# Perspectives on Neocypherpunk | Paul Dylan-Ennis & Rachel Rose O'Leary - Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress) - Date: 2026-07-09 - Duration: 30:38 - 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, neo, summit, berlin, neocypherpunk - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-IqLP7K4D1gA - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqLP7K4D1gA ## Description “Perspectives on Neocypherpunk” fireside chat with Paul Dylan-Ennis [University College Dublin] and Rachel Rose O'Leary [DarkFi]. Contrasting the lunarpunk framing of "neocypherpunk," as coined by lunar_mining, with the more CROPS- focused implications of the term popularized by polar. Speakers Paul Dylan-Ennis — University College Dublin https://people.ucd.ie/paul.dylanennis X: https://x.com/dylanennis Rachel Rose O'Leary — DarkFi https://dark.fi/ X: https://x.com/rachel_rose_o Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ ## Transcript [applause] >> Hello. >> Yeah, hello. We don't have a moderator, so we're kind of uh ungovernable. Um Yeah, so I guess I was going to sort of be a quasi moderator a little bit just to start us. Um around this term of uh neo-cypherpunk and uh for a long time people would attribute the term neo-cypherpunk to me. So, they would say that I was the the creator of neo-cypherpunk as a term, but actually it it's you. Um so, I just wanted to know if you could like tell us a little bit about that, the the origins of the term neo-cypherpunk. >> Yeah, so I can explain like um So, as far as we know that I was the I had the earliest usage of the term neo-cypherpunk. Um and I can explain like a bit of history context there. Um But uh you know, actually to give you a bit of credit, like just to go back in time, in about like 2014, Paul gave me a copy of a book called um Cypherpunks by Julian Assange. Cypherpunk and the Freedom of the Internet, I think it's called, which is a great book and I highly recommend it. Um it's basically a long interview with Assange, but the beginning of the book, it starts off with a manifesto. And it's kind of an address from Assange to the world, and he's speaking in a tone which is like, you know, there's a sense of urgency. And he's basically saying like our our world's is hurtling headlong into this like massive crisis of like global totalitarian surveillance. And the only path forward, like the path freedom a path of freedom is like to encrypt. And you know, like build unstoppable peer-to-peer anonymous systems. And when I read this in like 2014 or something, it left a powerful impression on me and it was one of the factors that got me into crypto. Um but then going into crypto and like you know, as I as I kind of started going to conferences in and around like 2016 era, there was a massive um disconnect, kind of like a cognitive dissonance between the ideas of the Cypherpunks and the reality of the crypto industry um that was like what was going on at events. So, like kind of early on um you know, started to feel like there was a malaise, like some a little bit inside of crypto that was like uh is crypto was adrift, you know, it had it become dis- de- de- anchored from its like uh its fundamental mission and it's just like kind of lost and floating around. Um so, you know, at the beginning Dark Fire was kind of conceived as a neo-cypherpunk project insofar it was a revival of the original Cypherpunk principles that brought me and many others into the crypto space. Um but like the the term that I kind of used I I switched between using the term Lunar Punk, which some of you may have heard. Um neo-cypherpunk was another word that I used for the same thing. And basically like all these terms meant mean is uh to me at least at the time was a revival of the original principles that that invigorate crypto um and kind of like re-centering of crypto back to its like um original proposition, which was radical, revolutionary, and it involved using decentralized, unstoppable, peer-to-peer, and strongly anonymous technologies to create a shift in the logic of violence that basically redistributes power away from the state and towards like um like smaller actors. And through this process of revival, right? You're not You're not simply reflecting and becoming nostalgic about the the first Cypherpunk movement, you're also recreating Cypherpunk for the modern age, right? So, it's like it's simultaneously uh this like this synthesis of of Cypherpunk with the the kind of new culture of crypto. Um so, what is the new culture of crypto? Like I would say the orientation is like a little bit less kind of individualist. There is more of an emphasis on squads, you know, squad wealth, stuff like DAOs, you know, uh networks. Um this sentiment that in order to have like real impact, we need to work together and not just be kind of like individual nodes on our own little missions, but actually to like, you know, build something together that's like, you know, truly like emancipatory potential. So, there's like a few shifts in in this like in this revival of Cypherpunk that makes it a neo-Cypherpunk or lunar punk, uh which we can talk about, but that's a little bit like the context. Um so, I don't think personally when I hear neo-Cypherpunk, I I'm I still think about it within this context. It's It's the broader effort to revive the original values of crypto and to rein- reinvigorate crypto back to something meaningful because it's lost its sense of direction. There's a sense of malaise, and you know, you really feel it now in the bear market. Anyways, I I can go on, but I'll let Paul say something. >> Um yeah, I mean, so it really made me think that this idea of, you know, perspectives on neo-Cypherpunk, I I started even thinking about um how did I think about Cypherpunk as recently as absolute essence of Ethereum? Like, what did I call the values in the book? And um the the terms like the definitions that I went with were the values of decentralization, so, you know, power should