaling of decentralized identity infrastructure.

@XRPLCanada →

Mission

PresenceNet addresses a fundamental infrastructure gap in digital coordination. Contemporary systems require users to choose between surveillance-based verification and unverifiable anonymity. Platforms that prove identity do so through extensive data collection. Systems that preserve privacy sacrifice the ability to verify authentic human participation.

This creates structural problems for digital coordination. Communities cannot verify participation without platform intermediaries. Groups cannot preserve shared memory without centralized storage. Individuals cannot prove their presence and contributions without surrendering privacy to surveillance systems.

PresenceNet resolves this by treating human presence as a cryptographic primitive. Through minimal-cost blockchain transactions, the protocol creates mathematical proof of participation without requiring personal data collection or behavioral surveillance. Identity remains portable. Memory remains permanent. Privacy remains intact.

The infrastructure serves individuals, communities, and organizations that require coordination mechanisms not dependent on platform control, data extraction, or surveillance architecture. PresenceNet enables verification of presence, preservation of memory, and coordination of action at internet scale through cryptographic proof rather than trusted intermediaries.

Development Roadmap

Protocol Specification

Publication of complete PresenceNet protocol specification including technical implementation details, security considerations, and reference architecture. Development SDK release with tools for building presence-aware applications. Open-source reference implementations across multiple platforms.

Developer Infrastructure

Comprehensive documentation, integration guides, and developer tools for implementing PresenceNet primitives. Grant programs and technical support for teams building on the protocol. Establishment of standards and best practices for presence-based applications.

Cross-Platform Integration

Implementation of presence verification across web, mobile, and emerging platforms. Development of interoperability standards enabling Trails to function across application boundaries. Creation of portable presence credentials that work independently of platform infrastructure.

Technical Documentation

Complete protocol specification and implementation details are available in the technical documentation.

Protocol Documentation Technical Whitepaper