Cypherpunk Retreat outcomes | Beth, Martin Karlsson, Adam Burns, Joshua Davila (October 2025)

So um yeah to introduce me I'm Beth McCarthy program director at web3 privacy um was working on this event and um a lot of our other initiatives that I would love to speak about uh later when we are not running on a time limit if you want to find me after. Um I think each of them can introduce themselves quickly and also um what topic they are um particularly excited about focusing on in um this world of digital rights, freedom, open internet and privacy. Um and then we'll just run through a few quick questions together and um then take some questions from the audience and move on from there.

Okay. So hi everyone, my name is Josh Davilla. Um I wear many hats. Um I have a podcast called the blockchain socialist. I co-founded a project called bread cooperative.

I think I was at the cipher puck retreat mostly to share about a specific project that we've been working on called gas killer um which is meant to help scale computation on Ethereum. So if you are if you have transa or methods in your smart contract that are very expensive come talk to me. One of the things that it's really good for is for um scaling uh zk proofs on Ethereum. Um but yeah, was there a specific question? Was that

um yeah, just what uh you were focusing on kind of in general about privacy and digital freedom or ado retreat.

Well, that was my main that was a big big part of my focus was talking about that with people. Um and then I have a lot of interest in like journalism and privacy as well since I do some of that stuff as well.

Thanks. Hi. So I'm Martin. Um so I've been working very much focused on how we can uh collaboratively solve complex problems more effectively in a decentralized manner. Uh that's called the coordination network.

And um I guess there's been a lot of topics covered by the speakers. One that we're very interested in is is how in this kind of AI augmented world we retain agency over our expertise. Um so one of the key themes essentially that uh I was interested at the event is around private compute and how you can use those tools to augment your abilities while not handing over all your data and I think as Lefarius mentioned like handing over not only kind of your transactional history but literally how you do things and how you solve things and you know your actual expertise. So um that was one area that I was very interested in focusing on and the other one linked to that is um more on the narrative building side. So the threat that we're seeing today is that uh a lot of centralized approaches are you know embedding themselves when it comes to the use of AI.

Um and so how we can build narratives that uh increase awareness of alternatives. So in terms of using for example uh private compute uh how can we build a greater awareness of that so that you raise the expectation of offering things in a privacy preserving manner. Uh so the TLS attestation project would be a cool example of that where for example like people have now started getting used to like SSL and having this little lock on their browsers. How can you do the same with private compute? So you know that if you're using a service that doesn't do that uh you're aware of it.

So um yeah those are the two pieces that I was very interested in exploring.

Okay. Thank you. Hi my name is Adam Burns. I work with the D.org Foundation.

um the interest in working that uh in the areas that I've been working with with Dimene Dime develops a locally run virtual m cryptographic machine called Zen room that offers configuration and workflows that are understandable in a human language based um uh DSL or domain specific language. Myself personally, I also have interests in um creating trust routes with our existing infrastructure specifically for community networks and edge networks, IoT especially as well as oddly a highly centralized but decentralized structure called the DNS or rather secure DNS DNS sec as an as a global initial trust anchor to then leverage off into other systems that you then may trust as a trustful directory service I guess. Anyway, so that's some of the stuff that I've been interested in. Um, one thing about the conference, if I may say, is um, I felt that it was an amazing event because it's very rare to get such, um, an interdisiplinary group of experts together. And what I felt that did was that it evened everyone out.

you know, everyone knew that they knew quite a bit in their own particular area from policy to um law to coding to cryptography and all of privacy and everything else. But no one is an expert on any everything. And so that leveled things out and allowed people to have very interesting discussions on interoperability on the consequences of technology beyond um the digital stack etc. And I found that really vibrant and exciting um because it's not often you get technical conferences at such a wide scope in any sense.

So the reason for talking about something that already happened is partially as a call to action for how we can continue interdisciplinary discussions into the future. So um I think one thing I would be interested to hear from you guys is um right now privacy is under threat in so many ways you know being surveiled at scale um you know from defense technology in a way that's very scary having these chat control discussions um happening around Europe um you know like a huge realm of kind of attacks from all side on digital rights um where do you see web 3 technologies fitting into um kind of this wider conversation like either on an infrastructural level or um fitting into existing tooling in a way that can be meaningful like how can we contribute to this um yeah privacy as act of resistance and resilience and an increasingly threatened environment.

You seem like you have a thought about that. Could you could you hold the mic to get like get together like that?

Yeah, sure. I'll pass them both along as well.

Thank you.

Yeah. Um

is this thing on?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. uh on on your topic there um I think there's a a uh growing skepticism about um privacy being uh mediated by any system whether it's a web3 system or governmental uh database or or whatever I think that that is increasingly important I think um the first speaker talked about keeping things close local first etc. Um I think perhaps this movement will get more and more popular.

