# Ethereum Principles | Josef Je (Berlin Ethereum Day, June 2026) - Speakers: Josef Je - Channel: [Berlin Ethereum Meetup](https://streameth.org/berlin-ethereum-meetup) - Date: 2026-09-09 - Duration: 10:21 - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-iow-ft4NYe8 - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iow-ft4NYe8 ## Description Ethereum is a “technology generating society”! The network should be impossible to capture. The culture should be difficult to corrupt. Josef Je (European Ethereum Institute/OWN) walked through the principles of Ethereum. The Berlin Ethereum Day was a one-day event held on June 15, 2026, during the Berlin Blockchain Week, bringing together speakers from the Ethereum Foundation and the broader FOSS, privacy, and security ecosystems to explore the future of Ethereum and self-sovereign technologies - from technical direction and core values to the challenges and opportunities ahead. Future Meetups and Events: https://www.meetup.com/berlin-ethereum-meetup/ More information on the speakers and the agenda: https://berlinethereumday.com/ ## Transcript Everybody, my name is Joseph. I said I've I've been here for for the last decades. I joined the Ethereum space as a essentially a broken broken student and I discovered Ethereum and it pretty much changed my life and I've seen crazy stuff to be happening in in the ecosystem. I'm blessed that I could be part of many of the great things that you guys have have been creating and now it's been 10 years and I'm still broken. I'm still here. So thank you for having me. Today I want to talk about principles of Ethereum. By the way, this is supposed to be a lightning talk, but we just saw the lightning strike by Benji. So I hope this is not too boring. What I'm going to argue about today is that forget crops and forget the entire mandate thing. I'm going to get to that in a in a bit, but what I want to argue for is that Ethereum is a technology generating society. And what does it mean? I think there in the sentence there are actually two meanings. A, I want to argue that Ethereum is a technology that generates society, but also want to argue that Ethereum is a society that generates the technology. That's all of the builders that that actually go out and build stuff. And what I propose with these principles definitely isn't something definitive, but I just want to make an argument show them to you and then let you guys to help me define them. So let's start with a question. How can principles form a society? So on your left you see the 10 Commandments. Is there actually anyone here who can yell out a few of them? Is there anyone who remembers all 10? Awesome. Um See, like there was one person raising raising his hand, I think. Um there's probably a few more, and like if you guys tried, you probably could recreate, I don't know, like 50, 70% Um which is good enough. The point here being well, these 10 Commandments have essentially created what we know as the Western society. Um do we live by them? Somewhat. Uh do we necessarily have to remember all of them? Like hells no. Um but they are there, and they're very useful, and they're easy to understand for anyone. There's another example. So, roughly a month ago at the Prague, um uh we were lucky enough to to welcome um uh Marian uh Goodell, the the one of the founding members of the Burning Man project. And I would argue that Burning Man is another great example of of a large community that has been fostered and stewarded to um the these principles. Uh I'm not going to go through them, but I definitely encourage you to look them up. I think there are some overlaps with what we see in Ethereum, but there are definitely also major differences uh in the in the Burning Man spirit. Uh and I also know there are a bunch of burners here. I haven't been to Burning Man, but I still find it amazing of like how these principles and um how the simple communication of these uh has been forming this this tremendous pop-up city every year, and like went way from just one event into this entire um generation and uh community worldwide. I mentioned the EF mandate. And you've seen it throughout the day. It's like a bunch of slides with EF things this, things that. What I would argue for uh is that let EF keep its mandate. Um in my opinion, Ethereum actually needs much wider principles. And there definitely is an overlap between Ethereum or what I see as Ethereum and the the Ethereum Foundation. I mean, a whole bunch of the core stuff definitely applies to both. But, the way I read the EF mandate is that it's a political document that defines a mission and a like accountability framework for one organization within much, much wider ecosystem. So, um just, you know, like let EF write 40-page documents, um but if we actually want to communicate way more effective to much wider group of people what Ethereum is, I think we should make it narrow. We should make it much easy, uh easier for them to to grasp it or even like to