Orchid creates internet protocol to defeat censorship and surveillance

"I think a free Internet is a really important thing for society and they're solving it in a very elegant way through technology," says Sequoia partner Matt Huang. "This type of network is, to us, one of the most exciting first applications of the blockchain computational sharing economies."

How it works: The main idea is to incentivize people with unused internet bandwidth to share it with other users (presumably in places with restrictions), in exchange for payment via Orchid's Ethereum-based tokens. The company also says it's a more viable option than Tor and virtual private networks (VPNs), which are increasingly difficult to access in places like China.

The team: Orchid's co-founders include entrepreneur and investor Steve Bell, former Pantera Capital partner Steve Waterhouse, former Ethereum developer Gustav Simonsson, developer Jay Freeman (best known for jailbroken iOS device software), and Brian J. Fox, author of the GNU Bash Shell. Orchid's advisors include Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood and Stanford cryptography professor Dan Boneh.

Funding: Orchid has raised a $4.7 million in seed funding via a SAFT (loosely, a convertible note promising future tokens) from an investor group that includes Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, Polychain Capital, Metastable, Blockchain Capital, Crunchfund, Struck Capital, Compound VC and Richard Muirhead.

What's next:

Orchid plans to make its network and tokens publicly available next year through a public sale. One source tells Axios that early talk is about raising up to $350 million, although Bell says the company has no target.

The state of play: American firefighters joined those in New South Wales and Victoria this week, along with the Australian Defense Force and some 3,000 Defense Force Reservists to help tackle fires that have killed at least 25 people this bushfire season.

• U.S. firefighters joined efforts in Victoria on Saturday, putting in control lines in Mount Buffalo National Park.

In Victoria, a state of disaster declaration was not renewed after midnight on Jan. 11, due to milder conditions. Weather is forecast to be steady for the next few days, with more moisture in the air to limit fire behavior and aid containment, Incident Controller Paul Bates said Saturday evening.

• "We're a long way from the end of this. We're at only mid-January, and we've got a long way to go in terms of our fire season," Neville said Saturday.
• "We've still got several weeks of this fire to go," Bates emphasized.

In New South Wales, there are roughly 135 bush and grass fires burning. Nearly 50 fires were uncontained as of early Sunday morning, NSW Rural Fire Service said — and all fires have been downgraded to the lowest emergency warning.

The impact: Since September, Australia's bushfires have claimed the lives of 19 people in New South Wales, three in Victoria and three in South Australia, per Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

• At least 25 million acres of land have burned, including 12 million in NSW, per News.com.au.
• 2,097 homes have been destroyed since Jan. 1, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service's latest update.

The big picture: The intense heat has caused more than 20 firestorms — or unusual thunderstorms partially fueled by heat from the flames — over the past week, according to NASA, which notes that "strong winds from these storms can fan fires into raging infernos." Smoke particles from the fires have spread east over the Pacific Ocean.

Go deeper:

• In photos: Deadly wildfires rage across Australia
• Australia's wildfires cause New Zealand glaciers to turn brown

Editor's note: This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.

By the numbers: Sanders is the top choice for president for 20% of likely attendees to the Democratic caucus, the poll shows. Warren stands in second place at 17% and Buttigieg takes third at 16%, while Joe Biden stands at 15%.

Methodology: The latest poll tallied 701 likely Democratic caucus-goers from Jan. 2-8. The poll's margin of error is -/+ 3.7 percentage points.

• Due to the poll's margin of error, all four top candidates are in a statistical dead heat.

Be smart: Sanders clawed back 5 percentage points from the November poll, when Buttigieg was the first choice among 25 percent of likely caucus goers. Warren came in first among 16 percent of those polled, while Biden and Sanders were each the favorite of 15 percent at the time.

Yes, but: Sanders beat his competitors in Q4 fundraising, raking in $34.5 million — while Buttigieg followed at $24.7 million.

• Sanders' "anti-establishment message hasn’t changed for 50 years, and it resonates with working-class voters and young people who agree the system is corrupt and it will take a revolution to fix it," the New York Times' Sydney Ember wrote in December.

Go deeper: Bernie Sanders is the dominant Democrat of the Trump era

Editor's note: This piece has been updated to show that Sanders has gained momentum in the January poll.

Driving the news: MIT has released an unredacted version of the 61-page Goodwin Procter report into Epstein's donations to the university.

• The report recounts a 2013 conversation in which Ito suggested the swapped-donations strategy as a means to conceal the origin of Epstein money.
• The following year, Epstein took credit for a $2 million donation from Bill Gates and a $5 million donation from Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management.

Gates denied to Goodwin Procter that his donation had anything to do with Epstein, while Black refused to talk to the law firm.

• "We were unable to connect with representatives of Mr Black," Goodwin Procter lead investigator Roberto Braceras tells Axios.
• Goodwin Procter managed to find no evidence that the Gates and Black donations were made at Epstein's behest, or that they represented Epstein money laundered via the billionaires.

On Friday, MIT announced that it had placed a mechanical engineering professor, Seth Lloyd, on paid administrative leave following the Goodwin Procter review, as Axios reported.

My thought bubble: MIT is currently putting together "a clear and comprehensive gift policy" and "a process to properly vet donors". But if the Leon Black donations were indeed Epstein-related — and there's no evidence to suggest that they weren't — the results of this investigation suggest that Epstein and Ito have already demonstrated an easy way to circumvent any such policies.

Go deeper: Exclusive: MIT and Jeffrey Epstein's billionaire enablers

What they're saying: The reason “comes down to what industries are expanding and which ones are contracting,” Megan Greene, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, tells Axios.