If you have something important to you, keep it close. If you delegate trust to data centers or providers, that's a a bigger distance. I' I'd almost argue if you're not in sight of the power plug, you're not close enough. If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space and you're vulnerable.

Maybe it's come to that, but maybe I'm becoming a bit of a prepper. I'm not sure. Thanks for

uh so I think on the on the topic of call to action maybe that's one area where I I think what I'd be keen to emphasize would be um where anyone so one attendee made the good point which links to I think uh was it uh one of the earlier speakers mentioning how when you talk about privacy you talk about like these dark glasses and like the detective uh and so on and uh one of the attendees made this point of like uh they had a conversation around how do you make cipher punk cipher top and I think this is kind of was quite a effective meme uh on this topic. And so I think like building awareness of uh this um and and starting a movement that like looks to bring in people to you know who might have experience from like narrative building and storytelling and and so on I think is a really important initiative now so that we have an active campaign essentially. So that was something that I talked to different groups about. So we now have a signal chat called cipher pop media. So if anyone's interested in that topic, please uh come and speak to me.

Um because I think like we want to bring this conversation outside of kind of niches essentially. Um and it's funny because in one of the conversations we had, we also raised like one of the most recent viral events was Matthew McConna talking about private LLMs and it's like these and and other examples like PewDiePie has a guide for how to like get privacy and I think um it's just how do we amplify and kind of consolidate those narratives? um so that it doesn't get drowned out by like you know the alternative um whether it's like AI slop social networks or whatever it might be um I think a coordinated initiative around that is quite important so I would anyone who's interested in that I'd be very keen to kind of um yeah help organize around

I just need one of the mics

okay yeah already miked up

I mean in in in real terms the the thing that I see out of the web 3 space is basically funding for a lot these uh cryptographic primitives that at least at the technical level are able to to make certain differences or certain changes in how how things work. Um, in some ways I think the the crypto I don't know I I don't I may regret saying this or I may disagree with myself tomorrow but I think in some ways the the crypto space is a little bit of a vanguard for um the adoption of kind of newer technologies especially when it comes to privacy and I think Ethereum is kind of trying to take up that that space in in a way and that's kind of encouraging to see. Um so yeah I'm not sure if I have much else to add besides they already said great things. Thanks. Uh I think you had something to add.

Hey, thanks. U yeah just a brief comment. I really liked what you said about again like the interdiciplinarity of this conference of ways investigating ways of getting this out and you made me think actually I wonder how many people here have been to a crypto party. Hands up.

I'm just thinking you know and I ran one at CBase for a couple of years. Um, I'm just thinking

Yep. Okay. I'm just thinking it's stereo now. Uh, I'm just thinking perhaps we can apply such a model for outreach for privacy web three and or otherwise the encroaching future of our digital lives and uh the importancy of it in the style of Asha Wolf and the movement she built around crypto parties. That might be a good starting point.

And I'd be interested in finding the signal group address thing.

Um, so I have no sense of time. I um we probably have time for one more question or no more questions. I'm not sure. Um, okay. Go for it.

So we'll have um I think one more question like what do you guys see as the biggest challenge or barrier to either Yeah. widespread adoption of privacy practices or um crypto integrating into the wider um you know world of tech like I think the thing that leers mentioned about you know you can just look at a wallet address and see someone's entire past history of what their company was doing or what they were doing like it seemed so um antithetical but you know in a certain way to um like privacy preservation so um yeah curious where you see as some of those sources of tension and if there's a solution space that you see around any of those

I maybe have a little bit of a of a kind of non-answer but I mean I think the issue is that you know every time the thing with privacy in the digital space is that every time we move we produce something you know like it's not that I'm trying to share anything with everyone it's simply I do things and things get produced from that um and so and and that's kind of like the norm everywhere. And that's also true in the meat space. Like if you want to have this kind of like whoa dude kind of, you know, realization of like the world is a computer or like every time I move, you know, the butterfly effect, me waving my hand probably kills, you know, someone a billion years from now um because I moved a particle. Like there's always like some something is always being produced simply by by acting. Um so there's this like contradiction I think with um trying like there's a contradiction between community and privacy essentially um that if you want to be uh if you want to be in community you have to reveal things you have to go and do things and reveal things about yourself and part of the building of relationships in a community is that I know something about you.

I don't trust you if I don't know anything about you. So you cannot be private and so you cannot build community. But I think and the the contradiction is also in the reverse where I think privacy can also largely only be created through some sort of collectivity that like this idea of being the the kind of guy in the uh moving to the moving to the cabin and like you know living completely isolated from everyone else as being the way to live a truly private and like you know rugged individualist life is simply infeasible for a world of 8 billion people. So it's not like we cannot possibly think that like this hyper individualist approach could actually achieve anything meaningful. And so, um, yeah, I think the big kind of the biggest things I think you have to kind of realize is part of this maybe cipher pop, um, move rather than cipher punk is kind of like, uh, an embracing of like the need for some form of collectivity or collective forms of organizing and action that this the cy the original cipher punks honestly just like didn't think about or really advocated really for ever.

