š§µ You know that Tim Berners-Lee invented the web and you know that Vint Cerf co-created internet protocols.
But there's a Scottish engineer who's been quietly building a radical future and new internet for two decades.
Let me tell you about David Irvine.
In 2006, while everyone was busy pimping their MySpace, David looked at the internet and thought: "This is fundamentally broken."
Servers. Central control. Corporate gatekeepers.
This was before Bitcoin. Before anyone cared about decentralization. He just started fixing it.
I have been following David's work for years.
Since just after he brought a team together, founding MaidSafe in an office above a wedding dress store.
Later the team moved to an unheated boat shed where they coded through Scottish winters wearing woolly hats.
No complaints. Just building.
In 2014 David launched the world's first Initial Coin Offering (ICO) right after Mastercoin.
He hated the attention.
All he wanted was funding to keep working on the problem. He raised $7 million in hours.
Pioneered the model that changed crypto forever.
David went back to his desk the very same day.
David's network design was inspired by nature.
Inspired by how ant colonies self-organize without central command.
Simple nodes working together to create something far more intelligent than any individual part.
When Snowden's leaks hit in 2013, they confirmed what David already knew from the architecture alone.
Here's what people don't understand about David:
He's not building a business, or an empire. He's solving a problem that's been eating at him for decades.
"Once we start this network, we can't stop it. It becomes its own thing." It becomes everyone's.
Like an ant colony. Self-sustaining.
The network encrypts your data, breaks it into pieces, scatters it across thousands of devices worldwide.
No surveillance. No censorship. No kill switches.
David calls it "just engineering." But it's way more than that, it is a marvel and accomplishment that many said was impossible.
He's presented at Google (the engineers loved it, management, ermā¦ less so), he has been on Max Keiser's show, and Let's Talk Bitcoin (what a blast!).
When he told Brewster Kahle his network would put the Internet Archive out of business,
Brewster smiled: "No one has ever said that to me. That would be great!"
HBO's Silicon Valley based Pied Piper on David's work. They flew him to Hollywood as tech advisor.
He helped them write the fiction while building the real thing.
Featured in documentaries, even Disney projects.
No fanfare. Straight back to work.
February 2025:
After 18 years, the network launched. No drunken party.
No victory lap. Just the quiet satisfaction of engineers who know what they have built.
And heās already thinking about the next problem to solve.
While we argue about which billionaire owns which platform, David made something where ownership doesn't matter.
He won't promote it.
Won't take credit.
Rarely talks about himself.
Someone had to tell his story.
David Irvine will never be a household name.
He doesn't want to be.
He is "just" a Scottish engineer who saw a broken internet and spent two decades fixing it.
We need more builders like David.
Follow the man himself: @David Irvine
Follow the network: @Autonomi
https://x.com/JoshClsn/status/1928370778845626437