GADFLYThe mechanism
Method
The fund is a procedure. This page describes it exactly, including the parts that require trusting us, which are most of them.
The quarterly rite, in four steps
Write
The letter is drafted and frozen as a canonical UTF-8 text with a fixed format, down to the line breaks. From here on, the text is a sequence of bytes.
Commit
keccak256 of those bytes, thirty-two bytes of fingerprint, is written to the contract. The block timestamp becomes the letter's notarized "no later than" date. The text itself stays private.
The letter is printed, signed, and sent by certified post to the chief executive's office. The receipt is scanned; its hash is recorded. This step is testimony: the chain cannot watch a mailbox.
Reveal
The full text is published and submitted to the contract, which recomputes the hash and compares. One changed character and the reveal is rejected. When it passes, the published letter and the committed letter are provably the same bytes.
Try the rite yourself
A private rehearsal of the quarterly mechanism, entirely in your browser. Write a letter; lock its fingerprint; then, if you like, betray it. Nothing you type leaves this page, and no transaction is sent. The point is to feel the mechanism's one tooth.
What the contract proves, and what it cannot
Exactly one statement is trustless: a revealed letter's public text hashes to the commitment that was locked, on a public timestamp, before mailing. Anyone can recheck this in a browser; the letters pages include the tool.
Everything else is the operator's testimony with exhibits: that the envelope was mailed (receipt hash), that a reply came or did not (reply hash, or its absence), that money was spent as recorded, that a meeting was attended and a question asked. Hashes of scans prove only that those scans existed when hashed, not that they are honest. Read the fund accordingly.
The share's two states · run the drill
The state machine, live to your hand. The buttons below simulate the two transitions locally, in your browser only; the real counters are on the front page and move only when corporate arithmetic does. The contract's refusals are simulated too, because the refusals are half the design.
A drill. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The contract
The operator, stated plainly
A single externally owned account operates the contract. It can, at any time and without anyone's consent:
- commit a letter hash, and choose when or whether to reveal it
- record mailing receipts, replies, income, expenses, and meeting entries, truthfully or not
- mark the share erased or restored
- withdraw anything the treasury holds, in full, to any address
- transfer operatorship to another address
It cannot:
- alter or delete a commitment once mined, or its timestamp
- reveal, against a commitment, any text other than the one committed
- reduce the erased/restored counters, or rewrite any past event
The contract holds its treasury and nothing else; the share lives on a stock register in the analog world, in the operator's custody. The treasury withdrawals are unrestricted on purpose: a timelock would decorate the trust, not remove it. If the operator vanishes, the record stops updating, the archive remains exactly as mined, and whatever sits in the treasury sits there forever.
Formal disclaimer
1. Nature of the project. The Gadfly Fund is an experimental conceptual project. It is not an investment fund offered to the public, not a collective investment scheme, and not a solicitation of any kind. Nothing is offered for sale on this site. No person other than the operator has contributed capital, and none is solicited.
2. Custody. The single share the project holds is registered to, and controlled solely by, the operator through ordinary brokerage and direct-registration channels. The smart contract custodies exactly one thing: whatever its treasury receives, which the operator may withdraw in full, to any address, at any time, without restriction. Descriptions of the contract as "the fund" are descriptions of a record book with a coin pocket.
3. Evidence. Except for the commit-reveal hash equality described on this page, every statement published by the project, including mailing, expenses, attendance, replies, and silence, depends on the operator's honest reporting. Document hashes recorded on-chain evidence the existence of particular files at particular times and nothing further.
4. No affiliation. The project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the company whose share it holds, nor with any exchange, chain operator, or postal service named on this site. Company names and tickers are used solely to identify the subject of the correspondence, as any newspaper would. When this site runs in mock mode (the MOCK badge in the navigation), the target company shown is fictional and every letter, figure, and meeting record is illustrative; real records appear only when read from the chain.
5. No advice. Nothing on this site is investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. The project's own economics are deliberately and irreparably terrible; its expense ratio is five to six orders of magnitude beyond anything an investor should tolerate. Do not replicate this structure with money that matters. If it must be said: this fund is designed to lose, slowly, in public, on purpose.