be distributed as widely as possible, permissionlessness, no permission required to use the protocol, censorship resistance, all transactions are equal in the eyes of the protocol, I guess, and then credible neutrality because with an Ethereum box, we need to have a metallic value in there. And what I like what I think is important about this is that when let's say in the recent history, I guess what I'm what I'm trying to get at is that in the the reason why Neo Cypherpunk has become important again is because there was a an event essentially in Ethereum culture where we saw something like a populist revolt against the Ethereum Foundation. And the nature of this populist revolt was we want pragmatists who wanted to focus on ETH asset and institutional focus and that we should be less concerned about the dreaming about Cypherpunk and talking about ideology. That actually this is something that's getting in the way of Ethereum succeeding. And then there's a installation of Tomas as a the pragmatist representation and then we get Shaw Wei as representing the the Cypherpunk side of the OG Cypherpunk perspective. Now, the reason why this is important is because we have seen in recent times that the Ethereum Foundation has decided to I guess codify the the values of Ethereum along these Cypherpunk lines in a very hardcore way. And one story that I think is a little bit untold about this is the the the origin like where does this like where does crops come from, right? So, where exactly did this originate this terminology? And it really is a story of these various different documents. So, all the way back in when Vitalik wrote Make Ethereum Cypherpunk again, so this is a blog post that Vitalik writes in response to Tornado Cash. So, Tornado Cash is effectively the the first moment really in Ethereum culture where the presumption that our values are being inscribed are really challenged because of course what's happening is there are censoring on the layer one blockchain itself. So you get this blog post which reintroduces Cypherpunk. There is the question of course was was Ethereum ever Cypherpunk which is a different question. And then after that there's a subterranean lineage of documentation. So P Car Versacio's Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto which is really under appreciated and I encourage people to check it out. It actually has crops in there. So censorship resistance, privacy and security. It hasn't got open source. That's one of the the pillars that's sort of buried in the text. And then after that which shall we get D5 punk which now stresses that the Ethereum Foundation is going to support you, then it's going to be a case that we only support you on the basis of your crops affiliation let's say. And then that leads us to the famous or infamous Ethereum Foundation mandate document which I will just say clearly that I disagree with the pledge on principle. I think that was a unnecessary cultural schism. There's no need to be pledging to documents like this. However, it is a very very useful document in terms of it's a a rare deep analysis, granular analysis of what these values are. We don't have many documents of that that caliber out there. Now that goes back to this story. It's just something you mentioned around like telling your own story. So neo Cypherpunk I think is useful because as a term if we want to talk about say censorship resistance, we can begin by telling people about Cypherpunk and then you go all the way back to the 1980s. So now we're talking about DigiCash and then maybe we're going to talk about PGP and then we're going to go through the crypto wars and then we get to Satoshi and we get to his influence or him being influenced by the mailing list and then we have to tell the story of libertarianism meets open source. That gets you a new fresh culture. And then by the time you get to Ethereum, your you know, audience that you're trying to teach about Cypherpunk has not really learned about the blockchain implementation of Cypherpunk that we ourselves actually have. We have our own tradition, we have our own culture. We do not need to be going that deep into history to be talking about Cypherpunk. We should begin the story with say Bitcoin and with Ethereum you should begin talking about the values as they are actually discussed and in the realpolitik context that these values are changing. So, for example, censorship resistance traditionally just meant, you know, transactions can't be censored. You read the Ethereum Foundation mandate, it focuses on downstream applications, right? Interfering with downstream applications. It also talks about durable non-competitive like be like being in a position of durable non-competitive scenario. So, for example, in the case of the middleware services around proof-of-stake. So, we layers and builders and solvers, etc. Even if they are not necessarily censoring, although they were censoring for quite a while before before sanctions got lifted on Tornado Cash. Um just by being in that position, you are like latently censoring, which is something a very powerful and interesting idea. It's like you're virtually or latently or potentially censoring and that that itself is considered a form of censorship resistance, which is unacceptable according to the Crops documentation. The other big one would be the and here's where I'd be a little bit critical where is decentralization? To me, decentralization is a meta principle, it's not something that is a means to an end. That comes from Pika Versacio, this language that you'll hear on Twitter more and more. You'll hear people say that decentralization is a means toward censorship resistance, etc. And I I very much disagree with that. I think that that's a diminishing status of what I would consider our most important value. But that'll be my general take. >> So, somewhere I want to kind of tease out here a little bit more is like basically um I really think when it came to when I started