Putting the "punk" back in "solarpunk"

Transcript

Okay. Well, thank you everybody for jumping in. Excited to be here. This is my first time at ETHCC. This is my first time at an Ethereum event at all. So, an outsider coming to join y'all speaking in. I'm I'm pumped for this. I figured I did a lot of back and forth trying to decide what do I want to actually talk about? I'm more of a technical background, more focused on privacy tools, education. There's a lot of different things that I kind of kind of get my hands into, but I figured I would actually kind of go back to first principles, focus a little bit more philosophical today.

Mainly because I am more of an outsider kind of coming to join y'all, seeing seeing what the vibes are here, seeing how y'all are building, why you're building what you're building. And I I thought this would be a good topic. So, we'll define these terms. If you've never heard what Solarpunk means, I promise you will we'll get into that a little bit. But really excited to be with y'all here today. So, briefly about me. So, I I very intentionally call myself a freedom tech maximalist, not a Bitcoin maximalist, not an Ethereum maximalist, not a Monero maximalist. I I think that these things are immensely useful tools for freedom, but ultimately we need to be flexible to find what works for real people in real situations to empower them.

So, that can look like a broad variety of things. Obviously, financial freedom is is critical to everything else. We'll get into that a little bit as well. I've hosted a podcast called the Opt-Out podcast for quite a few years. I don't do it as frequently now, just time constraints. But it's a a fun side of things getting to have conversations with people from all around the world who are building freedom tech. And then, what does absorb most of my time? I am COO at Cake Wallet. We're a a multi-crypto wallet focused on Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, a bunch of others as well. Trying to make self-custody really easy, fully open source, free to use, privacy really easy, and payments really easy. Well over a million users now and and centered around privacy as not just like a nice to have or a marketing narrative or a niche, but

privacy as something that is absolutely essential to these tools actually being something that empower human freedom and not just for for degen trading or other things that often go on in this space. And then, lastly, I'm a a cautious Ethereum user. I'm not someone who has been like daily using Ethereum for years, but I've been I was testing Ethereum and using it very early on, but the the lack of privacy has always been something that's honestly terrified me a little bit. It's It's a lot easier to achieve privacy in other chains. Monero is how I got started in the space. Bitcoin has been a focus for me. And while Bitcoin absolutely has not solved privacy, the account model on Ethereum is particularly problematic. So, I'm very careful about how I use Ethereum. And yet at the same time, especially after

joining Cake Wallet, I've realized that Ethereum and the the tools that it provides both for developers and users make it something that's just indispensable that we absolutely have to have and have to build around and thus have to build privacy around. So, Solarpunk. This may be a totally new term to you. Maybe you you you live the Solarpunk dream and you're you're fully on board and you you understand what this is. For many, this may be a new term though. So, Solarpunk is is this idea that when I have kind of looked on the Ethereum community from the outside in, has been something that seems like the driving force behind a lot of how Ethereum builds what they build, why they build what they build, how they make design decisions. It starts from this place of a really like unbridled optimism. And

it's something that I have really honestly envied about the Ethereum world. It seems like the the worldview, the ethos is one that is very optimistic and and kind of thinks of things in terms of if we just build the right tools, if we just form the right DAO, if we just build the right on-chain governance, if we just build the right thing, ultimately the world's problems will be solved, people will choose to do the right thing, to be kind to each other. Like people will be good people if we give them the right tools. And I I love the idea. I I've always wished I was that optimistic. I think I can I can lean a little bit more pessimistic.

But I've always had this wonder like with the Solarpunk ideology, with the more optimistic worldview that that many builders in the space especially can have, is it too optimistic? Like is is there something missing if we lean towards this focus of just building the right tool and all of our problems will be solved? Obviously, we'll get into that a little bit more, but I I think it's something we need to kind of be constantly considering. And there we go. And on the other side of the spectrum, and this is a term most of you almost definitely have not heard of cuz it's much newer.

It was coined by a friend of mine, Rachel Rose O'Leary. It's called Lunarpunk. And it's essentially the like the alter ego, the shadow self of the idea of Lunarpunk of Solarpunk, which is essentially the most pessimistic view you could almost take, which is that not only do we need to build the tools, but ultimately we need to build the tools because everyone is against us, because governments are seeking to crush us, because corporations are seeking to exploit us. It's one that's grounded in the reality of brokenness in the world that we live in, and yet it's one that that ultimately goes I think quite quite a bit too far.

