# Web3Privacy Now | Privacy as An Ecosystem - PG | ETHDam III - 2025 - Channel: [CryptoCanal](https://streameth.org/cryptocanal) - Date: 2025-10-07 - Duration: 21:19 - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-YW0VTklTrF4 - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW0VTklTrF4 ## Description Welcome to the 3rd Edition of ETHDam, hosted May 9–11, 2025 in Amsterdam. This year, we brought together the brightest minds in privacy, security, and AI for a unique 48-hour hackathon + conference combo. 🌷 https://www.ethdam.com// 🌷 ------------------ Web3Privacy Now | Privacy as An Ecosystem - PG | ETHDam III - 2025 🎀 About the Speaker: Co Founder & COO Web3Privacy Now Core Team Urbe.eth & CryptoCanal 𝕏 Follow: https://x.com/PG_CDG https://web3privacy.info/ https://x.com/web3privacy ------------------ About ETHDam & CryptoCanal ETHDam is powered by CryptoCanal, an education and events platform rooted in Amsterdam, expanding into Rotterdam and ZΓΌrich. Keep up with us to see updates on future events: https://www.cryptocanal.org/ Follow CryptoCanal on X: https://twitter.com/CryptoCanal Join CryptoCanal TG Community: https://t.me/CryptoCanalCommunity Join CryptoCanal Discord: https://discord.com/invite/XJVjpCqQBz CryptoCanal unites crypto enthusiasts committed to making a positive impact. Unapologetically political, we prioritize education, events, and services while championing cypherpunk values like privacy, sovereignty, and censorship resistance. ------------------ πŸŽ₯ Credits: Intro / outro by babyPRO - https://babypro.art/ ETHDam Photography by Paulus – https://concretestate.eu/ ------------------ Special thanks to our partners who made ETHDam possible: 🌹 Hackathon – Bouquet: Oasis Network https://oasisprotocol.org/ 🌷 Hackathon – Petal: Circles https://aboutcircles.com πŸ’› Conference – Gold: Zano https://zano.org/ Dash https://www.dash.org/ Bitvavo https://bitvavo.com/en 🩢 Conference – Silver: Igra Labs https://igralabs.com/hero πŸ’› Conference – Copper: Lido https://lido.fi/ DeTrip https://detrip.travel/ Cake Wallet https://cakewallet.com/ The Grid https://thegrid.id/ Calimero Network https://calimero.network/ 0xbow https://0xbow.io/ Mina https://minaprotocol.com/ JobStash https://jobstash.xyz/ Cyber Capital https://www.cyber.capital/ POAP https://poap.xyz/ Acronym Foundation (Supported our Top 10 Hackers) https://acronymfoundation.org/ 🌱 Sponsor: EF Ecosystem Support Program https://esp.ethereum.foundation ------------------ 0:00 Welcome to ETHDam Day 2 0:24 Privacy as an Ecosystem 2:18 Why I Got into Crypto 3:17 Drift from Cypherpunk Values 4:45 Privacy Is Coming Back 6:01 Organizing with Values First 7:01 Privacy Enables Freedom 9:00 Beyond Code: We Need Collaboration 12:00 Fragmentation in the Privacy Space 14:46 Tornado Cash as a Case Study 17:00 Nature as a Model for Resilient Systems 19:41 Real Change Is About People ## Transcript Welcome to Ethan to Etham to Etham to Etham to Etham. Right. Today is day two for Etham and I'm telling you this so you can go tell everyone else. Um the key thing is uh this morning we have a bunch bunch of cool content obviously about privacy. I'm really looking forward to the next one on privacy as an ecosystem from PG here because ultimately it's the ecosystems um that are being built that allows everyone to actually find, discover, and use all of the different technologies. Um later on uh this this morning, we're going to try and get everyone together in the room to try and do a check-in, check in with all the hackers, see how we can help TBD on how that's going to happen. We still got to figure it out. And then this afternoon we have a lot of the political stuff that's happening um and a lot of a Dutch politician coming in to speak about crypto. So it's going to be a interesting afternoon to say the least. And then tomorrow morning we also have all the regulatory stuff as well and the hackathon presentations which will be really fun. Really looking forward to the rest of the day. But enough from me. I'm just going to hand it over to PG Red who is going to share privacy as an ecosystem. Please give a round of applause. trial. Hey. Hey. Yes. Yay. Hello everyone. Um I'm here today to share with you some of the understanding that both at uh both as an individual and uh as part of different or organizations in web 3 and beyond uh committed to protect freedom in the digital age. Uh we realized how much a lot of the efforts to restrain authoritarianism, surveillance, capitalism and a lot of bad threats that we are facing as a society are scattered among a lot of different communities, bubble, people, perspectives, opinions and unless we are going to uh bundle up and coming together and understand each other, we are not going to make it. Long story short, my talk has ended here. Thanks a lot. See you tomorrow. Um this is the reason why I got into crypto uh 10 years ago and the reason why I'm still here to tackle down uh abuses of power and opac resource management. Uh this is how I got into crypto uh in a very tiny tiny nutshell. Uh I was very curious into understanding how and why all these hypocrisies that uh our society, our world uh continue to uh you know show up in different through different institutions, power dynamics um