talking about Neocypherpunk and and Lunar Punk back in like 2020 when I started talking about this uh it was very much a reaction to the lack of discussion around privacy and anonymity inside of crypto. Cuz all the other values were being talked about non-stop. Like everyone was talking about decentralization, sensitive resistance, permissionlessness, you know, like there was lip service being paid to this. Privacy and anonymity sometimes get a mention, but there is like literally zero um work being done on that aside from like in Zcash and Monero. Um and then like literally I remember I went to Ethereum conference in um New York and there was a man, he gave a speech um talking about how you could tokenize your um your biometrics and you could use like you could have a way you could wave at your car and it would unlock because of some like NFT on the blockchain or you know, something like this. And people were cheering this guy on and I was like, what is this? This was like kind of just prior to DeFi, but it was like everyone was fetishizing this idea that Ethereum was like a on-chain data kind of explosion that would lead to all these like interesting smart utilizations of data. And even the DeFi angle was all emphasis on transparency and like oh, you can now there's going to be no corruption anymore cuz all the finances are 100% on chain. And you know, you can see everything. And that was very much the the rhetoric. And so, that was partially one of the things that I was reacting strongly to in the in the Lunar Punk Manifesto cuz it it basically described all that kind of thinking as Solarpunk, right? And it says like this Solarpunk imaginary, it's like it's obsessed with transparency, but it's fundamentally fragile because as soon as you become a real threat, um you know, it's trivial to basically persecute the the participants within those networks. Um and this is like the weakness of of Ethereum essentially. Um so so that was the time and now I do see Ethereum is kind of started to pick up the conversation about privacy and anonymity, which is good like and I I really hope they they do pull it off. I will say though um I just want to bring up a little a kind of interesting historical point um uh which is like there there's this weird strange um paradox in history where um so in Ireland um the revolution which happened in the 20th century um was spurred on like prior to the political revolution, there was a cultural revolution called the Gaelic revival. And this was all about um like reviving the myths, the founding myths of Ireland and like this kind of like romantic nostalgia for like the imagined Celtic past and you know, it was simultaneously historical thinking back what things were like before, but it was also this synthesis of like creating something new like this new aesthetic based off of an imagined past. And a big part of this Gaelic revival was the language revival. So you know, everyone was was trying to return to like Gaelic and wanting to restore the Irish language as the as the primary language spoken in Ireland. Um but there's an interesting kind of paradox in history, which is the political revolution that preceded this that implemented this cultural revolution, they they they did win like the sovereignty of Ireland, you know, like they they did a successful revolution, but they never they never achieved the language goal. Like they never got Irish spoken as the main language. So there was neither did they implement a Gaelic revival. Like culturally, Ireland remained the the same as as it was under British colonization. So, it was like they had this vision of what they were doing, but the reality of it was different to the reality of what they were doing. There was like a disconnect between the the dream of of of of their of their of their work and the reality of the end of doing. So, it's a weird paradox cuz the right revival the revolution and the loss of the language happened at the same historical moment. So, it's like they were simultaneously talking excitedly about like how they're going to bring back Irish at the same exact moment Irish was like basically falling into almost near extinction. So, it's like this weird thing. Anyway, I I wonder like if we're not at risk at least I mean with Dark Fi, we've made a concerted effort to like um you know, like essentially walk the talk. Like you know, we we have from the beginning built everything to be like strong and strongly anonymous, you know, it's not just a value, like it's actually software. It's like hardcore uncompromising anonymity at like every level of the stack. Um but Ethereum, I feel like it's in this weird situation where it's not anonymous. It's not there are no privacy protecting features. I know they want to make them, but it's like it feels like the ETH Foundation is is is retreating and it's now just purely representing values and I do wonder if there's if it's possible that there's this like psychological rift, like this this disconnect between of like of this neo cypherpunk vision and the reality of what Ethereum actually is today, which you know, it isn't this this neo cypherpunk thing. I mean, maybe it is to some degree, right? But it's definitely not anonymous or privacy preserving. >> Yeah, that's unexpected Irish detour, which obviously I'm quite quite happy with. Is Ethereum Ireland a philosophical discussion. The the privacy aspect, I think that is important to stress about Ethereum that like privacy has not been considered an important central value of Ethereum. I mean there's always been people defending it, right? So there's always been say like elements within Ethereum culture who are privacy oriented. In fact, Web3 privacy now would be has been doing like Trojan work in terms of like ensuring that it is part of the conversation. But this more or less comes from Pika Versace's influence, I think as well. So he has as well as the Cypherpunk Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto, he also has