A direct quote from Rachel on this, "Lunarpunks are preparing for war, building privacy-enhanced tooling to protect their communities." And the concepts are like incredibly sound. It's It's what It's a an idea and a philosophy that's resonated with me over the years. But if we take it too far, as I've seen quite often in the Bitcoin and Monero communities especially, in the Bitcoin world everything is doom and gloom, the dollar's going to collapse any day. If I just stack sats, I'll just sit in my citadel and laugh at all of the the peons below me. In the Monero community, this gets taken too far where everyone assumes that anyone who is not them is a spook, that any corporation must be evil, that every government official is is Satan incarnate. Like it it it can take these things way too far.

And when we're looking at what we actually build out of this philosophy, it often ends up with things that are extremely technical, extremely hardcore, and things that no one will use. Because they're they're built for the paranoid individual. They're built for the person who has a deep deep enough technical understanding that they also know what in the world Lunarpunk means. And they're they're just not things that are going to be going to be widely used and thus aren't going to actually provide freedom to many people. So, ultimately, kind of where I've settled and where I think is is is almost always the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. There's there's there's nuance, there's beauty in both of these philosophies.

And ultimately finding that that nuance is something that when we kind of go back to the roots of the Cypherpunk movement, I won't make you read the whole Cypherpunk manifesto. If you haven't read it though, please take some time, go read it. It is one of the most like prescient and well-written simple documents that describes kind of why we should be doing what we're doing. And it takes a very nuanced middle ground approach. It it does say privacy is absolutely necessary for an open society, that if we don't build privacy into the way that we talk, into the way that we transfer value, that those tools will not provide much freedom for the individual.

And yet also it does acknowledge that that governments, corporations, they're not going to just build tools that empower the individual and strip them of power out of the goodness of their hearts. That's That's not unfortunately how human nature works. That's not how these things happen. And yet at the same time, you'll see throughout the manifesto, it's also not saying that governments, corporations, etc. are just these evil entities that are seeking to destroy you at all costs. Like there there is a middle ground, there is balance there. And then lastly, the thing that that just clearly resonates with everyone in both Lunarpunk, Solarpunk, throughout the Ethereum ecosystem, Cypherpunks write code. Like we we have to actually build the tools. Somebody's going to have to do this. If it's not going to be those governments, if it's not going to be those corporations, it's going to be us. And so ultimately it is

our our responsibility to build those tools coming from a a nuanced balanced framework. And ultimately, I am not creative enough to come up with a cool name like Solarpunk or Lunarpunk. I kind of term the the way I approach things when I'm building as as optimistic pragmatism. Like this idea that like we we want the best, we see that people are seeking freedom, we see that people are seeking tools that empower them. Like everyone wants freedom tech. Everyone wants something that is built for them and not built to benefit someone else at their expense.

And yet, there are people out there who are going to exploit vulnerabilities. There are people out there who are going to abuse good tools to do bad things. So, how do we find that middle ground and build out of it? And and ultimately, this this looks like building out of that middle ground. It looks like assuming that freedom tech, these these these tools not just financial, like Ethereum specifically is just one piece of the puzzle. Financial privacy, financial uh uh tools that allow us to to do things like earn yield, DeFi, all of these things. They're they're powerful, but they're only one piece of the puzzle. I think often we get kind of trapped in this idea that if we just fix the money, everything else falls in line. And yet we need a broad suite of tools that

protect us. We We do need financial privacy. Yes, I think that if you if you lose financial privacy, the the rest of your your rights, the rest of your freedoms will quickly will quickly dissolve, will quickly go away. And yet you also need digital privacy. You also need network level privacy. You also need ways to become anonymous when that's necessary. You need a whole suite of tools. So, we need to build freedom tech that empowers individuals in new ways. And again, that does it in a way that the average person can actually achieve. Most of us who are extremely technical are not in as much need of freedom tech as many others. Especially those of us here in the West often don't need these tools right now. I think we will. And the lack of perceived need can be just as big of

a problem. But we need to build these things that anyone can use. I think we also need to be pragmatic in understanding that that while all governments and corporations are not evil, necessarily power does corrupt. Necessarily, as corporations get larger, we do see things like enshittification for lack of a better term, where the the things will necessarily get worse over time that are being built by these corporations as they do seek more income, as they seek to to please shareholders. And that that there are ways that we need to think about what what is the worst case. Like if I if I build this tool with this compliance angle, if I build this tool with complete transparency, what ways can that be abused? And we need to think about that pragmatically in the tools that we

