# Cypherpunk is slow, not hyper-financialized and unlike Twitter by Sebastian Buergel | Devcon SEA

- Speakers: [Sebastian Buergel](https://streameth.org/speakers/sebastian-buergel)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-09
- Duration: 07:44
- Topics: Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-zIqVFYQqPk0
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIqVFYQqPk0

## Description

In this lightning talk I will present three major directions that we need to tackle to make Ethereum Cypherpunk:
1. Against popular trends, I call for increasing block time (instead of making it faster) to increase resilience via better DVT and mixnets - both are struggling with low latency blocks
2. Let's revive the Ethereum world computer, not just financial infrastructure and their implications
3. Rethink [d]app UX entirely - how does resilient human interaction feel like in the digital era?

Speaker(s): Sebastian Buergel
Skill level: Intermediate
Track: Cypherpunk & Privacy
Keywords: latency, Censorship Resistance, Ethereum Roadmap, Not financial

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## Transcript

[Music] yeah welcome and thanks for the kind introduction um my name is Sebastian I got introduced already um so yeah but today actually I don't want to talk about any individual projects because I'm talking about a problem that I think is bigger than any individual you know project that we're seeing here and before I get there I want to dive in how we come here so a long long time ago you know um in days so old that ethereum had a vision a vision was stated on the launch day website of ethereum.org July 30 2015 and that read what is ethereum ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime censorship fraud or third part interference ethereum is how the internet was supposed to work on a page you found how to for the very first time in human history actually do you know Fair voting if you dig deeper you found out how to launch your shitcoin without running a network that was neat somebody came up with a horrible standard and called it ec20 and yet people were building like really cool interfaces on top of it the birth of defi well the birth of defi in this Dex had a bit of problem that you know if you look in the order book only one person can basically buy the top of book right you wouldn't know who in the block actually got that that's not great luckily a young man came up with an idea and another even younger man wrote A Blog about it and his blog can be summarized in exactly five characters x * y equals k I think the most iconic equation of our times and dexas were born right and um Along came a third young man who at the time didn't even have a job or knew how to code and coded up that idea and called it Unis swap now if you use Unis swap you might have seen the settings thing you might have not seen it there's something called slippage that fixes the issue I talked about earlier of not you know taking this exact order only fast forward to last night there was some fellow who was again trading a token because that's what people do 15K worth of coins for like 13.5 K worth of eth weird what's that difference slippage of course not right so that's a sandwich attack that fellow got sandwiched by sophisticated front run and back run here how was that possible well of course it's possible thanks to a highly sophisticated you know user screwing infrastructure that's also called me that was built to democratize access and make things fair for the user by leveling the playing field and bringing many players into the field so let's zoom into that let's zoom into this Builder section down here and let's see how that democratization is going well today we see that there's exactly two remaining right so um that's Titan and beaver congrats on democra ation going well and I think that is broken right that is broken that is not how ethereum was supposed to work so an updated version of what is ethereum 2014 ethereum 24 Edition ethereum is a platform that runs Smart Financial Casino contracts applications that usually run exactly as paid without any possibility of downtime and yes it actually one set third party interference funny right ethereum is Bernie mad's wet dream and that is broken and that's what I'm here to talk about and that's what I'm standing up for because that is not the ethereum that I came here for it is about them versus us they want faster blocks obviously right you can trade faster you can make more money quicker we want resilience via privacy and decentralization and it's unfortunately at odds why is that at odds well because physics because it takes a few hundred milliseconds to have a round trip of ping across our you know not so tiny planet and if you want privacy infrastructure like mix Nets that we build at Hopper or DVT that other people build you have a bunch more of those right so things are not as fast and that's why that's an actual problem now they invest in reaking RW and rehypothecation we and empower the individual on the world computer these two things have to share the same Ledger and have the same infrastructure to share they write checks Cipher puns write code they are here for the profits we are here for positive human interactions and experience in the infinite Garden if you are here for profits you are part of the problem you are contributing to A system that is corrupting the underpinnings of the world computer that Cipher punks want to build really great stuff on let's fix that let's be conscious about that and let's try to build an ethereum that goes back to the roots of where it started in order to bring us the infrastructure that empowers the individual and not the trader thank you so [Applause] much thank you so now is your opportunity to ask some questions uh please raise your hand if you have any question about a censorship resistance there are still note operators that uh make vanilla blocks so how does that compare to what you said so yeah I mean uh there are still some not producers that produce blocks but that's not enough 80% of the blocks that are showed are subject to that right and that's not great right so increasingly even individuals are subscribing to the big Builders and that corrupts the infrastructure for example it's not just the L1 with based rollups that directly translates to corrupting the l2s right so we need neutrality of the L1 hi thanks for the talk so you showed the website back in 2015 and 16 and I think one of the big things that changed was the DOW hard for and that split the community uh to some extent but also kind of filtered away some of the cipher Punk philosophy uh so why don't people just the cipher punks why don't they just use ethereum classic sorry why don't they just choose ethereum classic great um well I I think we've seen the attack ability of that right so Cipher Punk still deserve security and Cipher Punk still deserve security that they don't get on a chain that could you know any time of the day just get forked away under their feet uh that's not great so I think Cipher punks deserve ultimate resilience more so than the profit maxity here because they can still go to binance if you want to make money binance is great technology right please do trade on binance well actually that was the last question thank you so much uh please give some Applause to sasan