Solarpunk, Lunarpunk and Cypherpunk

Transcript

great thank you very much yeah hey welcome guys thank you for coming uh it's really great to have you here uh I think some of these speakers we covered some topics really relevant to to Cipher Punk lunar Punk and solar Punk yesterday and uh like what we would love to cover in this panel is diving a bit deeper into these terms and these philosophies and how they all maybe fit together or don't um and and tbay might contribute to kind of the Dak movement and the future of society U so maybe it's good to do a few quick intros to the panelists if you each want to introduce yourselves quickly um starting with

Alexi hi yes I'm Alexis I'm the CEO of nim Technologies uh I'm in the Bitcoin space for um since 200 13 uh before that I was in the open source movement uh in privacy world already uh interested as an individual uh in all of um the crypto Anarchist and Cipher movement uh and in Switzerland I'm also a political activist I'm a I was used to be president of the Swiss P party and I if you are in Switzerland you heard about initiative called the right to digital Integrity that was um voted in Geneva and in U Nel and now there's it's been signed it will be voted in a year uh in

Zurich uh and it's about uh digital rights uh and uh that's based on my work I wrote a book about it did the right to digital Integrity a few few years ago amazing thanks think it's super hard to top that uh intro uh hi everyone um W co-initiator with IA for Switzerland um deeply passionate about Community uh da and professionally I'm actually a PhD at eth Zurich had a long career on architecture engineering and construction so um there is a lot of perspective especially on Smart housing and basically be quos build environment and how uh we as individuals going to live in this um

basically we are as a moving antenna in our build environment and this Futures and but at the same time we're also very much optimistic and I want to build a uh Village that fits everyone and this kind of this solar Punk Vision so really looking forward to this discussion and everyone bring in a different perspective cool hey everybody I'm Vlad u based out of Chicago um currently run BD at a uh token fund named Cosmo Capital I'm also part of the Court team Switzerland and I help run the ethereum Chicago Community as well back home um I my studies in school were in economics so I lean very heavily towards um I have a bias towards solving macro issues

through the lens of Economics so I'm super excited to bring that perspective to discussion today hey guys I'm Veronica um I lead operations for z. City the software side of the Zulu movement um we're building Community operating system of ethereum ecosystem applications um and I am on the court team for zerland I think in broadly in the zuu movement I've been involved with since since the start I've tried to represent interests of from the rationalist movement or so that was how I was introduced into zura where I was invited to the original experiment and ever since seeing lots of dynamics that you'd

expect anytime humans come together playing out within crypto space and Zulu space tribalism Etc I've tried to push forward truth-seeking um and critical thinking perhaps and so I'm with I'm very optimistic and excited about zuin and zuu and all the things that we can build but maybe I'm representing more the skeptical darker um Cipher side so I put the Hat on to try to represent that yeah amazing thank you everybody um yeah and I I also kind of came into the space in ethereum as very much more on the solar Punk side of things how can we envision like the best possible outcomes and uh for society um and have been more

and more as I got into the space uh Cipher and Luna Punk pilled in terms of yeah what what is needed on a rational level um to get there to the ideal outcome so maybe just before we dive deeper into other areas um for each of you if you identify particularly with one or the other philosophy it would be great to hear which of the philosophies you identify maybe most with and and what they mean to you or or what they're about for you um yeah feel free whoever wants to start um yeah I'll start um I identify mostly with um Cipher Punk values um it's um uh

and and um Cipher bank for me as I as I read it it was a very uh individual approach is I want to be uh autonomous in the digital world and I want to protect myself and I I have the I use the tools and what are the tools the tools are uh cryptography uh knowledge of the networks uh self-hosting as much as I can all these kind of like uh tools where I'm uh in command and I'm protected from from any interference from um from the outside um that was the original uh the original movement uh but obviously we are building a whole society and we are interacting all the time and we have groups and organizations and now we have actual economy and this is where the solar pank from which is rising which I see more

like an a followup of the cipher Punk movement um uh which uh is looking at uh how the uh Society can be organized and how do we uh make businesses and how do we uh make education and we how do we create things uh in an environment where uh these core c values are still respected um and um uh and it it's what is interesting what solar Punk uh adds it Cipher pun was in a very strong opposition with the old world so uh uh and the um this the solar prank comes into an kind of an agreement saying well the transparent dystopia does exist it's

