The Overweb is the first full instantiation of the Metaweb (Figure 12.1). It builds in enhanced privacy, accountability, and safety. Whereas the Metaweb is anything goes, the Overweb is a safe decentralized digital space. They differ as much as the Wild West and Bhutan.

Both are digital spaces. Like the Wild West, the Metaweb is liberating. But it's dangerous and you can't tell who's who. Similar to Bhutan, on the Overweb, you're accountable for your actions, know your neighbor, and commune with like-minded people.

Just as the Wild West birthed Silicon Valley, the raw Metaweb has immense potential but it can't be trusted. We expect over time it will birth many digital spaces, some of which we hope will emphasize safety, like the Overweb.

Figure 12.1 The Overweb is the Metaweb's first full instantiation (adapted from Hypothes.is Overweb deck).

The Overweb is a DAO, an open-source community, and a software application layer above the webpage that follows a design pattern called the Overweb Pattern. It includes three key elements, seven cornerstones, and a bill of rights. Together, these enable self-governance while optimizing for collective cognition, value creation, and fair value exchange.

Foremost, the Overweb is a trust layer over the Web, where people can feel safe from harassment, scams, and other forms of abuse. A safe digital space that enables communities to connect in an always-available wherever-you-are generative space and build together. The Overweb provides digital analogues to important IRL structures, including the individual being, families, friend groups, community groups, teams, organizations, and even countries, so our lives can stratify into an integral digital existence.

The Overweb is a social ecosystem that secures and supports creators, context, private research, fact-checking, citations, collaborative research, and much more. Today, we have a limited view of the information on the Web. We need

Comprising three pillars, the Overweb pattern is present throughout the Overweb ecosystem: Safe Digital Space, On-Page Presence, and On-Page Interaction.

Safe digital space gives participants a level of security, safety, and surety impossible on Today's Web. The Overweb is a safe, privacy-honoring digital space above the webpage with one-account-per-participant and abuse safeguards. Hence, anyone you encounter on the Overweb is a real person in good standing. Communities organize as meta-communities, which have their own application process and community-based moderation. The Overweb has an adaptive account uniquification process that ensures each account is a unique real person so that no one person controls multiple accounts. Say goodbye to scammers, trolls, serial abusers, unidentified bots, trolls, fake accounts, purveyors of disinformation and clickbait, and throwaway accounts.

Participants have one main Overweb account that includes a real phone number and a unique biometric identifier, which is controlled by the account owner. The Overweb cannot unmask the user. People have multiple personas tied to the primary account. The connection between the person and primary account can be visible or invisible. The different personas carry different information. For example, a winter sports persona may have the type of equipment, experience level, even mountains or resorts visited, and/or favorite conditions. Communications use encryption and can be disappearing.

Communities organize themselves as meta-communities – networks within networks that have their own dedicated layer above the webpage. Meta-communities have a common purpose, a code of honor or conduct, as well as an approval process for entry, and community-based moderation. Skiers and snowboarders, for example, could have their own meta-community.

Many meta-communities are DAOs, while others are existing online communities or communities formed for a specific purpose. Members choose an active persona when accessing a meta-community. E.g., members of the skiing or snowboarding meta-community may choose their winter sports persona. Thus, meta-communities operate as a safe autonomous zone above the webpage, accessible by members. Their safeguards ensure privacy and that people are real and in good standing.

The meta-community may deactivate the account or restrict access to people who violate their code of honor. This affects all of their personas. Completing a community-defined rehabilitation process is necessary to restore their account. All the past activities with any of their personas stay with the main account, whether the persona still exists. In this way, the main account is like the US Social Security account number. If we charge up credit cards and don't pay them off, our credit score will plummet and we can't get more credit. In either case, we cannot just get another account. We're interested to see how conflict resolution, rehabilitation, and restorative Justice emerge on the Overweb.

The Overweb gives people a real-time presence on webpages similar to Google Docs. Today's web isolates participants. This prevents them from knowing who is on the same webpage as them. We're missing people with common interests and similar reasons for being there. Today's web is like an empty café or stadium. The Overweb creates a safe way for participants to meet by going visible on webpages of their common interest in persona. Visible participants can see whoever else is visible on the page at the same time (or in the recent past), review participant profiles, and start communication. They can also limit who they see to members of their meta-communities.

Here's an example of how it works. Our friend Jane enjoys snowboarding, hence one of her personas could be @snoboarder333. Because of the safe digital space pillar, anyone who encounters her on the Overweb knows she is a real person in good standing. Let's say Jane wants to snowboard in the Alps next winter. In search, she finds SkiResort.info but feels overwhelmed to learn that the Alps are humongous with 1150 ski resorts, 26,738 kilometers of slopes, and 8,218 ski lifts. What to do? She needs help and not just from anybody with a snowboard.

With an on-page presence, she can "go visible" on the webpage for the Alps or even the SkiResort.info home page. Once visible, she can see others who are visible. Hundreds could be visible.

She can review the profiles of the visible participants and the ongoing conversation in live chat for the page. She wants help on where to go. So she filters the live chat and the visibility list for people with similar levels of experience, equipment, and favorite conditions. She can browse profiles to find people working or living in the Alps. Or people who've skied many mountains. She may see a post from someone she wants to talk with on the page's live chat. She can reply to the post or send them a private message.

The recipient will receive a notification that someone – a real person – they don't know has sent them a message. They can ignore or flag the message. If they choose to respond, a dedicated chat room will open up between them. This new connection can go wherever it wants.

Through on-page presence, the Overweb gives opportunities to meet and interact with people you wouldn't meet IRL. Meeting people will be easier if you already have many interests in common.

On-page interaction is like a graffiti project for people in your tribe. People can see the creations within their meta-communities and add their perspective. On-page interaction gives computation – as interactions, transactions, and experiences – a real-time presence on webpages, similar to how you can tag your aunt in a photo on Facebook. The content creator controls the webpage. You can weigh in if they enable comments. Or if you have access to the Overweb.

Beyond notes on text, the Overweb enables structured annotations configured by Overweb developers on any media from text snippets to parts of images to segments of videos and podcasts. In the future, participants will have a quiver of smart tags, including bridges, notes, conversations, polls, lists, and more that they can attach to any content on the web. This enables participants to have conversations directly in real time and indirectly through smart tag interactions attached to specific pieces of content, layering thoughts and knowledge on webpages. Smart tags are stigmergic, meaning they build upon the work of others and create a collective intelligence.

The Overweb is not only a new frontier for participants, but also for developers. It offers a new realm for developers to explore and create useful and innovative tools that can help people navigate and interact above the webpage with more precision and understanding, showcasing their skills and work in the next level of the Internet.

On the Overweb, developers can create smart tags for a wide range of applications, such as meetings, audio conversations, fact-checking, content manipulation utilities, content generation, polling, and more. With the ability to easily reuse backend code and build upon existing work, developers can quickly create smart tags and begin earning rewards while contributing to the ecosystem. They can offer their creations for free or a fee, or by subscription or donation.

The Overweb's virtual headquarters in the Metaverse will be heptagonal, reflecting the seven cornerstones of the Overweb. The cornerstones represent the fundamental values of the Overweb, and demonstrate the Overweb's philosophy of creating a symbiotic relationship between participants and the environment, where all parties benefit from the exchange of value and data. The evolving implementation of the 7 cornerstones into smart contracts and software will be led by the Web4 Foundation, the appropriate working groups, and open source developers.

The Overweb is built on the principle of sovereign identity, which enables individuals to manage and control their own digital identity and data without outside intervention. This approach is rooted in the sovereign identity movement, which aims to bring the same trust, freedom, and accountability of the real world to the digital realm.

