We’re on a mission to create economic opportunities for everyone on earth, and maybe mars too if we make it. To do that, we aim to build an internet-scale protocol for work — one that is global, permissionless, and decentralized.

The internet was built as a neutral technology to connect people all across the world, and in many ways it has achieved that ambition. But when we look at how it has shaped our work relationships, it’s time we aim higher. Even the words “professional network” make us feel cold and stale, despite how many opportunities continue to be routed through them. We’re hostage to those closed systems despite the way spam and self-promotion has decayed their value. That decay doesn’t come from malice or apathy, but structure and incentives.

We imagine Backdrop in the future as a sufficiently decentralized protocol used by developers to build a thriving ecosystem of applications, competing not to hoard data but to provide the best possible experience to users of that protocol. We know that will take years, and our work at Backdrop Labs is to steward the early development of the protocol and to build the first valuable application on top of it — the Backdrop you see today.