there and it cannot it will always be there and there's like kind of a um um equilibrium or balance and if this balance is broken then it goes bad to one side or the other but it always go back to the balance um and um and and so the same tool can be used from both sides for example and and this is maybe the realization for me of this uh balance between the two is the the Bitcoin chain itself the first Bitcoin Bitcoin was built by Cy punks and uh uh it has a lot of values but it it it has been designed in a very transparent way uh it's pseudonymous so we don't know you can create as many accounts you want you don't know but as soon as you are using it it's purely very transparent but the ethos behind was not that they

wanted we wanted to have the individual being traced we wanted to the system to be transparent so we will come into a future hopefully where uh the individuals will be anonymous the interaction of the individuals will be uh private and Anonymous but the functioning of the system will be uh completely transparent right and so this balance uh that that's going to make the Society of tomorrow thank you um for me it's a little bit of a trap question IA you know like because uh we discuss many time I always feel like sometimes uh we're super solar Punk and sometimes we're like very lunar Punk also uh walk so I I think I'm very much

uh divided um I do think in a world that we're living in now it's not um it might be don't have the the the luxury to be fully solar Punk um I think lunar Punk it's a necessary um mentality to walk the walk sometimes and um uh to be defensive like we talk a lot Al also about DC for example defensive acceleration how do we progress with um with also protect our own sovereignty and this is even it's getting just Harder by the day because um all the technology that is progressing and the way that is uh or the direction that it's going so I would say in short I'm very much both or all

three yeah um I feel I mean obviously pretty similarly there I think uh it's hard for me to put myself into anyone specific bucket with pretty much anything in life um but I will say generally broadly I do believe in transparency as a as a goal at sort of like the Bas layer one of the things that attracted me to ethereum is the fact that similarly to bitcoin it is an open and transparent system you can obviously check all the onchain records and um I think as a matter of uh coordination I think transparency is the best way to just coordinate people to accomplish goals uh that being said um a lot of what we've built here would not have happened without people who are

very strongly Cipher Punk or or lunar Punk and believe very uh strongly about the sovereign individual and tools uh anti-oppression tools um so I I may just not be the person to build those tools but I'm very much strongly supportive of people with very strong ideals yeah I already said um in in the introduction that maybe I'm um lean more on the cipher Punk side of things I think it's generally a trap to ever label yourself and then as something that pre presupposes beliefs and it's better to look at questions at hand and then form your belief based off of the question at hand rather than saying I'm a cipher Punk and therefore XYZ but I do think privacy is a fundamental right I'm

concerned about direction that a lot of different countries are going and I think that that's the most concerning problem of our time um and think that is that's a huge motivation for my involvement is making sure that we have Alternatives before it's too late and there are many people where it's already too late where they are so I feel fortunate to be in a place where I can even try to even talk about these things let alone try to help build private Alternatives but there's importance for building and you know it all goes hand inand so it depends on what we're what exactly we're discussing yeah yeah I tend to agree and um for context the way that we've

thought about zzand and the thesis of zland is kind of that there's a necessary balance to be found or balance sometimes can be the wrong word as well so I think balic talked about integration where it's not always the attempt to have one and the other at the same time but rather as you say Veronica kind of on a specific question at the at the moment at hand which is the right approach to take here to maybe allow for the other one to happen um and I think that that's really important but um I'd be curious kind of on that note do you feel that Dak is inherently more aligned with one of the philosop philosophies in another or is it all three um or yeah I

mean what's your perspective on that feel free any anyone that has a thought there to to jump in uh I mean I'm obviously very aligned with DC I mean if you look at vitalic who sort of like came up with the DC manifest St I think I'm very aligned with um his values I think um DC fundamentally is just a a counter to some of the centralization issues we see today and you know going in that route of like you know oppressive centralized regime so obviously very aligned with that um I think you know what I would caution against is um becoming too

skeptical of everything uh everything that's being built in you know like for you know like I we had this discussion yesterday on a panel about what happens when something becomes like a kind of transitions from like a open source non for-profit public good into more like of a of a corporatized model and I fundamentally don't have a problem with it I think where it becomes a problem where is when these entities seek like mon monopolistic control over and to sort of like squeeze the advantage that they've built early as as like a corporation for profit entity into just like maintaining advantage that's where I actually think like capitalism really gets distorted and to go back to my economics

