Fathom was conceived in late 2014 by Jared Pereira as an experiment to create an alternative educational structure to schools. Quickly this ran into the problem of assessment. In order to create structures for learning, you need some way to capture or measure learning. So the summer of 2015 we began work on an assessment system. We drew inspiration from the incentivized consensus systems emerging from the world of blockchain technologies. By summer 2016, a small prototype of the assessment smart contracts was ready and out in the world. In September of that year came a whirlwind but pivotal 3 days in Shanghai at DevCon 2, the second annual Ethereum developers conference. After a consequent meeting with Joe Lubin, the founder of blockchain technology company ConsenSys, Jared joined ConsenSys in October 2016. Fathom was incubated within ConsenSys for just over two years. During that time the team grew, learned an incredible amount, and built out our smart contract system to be much more robust. We also worked on developing implementations to get this thing out in the real world, and get people using it. Now, in 2019, we are spinning out from ConsenSys to continue work toward this vision as an independent entity.