read through this. So, the first principle, and I don't know how much time I have, but this should be quick. The first principle, which obviously matches the mandate, is sovereignty for everyone. We obviously want any anyone in the ecosystem to be able to do whatever they want. Like, we don't we don't want to wait for permissions. And by anyone, I mean like any individual, any any business, any institution, if they will. Um they should be able to do this under the under the umbrella of um Ethereum. Well, obviously like there are caveats to what we what we find to be uh moral, but um if we consider this to be one of the principles, then we can see how this plays out with a couple more of them. The second one is decentralization as a duty. Um it's not just like the blind decentralization, but we actually see purpose in chasing, um removing the central points of failure from any system within Ethereum. And let it be technical uh or even let them be the community the community structure that we created. So, although coordination is necessary, we know that critical dependencies are dangerous for the system. We try to avoid them. Uh by the way, I I think it's super funny that like some of the slides that the previous talks have very similar um images generated by Codex. So, we think we're pretty much like bucketed for what Ethereum stands for already. Normalizing privacy. Obviously, that's part of props. Um but I think that's that's the thing that unites us. Um within the Ethereum space, um let that be uh let that be the um technological advancements on zero knowledge proofs um and then pushing those onto the chain or let it be even us as a community um making sure to uh stand up for anyone anyone's privacy in the space. Conscious pluralism. You can argue and it's I mean, again, like I'm not 100% convinced these are the right principles. I want you to actually then come and talk to me and comment on these. Um but I think there is also important factor in the consciousness of the decentralization. We've seen great things to to be kickstarted, to be created on Ethereum like Lido, like Ave, and so on, like Geth. But it might be in we tend to like them more if they are not threatening us, if they are not becoming the single point of failure. What we've seen previously was people hating Lido for being too successful. People hate the people hating hating um Ave for being too successful. And to be honest, I actually tend to like Geth even more now that I know it's not the core dependency of the entire ecosystem. So, we choose pluralism over domination uh in Ethereum. The next one, I think, shared with the Burning Man spirit as well as sharing responsibilities. We know that it's not up to one single person, one single entity to be the steward and to actually take action. We at Ethereum, when show up. Credible neutrality. This is actually the one where I'm not sure about this myself. I think the network should be neutral. Uh, some people are arguing that the network can be neutral. Like we are what makes it neutral or the operators do. Um, and I think it's a very core or very important aspect on the technical level, but is it is it on the social level? Uh, shouldn't Ethereum be more of a chaotic good uh than a truthful or lawful neutral in the D&D sense? Um, I don't know. The open spirit. So, from what I witnessed, we love experimentation with whatever. Nothing is secret. We can go and build crazy stuff and we can see it flourish or die and it won't stop us. We'll just see people uh building new financial systems, new identity systems, um, you call it. I I think it's very core of what we stand for within the Ethereum space. And finally, the the eight principles, there is eight of them. I don't know why this has happened so. Um, it's building over talking. So, this was supposed to be lightning talk. Um, I hope I'm not too too much over, but this is where I'm going to to actually finish. So, I think the the Cypherpunk uh the Cypherpunk view on writing codes and being hands-on is actually quite important. We love conferencing, but we also love people seeing uh love people building and and hacking on on different things. And if we stop doing that, we just get into the talking, uh Ethereum definitely won't be what it was until now. So, I'll shut up now. Um, you go back to building. These are the eight principles. Uh, sovereignty for everyone, decentralization is a duty, normalizing privacy, conscious pluralism, responsibility sharing, credible neutrality, open-source spirit, and building over talking. Um you can, and please do, scan this QR code. That will lead you to um to DDocs to followers. We find these with a few more words, uh a paragraph for each. Uh I would definitely want to encourage you to open this up and comment, uh and just see if this makes sense, um and contribute in the in the open-spirited way uh to how would you define what Ethereum is in few different easy principles. And that's it. That's actually the final slide. Thank you.