Um so I think uh at least with at separate what I found that was really encouraging was that people were not uh it was a lot more diverse in thoughts and types of people than you would have otherwise thought or at least who were the original cyber punk guys um were kind of like thought in a very particular way that doesn't I think now 10 20 years later like we've kind of found to be kind of uh limiting in in certain ways. So to me I think a movement towards recognizing this contradiction and how we uh not be able to solve every single little problem because of it but like instead tried to think of it as something that is um yeah a larger issue that needs like many an inter interdisciplinary view into it. Yeah. Um yeah, so in terms of I guess what I would say is maybe combine both the barrier and an opportunity. Um because I think one of the big barriers is essentially around kind of the complexity of setting up for uh living this way.

Um because I think the opportunity and what we're because we also have been discussing with um you know for example in Europe government agencies um on the topic of how they're going to be adopting kind of AI capabilities as a catchall. And so what we've seen there is that there's just a people are very much scrambling for like what is what is their approach to adopting these new technologies right now. So there's a huge opportunity to package up new approaches on these principles as the solution which is actually most aligned with their citizens uh desires to put it that way. Um and so I think uh doing a coordinated effort of how we package up these technologies now and have the solution to provide uh because there's actively people seeking um so that we don't get drowned out by very wellunded uh corporate approaches um is there's like time pressure to do this now. So um yeah but the opportunity is there that people are actively seeking and I think this can be presented in a way that can out compete any centralized offering.

So um yeah, I guess that's to say that it's a barrier to overcome of how to do that, but I think the opportunity is there that if we do that effectively right now, the window is open essentially um to make it happen.

Yeah, thanks. I I I like your optimism. Um but yeah, I'm not going to go all uh ranting and raving and go Ted K on the audience, but uh yeah, um I am really inspired by a group here and in fact I've been involved in um these initiatives for a couple of decades now. Um have many people here could you show hands maybe? Have you heard of Fryk here in uh Germany?

For those that don't know, Fryon is one of the most successful European community wireless networks. They run uh volunteer free and open networking, local networking uh throughout Berlin and and dozens of different regions around Germany. And I like that. Um they made a sticker a little while back. I have it on my laptop, but not one here.

Their sticker has a frightful logo and it says local is the new social. That's the catchphrase and I really like that especially when we start talking about communities knowing each other and even though it goes so far as identity sharing. you were saying, you know, privacy uh needs to be traded or or communicated. You know, things about you need to be shared. And in a sense, maybe identity can be a direct human and human human to human thing.

This gets hard when it's mediated by technology. It gets even harder when it's mediated by large companies running technology, global networks. Um, so maybe there are ways that we can start to define spheres of comfort, spheres of human care within local communities for each other, and to start to embed these practices in our local lives. Just a thought, be skeptical of anything further away from you. Not people, machines.

Yeah, there that was a very elegant closing because I think Yeah. Yeah. folks are doing a really incredible job of building community here locally. And just a final thought for me, I think uh many of you may have seen the meme like going around of like uh the price of community is inconvenience. And it's funny that people are often saying this about privacy as well, like price of using privacy preserving software is inconvenience.

And you know, to get to the reward, I guess for both of those things, then it's worth it to slog through. Um so uh yeah so please come talk to these guys after. There have many more interesting things to say than I have time to ask them about. Um I will also do a quick showing for what we at Web3 privacy are doing together with um our friends at EF if you are interested in continuing these discussions. So we are having uh the cipher punk congress in Buenus Aries uh also running the privacy hub and I still would love to have more people get involved as um program curators for the different days there.

So we'll have a research day, practical privacy applications day, um governance and compliance and legal type of topics day and also a lot of um very intentional and careful matching um to bring people from different skill sets together for the hackathon. So that is going to be super cool. And then we also are running this event um with uh folks from EF directly um for like what is kind of the technical stack that is being built out throughout this year and throughout that week and going really deep into a lot of cool nerd topics about things that are going on um around topics like uh TLS, all of the acronyms that we love talking about with privacy. And finally um a Gitcoin round that we are running uh also with EF and specifically the Macy guys. And um there we have um several different um categories.

So education infrastructure deapps and R&D and um I really encourage um reading through this which I will leave up here for a minute and um encourage people to apply. We really want to carry forward the um like theme from what we were speaking about today of like we really need um interdisciplinary efforts, people from within and also outside of web 3 and are very keen to fund this kind of work um so that we keep yeah basically fighting this fight. So thank you What?