and it was a very linear natural process of investigation through uh financial systems uh power dynamics, economics, history, philosophy and I found crypto for this reason. Um okay this is not working apparently. Fantastic. Uh over the last 10 years it was showing basically the cipher punks and some uh on left and on drive some Lambo and you know numbers go up. Uh and basically what I wanted to say here is that from this initial ethos of crypto uh we drifted away uh from this initial purpose and for the reason why crypto has been developed in the first place from the 80s onwards. Um and this is mainly because I think especially in the last 10 years uh if crypto became synonymous of numbers go up is because of a lot of attention came into this space without education and we also brought in a lot of people uh basically putting at the center of the attention these numbers go up image of what we were doing. uh and both because actually uh VCs brought massive capital into the space uh which centralized influence and also projected this uh move fast exit faster mindset. Uh and so project basically started optimizing for valuation over decentralization, privacy uh or resilience. Um in the last two years we have seen in the space that a lot of industry pioneers and also everyday users started manifesting this sadness and disillusionment because of that um a lot quite a lot and the good news is that slowly but apparently it's happening we are putting back privacy as the main thing to develop uh we can see that with the dev contract finally we have a cipher punk in privacy track vital entering his articles and uh also uh road map for this year uh around privacy. Um and also I think this is happening because some events some people in the space uh strived for many years putting values at the center of what they were doing especially uh I want to brute here the example of ETH Berlin. uh guys of uh department of decentralization always wrote a manifesto for the hackathon put values at the center had this technological agnostic approach so that they basically avoided this bounty hunting uh uh young developers approaching hackathons for short-term wins and developing something that will not come up uh will not come out of these three days of development and I think many other projects actually got inspired by uh ETH Berlin just here Here I put some some some of the one um I am most involved with uh uh because I know this actually we have got highly inspired by their approach. At the beginning was scary because you know if you don't accept bounties and you put values at the center of course it will be more tough to find money and to to to do the events but it works. I I I I I can tell you it works. Um besides of this we also organized um Ethereum server punk congress and I want to bring this as a use case here to demonstrate that if you put values at the center at the core of what you're doing a lot of people that care about digital rights and privacy will show up and help and support. Uh we had like we probably organized the the biggest event in privacy. Uh and we are just a collective a grassroots collective. Um we had like more than 50 speakers from whistleblower Chelsea Manning to lawyers like Pigman Valvenberg from Coin Center told leaders from Scott Moore, Vitalik, Sebastian. We had greater G developers, uh researchers, policy makers all united in recognizing the importance on privacy. Um I have only 20 minutes so I cannot uh I mean this this topic is massive of course is like a huge one. Um let let me only say that only with privacy we can have freedom in the digital age. I think we all agree here. Um and privacy we are also trying to flip in this narrative because privacy is especially for someone that is not building privacy also for them to be honest. Um uh it has a lot uh to do with all this gloom and doom. uh be in the basement uh you're doing something risky risky uh terrorism uh is scary is problematic uh is every everyone wearing black suits you know it's like not the best thing ever uh but privacy then is not about secrecy is about enabling ecosystems of freedom what does it mean uh first of all privacy is embedded in all the constitutions worldwide as a fundamental human right uh but still in regards to the digital space we are like oh privacy maybe Yes, maybe not. Privacy is so normal. Privacy is something that is embedded in every democracy all over the world. And only privacy enables many different freedom. Freedoms, freedom of speech, of movement, of association, identity, political belief. So freedom of but also freedom too. Freedom to learn and access information. Freedom to care and connect. Freedom to build to build open source censorship resistant software. And freedom to resist. So building up all those tools for activists, journalists, whistleblowers. Uh in a sentence, privacy enables to stand against authoritarianism and also hold power to account. Uh now this is exactly why crypto came to life. Um and next to the cipher punks also other uh intellectuals I would say uh thinkers realized and foreseen what was coming. uh Orwell Axley uh Russell uh Herbert Marcus Anarant Weber Gshi many of them um but keeping the focus on on cypher punks um I mean if more than 40 years