perspective um I think the problem here is a wealth inequality problem and we should really be talking about what we can do to deal with these things I think it's like a very invisible enemy that we have today um there's some really great economists like Thomas petti and Gabe zuckman who've done a lot of research on this stuff and it's it's clear that we're in a moment of very high inequality that's affecting a lot of society's issues yeah I think Cypher Cipher Punk is defensive at its core too um and Dak stands for the D can stand for a few different things if you read the article but usually um or I think people colloquially are calling it defensive

accelerationism then he says Democratic differential and decentralized but the acceleration side of it I don't know I it's a semantic question I can't really yeah because like I mean there was someone saying this yesterday like um they hear defense of acceleration and they immediately think it's not acceleration but it's actually slowing down or like stopping that's deceleration though yeah exactly and so acceleration you're accelerating in a nuanced way there is a fundamental feeling that people have when they hear defensive acceleration or Yak that like um they're opposing ideas um and I think yeah I probably feel like maybe people have the feeling about Cipher Punk lunar

Punk and solar punk as well like how do you guys feel about that do you feel it there there's any way of having a society that embodies all three or even two of these or are they really fundamentally opposing ideas um no they they they they all come together what is interesting is that um uh in switzland I'm um uh I'm known as a as a person who is um building tech for uh or um working in companies who build techs for for for now more than uh 15 years um and I've been working on digital rights and at the same time people uh label me as Luddite you know like as I'm an N technology which is crazy and just because I want uh the technology to be

in control of uh of people so right now the um the the main way of thinking in Switzerland and in the world is that uh it's it's a Pure Solar Punk vision of the society which is not uh um people don't realize that but they want uh technology to be to the benefit of the government and uh to build uh to have very efficient governments um there was an article in in the nzz who the the guy was uh criticizing uh the right to digital Integrity which is giving more power to the to the individual because it was going to slow down the possibility for the zui government to make an efficient and very uh uh cheap uh digal government um and so um so that

should impose the he sees that as a way to impose this to the to the people so um um my view is that the uh uh the the where the acceleration comes is that we have to develop all these technologies that currently are not being developed by the uh by by the mainstream industry let's say because uh there the right now the needle is way too much on the on the full transparency full uh uh solank dystopia uh and uh and when we say accelerationist uh for me is uh working on cryptography working on uh decentralized system and working also on

the concept of anonymity which is really has a very bad um name right now um people say oh you want to be anonymous only criminals are Anonymous it's not about just the the privacy because privacy I think um we have this discussion also I I think the fight for privacy if even though it's super important the term is not very well accepted uh but we have to we have to reverse this uh uh this is what I'm trying to do to reverse this sentiment of saying well actually being anonymous is actually a key thing in a in a democracy in a society and it's a positive thing because if you're anonymous you are actually a free person and then you can actually vote and

participate in society and do business and be maybe more powerful more um effective in in bringing something to the society so we have to turn this uh that's a challenge actually uh to to turn this narrative in a positive way yeah yeah I think uh vitalic touched on that on his essay on pluralism as well he touched on the yin and yang and how even on the like the yin being the individual and the Yan being the collective and that you need both but even within the collective you need actually the individual right to like the the Privacy for example to be able to collect create the collective and create the coordination that protects your individual rights on the

other hand so this a really interesting in playay I feel there um I also feel like on a philosophical perspective um Beyond just solar lunar um sephr punk um I think what I deeply recognize is that I think nowadays uh nowadays I I feel like we need to um walk away from binary thinking um which is like thinking that we have to be in one side of things and I think diak is beautifully describing a seemingly contradicting um you know concept that some people couldn't grasp but almost the contradicting way that you walk both ways almost the right way I feel like um and um you know sometimes uh funnily um I think about this like in a in a very I

once like just had this I don't know daydreaming and thinking about like you know commitment to marriage um you it's very interesting from Asian culture and you know it's a big Topic in in in Switzerland that um that uh in or in Europe in general people don't want to committ into a marriage so like when someone people ask you like are you committed would you say like you're you're 5050 like actually it's it's not 50/50 never the balance is never 50/50 I'm not 50 in and 50 out of a marriage I'm like 100% committed I'm 100% not committed in a way that I know I can walk away um I know I have the freedom to walk away but when I'm committed I'm 100% committed so you almost in a contradicting 200% State instead of like

