About

Somewhere right now, a grandmother's photo album is dissolving in a flooded +basement. A soldier's letters home exist only on a shuttered email service. A +child's first words, recorded on a phone, will vanish when the cloud +subscription lapses.

We are the first generation in history that produces more memories than any +civilization before us — and loses them faster than any civilization before us.

The Problem No One Talks About

Every platform you trust with your memories is temporary. Every company that +promises "forever" is one quarterly report away from pivoting, selling, or +shutting down. Every proprietary format is a ticking clock.

Google Photos, iCloud, OneDrive — your memories live on someone else's +server, under someone else's terms of service, behind someone else's paywall
Social media — your life story is scattered across platforms that treat +your memories as advertising inventory
Hard drives and USB sticks — they fail silently, with no warning and no +backup
DVDs and CDs — already unreadable for most people

The pattern is always the same: a format becomes popular, a company makes it +easy, people pour their lives into it, and then it disappears. GeoCities. Vine. +MySpace. Google+. The list grows every year.

This is not a technology problem. It is a design problem. We keep building +systems where memory preservation is a side effect of someone's business model, +not the purpose.

What Tesseras Does Differently

Tesseras starts from a radical premise: your memories belong to you, and they +should outlast every company, platform, and format that exists today.

A tessera is a self-contained time capsule — photos, audio, video, and text — +packaged in a format designed to be understood centuries from now, without any +special software.

No Servers. No Subscriptions. No Company.

Tesseras is a peer-to-peer network built on mutual aid. You store fragments of +other people's memories, and they store yours. No tokens, no blockchain, no +monthly fees. The incentive is simple and human: I help preserve your story, you +help preserve mine.

Survives Anything

Your tessera is protected by erasure coding — the same mathematics that keeps +deep-space probes talking to Earth. Your data is split into redundant fragments +and distributed across the network. Nodes can go offline, hard drives can fail, +entire regions can lose connectivity — and your memories survive.

Self-Describing Format

Every tessera carries within itself the instructions to be decoded. In plain +text. In multiple languages. Even if every copy of the Tesseras software +disappeared tomorrow, anyone with a basic understanding of computing could read +your tessera. It is a file format designed for archaeologists, not just +programmers.

Post-Quantum Cryptography

Tesseras uses dual signatures — classical Ed25519 and post-quantum ML-DSA — so +that the authenticity of your memories can be verified even after quantum +computers render today's cryptography obsolete. We protect the future, today.

Built for the Long Arc

Every decision in Tesseras is made with centuries in mind:

Simplest media formats — JPEG for photos, WAV for audio, WebM for video, +plain text for writing. Not because they're the best, but because they'll be +readable the longest.
No encryption by default — availability over secrecy. A memory that can't +be decrypted is a memory that's lost. Private memories can be encrypted, but +the default is survival.
No dependency on the internet — tesseras can be stored on USB drives, +optical media, Raspberry Pis on a shelf, even low-power IoT devices. Any copy +is a valid copy.

The Human Need

Humans have always preserved memories. Cave paintings in Lascaux. Clay tablets +in Mesopotamia. Letters folded into books. Photo albums passed from parent to +child.

The desire to be remembered — to leave proof that we were here, that we loved, +that we lived — is among the deepest human impulses. Every culture, in every +era, has found ways to inscribe its existence into something more durable than a +single lifetime.

The digital age promised to make this easier. Instead, it made it fragile. We +traded durability for convenience, and the cost is measured in lost childhoods, +forgotten faces, and stories that no one will ever hear.

Tesseras is an attempt to restore the ancient contract: what you choose to +remember should endure.

Why "Tesseras"?

A tessera (plural tesserae) is a small piece of stone, glass, or ceramic +used to compose a mosaic. The word comes from Latin, borrowed from the Greek +τέσσερα — the tiny squares that, piece by piece, built the grand mosaics of +Rome, Pompeii, and Byzantium.

Some of those mosaics are still intact after two thousand years.

The metaphor is the project: each tessera in our network is a small, +self-contained fragment — individually simple, individually durable. But +together, they compose something larger: a mosaic of human memory, distributed +across thousands of nodes, resilient enough to outlast any single point of +failure.

Just as ancient tesserae needed no manual to be understood — a shard of colored +stone speaks for itself — each digital tessera carries within it everything +needed to be read, in plain formats, in plain language.

The name is also a reminder of scale. A mosaic is not made in a day. It is +assembled piece by piece, with patience, by many hands. That is how we intend to +build a network that lasts.

Open Source, Open Protocol, Open Future

Tesseras is free software under the ISC license. The protocol is open. The +format is documented. Anyone can run a node, build a client, or fork the entire +project.

There is no venture capital behind Tesseras. No growth metrics to hit. No exit +strategy. Just a simple conviction: the technology to preserve human memory +should not be owned by anyone.

Current Status

Tesseras is in Phase 4 — Resilience and Scale. The core format, cryptographic +foundations, peer-to-peer network, active replication with erasure coding, +GraphQL API, and Flutter app are built. We are now working on Shamir's Secret +Sharing for heir key recovery, advanced NAT traversal, and performance tuning.

This is a long-term project. We measure progress in decades, not quarters.

Join Us

If you believe that human memory is worth preserving — not as a product, not as +a service, but as a fundamental right — we'd love your help.

Read the FAQ to learn more
Join the mailing lists for updates
Browse the source code
Contact us directly

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