of activism and development uh did not solve the issue we still have the same problem but with bigger threats to actually tackle um probably we should realize that innovation and code alone won't change the world even if I mean shapo to the cypher punk shapo to the all the amazing primitives that have been developed but still it's not enough uh and maybe I'm not the most credible voice to tell you this because I'm not a coder I'm not a developer I was not there or here in the '9s uh so I let a cryptographer with 30 years of experience in open source development through cryptog to tell you this story uh with his own words um his name is Jaril by the way and oh amazing it's not working okay um so basically what Jerem says is that if we failed as cippher punks he was he was there he was squatting buildings in Amsterdam back 30 years ago uh he knows like everyone in crypto since day one and he's saying uh and also he's so experienced in uh the open-source culture community people um and what he says is like if we are not come if we failed is because we didn't manage to talk with the others to not welcome all the amazing contributions that came in to help and we just didn't you know welcome those contributions and also um not going to make it if nowadays we still continue to think that our solution is the best our chain is the fastest our you know and we are the only one uh I had also another um another manifestation of the same point by uh Ying Tong probably the same thing will happen Yes. Fantastic. Um she's also a cryptographer, a researcher and basically she says that she joined this event doing a workshop. Uh and in this workshop, so she's like highly technical person like mathematician so so knowledgeable. Um and what she says is that only by getting into the same room with lawyers, policy makers, people with skin in the game, I've got to understand how to do my research in a more impactful way because otherwise I keep studying and researching and doing mathematics but I'm not connected with the real world. So being in touch with lawyers again with innovators with uh NOS's uh made me realize that maybe a lot of my work was a bit wasted or still not pointing in the right direction. And it was very nice to hear these words by hair like as a really um a big realization of wow to be impactful we should be together and understand each other perspective. Uh okay going back here voila. So these are some of the organizations um we as web privacy now have been working with uh or at least we had some of their speakers founders we got insights about what they're doing how they're doing that um and we have got to realize that most of them don't talk to each other uh and it's not only a matter of I would say web three web two uh it's also a matter of within the became really small niche. There is a lot of competition still but the adversary is the same and we al also not realizing that there are a lot of great projects that are trying to confront the same problems for 30 years and still we are not taking lessons from them. We are not learning from them. We are not teaming up with them. Uh to make this maybe more um I mean help you see the concept in a more visual and easy to to grasp way. uh this is what I was saying at the beginning like efforts to restrain surveillance capitalism authoritarianism you you name it are scattered among different professions perspectives and they don't understand each other because they have different tools they use different solutions they have even different categories or wording to describe the same thing um and my my whole point here is that imagine how much more numerous and impactful we could be if only uh we joined forces Because cipher punks can build the tools, but to change power dynamics in our highly complex society and systems, uh these tools must be understood, spread and used. And this is why to give our work cyber punk work depth, meaning uh and lasting impact. We need the intellectual and cultural grounding of thinkers, uh, professors, academics, philosophers, sociologists. Um, to build effective tools, resilient networks, we should team up and learn by open source communities, grassroots movements, peer-to-peer architects, activists, and many more. And to reach people, earn trust and be truly understood, we need the skills of designers, political and social scientists, marketers, writers, journalists, and artists. And there are many people like this that are doing the same thing. I mean, they have the same mission. They have the same values. uh and to be unstoppable to be truly unstoppable our work must be protected and legitimized and this is where lawyers journalists policy makers NOS's politicians come in because at the end every institutions I mean I get that many people in the space are like skeptical ah politicians are bad a regulators are enemies blah blah blah but at the end it's all about people every institutions that we have in society is made up by people is made of people and there are good people there are less good people if If we manage to find the good people, we have a lot more, you know, uh, leverage. Um, I want to bring here an example that probably is close to many of us for different reasons, both for geographical