We pronounce MuKn like “Moon” (or “Myun”), as it stands for MU-tual KN-owledge.
Our whitepaper was officially released on January 31st 2020. It is admittedly long, but you only need to read the parts relevant to you, and we will be extracting shorter more focused documents from it. We welcome your comments, either directly on the article, or by email; please contact us to get the access rights, or to send feedback directly.
4-minute pitch:
32-minute technical introduction (slides):
DApps, Blockchain Decentralized Apps, are a multi-billion dollar market, fast growing and set to take over finance, but... writing safe DApps today is too difficult. That is why we at MuKn created Glow, a language that makes it tremendously easier to write, and verify, DApps—a “JavaScript for Blockchain”. We have a working prototype, and seek funding to turn it into a market-disrupting product.
A single mistake in a DApp can cause its users to lose all their assets. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of digital assets were already lost this way. To avoid this catastrophic risk when writing a DApp today, you should hire top experts in seven (7) different fields of Computer Science and Economics, in addition to your DApp's own field: cybersecurity, cryptography, distributed systems, systems programming, economic modelling, economic mechanism design, and one specific blockchain. Then all these experts must somehow work together, just to support that one blockchain. All in all, writing a DApp with today's tools feels a lot like digging for gold with toothpicks; and even the most advanced development platforms only offer you pickaxes. We at MuKn are building excavators instead.
Our team uniquely combines expertise in all above-mentionned fields, and also in Programming Languages and Formal Methods. We encoded our expertise in a language, Glow, that abstracts over the complexity of Blockchain. With our language, you only need a single expert, in the subject matter of your DApp, whether it is derivatives trading, insurance, supply chain, etc. Our compiler and runtime take care of Blockchain.
Glow makes DApps vastly simpler, hence cheaper, faster and easier to write—but also to audit. To further simplify audit, and unlike our competition, Glow has built-in support for formal methods to automate the verification of security properties. Note how independent audit is essential for DApps because users put their assets at risk with no recourse, which is not the case with centralized applications. Also unlike our competition, our language will run on every blockchain, not just a single one you must bet on. DApp writers and users won't care anymore which blockchain they use; Glow will therefore commoditize the underlying Blockchains and disrupt the market.
Everyone will use Glow. All financial institutions will use our services. We will provide the marketplace for blockchain services. We will be the “Microsoft of Blockchain”.
Come join Mutual Knowledge Systems, Inc. in growing and using not just a DApp language, but an ecosystem that will give each individual, each business, each association or institution, control over their own financial sovereignty. We are actively raising funds, seeking partners, hiring developers and courting users, to build what is poised to become a very large industry.
See our current Whitepaper, or check out the prototype previously completed by our founders.
François-René “Faré” Rideau, Co-Founder,
has been making programming languages and distributed systems usable for 25 years.
Alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure,
Former Senior Engineer at ITA Software,
he also worked at Google and Bridgewater Associates.
While working in the industry, he notably maintained and rewrote ASDF,
the build system at the heart of the Common Lisp open source community;
he also kept publishing academic papers and speaking at programming language conferences;
early in his career, he even proved in Coq the correctness of a (centralized) payment protocol.
Eventually, his interests in economics and software security
converged with his experience in open source software and formal methods
and he started working on Layer 2 solutions for the Blockchain.
Since January 2018, he has made plenty of mistakes as co-founder of startups,
and learned the hard way to become his own CEO.
linkedin.com/in/fahree
Alexander Smart, Co-Founder,
has always thought fast, but learned to think deep and sharp at UChicago.
After studying law at Pepperdine, he spent nearly fifteen years
guiding executives and decision makers through litigation,
in matters ranging from shoplifting and speeding tickets
to multi-forum international investment bank disputes.
His practice honed his ability to quickly assimilate and master new information,
and deliver that information clearly at any level of sophistication.
Tiring of courthouses, he found his skills were readily applicable and desperately needed
in the blockchain space.
linkedin.com/in/alexandersmart
JR Howard, CFO,
has over 30 years of experience as a CPA & CFO, focused on startups.
linkedin.com/in/jrhowardcfo
Drew Crampsie, Senior developer,
has decades of experience writing software in Lisp and many other languages.
He has built and maintained software that has remained in production for a decade.
He notably wrote parsers and other parts of compilers.
github.com/drewc
Alexander Knauth, Junior developer,
has already co-authored two notable papers, and contributed to the Racket ecosystem.
His previous work on combining types and macros is directly relevant to building our compiler.
github.com/AlexKnauth
Rick Dudley, President and System Architect of Vulcanize, Inc.,
has in-depth experience in both the technology and the business of blockchain.
linkedin.com/in/afdudley
Nada Amin, a faculty at Harvard SEAS,
researches advanced aspects of programming languages such as
static / dynamic reflection, and programs / processes manipulating programs / processes.
namin.seas.harvard.edu