The Overweb also recognizes that traditional centralized systems of identity management are often exploitative and lack transparency. Hence, the Overweb will not require that participants connect their sovereign digital identity to a real world identity and will support pseudonymous personas. The goal is to enable trustworthy and safe management of identity online, so that every individual can manage their privacy and control their data.

The Overweb prefers social recovery or multi-party computation (MPC) for managing identities, as these methods allow people to retain control of their identity and data even if they lose access to their wallet or other login credentials. This approach ensures that participants can regain access to their identity and data in case of loss or theft, without relying on centralized authorities.

The Overweb is built on the principle of fair value exchange, which is a way of compensating creators and participants for their efforts and the quality of content they bring to the environment. This approach is rooted in Web3 and game theory, and is designed to create a more equitable relationship between the environment and its participants.

The Overweb recognizes that the exploitative relationships of Web 2.0 have led to a lack of fair compensation for creators and participants. Hence, the system is implementing a system of value-based incentives that rewards participants for their engagement and contributions. This system is designed to acknowledge and reward participants for the value they bring to the ecosystem.

One important aspect of the fair value exchange system is the compensation of bridgers – participants that connect information and create value by fostering interactions and collaborations. Bridgers receive rewards based on the value their bridges create in the ecosystem as described below. They can also earn rewards from curating bridges, labeling content, and watching advertisements.

The Overweb is committed to creating a more equitable system of value exchange for all its participants, where participants are fairly compensated for their efforts and contributions.

The Overweb understands that data privacy and control are crucial. The environment is built on the principle that participants own, control, and monetize their data. This means that participants have the power to decide who can access their data and for what purpose. They can choose to track their data, make it available for use by marketers and algorithms, or keep it private, or not track it at all. The Overweb's algorithms are open-source and auditable, ensuring that participants can trust the handling of their data.

In addition, the Overweb also provides opportunities for participants to monetize their data. Members of meta-communities can sell or rent their anonymized data through data cooperatives, or take part in basic income programs. These programs allow participants to earn compensation for their data while maintaining control over its use. The participant can choose not to take part in any data program if they do not want to share their data.

The Overweb is committed to creating a transparent and fair data ecosystem where participants have the power to control their data and the opportunity to monetize it.

The Overweb is working towards a future in which humans and AI work together in alignment. Instead of fearing AI, the Overweb recognizes the potential for AI to augment human capabilities and enhance our ability to navigate the digital landscape as well as the need to align AI with human interests. The Overweb accomplishes this by requiring autonomous AI Systems to be constitutional or glass box, which were both discussed in Chapter 2. To join the Overweb AI-DAO, systems must either have heuristic imperatives to reduce the likelihood of harm or be explainable such that system workings and decision-making processes are clearly understandable and manageable.

To participate in the Overweb, autonomous agents must possess a decentralized digital identity, be associated with a real individual, obtain consent for accessing participant data, and publish notable activities and discussions with other autonomous agents on the blockchain. AI-DAO agents will actively monitor this activity in real-time to identify anomalies, as well as any inappropriate or suspicious behavior.

On the Overweb, AI is present to serve the participants. It can help participants understand their personal preferences, protect them from cognitive manipulation, act as their personal assistant or agent, filter out unwanted information, generate unique content, and safeguard their data. The Overweb's algorithms are open-source, which means that the community can contribute, share, and monetize their own AI models. This approach creates transparency and ensures that all bots are identifiable and connected to a real person. Additionally, AI-generated content is labeled on the Overweb.

Our DAO is well aware of people's concerns about the future of work and the potential for AI to displace jobs. The Overweb, however, is committed to creating a symbiotic relationship between humans and AI, in which AI can enhance human capabilities and create new opportunities for work and collaboration.

With the integration of AI assistants and agents, mundane tasks and content generation will be handled with ease, freeing up more time for connecting IRL. By 2030, experts project that AI assistants on cell phones will surpass the capabilities of the AI currently employed by today's largest companies. The AI-assisted web of the future promises to greatly enhance both human-to-computer and human-to-human connection, conversation, and collaboration.

The Overweb is built on the principle of contextual relevance, which means that the environment only shows participants information that is related to the focus of their attention. This approach is designed to improve the user experience by reducing information overload and providing participants with relevant and useful content.

To achieve this, the Overweb anchors on the Universal Content Graph. The Universal Content Graph connects the web on an idea-by-idea basis, creating a collective learning map that grows with the interactions of participants. This map provides a new way of locating information, interactions, transactions, and experiences, enabling participants to build and explore the relevant information ecologies.

Compared to traditional database structures, the Universal Content Graph retrieves information orders of magnitude faster than searching. For a piece of online content, participants can find all related information within microseconds. This approach allows participants to quickly and easily find the information they need, saving time and reducing frustration.

This approach ensures that participants only see information that is relevant and useful to them, making the environment easy to use and enjoyable to explore.

The Overweb is built on the principle of radical transparency; people thrive when they have access to information and can make informed decisions. The environment's transparent approach ensures that participants know when they are dealing with humans versus bots and how their data is being handled.

Every person on the Overweb is a real person in good standing, and their entire history of communications and interactions across profiles stays with their primary account. People are responsible for their digital footprint, which helps build trust. For any participant, the Overweb provides an overview of the blocks and flags they've given and received as well as any censorship requests and actions. This helps the participants to understand their own behavior and the behavior of others.

All bots tether to a human account, which is responsible for the bot's activities. The Overweb's smart contracts and owner can revoke a bot's permissions and participants can block bots and the content they produce.

The algorithms governing the display of information and interactions on the Overweb are open-source, this means that participants can understand the algorithm's implications and turn it off, or switch to a better-aligned one. This approach ensures that participants have control over the information they see and can make informed decisions about the content they consume.

Participants also have their own smart filter, which they can use to limit what they see. The filter is adaptive, transparent, and tunable. This means that the filter can adapt to the user's patterns and the user can see what's getting stopped and make adjustments.

The Overweb surfaces information related to the viewer's focus, similar to how when we observe something in real life. By focusing our attention, we can access greater levels of detail and context that are relevant at the moment. The Overweb aims to replicate this experience online by enabling participants to zoom in and see more details about the content they are viewing.

In the meta-layer, participants have access to information relevant to what they are focusing on. Participants can see information, interactions, and context that relate to the focus of their attention. Unlike on traditional web pages that are flat and static, participants can access a greater level of detail and context by activating metadata and navigating to additional information.

The Overweb uses attention triggering, which displays controls and metadata related to the participant's focus of attention. This reduces distractions and makes the user experience more engaging and efficient. As participants scroll through content, content with metadata activates. When content activates, a circular badge displays the number of smart tags available to the participant; interacting with the badge displays an overview of smart tags with a filterable list.

The smart tags represent metadata and interactions related to the content such as notes, bridges, conversations, polls, and more. They provide context for the focus of one's attention, enabling participants to see more details about the related metadata by hovering and clicking. This approach allows participants to access the information they want, when they want it, making the environment less distracting and overwhelming despite the sheer quantity of information available.

You have rights on the Overweb. You don't have rights on Today's Web. Depending on where you are, you may have rights on the Metaweb.

The Overweb is a sovereign digital space above the webpage comprising a shared universal content graph and countless sovereign meta-layers for applications and meta-communities. Operating as a DAO, the Overweb creates safe decentralized public space with protections and rights unavailable on Today's Web. We think these are the minimum viable rights for digital existence and a thriving digital democracy. The evolving implementation of these rights into smart contracts and software will be led by the Web4 Foundation, the appropriate working groups, and open-source developers.

