devcon 7 / cypherpunk is slow not hyper financialized and unlike twitter
Duration: 00:07:47
Speaker: Sebastian Buergel
Type: Lightning Talk
Expertise: Intermediate
Event: Devcon
Date: Nov 2024
Network level privacy with HOPR - fixing Ethereum's Achilles' heel
Multiple projects currently focus on on-chain privacy but at network level, Ethereum utilizes broadcasting of messages in a P2P setting which is known to have inferior privacy-guarantees compared to mixnets. Beyond the core layer, dapps running on top of Ethereum or users interfacing these dapps and communicating with one another need a go-to protocol that allows them to exchange data without leaking private metadata that allows for de-anonymizing them while using a dapp.In this talk we highlight some attacks that collect network metadata in order to de-anonymize senders of a transaction. We then show how a mixnet like HOPR can be used to establish network-level metadata privacy. HOPR is a mixnet that allows participating nodes to earn ETH for relaying messages and thereby provide privacy. As HOPR requires cooperation of downstream nodes to unlock a payment, traditional payment channels would lead to race conditions that allow relayers to exploit the network. We will present an alternative to common payment channel implementations, building on commutative properties of elliptic curves for efficiently closing payment channels.
Tending the Infinite Garden: Organizational Culture in the Ethereum Ecosystem
This presentation will discuss the findings of the academic paper "Tending the Infinite Garden: Organisational Culture in the Ethereum Ecosystem" by Dr. Paul-Dylan-Ennis and Ann Brody. Our study examines the decision-making processes fundamental to Ethereum's protocol governance, drawing on interviews with Ethereum's core developers. We identify a central worldview in Ethereum known as the "Infinite Garden" and discuss how Ethereum's social layer is crucial for upholding cypherpunk values.
Keynote: Lessons learned from Tor
I will share lessons learned during Tor's twenty years as free software fighting for privacy and human rights. We'll talk about distributed trust and privacy by design, how to help people understand the good uses of your tech, getting allies in both cypherpunks and government, why transparency and community-building are so essential to trust, and successes from other spaces. It may seem like the crypto wars never really end, but we all have a part to play in saving the world.
Keynote: Glass Houses and Tornados
The Tornado Cash sanctions and criminal prosecutions have challenged longstanding assumptions within crypto about the limits of money transmission licensing, money laundering statutes, and sanctions laws. They've also revealed a longstanding assumption from some in policy and law enforcement circles: that blockchains have always been and must remain transparent. Neither assumption has served us well and the time has come for legal certainty. This talk is about how we get there.
Keynote: How to Properly Open Source Software: Lessons Learned from the Linux Foundation
It can be challenging to properly open source software: there are licenses, IP, security reporting, and many other issues that need to be addressed. In this talk, we will discuss the best practices for open source software development learned from almost 25 years of experience at the Linux Foundation. Attendees will learn about how to set up their projects for a variety of potential goals, including things like maximizing security and community building.
Keynote: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again: Why we need privacy
The Web3 revolution seeks to address the sins of Web2. However, in doing so, it’s created an even worse outcome for users - users’ data is publicly available and makes them vulnerable to state-level censorship and adverse actions. This talk will address the philosophical as well as practical considerations of privacy in Web3. Privacy is an industry-wide issue and sits at the heart of all that is Web3. Understanding why privacy matters involves recognizing that it is not an isolated concept bu
Lunarpunk Endgame
Global surveillance is a static world where change is surpressed and society cannot evolve. In contrast, an anonymity-enhanced world resembles a forest. New civilizational experiments blossom like flowers, radiating outward from the freedom-fighters of the future. The lunarpunk end game is to enable a new ecology of social orders. This talk will describe the grand vision of lunarpunk: multipolar space-faring civilization, human speciation, and the reproduction life throughout the cosmos.
Bringing peer-to-peer networks to ALL the peers
The p2p networks of the Ethereum ecosystem generally draw the line to server nodes. True end users devices: mobiles, laptops, browsers, are excluded and use centralised APIs and gateways to access the p2p network. Removing sovereignty, censorship-resistance and privacy in the process. In this lightning talk, we’ll review everything that can go wrong when trying to include resource restricted devices in a peer-to-peer network, using the most popular tools and libraries.
Ethereum Citizen: Embracing Self-Sovereign Digital Identity
The world is changing. Everything is becoming digital. As we seek to extract more from digital services, we are giving them more and more of our personal data. But it doesn't have to be this way. Just as we gained self-sovereignty and ownership over our digital assets and money, we can achieve the same for our digital identities and data using similar and new technologies. This presentation will explain what self-sovereign identity is, why we need it, and where we stand today.
I read every single 1990s Cypherpunk email. Here's what you should know.
What would Hal Finney, Tim May, David Chaum, and other cypherpunks think about the current state of Ethereum, cryptography, privacy, and trusted hardware? I read every single 1990s cypherpunk email (thousands) to learn more the original movement. I gathered the most interesting and relevant cypherpunk emails, and put them together to make this best-of-the-best cypherpunk presentation.