build, and not just assume that no one will abuse the tool, that no one will abuse the lack of privacy, but rather game plan out what are the threat vectors here? How can this be attacked? How can this be abused as we're building out these tools? Um and then the the the last one here is is ultimately something that ends up trending more towards the solar punk ideal, which is that as we build freedom tech that's actually achievable, as we build things that that real people can use, that real people need, it ultimately does strip power away from authoritarians. It does ultimately slow the the devolution of governments into totalitarian regimes. It It ultimately does protect the individual and empower them and lift up uh

communities themselves. So, these things I think it it can often trend towards what the solar punk ideal is, but only when we build with that pragmatism in mind at the same time. So, getting a little bit practical here, um something that like that underpins everything that that I do, that underpins everything that we do at Cake Wallet, is this idea that that freedom money necessarily needs two things. One, self-custody, you all know it, not your keys, not your coins, like it's the the most uh trite statement in the in the cryptocurrency space. Everyone understands it.

And yet I think we often forget it because we get these these new ways, these new ideas, these new new types of custodial tools that we can build, and we often forget that the the censorship resistance that often we we need out of tools like Ethereum only comes when you do have self-custody. So, the obvious one, build towards self-custody, that that has to be a non-negotiable. That has to be an a necessary underpinning here. But the the other piece that is often just completely forgotten is that even if you have self-custody, if anyone with a block explorer or even worse, anyone with a chain surveillance tool can know exactly what you're doing, when you're doing it, what your positions are, when you're spending, who you're paying, the actual censorship resistance you get in the real world trends towards zero.

Because when someone knows exactly who you are and exactly what you're doing on chain, you can actually end up in a worse place when it comes to financial freedom than outside of the cryptocurrency space. And oftentimes we have built these these panopticons almost of financial surveillance accidentally because we're building from a place where we don't we don't think through what is what is the way that this can be abused. Um and so we need those two pillars. We need self-custody, that one we've pretty much solved in the space, although I think we can do better at at onboarding and things like that. And then the financial privacy piece is the other side that has to go hand in hand with self-custody for this stuff to actually be freedom money.

Um next up is just figuring out like what are the the low-hanging fruit? What are the ways that we can improve user privacy that are not going to to cost the user too much. It's been really really awesome to see the EF, to see people throughout the Ethereum ecosystem finally pushing on privacy, understanding that this isn't just like a nice to have we can do at some point, but this is is absolutely necessary to these tools being useful long-term. And so that has been fantastic to see, even just like a recent push to to implement Tor into more wallets. Most of the Ethereum ecosystem, you're using your wallet as a a light wallet, you're just hitting an RPC and telling it everything about your transaction history, your accounts.

Why not do that over Tor? Has very little user experience degradation and provides that user fantastic network level privacy. Um that's low-hanging fruit, but there are obviously a lot of other things we can do. Things like Railgun, things like privacy pools that are being built out. Things like the Kohaku SDK, if you haven't heard of that, fantastic tool that allows developers to more easily implement privacy tools into their wallets. Um and then on top of that, we have things like stealth addresses. There There's There's fantastic privacy tooling coming out for the Ethereum Ethereum ecosystem that we really need to lean into. And ultimately it comes down to this idea that we we have to build tools that shift power back to the individual. I think often when we think about this kind of balance of power or balance

of privacy versus surveillance, we think it's just like slightly shifted. Like it's like 55% surveillance, 45% privacy. Well, in reality I think quite honestly for most people they have very little to no digital privacy by default, no financial privacy. And it's our job as developers, it's our job as builders to shift that power back to a place that provides the individual the tools they need to have privacy. Um and lastly, the ultimate thing that looks like again, like I said, like we can't be nerds building for nerds when it comes to this stuff. I think that's been the tendency for too long in this space where the tools that we build are extremely technically sound, they have these intense cryptographic principles that are at their core, and yet they're so hard to use that we can talk about them

all day on Twitter, but no one actually leverages them because they're they're just a a pain to actually step into each day. So, building good UX, building in strong defaults, building in gentle prompts for the user that help to remind them, "Hey, this is going to be bad for your privacy, are you sure you want to do it?" Or, "Hey, there's this privacy tool that's quite easy to use, would you like to enable it?" These sorts of things to to push users into making good privacy choices, and doing our job as developers, as builders to make these things as simple and as approachable as possible. The The last thing I wanted to touch on and it's a little bit outside of the the actual topic of this talk, but it came to me just kind of throughout the the conference so far as I've been thinking

