# Privacy Isn’t Defense - It’s How We Build New Worlds // Rachel-Rose O’Leary (DarkFi) - Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress) - Date: 2026-04-09 - Duration: 09:27 - Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn, taaki, darkfi, cryptographer - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-4hhwcrRmsfs - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hhwcrRmsfs ## Description In this interview, Rachel-Rose O’Leary (DarkFi) presents privacy as a way to expand freedom and open new possibilities beyond surveillance. She discusses the shift toward community-driven neo-cypherpunk ideas and the need to move crypto beyond its current niche. She also shares a vision of a decentralized, anonymous internet built for communities and new forms of freedom. Timecodes 00:00 – Introduction: Rachel-Rose O’Leary (DarkFi) 00:20 – Privacy as a way to expand the future beyond surveillance 01:12 – DarkFi tools and anonymous ecosystems 02:17 – From cypherpunk to neo-cypherpunk and lunar punk 03:30 – Shift from individualism to community-driven systems 04:20 – Moving beyond critique toward new futures and possibilities 05:01 – Crypto’s disconnect from users and niche culture problem 05:59 – Reaching new audiences and cross-cultural adoption 07:29 – Vision of the future internet: anonymous “dark forest” --- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you! ## Transcript Hi, I'm Rose. I'm a programmer with Darkfy, which is an anonymous uh layer 1 blockchain for anonymous smart contracts. For me, privacy is about the future because in a world without privacy where we just have total surveillance over all of our actions, um the future becomes restricted to the small space of like what kinds of changes are allowed by whatever uh power is controlling the surveillance infrastructure. Um, so by enabling anonymity and by allowing it to spread online and to reclaim the internet with these anonymous wild spaces, we're actually opening up the future uh to a new set of potentials and possibilities. That's what is important about privacy. So my favorite tools has to be uh the darkfly tools. Um, every day I use tools that I've work contributed to building such as Dark IRC, which is a fully anonymous peer-to-peer chat. Um, which is like 100% unlinkable, no identities, runs over a tour, um, potentially in the future over Nim. Uh, so it's a chat. Um, but we're also building out an entire ecosystem uh of smart contracts where you can have financial tools, coordination tools, and other kinds of anonymous software that you know was previously no longer that was previously not possible to have. Uh, so that's my that's the ecosystem that I live in and that's my uh favorite freedom tool that exists today. I think it's that's why I'm working on this project because there's nothing like that that exists. Um, so, you know, I I feel like it's worth dedicating my time to that. So, cipher punk as a phenomena has gone through different stages of evolution. I think um in about a few years ago, many people in the cryptocurrency industry began to feel that this culture of cipher punk was the true kind of um backbone of cryptocurrency, it's its ideological bedrock and also its future or its destiny. But that cipher punk in the way that it was um sort of preserved from the '9s was somewhat out of touch with the kinds of conversations that were happening in and around crypto and the web tree space, Ethereum, Monero, Bitcoin, etc. where uh so a few of us kind of converged around this idea of a neo cipher punk. Um and a similar term is lunar punk which relates to this attempt to reinvision cipher punk for the contemporary age. Um, and typically forms of neoccer punk and lunar punk involve moving away from the kind of um, lonewolf individualism of the cipher punks towards a subject that's a bit more expansive and focused on empowering communities and empowering collectives. Um, so you know thinking about Dows and squad wealth and uh, these kind of onchain entities. Um similarly uh cipher punk felt a little bit like um sometimes a little bit reactive and a bit sad a bit a bit limited in its attitude even though I say that with with a with a lot of respect for cyber punk like really it's the reason I got into crypto many of us is the same you know it's a very inspiring story um but there was something a bit trapped uh it felt a little bit trapped like it was stuck in just the shadow of this of surveillance, but it wasn't really proposing a viable future alternative. Um, so the neocyer punks and the lunar punks, they're much more interested in creating kind of uh a utopian scenarios that are more far-reaching and affirmative that, you know, expand the space of possibilities. And they're not simply about criticizing the status quo, but really about presenting new kinds of freedom and new ways of being that are oriented towards uh communities, empowering communities. Freedom software has an issue where in crypto we've built a lot of infrastructure, built a lot of tooling, but we have this issue with users. And not only do we have like low adoption of the software, we also have another issue which is that over many years, crypto has become seen as kind of more and more ridiculous. Um, and it's very common nowadays for people to um just hate crypto. Just normal people, they don't even know what it is, but they think it's something must be something bad. Uh so in a way crypto's kind of lost touch with its user base completely and it's become its own uh small subculture um which is only serving itself. Um and so we do need to think about ways that we can break out of this strange bubble that we've constructed. Um and one of the ways to do that I think um is by sort of crossing into different um cultural millurs like different cultural um niches. So creating new kinds of crosscultural contamination between crypto and other areas of society. Um so you know today we're at the uh the Logos uh conference. um they've made a big effort to create uh links between crypto and music, crypto and art. I think that's one avenue. The other avenue is kind of to look at, you know, what are the people in the world who genuinely need these tools? You know, who are the people who are the biggest targets of surveillance? Um and trying to do directed outreach towards those communities. Um, and also I think it's important not just to build within an echo chamber but to build for a specific use case and allow that use case to kind of feed back into your uh development process. So you know you become become engaged in a feedback loop which leads to more products that are more refined for a specific user group and I think we've been failing to do that in crypto so far or so far what we've been doing we have been making products but they're very much catered towards this crypto niche of financial tools but they haven't really escaped that niche and began entering into this interesting feedback with broader cross-cultural um communities. So the internet of the future is a dark forest which is fully encrypted um dark and anonymous but completely overflowing with life. Um it's peer-to-peer. Um so you know there are no uh predatory um architectures that are stealing data or otherwise kind of um sucking the lifeblood out of their users. Um it's free software. Um, so anyone can modify and uh and and change this and read and and and repurpose the software that they're using. Um, and it's, you know, it's oriented towards freedom and expanding freedom through this process of serving communities that really need the tools and making emancipatory software. So that might mean something like uh anonymous dows that allow people to um collectively uh spend money from a treasury according to rules. Um a programmable anonymous uh treasury you know these kinds of mechanisms I think that we're only at the beginning of discovering. So I think we with with the invent of anonymous engineering, we can actually multiply the kinds of futuristic applications that will exist online and that allow people to restore their sovereignity um their ownership of their data, their finances, um and their future. Um so that's the ideal internet in my opinion.