On Today's Web, you have no privacy. By accepting cookies on websites, you are consenting for them to track your data. By accepting the terms of the conditions set by the platforms, you are giving them free rein over your data. This includes ownership of your creations, and even the photos that you upload to private galleries.

On the Overweb, your privacy is paramount. You determine what information to divulge to specific groups of people. You have a sovereign identity for which only you have the private key (unless you outsource its protection to a custodian). The Overweb cannot doxx you or even supply your identity to authorities because your private key secures access.

Today's Web has frequent security lapses. As mentioned earlier, millions of records leak in hacks every year, providing fodder to be sold on the Darknet to identity thieves.

The Overweb protects your data from unauthorized access. It builds on the cryptography systems inherent in blockchain. This provides a much higher level and granularity of security than centralized systems. In centralized systems, security lapses can leak hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of records at a time.

On Today's Web, you relinquish the right to your data to use Internet platforms. Over time, they amass a huge amount of information about you, which they exploit to influence your behavior to their benefit. The ticket to entry for the use of social platforms is access to your mind and ownership of your expressed thoughts. This is like being in a film. Someone else is bankrolling it so you're being directed and you don't own your performance. And the film never ends unless you quit. Online, the influence is subtler: they decide what content hits your feed, its order, and they own your data.

On the Overweb, you control your data. You don't need to opt out of having your digital whereabouts tracked; that's the default. Opt-in if you want your activities tracked – for your use. You can monetize your data through data cooperatives, which protect your identity. There may also be some which reveal your entire identity, but pay you more. You can also enter UBI (Universal Basic Income) programs. Ultimately, there will be applications for you to learn more about yourself via your data, e.g., when you are acting on confirmation biases.

Self-determination requires cognitive freedom. We exercise cognitive freedom when our cognitive process is free from undue influence such that we are able to align our actions with our best interests and values. This can be challenging on Today's Web.

On Today's Web, when you use a search engine or social media, you enter a cognitive cage that limits what you can do, say, and see. Algorithms whose sole purpose is changing your behavior determine not only what you see but the order you see things. Within algorithmic regimes, if your legal speech is outside guidelines, they can curtail or throttle down your existence on their platform. That speech legality varies from place to place complicates matters.

The Overweb offers freedom from manipulation by unidentified bots, fake accounts, algorithms, and disinformation campaigns. You control the algorithm, not vice versa. Each participant has an adaptive, transparent, tunable smart filter. You see what goes through. You can find out what doesn't. If not, you can set up specific criteria for the filter to alert you. Make up your own mind based on synthesizing the totality of information that you allow through your filter.

Today's Web has less context than ever. Escalating since the Attention Economy took hold, commercial sites avoid outbound links from which they do not benefit. The lack of non-promotional outbound links has created a dearth of context, which makes it difficult to distinguish what is real from what is not.

On the Overweb, context is a digital birthright. You can see connections between first-hand accounts in blogs, tweets, and posts; historical accounts; and unfolding events in the news. You have unfettered access to deep layers of context for the focus of your attention. Access 360° contextual information right when it's most needed.

Today's Web is a dangerous place. Scammers are everywhere on the Web as people, sites, pages, offerings, reviews, videos, communities, and more. Abusers are on social media to steal from you or exploit your emotions. Trolls and gang stalkers want to make you pay for what you say. Bad actors peddle disinformation to affect your thoughts and behaviors.

On the Overweb, participants enjoy safety from serial abusers, and the comfort of knowing that everyone you encounter is a real person in good standing. Because everyone has one primary account, you know the person you're connecting with online is not a serial abuser. You know they don't make a practice out of harmful behavior. Disinformation is just a trickle because it stays with the person's primary account forever.

The Overweb prioritizes the protection of its participants from rogue AI agents. Its primary goal is to establish a secure environment that allows for the responsible and safe deployment of AI advancements. Serving as a computing environment, the Overweb has the capacity to enforce limitations on autonomous agents that were previously unachievable within the current web framework. To operate within the Overweb, these agents are required to register using a decentralized digital ID, adhere to specific cognitive architecture requirements such as David Shapiro's three heuristics, establish a connection with an Overweb participant, obtain consent for accessing participant data, and log significant activities and intra-agent communications on a blockchain. The Overweb's AI system actively evaluates this data to promptly identify any instances of inappropriate or suspicious behavior.

The algorithms operating on you are insidious and invisible. You don't know when they are active or how active they are, despite them controlling much of our digital lives. The algorithms may use data you don't want them to use. They may also lump you in with others (i.e., filter bubbles) that reflect the biases of the data scientists that are building them.

On the Overweb, you fully understand the algorithms acting upon your data. Overweb algorithms are open source, identifiable, and explainable. In open-source communities, people can contribute, share, and monetize their own AI models. All bots are identifiable and connected to a real person. Additionally, AI-generated content is labeled on the Overweb. AI systems on the Overweb must be explainable such that the workings and decision-making processes of these systems can be clearly understood and examined. This level of transparency and accountability is essential for promoting responsible and ethical AI technology.

You can also control your personal AIs. Your smart filter, for example, ensures that you see what's needed but also allows you to inspect what's filtered out.

On Today's Web, free speech is a highly debated topic. Many argue that the internet should be a place where people can express their opinions and ideas freely, without fear of censorship or retribution. However, there are also concerns about hate speech, misinformation, and other forms of harmful content spreading on the web. As a result, many platforms have implemented policies and systems to moderate and remove content that violates their terms of service or community guidelines. These policies are often reactive, responding to reported content after it has been posted, and have led to inconsistent enforcement and censorship along partisan lines and for narrative control.

The Overweb is built on the principle of free speech, modeled after the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This means that participants have the right to express their ideas, perspectives, and opinions without fear of censorship or retaliation. The Overweb recognizes the importance of free expression in fostering open and constructive conversations and interactions.

The Overweb's approach to free speech is not absolute. While participants have the right to express themselves freely, they are also accountable for their words and actions. The Overweb community has a zero-tolerance policy for harassment and other forms of abusive behavior, and for speech that incites violence or causes harm to others. Participants who violate these policies will have their access curtailed. All enforcement actions will be community-driven and transparent. Meta-communities set and enforce (or outsource) their own policies for content. Additionally, the Overweb will transparently comply with valid legal requests, such as court orders and subpoenas, to remove content that violates local laws.

Today's pages inhibit expression. Some blogs allow you to leave a comment at the bottom of the page. You can also make comments in-line on Medium articles and on webpages with an annotation extension. Social media limits you to fit their business model; tweets must be 280 characters or fewer. Many trolls are there to harp on whatever you express, especially Twitter.

On the Overweb, enjoy a safe digital space for art, civil discourse, and debate within your meta-communities. You can translate your thoughts and creations into knowledge artifacts that layer over the webpage. You can create bridges, notes, conversations, and more, only limited by the ever-expanding repertoire of smart tags available on the Overweb.

But wait! Something integral is missing. A differentiator from those who play in the flat, static web. One right – perhaps the most important – that you've likely never heard of before. It's actually multiple rights wrapped up into one.

The right to be present. And the right to be. The right to access a digital presence overlaying our lives. The right to have a presence and to be seen.

We don't have a visible presence on webpages. The closest thing is social media. We see a time-stamped record of thoughts. Chat may be available. We can't, however, know who is on the same webpage.

We exist in the digital world as our interactions. Except in the metaverse, where you have an avatar, but not safety. On the Web, we can't post up on our favorite sites and meet fellow visitors.

Being online is like being a soul without a digital body that incarnates as posts. We can't see one another. But we see the posts. We continue posting, leaving cairns along the path for someone to know our soul and ideas. Some of us leave long trails of these digital incarnations. But follow as one may, these web paths never lead back to the soul. You're the digital shadow one cannot catch.

