My crypto journey for this bull run has continued to gravitate towards DePIN. I'm so intrigued by the topic. Honestly, my husband saw its potential first. Last year, he casually sank a bit of spare cash into DVPN (a decentralized VPN) and sat on it for months before he saw fit to mention it. Cheeky critter. We're up a whole lot though, so I have to forgive him.
It took me longer to consciously realize that a decentralized VPN is probably one of the most perfect applications of crypto: lightweight, aids and abets censorship resistance, and highly saleable in disadvantaged areas around the world.
It wasn't until I was gossiping with a friend of mine when I discovered that DVPN was not alone. A project called "Timpi" is forming an alliance to challenge the biggest goliath on the internet. The Big Daddy: Google.
Their vision is straightforward and breathtakingly audacious: unite the cornerstones of a decentralized internet and disrupt the digital world forever. Decentralized Google. Decentralized Storage. Decentralized AI. Decentralized VPN. A killer app alliance.
In case you've been living under a rock, here is a list of projects that Google has taken out the back shed and shot over the past two decades. They're anti-innovation at this point, and they deserve a disruptor to their business model. Timpi's Whitepaper, website and Twitter all cite various figures related to how big their market could be. They aren't necessary to summarize here. Big bikkies, as us Aussies say.
It took me only a couple of days to realize that this project deserved a Tammy Investigates. In that time, I've trawled through their FIFTY PAGE LONG whitepaper, stalked the founders on LinkedIn, chatted with them on Twitter Spaces and hunted down their week-old token through the winding corridors of Cosmos.
Let's get into it.
First impressions: smort people. Very smort people. Fully doxxed, they are. I spoke with Joerg, Gareth and Andrew on
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Co-CEO Joerg Buss: LinkedIn experience stuffed with more cybersecurity and AI stuff than my potato brain can handle; his posts about these topics go back ten years. According to the whitepaper, he literally wrote the book on cybersecurity, something listed in his LinkedIn but difficult to verify elsewhere (probably too old/different language). First appeared on YouTube/podcasts a year ago. Twitter account (@JBussNZ) is two years old, but I do wonder if he has a German alt tucked away somewhere.
Co-CEO Gareth Evans: LinkedIn experience similarly loaded with big-brain tech consultancies; his posts about these topics only go back two years. His name is too common to do a clean news/YouTube search, and his Twitter (@GarethTimpi) is brand new, so tough to find a digital history on him.
COO Jonathan Ouellet: sales and marketing guru. Had a hard time finding him on LinkedIn, and the "about us" webpage has a dead link. Twitter account (@ouelletjon) is 16 years old, but it looks like he basically just cross-posted from Insta and Facebook for ages before joining Timpi and tweeting about them. Fairly boring internet history. No pings on Google News.
Executive Advisor Neville Richardson: LinkedIn does not list Timpi on it at time of writing, nor does he post about it, but the claims made about him in the WhitePaper are listed on his profile. Seems like he's seen a broader range of industries than the CEO's. No Twitter account I can see.
VP of Marketing Andreas Schleich: LinkedIn also does not list or post about Timpi. No Twitter.
VP of Investor Relations Andrew Mugridge: LinkedIn says he's been with Timpi for two years, plenty of posts. Obviously, social media presence would be particularly important for his role. I think he drives the official Timpi account.
VP of HR and PMO Matt Day: LinkedIn lists Timpi, and his background is in banking. Seems like a sensible ally to have on side. No Twitter I can see.
Blockchain and Full Stack Dev Lukas Buss: with his history in Darkscope, where Joerg also worked, and the same last name, we're looking at a low-key case of nepotism. LinkedIn lists Timpi and says he was educated in Germany. Bit bare though.
Seems to be a discrepancy between the website and the whitepaper -- the Whitepaper lists "Roberta Kovacs" as Marketing Co-Ordinator and the website lists "Tommy Hohaia" as the Director of Communications.
I'm not going to hold it against the members of the team who haven't updated their LinkedIn, but I do wonder why the team needs to be this big at this point in time. I also wonder why some of the team don't have a bigger digital footprint.
