We Promised Decentralization, but Forgot to Build the Infrastructure | Shayan Eskandari

Sun, Aug 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

We Promised Decentralization, but Forgot to Build the Infrastructure Shayan Eskandari is a security researcher, hacker, educator, and internet freedom activist working at the intersection of blockchain technology, security, and digital rights. His PhD dissertation, Uncovering Blockchain Challenges: Technical Nuances and Their Unforeseen Consequences, maps the gap between blockchain's ambitious promises and its real-world implications; from cryptojacking and front-running attacks that exploit the protocol's foundational properties, to oracle trust failures and the regulatory blind spots that leave auditors unable to accurately understand cryptoassets. The central argument: the same properties that make blockchains powerful — permissionlessness, transparency, decentralization — are also the source of their most dangerous attack surfaces. He currently serves as a postdoctoral fellow at NOVA SBE's Data, Operations & Technology Knowledge Center, contributing to BLOCKCHAIN.PT, a Portuguese national initiative co-funded by PRR and NextGenerationEU. His career spans the full arc of Web3: blockchain engineer at Bitaccess during Bitcoin's early ATM era, security engineer at ConsenSys Diligence specializing in smart contract auditing, and CTO at Ether Capital, where he led one of the first publicly traded Ethereum staking operations (36,000 ETH). He co-founded IranUnchained, a Moloch v3-based NGO addressing the gap between crypto's borderless ideals and geopolitical exclusion. He is also co-founder of Shiryakhat and CoinIran Academy, educating Farsi-speaking communities on blockchain technology since 2015. His current obsession is MoaV — Mother of All VPNs (moav.sh). The ideology: internet freedom cannot depend on any single tool, protocol, or organization. It must be distributed infrastructure, built before the crisis, resilient enough that no state can shut it all down without breaking their own internet. One command turns a $10 VPS into a node running 16+ simultaneous circumvention protocols: DNS tunnels, obfuscated proxies, Psiphon relays and Tor bridges. Deployed by activists and diaspora communities keeping people connected when their governments decide they shouldn't be. Outside the terminal: analogue photography, film, multi exposures, and a camera collection that has clearly gotten out of hand. Shayan Eskandari: https://x.com/sbetamc 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/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.