The Overweb offers a visible presence on webpages to meet people with common interests. You can toggle between visible and invisible on specific browser tabs or webpages. One day, your avatar will walk on webpages.

The Presence browser overlay provides access to the Overweb, a safe digital space in which real people and information have presence and interactions over the webpage. The overlay is accessible through browser extensions, a software development kit (SDK), and a mobile browser. Browsers, web apps, dApps, and mobile apps can integrate the Overweb by adopting the protocol. Thus, entire communities will connect across devices and applications. Society will benefit from a connected citizenry equipped to take part in all levels of democracy (Figure 12.2).

Presence provides first access to the Overweb. Its intention is to support and motivate people, teams, and communities who want to connect and interact around their shared areas of interest and build robust information ecologies. Community incentives reward participants with value for their contributions to the ecosystem.

Figure 12.2 A Wikipedia page with a canopi.

The Presence overlay technology won the award for "Disruptive Technology Culture Drivers" from the EU's flagship NGI program. This award was for building a new culture around technology that breaks up knowledge silos, creates contextual intelligence, connects disciplines, and targets a diverse audience. The initiator of the Overweb, Bridgit, was the only non-European company to win a Next Generation Internet award from the EU's flagship program.1

Assessing the Overweb via the Presence browser overlay provides a rich web experience. It enables people to interact, collaborate, and learn together on the same webpage with no coordination. Even if they don't know one another. Or speak the same language. Via a browser overlay tool that navigates an interactive self-assembling collective learning map, we call the Universal Content Graph.

Among many other things:

• Presence enables participants to access a secure social ecosystem over the webpage and engage in civil discourse within meta-communities through on-page evidence-based conversations, bridges, polls, and other smart tags. The Presence ethos is every person has value and can contribute to knowledge and collective intelligence.
• Presence supports critical thinking, reasoned argument, shared knowledge, and verifiable facts. These interactions self-assemble into the Universal Content Graph, a map of the online information ecology.
• Presence enables massive online collaboration among diverse communities working together on issues that lift their communities. Collaboration on this scale is necessary to address humanity's global challenges.

The first Presence products are the Canopi SDK and the Canopi Extension. Both enable participants to access canopis above websites. (See the section on Overlay Apps.) The Presence DAO aims to decentralize and open source the Presence browser overlay.

The Overweb gives participants a visual presence to interact in the space above third-party webpages. Participants opt-in to visibility and know others are real people in good standing.

Canopis enable people to connect in safety. A canopi is a sidebar on a third-party webpage that enables people to have a visual presence in the meta-layer without modifying server-side source code. Participants can opt-in to being visible on specific pages, knowing that everyone there is a real person in good standing. They can retrieve profiles, chat, and make friends.

Participants can see other visible people on the same webpage, review the page chat (that is always available on the page), and post messages or replies. They can create channels on the page chat to focus more deeply on a subject. They can also form private encrypted one-on-one and group chats. These chat messages can also disappear after a set time. People can also block or flag people and bots. They can also see those blocked by others in their meta-community, and set filters to exclude people that others block.

The six main building blocks of the Overweb are smart tags, overlay applications, meta-communities, smart filters, MORCs, and adjacent space.

Rather than just reading web content, smart tags enable interactions with content and real people interested in the content. For example, you can make notes, start a conversation, or schedule a meeting. The Overweb provides a quiver of smart tags for use on any page. While Today's Web relegates comments to the bottom of the page (except for Medium), smart tags – including notes, conversations, bridges, lists, and more – attach to related webpage content, making the Web hyper-dimensional and stigmergic. Developers will create hundreds of smart tags for you to use.

Smart tags enable real people to interact around and with content snippets, which is a foundational infrastructure for the next level of the web. They are computational code that attach information and interactions to webpage content, enabling indirect collaboration. Smart tags allow interactions with content (e.g., notes, bridges), interactions with others through content (e.g., comments on notes, conversations), and the display of information and interactions from other applications. They support computational text, which updates based on information external to the page.

For instance, smart tags enable an author to make their publisher's page work for them. Through the Overweb, she can tag information related to the book. She can hold or announce a Reddit-style "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) on the webpage, next to the image of the book. She may use a meeting smart tag or a specific tag for AMAs. Anyone who visits the page will see the tag for the event. If they RSVP, they will receive an email reminder to return to the page to interact with the author.

Standard webpages do not enable authors to connect with book readers except through comments at the bottom of the page. Substack's solution for connecting creators and readers is a mobile chat app, but this requires code switching, which can be exhausting. The whole point of the smart tag is that you don't have to go anywhere else. There's nowhere to go. The action is where you are. This is but one example of the plethora of possibilities presented by smart tags.

In 2022, most online information is still unstructured, be it a news article, blog, video, tweet, or podcast. It's just a blob of information that machines cannot process for non-generative purposes. As humans, we need to read and think about it, and sometimes even structure it in our minds to understand it. Machines and humans can read structured information. Examples of structured data include tables, data in databases, classifications, and metadata. The Overweb enables developers to create custom smart tags and overlay applications that label web content and create structured annotations. For example, there will be an app that enables bridgers to label content on webpages for machine learning. This data will also enable smart filters that personalize the Overweb experience.

The Overweb has native smart tags, including notes, bridges, conversations, polls, labeling, lists, and meetings. Developers can build and monetize external smart tags. The creator chooses which ones to use. Others with access (e.g., within their meta-community) see their tags.

As shown in Figure 12.3, we envision many types of smart tag integrations. From extending the reach of legacy apps into Overweb, to connecting with personal and enterprise systems, content servers, payment gateways, paywalls, and more.

Figure 12.3 Smart tag integration possibilities"

Today's Web is full of siloed applications available only from destination sites. Gordon Brander, founder of Subconscious, says the Web was supposed to be a global, connected brain that would enable us to think together but it didn't pan out. Apps trap our thoughts in software as a service (SaaS) silos. Early on, the Web adopted a same-origin security policy, restricting documents or scripts loaded by a page to only interact with resources from the same source. Apps inherit this model. Each app lives in its own pocket universe. They can only talk to one another with one-off integrations, which often require business deals. Because security ties to specific computers in the cloud, the data gets siloed. This doesn't scale to thinking together as a planet.

Since overlay applications use a unified identity model, as an abstraction layer, they can call multiple apps without violating the same-origin policy. This means overlay applications can authenticate participants, pull data from multiple sources for the participant, manipulate the data, and expose the relevant context and interactions either in the Presence sidebar or otherwise above webpage content. Some overlay apps, like smart tags and canopi, are native to the Presence browser overlay and provide its foundational functionality.

The smart tags overlay app supports Overweb native smart tags. Smart tags are computational code that attach information and interactions to content on webpages. These include bridges, notes, conversations, polls, lists, and meetings, as well as the capacity to work with external smart tags produced by the developer community.

Canopi is like a rooftop speakeasy above every webpage; a place you can schmooze with people in the know. The canopi overlay app operates in the Presence sidebar and is accessible via the Canopi Enterprise SDK and the Presence Browser extension. With just three lines of code, the Canopi Enterprise SDK operates a canopi on a single website. The extension enables access to canopis on every site and provides additional functionality and benefits. Canopi enables real people to enter a safe digital space over a webpage. They can see visible people, their profiles, or take part in the page's group chat. They can create rooms that provide messaging over the entire web for one-on-one or group conversations. In the future, developers will build plug-ins or extensions to canopi.

We expect the developer and business communities will build overlay apps to create new experiences with their proprietary information and interactions. People can activate overlay apps for a specific tab.