First impressions: the whitepaper is front-loaded with a good deal of marketing speak and emotive language, which means they know to play on people's emotions instead of presenting a truly technical outline. Weirdly, the embedded graphics are pixelated and low quality, which looks odd in the overall high quality production value of the paper. The download file title is tagged "12-APR_reduced_size", which means that it's about a year old and maybe the initial size caused difficulties. In saying that, it's a well-written whitepaper, with promising description of the intended vision.
Here is a list of features in the whitepaper I'm excited about:
Provably impartial search results, using AI: I'd really like more details on this, but it sounds fantastic.
Preview function of search result pages: much safer, faster to gather information.
Separation of ads from content: thank Satoshi.
Cyber Security Alerts: we're in 2024 and this isn't a thing yet.
Crypto-specific shopping options: yes please.
Voice search capabilities
Personalized dashboards + monetization opportunities - these were only hinted at during the Twitter spaces.
The network is broken into several components:
Geocore: globally distributed nodes that serve several purposes. They protect the network against attack by separating the "administrative" side of the network from the "search user" side. Geocores also receive and coordinates search requests and allows for analysis to be run according to search term.
Collector: the "worker bees" of the network that perform web crawling. They connect to the geographically closest Geocore. Users determine how much of their system resources can be committed to the Collector and can be stopped or scheduled at will.
Guardians: distributed storage notes - I believe these may be supported by a storage partner in future - that can be run on almost any system.
Timpi Autonomous Protocol (TAP): serves to optimize latency, availability and integrity of the connections between the other system components. It seems to be capable of detecting system failures and balance them automatically without service interruption.
NFTs: grant access to the software that runs the above system components. One type grants token rewards but has a high floor price, and another does not but has a controlled price.
I will note that all of the network-running NFT subtypes are listed as "sold out" but a link is only active for the "Collector Hero Node Access" panel. NFTs appear to be sold on a chain/platform called Neutaro for $625. Expected return on investment and system requirements are clearly listed on the NFT page.
Timpi Autonomous Government (TAG): holders of the token will be able to vote on the direction of the project.
Note: I would appreciate a dev big brain's analysis on this section. Does this sound feasible? Does it sound practical?
I spoke to the team on one of their regular AMAs here. I deliberately threw them a curve ball to see their reaction, and honestly it wasn't terrible. Their AMAs appear to be regularly scheduled and I'm impressed that the founders are making the time to be accessible.
Their tweets hold a fingerprint of "marketing speak" and not a whiff of degen self-deprecation to be seen. But, quibble over style as I may, it's a healthy Twitter account. They call the members of their Discord server "Timplars", which is cute; 2107 members, active mods, some Zealy quests, detailed role selection and well defined resources. All green flags.
IDO a year ago. NTIMPI/USDC liquidity pool on OraiChain has 97K liquidity and 18.77% APR at time of writing. Their website cites a static "over 110%" APY figure, which, honestly, I feel they ought to know better. APR figures change in Defi, and they don't want to present false impressions. Also, they incorrectly invite us to "stake" the token, and really it's just providing liquidity in the pool. Is that splitting hairs?
(I know what you're thinking. I will not be linking the liquidity pool on OraiChain in this article. Follow the official links on the website so you don't get rekt.)
I am impressed about their claims to getting a CEX this early in the project (Bitmart), claiming trading opens with them in early March, ie: around about time of writing. At the same time, I'm concerned that they haven't yet liaised with the degens' ally CMC and CoinGecko. (Note: Their discord chat claims "CoinGecko soon TM")
Token Allocation Chart snipped direct from the whitepaper below:
Digging through the pages of this project has left me with some nagging questions, but none of them are serious. Is this project structure technically feasible and practical to execute?
(sidebar, the Whitepaper DOES mention another decentralized search engine project called Presearch, I might do some reading into that)
Will the software-access NFTs see success, or is it too gimmicky? What are the time-locked periods for some of the allocated tokens? How are the tokens divided between the team? Is Cosmos secure enough as a L1 to stay them through bad times, or, with EigenLayer making waves, is it safer to stick with Ethereum?
Many questions, only time will tell.
Overall, I'm still as impressed with the project as when I started out. I will be working through all of Timpi's partners in the coming weeks. My intention is to document the entire crypto killer app alliance.
Proof of Sheila