a 50/50 which is actually the correct mindset and I think this also could borrow back into uh you know like when we're talking about contradicting simly contradicting you know solar lunar punk I'm not 5050 into solar lunar punk I'm not trying to say but like I'm actually 100% solar Punk 100% lunar punk in certain situations maybe um that's just a a way to interpretate it I love that anyone got a strong opinion there or otherwise um yeah okay otherwise I think it's interesting like when you look at solar and Luna Punk solar is very much on The Optimist side and lunar and Cypher punk are very much positioned as kind of the

the pessimistic dark everything needs to be closed and intransparent and solar Punk is open and transparent uh is there is there a way that those two aspects can work together um or are they fundamentally opposed as well transparency and privacy yeah ZK right that's how we can be transparent but privacy preserving which Alexi here actually we have to uh on this part we have to be care very careful about um what what we start to call privacy washing um basically um uh I my view on on on uh when it comes to data um there are different in in the

world there are different views on how what data is uh there is one region of the world where data is a commodity you can use it and to make money uh in another world part of it's more the US in another part of the world uh data is considered as a public uh public good it's owned by the it's part of the the society and the government uh is in charge of this data it's more like the the Chinese way of of thinking uh and in in Europe uh it's um it's in between the two but um there is a tendency which comes out where data is part of the human being it's part of yourself right it's it's a it's an element of your of your body and um you have it cannot be taken away from you um and uh what it

comes down is to the uh autonomy of the of the person and so uh right now this thinking is not very uh I mean the the in the on the on the on the US the US side and the Chinese side so the data as commodity data as public good um uh the whole system is based on collecting all the data by force you know like capturing all the data from your apps all the time your profiling you even without your consent whatever um uh and if you start to be anonymous you uh you you break this uh this this link it's it's a matter to to protect yourself so but the way we do now is by saying oh we should have privacy so we invent things which are useless like

gdpr with cookie walls and things that are useless but there's a tendency so what now people are doing is they're saying oh we're going to use those um all those uh homomorphic encryption and ZK uh Technologies whatever to actually continue harvesting data and doing all the bad calculation and profiling and everything on the data but it's inside a ZK something or a uh homomorphic something and so it's cool for privacy right so that's privacy washing we should not do right because then at the end the autonomy of yourself you you you will still have an algorithm that will push things to you that you don't agree on uh so yeah though so what we have to be careful is even when we are building

privacy Tech is for which reason are we are we building the Privacy Tech and for me the the core is the emancipation of the individual it has to serve the individual first uh and then uh and then we will Define what are the structures of the society that that that will handle these free individuals but if you start building uh things for the for the for the system then it will impose itself on the individuals and then you you won't have any choice yeah no I one thing occurred to me like a realization I had while I was in zoo Georgia um which was organized by Veronica and and her partner um was that

potentially these two things one is not not more important than the other but one does take considerably more effort than the other and is much harder to get let's say a social acceptance and scale and it felt like the defensive side is that side so if you want to build and scale privacy pre preserving Tech you need to actually put considerably more effort into that and it's a lot harder to do um and that people's possibly because people do prefer to be optimistic and do prefer to be um in the mindset of not worrying about things and not always in defensive mode that they do turn tend to gravitate towards societies that fix things for

them and they don't have to worry about it um I wonder if you have any comments particularly Veronica but maybe anyone else on that aspect yeah I mean not just when when you mentioned it thinking of it just being a harder pill to swallow the cipher Punk or the Privacy side I think just from like an event organizer perspective if you're trying to organize something you can't Market if you don't want to it's marketing just is a much harder harder task if you're not going to say like we couldn't reveal our location we couldn't share who was going to be there we shared very we like little bits of information and try to attract the right people but for generally an event or you're trying to

organize something people want to know a lot of this information that then makes it a security risk or a privacy RIS risk um and so I guess the like in the Zulu movement where we had lots of decentralized events last year and this is continuing we can see from a very zoomed out perspective the results of different approaches and so there's projects that have very traditional marketing um methods and at the same time people that care or need privacy and security to go aren't going to those types of events because everyone knows who will be there where they'll be um so yeah I don't know if that's exactly what