In real life, we have social contracts that govern our behavior in specific contexts and align with prevailing culture and norms. These contracts enable us to create safe environments for interaction and pathways for building trust in social situations. The Overweb reconstitutes the notion of a social contract on the Web so purpose-aligned communities can have safe digital spaces to meet and interact.

The Overweb enables people to express ideas and perspectives within structures for constructive online conversations and interactions. They provide a safe space for aligned communities to interact, at ease, without having to worry about predators, trolls, or harassment. And participants get rewards for the value they create.

With the Overweb, when people interact, they operate within a new social contract for the digital age – safe digital space above the webpage. Everyone on the Overweb is a real person in good standing. Unidentified bots, fake accounts, and serial abusers cannot take part. In addition, each person's entire history of communications and interactions across profiles stays with their primary account; they're responsible for their digital footprint.

This digital social contract manifests within a social construct called a meta-community. The meta-community enables communities with a common purpose to connect, communicate, cooperate, coordinate, collaborate, and celebrate above the webpage. It has a sovereign layer over the Web that provides a safe digital space for its members. People can meet and interact with like minds, without worrying about predators or trolls. As a sovereign, meta-communities make and enforce their own norms and rules, rather than rely on third parties like Facebook. They cannot be de-platformed.

Our DAO is excited about the potential of meta-communities to support online existing communities like the Good Country and Balajian network states. We believe that creating safe digital spaces for like-minded individuals to connect and collaborate on important issues is crucial for addressing global challenges and creating a better future for all."

The Good Country was aspirationally the first meta-community. British policy advisor, author, and researcher Simon Anholt and American human rights and development practitioner Madeline Hung sought to enable people around the world to shape and implement environmental policy. They wanted to foster enhanced cooperation and collaboration within the international community.

Their audience was the 13% (over 700 million people) who care about international cooperation and collaboration. The Good Country began in September 2018 and at its heyday had several thousand citizens that paid $5 per year.

Their premise was that humanity could tackle "grand challenges" more effectively if nation-states worked together, supported by a strong mandate from their own citizens. No individual country can resolve complex global issues on its own. But instead of collaborating to face our shared existential threats, countries focus most of their attention, resources, and energy on competing with one another. The Good Country was to shift this dynamic towards cooperation, enabling people to act as citizens of the planet.

>In his 2022 book The Network State2, Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, coined the terms "network state" and "startup society." Balaji offers multiple definitions of the network state. First, his definition in one sentence:

This makes sense. Create a new internet community online, once it grows big enough, materialize it offline, and begin negotiating for status. As Vitalik Buterin noted, anyone could imagine a network state under this definition that they could get behind. Balaji's more complex definition is a long sentence:

The startup society is the beginning stage of a network state. It's a startup that aims to be a country based on a shared purpose rather than geography. Along the way, the startup society becomes a network union; like a trade union but for the network. The network union centers on a social networking app that posts daily actions and crowdsources land IRL. While we love the vision, we prefer community leadership models such as DAO councils rather than a single person.

We also think creating another information silo is an inadequate digital strategy for a startup society. The members of any digital community, including startup societies, would benefit from being able to meet and interact wherever they are online, and from having a shared view so they can come to a common understanding and build knowledge together. We don't think communities should have to go to a siloed site or app to interact or that members should have to worry about fake accounts, bots, or predators.

Like the Good Country and startup societies like Afropolitan, meta-communities emerge from groups of people coming together for a common purpose. This can be Web 2.0 online communities, such as a Facebook group, a community on Circle or Mighty Networks, a Discord server, or any website. They can also be Web 3.0 communities like DAOs, NFT collection holders, network states, Gitcoin applicants, and Giveth projects.

The Overweb's meta-community has governance features that Elinor Ostrom recommends for protecting commons from free-rider tragedies.3 These include clear boundaries on who can be a member, management by members, communities making their own rules, communities monitoring behavior, graduating sanctions for those who violate community rules, cheap and accessible means of conflict resolution, and self-determination.

Communities moderate themselves through their code of honor, which specifies interactions and content that are not allowed. The consequences of violating the code are progressive and may include cessation of the ability to post, contact others, be present, or deactivation of membership. The amount of rogue content, however, is minimal because of the accountability built into the Overweb. Also, entry to the meta-community is a process owned by the community. A good screening process and accountability means less exposure to antisocial and antagonistic behavior. Meta-communities may offer rehabilitation processes, decentralized arbitration (e.g., through Kleros.io, a decentralized arbitration service for new economy disputes), and/or restorative justice for people who run afoul of the rules. It's up to the meta-community.

With meta-communities, communities extend their reach from a single webpage or site to all relevant webpages. Members can meet on webpages of their common interest and connect or interact through content via smart tags. Participants can see the smart tag interactions of members from all their meta-communities.

On any page, members within a meta-community – visible or not – can interact with content on the webpage. Through on-page interactions, members have access to a set of smart tags (e.g., bridges, conversations) that they can attach to web content. Most smart tags posted within a meta-community are only available to its members. The exceptions are bridges and labeling, which are available across all meta-communities. If one is in multiple meta-communities, they can re-post content among the other communities.

Voting results are the collective voice of the meta-community. Citizens may vote on the nation's strategic direction, how it operates, what projects to support, member preferences, etc. While many governments conduct censuses once a decade, a meta-community can conduct votes whenever needed in hours or minutes. Taking part in paid polls for research centers and projects can generate income for participants and the meta-community.

The Overweb's meta-communities are a network of networks that connect through parent-child relationships, as well as categories, subtopics, and tags. Communities can have channels with their own content filters and serve a subset of the nation's membership. When making a post, participants can tag channels within the meta-community.

The Overweb's meta-community capability supports the following purpose-aligned communities:

• Decentralized community - Meta-communities can be part of a comprehensive digital strategy for decentralized communities, such as DAOs, websites, follower and fan groups, advocacy groups, neighborhood groups, discords, slacks, group chats, cohorts, conference and event attendees, and NFT communities. With the meta-community, small, high-trust communities can safely meet and interact over any webpage. NFTs can gate participation in the meta-community. We expect that many decentralized communities will organize their meta-community as a DAO. Single sign-on with an existing community directory is possible, but it prevents interactions with other communities, although individuals could choose to register with the Overweb to work with other communities. Our DAO sees the potential for meta-communities to enable members to effortlessly connect and interact around common interests, between meetings.
• Network state/startup society - the Overweb's meta-community aligns with and complements the Balajian network states and startup societies, extending their reach to the entire Web. In fact, a meta-community would round out the digital strategy of any startup society or network state that's not thinking beyond a siloed super-app.
• MORC - Massive online research collaboratives (MORCs) are groups that come together around the goal of building knowledge or the information ecology for a specific topic
• Data cooperative - Data cooperatives aggregate the data of interest aligned groups (e.g., people with high blood pressure) to secure and administer deals with companies that want access to the anonymized data of cooperative members.
• Federation - Federations are meta-nations or supra-nations that have one or more child communities. As meta-DAO with a focus on regeneration, we can imagine the federation for planetary regeneration having child communities, e.g., one for regenerators in the northern hemisphere and one for regenerators in the southern hemisphere. People in a child nation can see (or filter out) people and posts of the federation vs. their meta-community. When they post, they specify whether it goes to their nation or the federation. Meta-nations and child communities must both approve the relationship.
• Company/organization - Digital entities enjoy their own dedicated layer over the Web to advance the aims of a company, organization, agency, project, or organization. The forming entity has control. The entity determines the purpose, who gets access, and moderates the content as they see fit. Examples of a digital entity are a corporation, a nonprofit organization and its network of collaborators, and a government agency and its contractors. Digital entities have a clear hierarchy that makes and enforces its rules. Digital entities can activate single sign-on with an existing organizational directory but, as above, it prevents interaction with other communities.
• Digital guild - Digital guilds are small groups of purpose-aligned people collaborating on a project. Guilds have a specific mission and members coordinate to make it happen. Guilds have up to 150 members (the Dunbar number), which, according to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, is the cognitive limit of the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

We expect millions of meta-communities in the next decade. Federations or meta-communities will bring together child communities that share geography, ethnicity, topical interest (e.g., regeneration), spiritual practice, or religion. Meta-communities can amplify the voices, ideas, and products of their constituency. Meta-communities provide a novel organizing structure for communities, projects, causes, mutual aid, support, adulation, and building knowledge.

