The History and Philosophy of Cypherpunk
Duration: 00:25:55
Speaker: Max Hampshire, Harry Halpin, Iness Ben Guirat
Type: Talk
Expertise: Beginner
Event: Devcon
Date: Nov 2024
Rather than bend to knee to Donald Trump, the goal of the cypherpunk movement is to abolish the state in order to maximize human freedom via privacy-enhancing decentralized technologie. After reviewing the history of this deviant group of programmers in the 1980s, what philosophical and technical lessons do the cypherpunks hold for Ethereum today? Censorship-resistant digital cash was only one the start, and the missing parts of their legacy: mixnets and anonymous credentials for identity.