you you were asking but as we're all here in person in in the real world and there's been like cameras going around and I don't remember signing anything um and I got confirmed that that's illegal in Switzerland um for for for cameras like you know and this is an ethereum con conference and there's there's like some argument that everything began in a more Cipher punk way and then even there like things were public on the website like there's like miscommunication without being asked and so I think it's interesting to see in the zuu and ethereum event world where we talk very philosophically about um maybe what ideals are and then in

practice everyone's on Telegram and everyone's using like these like various services and then people post on social media constantly like videos and photos of all the people that are there um and aren't thinking twice so I think generally it's a difficult um is a difficult interplay but maybe we're moving in ideally moving in the right direction uh I want to take uh maybe a lighter perspective on some of these movements because there's an aesthetic element to all these things so like um especially Cypher Punk like what do you guys think of when you think of cyppher punk in terms of like movies and books like anybody anybody want to throw one of their favorite pieces of Cipher Punk

uh fiction out there Ghost in the Shell Ghost in the Shell right got the Matrix 1984 a lot of dystopian lit uh I mean I grew up on this stuff I loved it I I was born in Romania it was Communist Regime I was born and you know we overthrew that regime and uh so a lot of those like resistance sort of like cautionary tales are very much embedded in the way I think about things um but you know the irony is the most important part is that we have a culture especially in Western Society to be able to write that sort of stuff to tell those sort of cautionary tales so we can think about them when we think about the future which I think plays into daac a little bit right just the sort of like that mindset um and so that's where I really align with the

cipher Punk and lunar Funk stuff like I watch your I watch like black mirror and some of these things and it's like oh my God this stuff could get really scary but then when it actually comes out it comes out with us having seen those stories and we're keenly aware of the risks of these things and so I think I'm I'm generally optimistic in solar Punk about us being able to manage in the long term you know things that are built with like transparency and openness in mind that's a a nice segue perhaps last question from my side before we maybe do some Q&A um if we do manage to Su successfully Implement a DIC society that integrates all of these philosophies into one what does that

world look like and what needs to happen for together I'll start with one comment is the first thing is that we will not be talking about thec we won't be talking about technical stuff because it's something that has to be um understood by the major majority of the people right um so uh it doesn't need uh that the Maj that the you in order to make social changes strong social changes you usually need about 20% of the people right uh and U and already the the crypto the the whole crypto world uh when we hear about you know like Bitcoin and and tokens and everything in the media uh the reality is that we are at a

level of 15% 10 to 15% adoption in terms of like people having some crypto and being open to it right so and and through this there are some values of of Cipher Punk which U which are there uh decentralization and something so we're not far away of these kind of changes and you can see it in the debates but in order to have long longlasting effect we will have an exercise to do is to uh transform the concepts that we have and to use to to put them into words that people actually understand and are understood in all the different cultural environments and the social uh with the the social realities of most of the people which are not ours uh and so that's one um the the one job I I did

here in Switzerland was to um people were um there was this concept cep in in in um digital rights which is called the uh uh which has been invented in Germany some time ago which is good I think it's the right to uh it's the digital self-determination right I don't know if some people are familiar to this um it's called in Germany uh digal is like a very complicated things and basically the judges invented this term and they say now we are going to use this to protect to protect the people it has very kind of Cipher Punk uh vibe behind but the reality is that no one understand this if you go into the street and you say this word to the people do you have this right people are

like I don't I don't know uh and then so what what uh what I did is I rephrased this with uh using existing terms you have you have you have the right to life it's a it's a liberty and inside the right to life you have the right to Integrity physical integrity and so I added okay let's add your digital integrity and then suddenly when it came to the the the the votes uh it was 95% yes vote in Geneva 91% yes vote in Nel and probably next year in Zurich it will be around 90% people have saying yes because they understand very well oh yeah I don't want to be harmed digitally that's fine so yeah have I have a right of digital Integrity the the work there was a change of words a work on the concept but behind

is uh digital autonomy of the the person and it will allow me to claim for using privacy tools to protect myself so we will have so long story short this this this future Society will not use the same terms that we are used to that we are using now but the concept will be embedded into like much more wider concept that people understand is it time to throw in the Switzerland line which one which one like the perfect word is Switzerland at least we're going to try yeah no we're very bullish on S obviously as the existing longest standing direct democracy that's doing