People who join meta-communities early have the most influence. And the greatest opportunity to earn rewards. The people who start the meta-community – by buying the meta-community domain and building a community – may earn a percentage of the funds raised. Members vote for new members. The founding members determine the economics of membership and may issue a fungible token or NFTs. The percentage for consensus defaults to 50% but can change by vote, similar to other configurations. If disagreements arise, members can fork a meta-community.

As a systemic solution, the Overweb seeks to:

• Support free speech
• Avoid censorship of legal speech
• Prevent violence and harm
• Allow safe places for expression within communities that have different tolerances
• Prevent information overload
• Avoid types of content and people
• Maintain accountability regarding content and interactions

Thus, the Overweb addresses:

• Who's there and holds them accountable for their behavior
• What you can post and who sees it
• Filtering out what does not fit within personal tolerances
• Ways to see aggregate views of what's available and drill on what captures their interest

The information on the Overweb might seem overwhelming. Hundreds, if not thousands, of smart tags, can attach to a single piece of content. Any page can have many pieces of content with smart tags. But attention-triggering and smart filtering reduce the noise, by screening out content that's not relevant at the moment. Smart tags that make it through attention filtering aggregate into filterable smart tag overviews that enable the participant to drill down according to their interest. When someone's attention approaches active content, an aggregate view of the associated smart tags will pop up. The participant can then filter by media type (e.g., text, video), relationship type (e.g., contradicting, supporting), and smart tag type (e.g., note, bridge) to generate a matching list.

Smart filters enable participants to regulate the content and interactions that come to them. The smart filter is the participant's personal algorithm. They own and control it. The smart filter displays the intersection of the page's smart tag content, the content accessible to the participant, and their preferences. Smart filter settings include whitelists and blacklists for applications and sites, and blacklisted words. They also contain preferred sources, measures of tolerance for violent, sexual, offensive content, tolerance for people with flagged content, and blocks. Participants can change their preferences to try out new settings, maintain a list of sets of settings, and revert to a previous set as needed.

Sometimes you need to see what you're not seeing. You can open the smart filter widget and display the hidden content. Based on Overweb activities, including reactions, flagging, and blocking the smart filter may adjust its setting with permission. It may notice differences in responses to specific content and repulsion to content or people. Here, you could ask the smart filter to show you the additional things it filtered out or in because of the adaptive change it made earlier. You can even configure it to notify you when it filters out certain content.

The smart filter system provides you with detailed explanations of how the filter's decision making and what factors are being taken into account. This allows you to understand how your filter is working and make more informed decisions about the content you see. You can access a breakdown of the filter's decision-making process, including the weighting of different factors and the specific criteria used to filter content.

The smart filter system also includes a feature for community moderation, which allows you to interact with others who share their interests and want to have more control over the content they see. You can create and moderate your own filter groups or moderate for meta-communities, and discuss and share content with other like-minds. This feature can be enabled for specific meta-communities or groups. By providing more options for community moderation, the filter gives participants more opportunities to interact with others who share their interests, have more control over the content they see, and serve their meta-communities.

Another unique feature of the smart filter enables you to create your own algorithms, which can be tailored to your specific needs and preferences. You can choose from a variety of pre-built algorithm templates or create your own using a simple drag-and-drop interface. You can also test and fine-tune your algorithms, and save them for future use. By giving you the ability to create your own algorithms, the filter empowers participants to have even more control over their content and browsing experience.

Additionally, if you create particularly useful or innovative algorithms, you can monetize them. You can choose to make them available for others to use for a fee, or even sell the algorithm outright. You can set a price for your algorithm, and track its usage and revenue. This feature not only allows participants to earn money by creating valuable algorithms but also encourages participants to come up with new and innovative ways to filter content.

The labeling smart tag enables participants to earn rewards for attaching metadata to content. Some classifications of web content provide data for machine learning to train on. Some labeling data enables smart filtering. For instance, the smart filter may use labels for violent, sexual, or offensive language to filter out disturbing content. Developers and participants can create smart filter configurations and add-ons and receive rewards for the value created in the ecosystem.

The smart generator is the ultimate tool for the generative web. With this innovative technology, you can effortlessly create personalized content tailored to your unique preferences and needs. Whether you're looking to generate a joke meme, create a recipe, design a desktop background, write a story, or produce a video response to a podcast, the smart generator makes it easy to bring your ideas to life.

Using the smart generator is simple and intuitive. For example, suppose you are browsing a website and come across a photo of a delicious-looking coconut brownie from the Asian Bodega restaurant in Tulum, Mexico. With a few simple clicks, you can use the smart generator to create a recipe for the brownie, complete with detailed instructions, an ingredient list, and nutritional facts.

First, you activate the smart generator by long clicking the photo. This brings up a window with a variety of options, including "Generate Recipe." You select this option, and the smart generator begins to analyze the photo, extracting information about the ingredients and the preparation process.

Next, you are prompted to provide some additional information, such as the desired serving size and any dietary restrictions. The smart generator uses this information to create a customized recipe that is tailored to your needs. You can also make some adjustments to the recipe, such as adding or removing ingredients, or adjusting the cooking time.

After you make the adjustments, the smart generator generates a recipe, and you can now regenerate, remix, edit, and attach it to the photo.

When you're satisfied, you can save it to your device, share it with friends and family, or submit your coconut brownie recipe to a cooking website for others to enjoy. You can even use the smart generator to create a video tutorial showing how to make the brownie, or a NFT out of the recipe, which you can sell or trade.

With the smart generator, creating personalized content has never been easier. Whether you're looking to create written content, a video, or a unique piece of digital art, the smart generator makes it easy to turn your ideas into reality.

The smart generator is not just a tool, it's an extension of your personal AI assistant. It is designed to work seamlessly with you, learning from your activity and preferences to deliver content that is truly unique to you. It's the opposite of the smart filter, which limits your options and curates content based on algorithms. With the smart generator, you have complete control over the content you create, and can fine-tune it to your exact specifications.

One of the key features of the smart generator is its presence. It can be used on any page and any web app, making it the perfect tool for creating content on the go. Whether you're browsing the web or working on a project, the smart generator is always there to help you create and edit content as needed.

Another important feature of the smart generator is its security. Your AI assistant can only access your data with your permission, and it cannot interact with other people or assistants without your authorization. This ensures that your data remains private and secure at all times.

The smart generator is designed to learn from your activity and preferences, adapting to your unique needs over time. It uses advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze your behavior, including the types of content you create, the style you prefer, and the specific features you use. By following your activity, it can train and tune its models to deliver content that is perfectly suited to your tastes and needs.

For example, if you frequently create memes, the smart generator will learn to generate memes that are more in line with your sense of humor. Similarly, if you often create recipes, the smart generator will learn to generate recipes that align with your dietary preferences. This means that the more you use the smart generator, the more personal and unique the content it produces will become.