reasons, for ideological reasons. I think all of you heard about tornado cash, right? Raise your hands if you had. Amazing. Um, is it today or tomorrow that Alexi will speech will speak? By the way, attend Alexi speech will be amazing. They told me um it's close to our heart also because every year cryptodam uh bring Alexi to stage I mean to stage. They've been organizing protests in the past uh gathering funds and I think tornado cashache is a great example of where solidarity and community uh worked well. So what happened in long story short, September 2022, six individuals uh backed and supported by Coinbase sued the US Department of Treasury challenging the constitutionality of the tornado cash sanctions. And after the two sanctions, two developers, Alexe and Roman, faced intense scrutiny, one was arrested and the other charged. But instead of fading into silence, the response was collective and defiient uh in a constructive way. And a lot of people manifested showed up and organizations and foundations and lawyers uh such as electric coin coin center you know who supported with a lot of advocacy statements uh and promoting privacy preserving development and also from the community we produced a lot of memes articles hackathons and debates kept this issue alive and in focus and this is how tornado cache I think is a great symbol where um I mean a great symbol not just of resistance but of resilience through solidarity through community and this is the point I want to make in decentral ecosystems uh where structures are decentralized and authority is distributed uh solidarity is not just a value it's a survival mechanism uh and this is how the community can protect its builders uh defend it deals and endures when systems of power push back. Let me touch briefly. Um, so we all speak a lot about resilience, resilient networks, right? And we all have different views on how we can reach a resilient network. But we tend to use many times nature as an example as a metaphor. Uh and in both cases if we are talking about dark forest or infinite garden still the key element I think it's uh diversity is this vibrant ecosystem. Uh I mean dark forest not really is more about being protected by the light and having you know uh but still we are in a forest you know and I think getting inspired by nature is so wise because actually nature is so much more resilient than human systems. Um and what is what is a forest? What is like this garden or forest? Uh it's basically a complex network of living elements and non-living elements such as soil, water, air, light all interconnected and influencing each other in each other's growth, survival, and reproduction. And each component plays a crucial role. And what nature shows us is that the more diversity you have, the more resilient this ecosystem will be. And also very interesting to see that a forest has a very important ecosic function uh which is basically doing many good things for the environment as such as regulating the climate, producing oxygen, protecting biodiversity, purifying water, conserving the soil and many others. Uh and my point here is that we should realize that we are an ecosystem because we are made of such a different perspective, skill set, background. Uh and the only way to change our society and our systems for the better is to not enclose ourselves into bubbles and to stop criticizing a lot each other because otherwise we we are not going to make it because again we are confronting the same problems but still we continue to invest a lot of energy and emotions into saying ah my chain is better than yours but this is crap. up. Uh we already have this uh this is not working. This is low. Why? Uh and I think here I use the ego chamber not eco chamber because I think there is a lot uh a lot of problems are because of the ego that we have. You know we we we are not able to recognize how much we are part of the problem and so we point to others. Um so yeah basically my point here is like let's strive to connect to create synergies to understand each other. Uh because again real change is about culture is about law and about society if we want to be realistic and real change is about people. Um this is what actually drives most of the things that we do with web privacy now. Uh we try to facilitate understanding, solidarity and collaboration in the space. Trying to create and facilitate a formation of an ecosystem around privacy around these founding values of crypto uh to advance privacy preserving technologies uh behaviors narratives uh and knowledge. At the moment we have more than 40 projects, internal projects. Uh everything is free, open source forever and uh I will I invite you to scan this QR code to find everything we do. uh if your organization, if you are an individual, if you are a developer, if you are a researcher, we welcome everyone because again we need the uh skillful and and heart and time and energy of everyone who care about digital rights. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much. And I really love the resource there. There's a directory of 750 projects in that link and it's one of the nicest directories that I've seen. So I wanted to also pay my respects in that regard. Congratulations. Cool.