very well um balancing certain aspects of autonomy and progress and this is all what me and I always go pitch about and we had talk about it yesterday oh um and um yeah and then so I guess I guess I guess a d world in the in the future has to be us Switzerland but somehow a bit more hardcore accelerated switzland hardcore on both side not only hardcore hardore a bit more hardcore on defense side too okay yeah yeah so maybe some of you have seen Robin Hansen recently talking about futar in prediction markets but there's a slide that I've seen him show multiple

times when he's talking about the difficulty of it being adopted in like companies is he gives it the analogy that it's like the autist in the sea suite and so you have like all these CEOs sitting around and then you have someone just blurts out the truth and then gets like thrown out the window because nobody that's at a like at an executive position level actually wants to hear like harsh realities um and so I guess when you asked that question I thought of that slide and thinking like what would be my ideal or what I'm hoping we're building with Switzerland and or just in general where I would want to live and you know help grow is a place that can be very techno optimistic and then tries to you know make the world a better place solve problems take

the tech that we have accelerated Advance it do all these things but accepts hard pills or accepts the truth or is constantly seeking truth updating the map to match the territory updating your me the mental models and just ultimately it's a social environment that allows for problems to be discussed plainly even when it's not comfortable um to do so and I think like we we we're on that path like we really really are and again to the point of like Switzerland being a great model for the world it's like you know direct democracy um a pretty strong separation of like centralized power and like uh individual freedoms uh that's

what attracted me to this project that's why I'm here um so again I think I think we're on the right path I think the technology that we're building is enabling us to make the stuff easier you know like the tech is just in service of our ideals um so again that I guess that makes me a solar Punk very optimistic right uh but I I I don't um I think my biggest fear is creating a very adversarial environment between people from these philosophies uh because like then the world becomes a zero sum game where it's like my win is your loss and that's where sort of things break down and we have you know bigger geopolitical tension so you know for us to sort of

like be here having these discussions constructively is the best way to prevent any of that from happening awesome thank you everybody um any questions that people have any thoughts or comments yeah go ahead hello thanks a lot for your interventions um I would love to hear from you how we can turn the reactionary aspect of being lunar punk cyer punk uh into more proactive approach and so basically upholding more positivity fun in being activist activist and so less dystopia less paranoia which I I I

get at 100% why it is like that but at the same time I feel a lot more powerful to uh make people understand and feel to uh Embrace new approaches which are respecting the individual uh Integrity Freedom human rights uh but with fun positivity uh in a Joyful Way which is not a reaction to something that we don't like and so we just attach emotionally and with our energy to something that we dislike and we keep talking about that and we keep arguing about that rather taking action in the way that we feel it's our way and it's a better way and so we can come together and do this again together because at the end I feel and sorry I end here uh

we are a lot of different niches and bubbles with the same Mission with the same kind of values but at the end we use different tools we have different languages and so how can we come together and be positive in doing so thank you very much uh and uh and you're right because a lot of uh activists at the beginning were like really on the um yeah very defensive side and uh um being on the yeah uh so so what is happening right now there's a shift is for example um uh in terms of uh business uh and I'm part of this uh now there is actually an industry being built to build privacy Tech until now

until recently uh privacy Tech was uh done by people on the side it was uh costing them it was um they they they did it by really um yeah um it was an idea that they had and they wanted to push it but now we we're coming to a phase where um privacy tools are uh so needed uh that uh inv m is happening in this field in the field and you can have and you can build your your privacy uh you can build a project which is linked to those values and still cre and it is it is seen by the by the by the society as bringing value so there people are ready to invest in there so that that is

a shift that's that happen so now you can have people who actually live make a living out of of out of these things which you didn't have before so I would say that's one positive uh way of doing things and and I think the the other the other one is that uh it's getting easier to have impact uh I think because the censorship is so big around the world that common people are being um uh they cannot do certain things depending on where they are maybe it's just watching porn or playing a game or doing something which maybe are obvious for you here but they're being censored and not allowed in the country and then you can you you can give them a tool tool and this tool is spreading uh through

