How Crypto Became Corporate and How We Take It Back- Josh Davila aka The Blockchain Socialist
Tue, Dec 2, 2025, 12:00 AM
Josh Davila aka The Blockchain Socialist - Crypto, Cooperatives & Solidarity Tech Author of Blockchain Radicals book and co-founder of Bread Cooperative, Joshua walks through his path from early Ethereum to building funding tools and “solidarity primitives” that put democracy into the economy. In this talk: Bread Cooperative’s crowdstaking on Gnosis Chain & venture-free funding Cooperatives vs DAOs: token power, governance, conflict resolution, micro-solidarity Identity on-chain (one-person-one-vote), ZK approaches, hybrid voting Crypto in crisis: sending USDT to Gaza via Binance/OTC Why privacy matters for movements; platform surveillance and power A future “socialist internet” built for communities, not adtech Resources mentioned: Blockchain Radicals, Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and Richard Wolff’s Democracy at Work. Timecodes 00:00 – Intro: who Josh Davila is Blockchain Socialist, Blockchain Radicals, Bread Cooperative 00:24 – Context Devcon Berlin + how he got into crypto (2016–17), political radicalization, Marx & early Solidity 03:30 – Corporate blockchain work to launching The Blockchain Socialist blog/podcast 04:54 – Bread Cooperative: why “Bread,” crowdstaking on Gnosis, BREAD token, VC-free funding logic 07:32 – Beyond funding: venture-studio tools (e.g., Gas Killer AVS) & community-driven building 08:20 – What a cooperative is; types; how DAOs map to and diverge from co-ops 12:16 – Doing collective work well: governance, conflict resolution, micro-solidarity; trust; therapy vs group practice 19:03 – Finding your people: filtering by values; building community as practice 21:08 – Working across cultures: curiosity, context, and communication habits that defuse conflict 24:13 – What socialism means to him: democracy in the economy; capitalism as a centralization machine 28:21 – Crypto in crises: sending USDT to Gaza via Binance/OTC and why it matters on the ground 32:32 – “Solidarity primitives”: from DeFi primitives to building blocks for cooperative apps 34:10 – Identity & one-person-one-vote; ZK/hybrid approaches; Bread’s 50/50 split; quadratic/conviction/liquid democracy 38:11 – Privacy & power: state/corporate surveillance, movement security, and the ad-tech internet 42:44 – Reaching “degenerates” via economic needs; unions, collective security, and politicization 47:05 – A democratic, interoperable internet in 30 years + reading/viewing recs (Engels; Richard Wolff) & wrap-up ... 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/p/interviews 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!