about this, talking to people, is that somebody who who did build bravely, who who built in the middle here, who built with a very optimistic but pragmatic view of the world, is currently undergoing prosecution. He was I think falsely convicted by the United States Department of Justice, but is about to go through the appeals process and I think stands a very good chance of winning that appeal, which would set a fantastic precedent for those of us who are building, those of us who want to use privacy tools. Uh and his appeal I believe happens in 9 days, and he's still seeking funding. So, I did just want to to raise if you if you haven't heard the story of Roman Storm, if you haven't heard the story of Tornado Cash, you probably have. It's It's pretty high-profile in this space.

But just a reminder that he hasn't just ceased to exist, he's still out there, he's still fighting the good fight. Uh and if you haven't yet, just scan the QR, it takes you straight to his website, freeromanstorm.com, and will give you a little bit more info. Um And >> [sighs] >> with that, uh that's about it. I think we have a couple minutes if anybody has any questions, but just real quick, if you want to follow up with what we're doing at Cake Wallet, scan the QR, cakewallet.com, or go and find us, we're on the yellow stage near the the free coffee. Near the free coffee. So, if you want coffee, stop by there. Jump by the Cake Wallet booth. Uh we'd love to chat a little bit more. But yeah, any questions anyone has?

Thank you very much for your presentation. One question, how do you verify the data you receive from the nodes in your wallet? Um so, primarily we do still rely on external infrastructure, things like Infura nodes to to provide RPC data to our users. We don't run our own infra because that's trickier with Ethereum than than other blockchains, unfortunately. Um so, we do rely on these RPC providers, but that's why we built in Tor natively that users can enable at a at a toggle to get the privacy side of that. Obviously it doesn't change the the validation side of that, um but just from a privacy perspective, that's one thing that we've done there.

Yeah. Anybody else? Uh great presentation. Thank you so much. Um how are you as a wallet planning on supporting encrypted mempools, a privacy uh solution to protect users against malicious MEV like front running and sandwich attacks? So, the initial way that we're solving for that is we have partnered with Blank um to use them for private mempool to essentially prevent MEV. Um but it's something we're constantly trying to figure out like what are the the best and most decentralized ways to do that. I think often it it

leans on on other things like a third-party RPC provider to to help protect against that. I know we've had a several different providers come to our booth as well during the conference to to chat about that. Um but it's something, like I said, I'm relatively new to the Ethereum ecosystem. We're focusing heavily on Ethereum this year and trying to figure out how do we solve these again real users real problems that real users have in a way that is as much as possible privacy preserving, is as much as possible censorship resistant and decentralized, difficult to have all of those things in one. So, yeah, trying to find the the best solution.

Uh hello, thanks for presentation. Uh I was curious about your opinion on advanced cryptographic primitives like ZK, FHE, MPC, because typically they come at a high UX cost, but they provide also very secure guarantees. Yeah, I mean it's something that we've been been doing for a very long time across other cryptocurrencies. Like we started as a Monero-only wallet, so we're we're very familiar with what good privacy and poor UX those tools can bring to users. Um I think there are a lot of novel things that we can do to to protect users from those issues. I mean, simple things like background sync have essentially solved the main main UX hurdle with Monero, which it has that same issue where in Monero, for anyone who hasn't used it, you can't just like

connect to a node and instantly know your balance. You have to connect to a node, download all of the data from the blockchain since the last time you synced, and check it locally to see if any transactions apply to you. Anytime you're using something like that, generally you are having to do a lot of that computation locally, or if you're making a transaction, you have to actually do the proving locally, and that can take a lot of time. Um but I think really simple things like doing things in the background can solve a lot of that, but at the same time we have to be we have to be honest with our users that you can get much better privacy by using tool X, whatever that is, and we will do our best to simplify that, but there's always going to be a little bit of pain. We're never going

to, I think, get exactly the same UX when we do go max privacy. But again, that's where we we provide our users the choice. We do as much as possible on the developer side, on the building side, to limit that, um to find good solutions to do things in the background when possible, but at the same time also just be honest with the our users, educate them, and say like you will you will be better off for using this, but you'll see this slight difference um at the same time. Awesome. I think that's all the time we have. Thank you so much. If you do want to chat anymore, uh I'll I'll hang around a little bit right outside the stage, but also we have that booth at the yellow stage, so thank you all so much.

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