their Network very very rapidly because uh the sensorship is so big and you can have a real impact and and as soon as you are giving someone a tool like I don't know like signal or a good decentralized Network whatever or a cryptocurrency um actually the it it really helps them to uh to to disconnect from from the censorship and the state that they have and it has much more impact than uh so so we are in this phase where there's um um yeah the impact as an individual you can have is much bigger also yeah and I think fundamentally what you're asking is uh about maybe a coordination problem um and we and just to throw out a couple of examples of like tools that are helping with

coordination obviously ethereum I'm a big believer that what a a core blockchain like ethereum and it's like native token is is a form of money and you know when we're talking about issues with like reserve currencies you know Sovereign Curr cures controlled by nation states we we think about the risks of like okay well what happens if I'm censored like if the state takes an adversarial perspective view of me and like that's why we're gravitating towards like sort of like decentralized like censorship resistant forms of money um so to me that's like okay great we're creating a global uh neutral currency that we can all coordinate on and build our businesses on top of and stuff that's super cool and then the other one I would think I would say was going to solve a big coordination problem is AI

obviously done responsibly with defensive mindedness but you know when we think about like just going to a different country and having language barriers like that's solving problems for us so I'm sure we'll get to a point where we'll be wearing devices where we talk to each other we'll hear each other in our native languages because it'll the translation will be so good and fast that literally it'll be like our voices in a different language um so that's going to be huge um and then um yeah I mean I can I can go on and on there's so many examples I have a I have a quick note um also on that um I think uh how how do we come together um uh despite all this I think exactly this conference on web 3 is like uh exactly the perfect example we're saw people from everywhere but somehow we

have a a value that align that all gathered us here and believe in blockchain as a tech that's why people think that blockchain is not a tech anymore it's almost a belief because somehow a bunch of people come together and in this industry and we somehow aligned in a different value I feel like cannot identify otherwhere anywhere else and this movement I think think it's kind of a more culture movement and go beyond you know already that's why you know there's a nwork state there's like people forming Community because we feel that there is community that that we feel more aligned rather than what we bounded by normal geographical you know your neighbors um I think this is this is super true and then this is happening and that's why we're also pushing from the culture Tech perspective that the

culture let's say the value and everything has to people has to align and come together and um back to Zulu like we talk in I remember talking to a friend Abu like uh he was like he sits there in the middle of like a zolu discussion and he sit back he was just looking around says like you know what a bunch of wonderful weirdos like all around here like random people random crosses of life super random and but like it's amazing and I think these are the energy that we're feeling that somehow just beyond a lot of traditional or like conservative value that uh we have from nation state um I think yeah like let's see where it goes and yeah at the risk of Shilling like I feel I do feel Zulu is that fun and coordination and

working on serious things all at the same time um and that's what is quite special about it we have like most of the pop-up cities I've been to there's been a lot of fun there's been great parties there's been good dinners there's been so much enjoyment and silliness on but we're all at the same time over breakfast then discussing like all of these issues and some of the most serious and consequential things for our future society and then we keep go back to having fun and build fun things but also build serious things and that kind of happens all at the same time so I think that's part of why and I and I yeah I mean this maybe a little bit hyperbole but like I genuinely felt at the end of the first suu I went to that like this is the group of people with

maybe the most potential in the world to really change the direction that we're going um and I still believe that um I think to some degree with the decentralization of Zulu the some of the M momentum that I felt around that was lost but like I'm starting to see it again now this year and I hope that that will continue I think that's a beautiful like note to end I just wanted to quickly Shout Out rose who couldn't be here today which is why I ended up joining the panel um but she and with her work with dark Squad I think they really are focusing on trying to make privacy seem fun um and I think um she also studied like propaganda and marketing and Etc and so I um so I think it's both been very intentional and um in somewhat

successful way to make the more M meme side of privacy can be a cool thing but ultimately personally I really agree with um with especially yeah what you guys are saying about Zulu because that be CH was life-changing in that way of feeling like you're you know an Anon or simous remote worker and just connecting with people maybe via subreddits or wherever like you're finding the in shared topics and then L you zuu brought like this opportunity of not just spending extended amount of time with people with Co living but now building a permanent Village um that can where you're retracting these similar similar types of people that have that want to