another manifesto which is called Ethereum the road to self-sovereignty, which is an interesting word the the sovereignty aspect. Where he outlines everything that would be needed to make Ethereum completely private. So he doesn't just make the claim like you know privacy should be unconditional, which you know people it's easy to say Ethereum should be unconditional privacy at the base layer. But he goes through all of the different elements that would needed to be accomplished. And it is one of the most intimidating documents just in terms of the extensive nature of what would be involved and then also just like the knowledge that he's displaying in terms of the understanding the protocol. The when he asked me when he he asked me to give a bit of feedback, the one thing I said that I he he was missing he gave with the he gave with the technical specifications of how this would be accomplished and I said that's fine, but actually the real job here would be the governance and the culture. So we we have this culture now which is at least in theory including privacy as one of its non-negotiable core values. Where there actually is no barrier to you know say saying like I mean in theory the we have a roadmap but it's not exactly clear to me that like privacy is at the forefront of say Ethereum's thinking when it comes to like I guess what Pika Versace was saying is if the if Ethereum wants to be fully private, the roadmap essentially has to be a privacy road map, and then everything else is secondary, which I just think is a uh a good um Irish nationalist type hardline to take. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, well, I hope that I hope that ETH pulls it off cuz then we could have anonymous bridges to Dark Fi, but um you know, let's see. I'm I guess Dark Fi is the bet that it does not. >> Yeah, um just uh I guess one of the aspects of this that I want to make sure uh this is the something that I uh if I have one thing that I always like to say if uh I guess I'm always thinking of people who are growing up in the the current Ethereum cultural environment that we have managed to escape the temptation of people to turn it into a sort of like pragmatist uh acultural uh phenomenon, and that we should keep in mind that, you know, Ethereum is not a company, right? It's a uh effectively a a system of stakeholders. Those stakeholders, they have different imaginaries that they adhere to, so regens and degens and lunar punks and cypherpunks. But ultimately, the the the glue, right? The the ineliminable core of what Ethereum is is those neo-cypherpunk values. So, if we imagine a situation where a degen comes out of fashion, comes in a fashion, and disappears, regen does the same, and so forth, but I think all of those things can change, although even the the pragmatist focus can change, but if uh neo-cypherpunk or cypherpunk values disappear from Ethereum, it would be no longer recognizably Ethereum. >> All right, do you want to move Okay, do you want to move to our next section? Okay, so we've got we've got topics. >> Yeah, um so uh this came up because the dark forest theory of the internet. Um so, three-body problem, seminal science fiction uh novel that everyone, you know, loves or maybe knows from the TV show, and uh it's the origin of that term, the dark forest, right? So, the dark forest meaning that any sufficiently advanced civilization upon encountering another civilization, the intelligent thing to do is to essentially eradicate the other civilization. And then otherwise, your job is basically to hide as much as possible and like just not not be found. Um this has its own crypto variant. So, it's been used by a famous paradigm blog post where it's extrapolated into MEV and so forth. So, you're just like the average user, but the advanced civilizations are flashbots and so forth. Also, you've used this term and in a book Bogna Konior's book The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet, where she essentially says the internet itself should be understood in this way. That you when you are online, you should presume that there are alien intelligences, meaning algorithms, artificial intelligence of course, and then I guess like we could add in flashbots, etc. Maybe Lazarus in our case. And that the intelligent thing to do in that situation would be to hide. And I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Bogna Konior is includes your lunar punk in her book. She mentions your use of the dark forest. So, when I was reading this, I was wondering this seems to be a tension, right? Where um if neo cypherpunk is supposed to be more collaborative, where we're supposed to be working together, more mutualist, less individualistic interpretation of what cypherpunk is, but that seems to imply that we must be visible. Um so, how does that I guess how can we mesh that with the the the other side of it, the adversarial nature? So, we are also supposed to be in some way hiding through our privacy actions. So, I was wondering what you think of that. >> Yeah, so I will kind of answer that in a roundabout way, but um just for I don't I don't how many people have actually read the Three Body Problem or have seen the Netflix don't watch Netflix. If you're going to watch something watch the Chinese version which is really good. I really recommend it on the books are great as well. But uh anyways, this concept of the dark forest is like very much related to information and kind of like many levels. There's There's basically two ways of understanding it. One is like surveillance um the surveillance world like where it's like you're hiding because if you reveal yourself even slightly it's just like auto you're automatically annihilated. So it's kind of like if you imagine um a actually it's kind of anal analogous to drone warfare today. And like if you're in a exposed environment where you know, the AI has like is just like monitoring your movements and if you um you know, step outside your cover you'll just