Additionally, the smart generator also allows you to change models and adjust the settings to get the perfect result. You can choose from a variety of pre-built models, or create your own custom models that are tailored to your specific needs, which you can also monetize. By adjusting the settings, you can fine-tune the generated content to your liking, ensuring that it is exactly what you need. Whether you're looking for a specific style, tone, or set of features, the smart generator makes it easy to create content that is perfectly suited to your needs.

In addition to its many practical uses, the smart generator also brings us into the era of the generative web. With this technology, you can create NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that are uniquely tailored to you and your preferences. Whether you're looking to share a message with a specific audience or create a one-of-a-kind piece of digital art, the smart generator makes it easy to turn your ideas into reality.

MORCs, or Massive Online Research Collaboratives, are designed for indirect collaboration through stigmergy, similar to how ants work together in a colony. We coined the term "Massive Online Research Collaboration" or MORC because it's needed. MORCs are the research analog to the mission-driven Massive Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) of Jane McGonigal's February 2010 TED Talk Gaming Can Make a Better World. She said if we want to solve our most pernicious problems in the next decade, we need to increase the amount of game playing online. But Esports and streaming emerged in the 2010s, and now reign over the impulse for meaning that might otherwise have led to massive games with massive social impact.

For us, the connection between the gaming market, social MMOs, and measurable social impact was always tenuous. There were some successes. Foldit predicts protein structure by leveraging human puzzle-solving, intuition, and competitive nature to fold the best proteins. But they seem more the exception than the rule.

Yet we continue to envision many thousands working together online on issues that matter. Let's expand the focus on gamifying online experiences that have an impact. The question becomes, what online activities can aggregate into the collective shifts needed in the world?

We're excited about knowledge building through MORCs or Massive Online Research Collaboratives, many of which will operate as meta-communities, DAOs, and/or data cooperatives. Researchers are like game players in some ways. They're on monumental quests, they don't know what's going to pop up, and they grind on with their craft. We think – with effective gamification – humanity can mobilize tens of thousands of researchers and students to build knowledge in common interests.

The MORC enables researchers and stakeholders to build maps of online knowledge that enable coherent collective responses to real-world puzzles. MORCs can grow and experience network effects for both people and content. Especially, if they tap into groups and loose associations of people that are already researching or curious about an issue.

A MORC produces the following outcomes:

• A map that connects online information about the subject and helps filter false news, disinformation, and misinformation.
• The first-generation knowledge base. People can extend the genesis constellation and connect it to any relevant claim or idea.
• A shared context for collaboration and communication.
• An active, connected, and engaged community that builds knowledge together.
• Quicker, faster answers to complex questions and 360° context for any idea.
• Emergent information realms for which humanity needs better sense-making – like false news – are candidates for a MORC.

Meta domains and adjacent spaces are a novel way of claiming and occupying conceptual space on the Web. In the space above the legacy web, every website has a corresponding meta domain. This includes all top-level domains (TLDs) and web3 domains. For example, the meta domain for espn.com is espn.com.meta. Adjacent spaces are subdomains that exist in relation to a meta domain.

Meta domains and adjacent spaces can be used for various purposes, such as advertising, e-commerce, or social interactions. For example, a business may create a community page on the meta domain for their site and purchase adjacent space to a competing site to promote their products or services. An individual may create a social space above their blog site to connect with their followers and another in an adjacent space to a relevant site where they can connect with fans that may be interested in their content.

Meta domains and adjacent spaces are stored as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Meta domain NFTs convey ownership of the meta domain on the Overweb and the right to deploy content in the space. The owner of the meta domain receives a 10% royalty on the corresponding adjacent spaces. Meta domain NFTs include the anchor address (e.g., espn.com.meta), optionally the name of the meta domain, the minter, the owner, category, topic, and tags. Once minted, the meta domains can deploy through the Presence browser overlay. The meta domain name and owner can be changed after the mint.

Adjacent space domains are meta subdomains that exist relative to a specific meta domain (Figure 12.4). Adjacent spaces are defined using polar or cylindrical coordinates, which use angles to define the relative position of the space. Adjacent space domains use a simplified cylindrical system, for example, the meta subdomain for the southwest of espn.com would be southwest.espn.com.meta or sw.espn.com.meta. Adjacent NFTs include the anchor address, the relative location of the adjacent space (e.g., sw), and the name of the adjacent space.

Figure 12.4 Adjacent virtual space around a meta-domain.

Meta domains and adjacent spaces provide valuable context for websites. Imagine browsing a real estate marketplace. You navigate to a home in the southern part of town. When you activate the overlay, it reveals the presence of a meta domain and its surrounding five adjacent spaces in the direction of north, south, east, west, and northeast.

The meta-domain has detailed information about the property, FAQs, a virtual tour, and the ability to chat with the selling agent. The north space is rented by the top real estate company in town and lists all the homes for sale in the town. The northeast space is rented by another agent and lists the properties for sale in the affluent northeastern part of town. The south space does not have any content. It is owned by the owner of the house and is for sale. The west space is a web presence for the top real estate agent from a competing company. The east space is a social space for real estate called the Real Estatement.

Meta domains and adjacent spaces are accessible via various overlays, such as APIs, browser extensions, and mobile apps. They are also viewable through specific overlay applications. Spaces can also have a presence on the flat web that is addressable via theoverweb.com.

By activating the overlay feature, you can view meta domains and adjacent spaces for any website. The virtual space owners can build virtual spaces as webpages or entrances to virtual worlds using the overlay's virtual space deployment tools. The owner can configure their space to allow participants to add smart tags to content and visit the canopi. If the meta domain or adjacent space is accepting offers, the visitor can make a bid or purchase the space directly.

The Overweb is committed to building a decentralized ecosystem that fairly compensates contributors. Participants can earn rewards for the value created by their contributions. The primary way to earn rewards is by building bridges that are crossed and upvoted by other users. Compared to social media, this system is much less susceptible to undue influence, as everyone only has one account, and you have to cross a bridge to upvote it. People can also earn Overweb rewards for labeling content and for watching advertisements. Some meta-communities may also give rewards based on engagement.

Builders can also earn rewards for contributing to the development of the Overweb ecosystem. For example, developers can earn rewards for creating new smart tags or algorithms or for contributing to the development of the Overweb protocol.

As the ecosystem evolves, there will be other ways to earn rewards, such as bounties and challenges, that reflect the ecosystem's needs. For example, participants may earn bounties for creating bridges in a certain topic or for labeling a certain type of content. Also, challenges may reward the best bridges for a specific question or topic.

To support the reward system, the Overweb has developed a comprehensive plan for the distribution and governance of a rewards token. This plan is designed to ensure that everyone who participates in the growth and development of the Overweb is fairly compensated for their contributions. Given the uncertain regulatory environment, the plan may require modification prior to launch. We believe that a collaborative and community-driven approach is the best way to ensure that modifications are beneficial for all stakeholders.

The Overweb (OWEB) token is a dividend-bearing asset that reflects the value of the Universal Content Graph and the activity on the Overweb ecosystem. The token will be distributed through a fair launch, the timing of which will depend on when engagement milestones are reached. The total supply of OWEB is 1 trillion, with 25% allocated to the fair launch, 25% allocated to the Automated Market Maker (AMM), 49% locked in the DAO's Treasury, and 1% allocated to development and marketing.

The AMM is a key component of the Overweb ecosystem. The AMM provides liquidity for OWEB and enables efficient trading of the token. The AMM is initially funded through the fair launch, and the reflections mechanism ensures that liquidity is always being added to the AMM, which helps to stabilize the price of OWEB.

