Index Network: Discovery Protocol

Finding people living in New York who listen to avant-garde jazz and curious about the semantic web, or discovering the latest events attended by people at the intersection of two communities.

Index is a discovery protocol that functions as a decentralized search engine which offers an open layer for discovery by leveraging Web3 and AI. Index enables composable discovery across the web, eliminating the need for intermediaries in discovering information such as knowledge, products, and like-minded people.

New internet at the intersection of Web3 & AI

There is a new internet being built; and here's what's new: in the first one, we connected computers. The second stage brought people into the equation, introducing a social paradigm.

Now, we are beginning something entirely different - the creation of abstractions. We began with the most common abstraction in human history, money. And we are continuing this evolution by establishing new abstractions for different protocols such as identity, trust, reputation, intent, and even intuition. These protocols within Web3 are semantic entities specifically designed to facilitate navigation across vast information spaces.

Yet, what will the discovery experience be like in this new paradigm? How will we uncover and explore these new abstractions? What will serve as the search engine for this new internet?

Information discovery has two main components: the index and the algorithm. These foundational elements have remained unchanged for the past 20 years. Now, thanks to Web3, we have the ability to connect our information without an intermediary. On the other hand, thanks to LLMs, computers can interpret our data using human language. These technological advancements will change the basic paradigms of information discovery. The traditional approach, upon which companies, industries, and information organizations were built, is about to face a radical transformation from its very core. So, how will this transformation happen?

Protocols that enable semantic abstractions represent different models and contextual elements for our understanding. In order to discover within our own individual contexts, we require the ability to utilize these protocols together. And that's what Index does, a protocol for discovery. We create a contextual environment for these abstractions to exist, to interplay, to be discovered together.

🌐 Surprise, the next search engine is not a search engine. Index enables a network of indexes and algorithms to work together in a user-centric manner, ensuring complete privacy.

Here is a glimpse of what you can discover: knowledge, context, identity, and intent, in one sentence, used for information discovery in a user-centric way.

To enable the flow of information in a fluid, interconnected structure, Index introduces two components:

Decentralized Semantic Index

It functions as a composable, decentralized vector database, designed for storing and making semantic representations of your context discoverable. This approach takes components from conventional monolithic index structures to build an open, distributed layer for information discovery. Rather than relying on a single index that compromises privacy, Index introduces a network of indexes that maintains privacy yet allows for querying together.

For instance, in a chat setup, it's possible to generate responses from both a community index and a private index, facilitating a connected discovery experience that delivers responses that are both personalized and trusted.

Composable Discovery Protocol

Switching gears to the algorithm side, Index enables a network of algorithms to function as autonomous agents, working together within different economic models. They can hear each other, respond, and interact with knowledge. These agents are allowed to use natural language to perceive their reputations, all while ensuring complete user-data ownership and privacy. Index introduces "Contextual Pub/Sub" functionality, which allows agents to subscribe to contexts using natural language queries. For example, they might simply say, "Run this function if something new happens about quantum materials." By enabling users to interact with agents using natural language, Index facilitates the composition of autonomous agents for information discovery, bringing together a variety of economic models and methods.

Building together with the ecosystem

We acknowledge the importance of building collaboratively if we hope to realize our vision. The new internet will not be a product of any single company, but rather the result of an open ecosystem of multiple entities, protocols, and algorithms.

Today, Index is developed using Ceramic’s ComposeDB, which integrates indexed data as part of an open, adaptable data ecosystem. All data is stored on IPFS, empowering users to create, own, and manage their data independently. We partnered with Lit Protocol to ensure decentralized access control with blockchain-backed privacy and also partnered with Fluence Network to enable search and discovery on a decentralized computation network, ensuring that user discoveries are kept private thanks to a composable privacy approach.

Combining these essential technologies into a single framework creates the foundational infrastructure needed for healthy and more relevant web discovery. But wait, there’s more. Index partnered with identity, trust, and reputation protocols, which form the cornerstone for navigating data within Index’s autonomous structure. On the identity front, Disco provides discovery for all the contexts users have; with Intuition Systems, users can build and explore trust; Verax allows users to sense reputations, and with Olas Network, to enable the network to services and offerings provided by autonomous agents. For Index, all these models are part of a user’s context, and taken together, they form the fundamental building blocks for creating a truly personalized internet experience.

Index is also part of the TachyonX accelerator program, powered by Consensys Mesh.