be like instantly kind of like drone striked by this like total domination by air. So that's kind of like the dark forest the dark forest is like applied on the the cosmic scale. Um but the other angle that kind of information impact of the dark forest is like the impact that that has on human behavior. So people start um in the books like people are they're trying to do politically politically organizing against the aliens, right? But they they can't actually act in a way that is like revealing their strategies. So they have to like um basically create like like trick trick tricky behaviors that like mislead the aliens in terms of what they're actually doing and they have to basically their only place of like true kind of sovereignty is that like inside their own minds and they they have a this like weird double act where they they they know they're under surveillance so they're like trying to use that and information to to to um kind of disturb the the the aliens' view on them. >> Yeah, it sounds like the UK. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, it's very much like the modern like social media experience. It's like everyone is always aware they're being watched so they moderate their behavior in in weird ways. And it's like this weird performance of identity. So that's where Bogna Kanyur, she wrote a book Dark Forest Theory of the Internet um and she what what I do recommend this book. It's very cool. She she she does something which she calls uh aesthetic sublimation. So that's like instead of being like, "Okay, let's fight the let's fight the the the Terminator, you know, let's like um let's the system and like overthrow the surveillance and break it with encryption." Instead of having that kind of energy, she's like she's like, "No, let's just like let's just like confront this the reality of this in a way as like as as harshly as possible and like see it for what it is without running away. Like without without running away or trying to cope by creating like some fantasy of escape. Let's just like let's just like feel this see it for what it is and then this sublimation that she talks about is like then how can we like aesthetically transform the the horror of that experience into some kind of practice, right? So it's like in her case she writes the book um like Dark Forest um Theory of the Internet. Um but yeah, I mean I I'm a huge fan and she kind of she talks about Dark Forest in the sense that I use it. So I I I tend to use Dark Forest in a in a way that's not very fair to the book um Three-Body Problem. So I see it as more as like Dark Forest is like a um it's a the like rewilded internet, right? It's like um anonymous enclaves where you have like total freedom of thought and and conversation and freedom of action and like everything that flows from the fact that you know you're you're speaking in a space outside of surveillance. And so it's not just like the kind of online world, but it's potentially like you know, a parallel society, like a a parallel financial infrastructure. Like what we're trying to do is like create a vision for anonymity and privacy that's no longer about hiding or shying away, but it's actually about expansive energy and like active energy and like, you know, doing cool you know, rather than like like than hiding or like and trying to conceal your preferences, but actually like like what is the most transformative activity that I could possibly be engaged in? Something so transformative and emancipatory that it actually makes me a threat that they that they want to to to start monitoring me and taking away my freedoms. Like that's where, you know, that's what we're going to enable, you know, we want to we want to enable people to to do that through, you know, money that they make outside of the like transformative activity. So it's like for us, we agree to create the tools for people to do that. And we're into it then. That's what we call the dark forest. And but it's kind of a mis- it's probably a mis- appropriation of like the term. But Bogna in her book, she calls me out when she kind of accuses me of of of being like this kind of revolutionary tendencies like she would see it as basically you're hiding some you're you're creating a cope. You're inventing this like revolutionary kind of goal to distract yourself from the horror of existence. And like really what you should be doing, like the the true art would be to to this is aesthetic sublimation where you like actually confront the the bleakness of the situation and not try to invent like some some some like idealist or like gnostic kind of like like world beyond that you can run away to, you know. So, but I do I do I do like her book and I think she makes a fair point and I think what what our goal should be is like what if what if you were to like if you were to um if you could try to combine both and create like a revolutionary sublimation or like uh you know a practice that's no longer it's not about running away. It's it is about 100% kind of like um accepting the state of affairs and in an unflinching way like without being in a state of fear continuing to pursue like the highest ideal which is like you know like the pursuit of freedom and like um you know ex- expansive activity and like um like breaking out of like whatever cage is set before you like whether that be surveillance or or something else. I don't know if that makes sense. >> Yeah, I was going to say um she sounds like a gnostic maybe or sorry gnostic Calvinist maybe just to kind of get us into >> Calvinist >> cuz that's what Nick Land calls himself a gnostic. >> and she would I mean I think she would call me a gnostic but yeah but yeah yeah yeah but um >> Um yeah maybe yeah we have a few minutes left to talk about um >> going to talk about. >> Sorry? >> We're over time. >> Oh, okay. >> Oh, can we quickly do that? Just really quick. >> Ask us about Nick Land afterwards. >> Oh, >> [laughter] >> yeah. >> Yeah. >> [applause] >> Oh, yeah.