build something like this in the world I'm using very vague language because there are so many different projects with different ideals and obviously I'm also joined Switzerland team because I have I'm very bullish on not just the country but also the people that I've met that are keep being attracted to this Switzerland movement um I feel quite optimistic about thank yeah yeah yeah thank you very much it was really inspiring um I have kind of two things I want to say and they kind of going in the same direction so one one is that I want to come out on the side of slowness and um I think people build mix Nets probably know the value of

slowness sometimes um and the other one was like a bit of a like it's related to the slowness but like a meditative approach to kind of holding um the the the full truth and the weight of the truth kind of uh present and and finding some joy in that um so one one suggestion was kind of to also not have just um solar punks and kind of Luna punks and cyer punks but also solar monks and uh L monks and C monks um I really like the the hher guide to the galaxies and I think it's actually a different book where he talks about the electronic Monk and um yeah so I like that so kind of yeah I think the world is very difficult but sometimes with

slowness and even stepping taking a step back you can get very far like there's some guy like I don't know it's maybe almost 3,000 years ago and he just sat down on that Tre and I think it still has big impact nowadays so so there's something to to say about that that maybe maybe I leave it at that there's much more to say but I want others to be able to talk as well a thank you so much I really love that and I think from what I know of italic I get the impression he may be a solar monk in some ways thank thank you thank you for the insight for um ideas um I yeah I have one question about how do you think of the crypto now as adopted acquired by the governments and the big corporates

or maybe I say it in this way like I feel uh crypto emerges as a way to at least want to reshaping the existing rules but now and and also we we want the mass adoption of this technology and now you see the mass adoption is happening but you also see that uh corporates or people who are already dominant or has the power in the world that taking taking control of this for example like you see President Trump launched the M token and you see how impactful that could be on on on the market so yeah um this is about that how how do you see of this um I I think it's a bit of a red flag um and I think a lot about the

1920s and 1930s we went from a period of just like roaring Financial you know insanity and Euphoria gold adoption to basically like wait a second we're debasing the primary coordination method we have for society which is just the like in the US US dollar so what happened they banned it so I know I think it's always like a meme to say like oh when is Bitcoin getting banned but that's like a real concern like because if this is being done by just by essentially like wealthy people and corporations to store their value against currency to basement that doesn't solve anything in the long run it just exasperates wealth inequality and so you get a populace movement against that eventually so I think the

current state of the way we're doing these reserves um I'm I'm skeptical yeah I I have the impression uh very similar emotional reaction I did think about it though and maybe we can be grateful to him in some ways for that action because I think it draws very very Stark attention to the fact that these things can be manipulated for political gain and that they're dangerous Tools in in exactly those kinds of hands yeah I was I was about to say the um the the the tools I mean I think this is we have to understand like uh the basis of cryptography and and and most of the thing is based on cryptography the basis of cryptography

is that the tool only works if your enemy is using the same tool right so the cryptography is good uh you are safe with using one kind of cryptographic algorithm because you know the enemy is also using it it's a it's a um it's it's because you and and so the the case here is a is you have something similar uh we are building Tech and obviously all all the all the perceived enemies of the philosophy will be using those tech tech but in for their own purpose right so um and that means those technology are effective that's that's what the what it means right otherwise he wouldn't be using this these Technologies so but what they are doing is they're using it

for the wrong reason or the wrong reason we believe so our job now is to develop the the right philosophies so that they are becoming um widespread so people can understand that using this technology with this mindset is going to bring them much more than using it with um the kind of mindset or just like raise money or for fun whatever so um so that's so technology come with with some philosophy and some political work that needs to be done but of course it always later and the enemies are always taking this technology first that's my answer thank you very much I think we're at time so um we'll leave it there but yeah I definitely love the love the

where we were going with this or reminds me of a quote that I heard once which was one ought less to learn than to contemplate um so back to the meditative thing um I know very much into learning but uh it brings me back to also to the Mind defense topics and the cognitive sovereignty that we talk a lot about um definitely there is a risk of if we don't think about these things ourselves and we just take what's given to us and what is popular and what is winning in the attention economy then uh we may not uh get the solar Punk outcomes that we all desire So yeah thank you everyone for coming and uh big Applause to our panelist thank you very much I love the insights you sure

especially on the on the community side uh yeah the discussion would can go forward for the next hour or so but unfortunately or fortunately we still need we still have a few hour a few sessions this this afternoon um so the next session will be starting in fre [Music]