The fair launch is an important aspect of the OWEB ecosystem as it ensures a fair and equitable distribution of the tokens. By allocating tokens based on the relative value of native coin (or stable dollar) contributions, the fair launch ensures that everyone pays the same amount for their tokens. The fair launch will be conducted through a crowd-pooled token offering, where participants allocate a native coin (or stable dollar) to the fair launch. At the end of the fair launch, the total amount of native coin allocated is added to the AMM, and all fair launch participants receive OWEBs at the same price.

The OWEB token has a reflection mechanism, where a 10% transaction fee is charged to holders whenever the token changes hands, with 5% reflecting back to all holders based on their relative holdings and 5% going to locked liquidity in the AMM for the OWEB/native coin pair. This ensures that liquidity is always being added, solidifying the token's price over time.

As reflections occur, liquidity is added to the DAO's locked liquidity, which helps to recoup the 1% allocated to development and marketing. This ensures that the DAO reaches and maintains 50% locked liquidity, which is a key component of the OWEB ecosystem as it provides a stable source of revenue for the DAO to manage. The DAO's 50% locked liquidity ensures that the DAO will receive 2.5% of all volume movement (50% of the 5% to holders). The DAO manages reflections that accumulate beyond the 50% locked liquidity. Of these, one half is allocated for rewards and the other half is for operations.

To harden the protocol, the Overweb Council is considering ways to add buying pressure to the protocol, including the issuance of a stable coin for transactions on the Overweb that holds a portion of its reserves in OWEB, distributing advertising revenues in OWEB, and/or other revenue streams that can be distributed in OWEB.

The OWEB also has a governance component where holders of the token can vote on proposals to direct the direction and development of the Overweb ecosystem. This decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure allows for community participation in decision-making and ensures that the ecosystem is aligned with the vision and values of its stakeholders. Votes can be council-only, token-weighted, or one-vote-per-person.

The rewards system compensates bridgers who contribute verified bridges to the Overweb Bridge Registry with OWEB based on the relative value of their bridges to the ecosystem. This incentivizes the creation and maintenance of high-quality bridges, which are essential for connecting the different parts of the Overweb. Bridgers are also compensated for curating bridges and watching advertisements.

Half of the DAO's reflections (above the 50% locked liquidity) are paid out as rewards on a regular basis. These reflections accumulate in a rewards pool. The reward pool may also generate revenues from other sources such as API fees to access the Overweb's Universal Content Graph. Participants receive OWEB from the rewards pool based on the relative value their bridges contributed to the ecosystem, the value of their curations, and the amount accumulated in the rewards pool in rewards period. The final tokenomics will specify the frequency and timing of rewards.

The bridging rewards pool is split between the bridge reward pool (80%) and the curation reward pool (20%). (In the future, labeling content will also receive a portion of this pool.) A participant's portion of the bridge reward pool for a given period is based on their proportion of unique bridge crossings accompanied by upvotes for the period and the amount in the rewards pool. Bridgers also earn curation rewards for upvoting bridges before they get popular. The curation pool for bridges will be distributed to the first 20% of the people who upvote a bridge that has valuable activity during the rewards period using an exponentially decreasing function.

The Overweb recognizes that bridges are not built in a vacuum, but rather in an ecosystem that supports and amplifies their reach. As such, when content earns rewards, 70% goes to the creator, and 30% goes to the ecosystem that supported its creation and distribution.

As shown in Table 12.1, the ecosystem share is split 10% for community affiliations, 10% for context indexes, and 10% for referrers. The bridger designates the 10% for community affiliation to meta-communities and guilds they are a part of, or causes they support. Some meta-communities and guilds may require that members assign a percentage of rewards to them in general or for specific content. The context indexes are fixed portions that go to tags, category, and topic of 6%, 1%, and 3%, respectively. A 9% referral reward goes to the persons who brought the bridger into the system and 1% goes to the protocol enabler (e.g., the browser, extension, or SDK holder that enables access to the overlay).

Table 12.1 Ecosystem rewards

The ecosystem distribution rewards meta-communities and guilds, referrers, and protocol enablers for their contributions while creating a futures market for context indexes for specific tags, categories, and topics. For example, the meta-community for Belgium Brewers gets a percentage of the rewards generated by bridgers in their community. The rewards for the context indexes accrue to metabags NFTs based on the associated network activity. For example, the topic "asthma" gets 3% percent of the rewards generated by bridges assigned to the asthma topic.

To generate interest in the metabags, the Overweb will publish statistics on context indexes. This will also enable participants to identify the most active areas in the ecosystem and focus on them to earn rewards.

In the future, the Overweb will offer contextual advertisements. Participants will have to opt-in to seeing advertisements and will receive value for doing so. When ad payments come in, the funds will be used to purchase OWEB (thereby hardening the protocol), which will be distributed as rewards. The ad click rewards will be split evenly with 20% each for the owner of the bridge that led to the ad clickthrough, curators of the bridge, prizes for ad watchers, the website owner, and the Overweb DAO. If a bridge was not involved, a portion of the rewards will be distributed to the link referrer.

The Web4 Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to building the governance and infrastructure of the Overweb. The foundation's mission is to create a decentralized and open web that is accessible to everyone, while also protecting the rights and privacy of its members. The Web4 foundation operates as the Overweb DAO. The DAO generates operating funds from the sale of meta domains, meta-bags, and reflections from OWEB transactions.

The Overweb council is responsible for guiding the DAO and the ecosystem towards progressive decentralization in order to achieve optimal efficiency, effectiveness, and inclusivity. This is accomplished by tapping into the collective wisdom and input of the community as appropriate, allowing for a more transparent and collaborative approach to decision-making. The council's ultimate goal is to ensure that the Overweb ecosystem is secure, scalable, stable, beneficial, and fair for all stakeholders.

One of the key elements of the foundation is working groups focused on different areas of the Overweb such as identity, security, privacy, data sovereignty, and rewards. These working groups are made up of experts and enthusiasts from various fields, including information technology, web3, emerging tech, AI alignment, tokenomics, strategy, product, marketing, human resources, business development, law, policy, social sciences, and governance. They work together to develop and implement the building blocks of the Overweb, such as smart tags, and the Overweb protocol.

The foundation is committed to protecting the rights of Overweb participants through the Overweb Bill of Rights. This living document outlines the basic principles and rights that all participants on the Overweb can expect, such as privacy, security, and freedom of expression, and explains how they are protected on the Overweb.

The Web4 Foundation also supports the open-source community that is working to develop the Overweb. By collaborating with developers, researchers, and other stakeholders, the foundation aims to ensure that the Overweb is inclusive, decentralized, and accessible to everyone. The foundation also maintains the bridge registry and registries for meta-communities, meta domains, and adjacent space.

If you are interested in learning more about the Overweb and how you can get involved in the foundation's work, please visit webfour.foundation or reach out to the foundation directly. We welcome people with specific expertise and interest in the next level of the Web.

As we delve deeper into the potential of the Overweb, it's important to also consider the challenges and problems that the current web is facing. From scams and fraud to abuse and misinformation, the issues on today's web are not only prevalent but also complex and intractable. But what if the Overweb could offer a solution?

In the next chapter, we will explore how the decentralized and open nature of the Overweb can address these issues head-on and pave the way for a safer and more trustworthy online experience for all. From one-account-per-person, overlay apps, and smart tags, to meta-communities, we will examine the various mechanisms and structures that can tackle these issues and how they differ from today's centralized web. So get ready, as we dive into the nitty-gritty of how the Overweb is working towards a better, more secure, and reliable internet for all.

1. https://permanent.link/to/the-metaweb/next-generation-internet-award-winners

2. Available free at thenetworkstate.com. The site lists aspiring network states.

3. A portmanteau of digital and citizens.