Shady El Damaty

Funding the Commons · May 9, 2026

As AI agents increasingly mediate human interaction, how do we make sure people stay in control of their own digital lives? Shady, co-founder of Holonym Foundation and the team behind human.tech, comes from computational neuroscience and applied cryptography. He argues that the current trajectory of AI development pulls resources, talent, and capital into a one-way infrastructure that gives little back — and that cryptographic tools, specifically zero-knowledge proofs, offer one of the most underused levers we have to redistribute power back to individuals. The core question he poses: what is the most important thing you could be building right now, with everything you have at your disposal? For Shady, the answer is technology that proves you are human, without giving up what makes you so. Speaker: Shady El Damaty (Holonym Foundation / human.tech) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io Note: This recording was captured with technical limitations on Day 1. We apologize for any audio quality issues and appreciate your patience.

Funding the Commons · May 9, 2026

45 million people depend on a network of internet freedom tools to access uncensored information. When the US government rescinded its funding mid-contract in 2025, most of those tools faced collapse overnight. Al, Director of Fundraising at the Tor Project, makes the case for why centralized funding is the Achilles heel of decentralized infrastructure. Tor's network is distributed by design — thousands of volunteer relay operators across the world, no single point of failure. But its funding came from one source. When that source changed its mind, the entire ecosystem was put at risk. His answer is to bring quadratic funding and community crowdfunding models from the Ethereum world into the internet freedom space. Tor is running a campaign in May 2026 using minimal anti-collusion infrastructure to make funding more equitable and resistant to manipulation — reaching 2.2 million Tor Browser users a day in the process. Speaker: Al Smith (Tor Project) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io Note: This recording was captured with technical limitations on Day 1. We apologize for any audio quality issues and appreciate your patience.

Funding the Commons · May 9, 2026

In 1999, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy told the world: "You have zero privacy. Get over it." Michelle Finneran Dennedy was working at Sun at the time. She went the other direction. Michelle, Chief Data Strategy Officer at Abaxx, created the first Chief Privacy Officer role at Sun Microsystems and has spent nearly 30 years building the field of privacy engineering. She argues that privacy has a precise definition — the authorized processing of personal data according to ethics, law and sustainable commerce — and that authorization is contextual. In a world where machines are acting on machines at scale, that context disappears fast. Her framework for fixing it is proofs of control: measurable, nano-level signals built into systems from the start, not layered on top after the fact. The privacy officer role, she argues, needs to move from compliance into engineering and into the boardroom before agentic AI makes the retrofit impossible. Speaker: Michelle Finneran Dennedy (Abaxx) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io Note: This recording was captured with technical limitations on Day 1. We apologize for any audio quality issues and appreciate your patience.

Swarm · Jun 24, 2024

The right to respect for digital integrity is an emerging right to protect people's digital lives. This talk will introduce this new legal concept, its possible implications for data protection and how this concept is being introduced in the current legal framework. The talk will also be an update of the implementation work with the adoption of the right in the Constitution of Geneva voted with 94% approval rate on the 18th of june 2023. The video features a talk by Alex Roussel, CEO of NIM Technologies, on the topic of digital human rights and the concept of digital integrity. Roussel discusses his work on making the idea of digital integrity a recognized right, drawing parallels with physical and mental integrity protected by laws. He shares his success in getting 95% of voters in Geneva to approve a new digital right in 2023. Roussel explains that digital integrity should be an extension of existing rights, ensuring individuals have control over their personal data and are protected from non-consensual use of it. He emphasizes the importance of anonymity and privacy infrastructure, mentioning that NIM is building a mix net and VPN to support these goals. The talk also covers how digital integrity can be integrated into legal systems, citing examples from Switzerland where new rights have been added to the constitution. Roussel argues for transparent societal systems where personal data remains anonymous, allowing for private interactions between individuals. He concludes by stressing the need for decentralized, anonymous systems to protect against misuse by generative AI and other threats. The talk ends with audience questions on how simply adding "digital" to existing rights can effectively convey the necessary protections in legal contexts, with Roussel explaining how jurisprudence would adapt over time to refine these rights.