• By the numbers: Women make up 22% of employees in goods-producing sectors (like mining, construction and manufacturing), as of last month.
• But they make up 54% of services-oriented jobs, including gigs in industries like health care and retail.
• The services sector is healthy, while manufacturing has seen pain from the trade war. Additionally, services make up a bigger chunk of the U.S. economy.

Other factors may also be at play. For one, the unemployment rate is at a half-century low, shrinking the pool of readily available workers and forcing companies to consider candidates they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Between the lines: Another employment survey of households by the Labor Department shows a persisting gap between men and women. By that measure, 84 million men say they have jobs, while 74 million women say are employed.

• "Men are more likely to hold jobs not counted on pay­rolls, in­clud­ing the self-em­ployed and farm la­bor­ers,” as the Journal notes. 
• “And women are more likely to hold multiple jobs.” A sin­gle per­son can be counted twice if they hold multiple jobs in the data shown above.

Go deeper:

• A more inclusive jobs rebound
• Black people are jumping back faster into the workforce

• Presidents have previously tried to uplift refugee resettlement programs with “bipartisan pride,” and to generate goodwill domestically and internationally, the Washington Post writes.
• Trump has already capped the number of refugees the U.S. will accept at a historic low of just 18,000 from a high of 110,000 in 2016.

What’s happening: Republican governors of Tennessee, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Nebraska along with others have written letters to the U.S. State Department or publicly announced they will continue accepting refugee resettlements, representing some of the reddest states in the country.

• They join more than two dozen other states that plan to continue taking refugees, according to Axios' compilation of news reports, press releases and public statements.
• Not all states have released their decisions.

Abbott has previously withdrawn Texas from the national refugee resettlement program and sued for the right to block Syrian refugees from settling in the state, the Texas Tribune reports.

• Meanwhile, Austin Mayor Steve Adler and Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price both called on Abbott to continue allowing refugees to settle in Texas.

Both Tennessee and North Dakota have also sued for the right to refuse refugee settlements, but have now both said they plan to continue accepting refugees.

Go deeper:

• Chart: How immigration levels in the U.S. have changed since 1900
• Refugee resettlement agencies sue Trump admin over executive order
• Trump lowering the number of refugees permitted into U.S. to 18,000

• Three MIT vice presidents learned of Epstein's gifts to the school's Media Lab in 2013 — but without "any MIT policy regarding controversial gifts, Epstein’s subsequent gifts to the Institute were approved under an informal framework," the report found.

The big picture: MIT maintained that no senior team members violated the law or breached its policy in connection with Epstein's gifts, but notes that "certain" members failed to adequately consider:

1. "Whether accepting money from Epstein was consistent with MIT’s core values."
2. "The impact that MIT’s acceptance of Epstein’s money would have on the MIT community should those donations become known."
3. "Whether it was appropriate to accept donations with a requirement by MIT that they remain anonymous."

What they're saying, via the findings of the investigation, which was conducted by law firm Goodwin Procter: "Professor Lloyd knew that donations from Epstein would be controversial and that MIT might reject them."

• "We conclude that, in concert with Epstein, he purposefully decided not to alert the Institute to Epstein’s criminal record, choosing instead to allow mid-level administrators to process the donations without any formal discussion or diligence concerning Epstein."

Worth noting: The report did not find evidence that funds donated to MIT by Apollo Global Management CEO and Chairman Leon Black or Bill Gates were actually Epstein’s money or that the men acted to launder Epstein’s money.

• Per Axios' Felix Salmon, MIT's fundraising office devised an idea that Epstein should not donate money directly. Instead, Epstein would allegedly engineer a donation from Black, Gates or other undefiled third parties.
• Black's gifts were understood within the Media Lab to be Epstein money, according to three MIT sources — and that understanding applied more broadly than just to Black.

Flashback: MIT Media Lab's director Joi Ito resigned, left his board seat with the New York Times Company, and resigned from the MacArthur Foundation in September following a blockbuster report from The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow that said Ito flew to Epstein's private island twice and accepted more than $8 million in donations from him.

Go deeper ... Exclusive: MIT and Jeffrey Epstein's billionaire enablers

• Drummond's last day will be on Jan. 31, and he will not receive a severance package.
• In recent months, he's been selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Alphabet stock.

Forbes was first to report the pending departure, which the company has since confirmed to Axios.

Our thought bubble: This is a clear signal that new Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is fully in charge. Pichai, who also continues to run Google, has said that he would have no tolerance for harassment and that no future employees leaving after such issues would get exit packages.

What they're saying: Drummond today sent a letter to Google employees. It reads, in part:

"The company is entering an exciting new phase, and I believe that it’s also the right time for me to make way for the next generation of leaders... As I do so, I’d like to thank everyone with whom I’ve had the privilege to work so closely over the past two decades... I know this company is in the best of hands, and I am excited for what the future holds for Google, for Alphabet and for me."

Bill Maris, who founded Google's venture capital arm and reported directly to Drummond before quitting in 2016, tells Axios:

"The news of David Drummond leaving Google today brings to mind a quote from one of my most favorite creatures. 'At an end, your rule is. And not short enough, it was.' I had been asked in the past why I left Google in 2016, and I have never really commented on that. David Drummond is the reason I left Google. I simply could not work with him any longer.  It’s that simple.  We have very, very different ideas about how to treat people, and this was a long time coming."

Go deeper: Google Ventures' #MeToo problems come to light