Blockchain Geopolitics: Decolonizing Cyberspace in the Age of Surveillance

Transcript

Hello. Glad to see you here. I'm Hayat and I'm going to talk about blockchain geopolitics. I know it's not the right the right presentation. Ah, thank you very much. Uh, so first question. I can use that? Thank you. First question, who's using peer-to-peer tools most of the time here?

Yes, so you already still in a Cypherpunk mindset. That's cool. So, I say that because most people are not Cypherpunks and will never be. So, you are but in your family people are not in this mindset. But they want to use the tools we are using and they want to be uh, customized with the decentralized ecosystem. So, my idea is that the Cypherpunk community values individual sovereignty.

And we have this individual sovereignty because we have technical background. So, we are privileged and we we we need to be aware of that. So, can we transform a culture of resistance into a culture of influence? And I want to talk about that because we have to think about those who doesn't have the privilege we have today. I'm Hayat and I'm working uh on uh visionary um, uh, usage of the decentralized infrastructure and the way we are going to uh, use them in the future. This is my third speech at ETHCC. The one was

about uh, DAO and um, micronation and I wanted to talk about that to see if it was the pioneer of uh, democracy and uh, I talked last year about smart contract to govern cyberspace and today I want to analyze with you how blockchain geopolitics can decolonize cyberspace. So, the Cypher the Cypher the Cypherpunk heritage we have today is a bit for a technical elite in a sense that privacy is something we already have.

Uh, they they built tools to protect individuals and probably you are building tools for everyone but everyone can't use them and we don't wait for government to grant us freedom because we know that [laughter] this will never happen. But who protects those who cannot use these tools? Today the situation is very critical because we changed. Uh, just before we were in a colonialism, digital colonialism and now we are in a cognitive colonialism and maybe this is going to turn to a totalitarianism.

Why? Because with uh, AI we have a new data and this data is the storage of intimate data. People use AI to talk about intimate situation, intimate feelings and it's very uh, it's very dangerous because big corporations and government has access to something they never had before, the intimate of every one of us. And if we are people from the Cypher Cypherpunk culture know that and we don't use these tools uh, as uh, the the random people or the the mass critical people, this is

dangerous for all the society. And we are at the beginning because with the development of HPC, with the development of AI and autonomous agent and with the with the development of of IoT embedded device, we are building the smart cities with AI governance and we are building robotics and humanoid. And all this is a real-time digital data stream. So, this is dangerous for every one of us even if we at individual at individual at at our level of technical background, we are going to live in a world where our

loved ones are going to be dominated by the big tech and the government. So, we should have the big picture of the situation. We we should have a systemic vision of the world. Today the the digital world and the physical world are interdependent. We can't live without digital world. And our politicians are not aware of that in a sense that they think they're going to have the power of all the time and big tech thinks they are going to have the power of all the time. But the technology we have today, the decentralized infrastructure, is like a

gift to us because we can organize ourselves to educate others but also to have an impact in the real world by organizing our community to have a voice with the institutionals. So, we are going to talk about economics and monetary sovereignty. Uh, we discovered Bitcoin a long time ago when it was forbidden, when it was critically critically by by everyone and we were the fool in the in this world. People said we were utopist, people said we were we were a bit strange etc. And today Bitcoin is

regulated. But me and probably you, we are not using Bitcoin. I mean with a centralized exchange or in a centralized way. We are using it in peer-to-peer and we know how to do it. But people who are buying today Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, they are buying it on centralized exchange so they don't have the same experience as us and they don't know the real power of what was offered to us by Satoshi Nakamoto. So, today the the crypto um, the crypto assets are regulated and for example tokens are programmable value. Stablecoins are the

liquidity infrastructure for for bank, for institution etc. And uh, there are CBDC uh, that are uh, state's monetary control. So, when politicians um, didn't uh, um, recognize our ecosystem as something valuable, they are criticizing us. And now we they are using what we have built and the the value we putted in this infrastructure is going maybe to be totally uh, how to say that, uh, transformed by

a new message. This is the same with governance and cyber diplomacy. Uh, the the governance we have, the decentralized governance with Ethereum or with Polkadot or Solana or or all others are a way to organize ourselves in a new way in the digital space. And today we have the same with the institutional, they are using DLT, what we call distributed ledger technology, in a marketing way we are call we are calling that uh, private blockchain but we know that this is not a blockchain if this is not public. So, they are inspired by by what we have

built. So, the message is today we have the power but I think this power is not completely used because we are not using it to defend the other that don't know what we are talking about when we are talking about decentrali- decentralization. So, why blockchain is geopolitics? Because there are regulation all over the world because all states have an interest to uh, know more about decentralization and how this technology can uh, help them and can impact their power all over the world. So, with decentralized technology they can create their

own power but knowing how how it is used and how it works. And this is also used in the global south but the difference with the leaders in this world is that for example uh, USA, China, Europe etc. uh, use decentral- decentralized um, infrastructure to understand how they can dominate the world. But in the global south they are using it to um, have less corruption and to help citizens and people to have alternatives uh, for communication, for exchange and for the development of their country or for their for themselves.

So, cyberspace today is the fifth geopolitical domain. Why? Because as in land, in the sea, in the air, or in airspace, we can do war in cyberspace. So, cyberspace today is a digital territory where all that we can do in the real world, we can do it in the digital world. That means states and institution are going to take it back if we are not protecting it protecting And cyberspace is also a globalized world by default because if we do a little bit of history, ARPANET

was created in the Cold War to have an infrastructure to communicate. So, the cyberspace is by default distributed and is by default globalized and free. So, I think that in the future we're going to have a diplomatic layer to rebalance power. Why? Because today the community, the decentralized the the decentralized infrastructure community don't have actors and ambassadors of the cyberspace. So, they are taking they are they are taking decisions

without us today. The decisions are between Big Tech, states, banks, but no one is going to ask us what we are thinking about regulation or about how the the world is going to evolve and with the the cognitive colonialism and with the possible totalitarianism, this is going to be a a huge a huge chaos. So, blockchain for a balance of digital power. What I think is that today we are doing governance in our ecosystem in a sense that every decision is discussed.

We have debate, we have rivalry, and we know how to find a consensus. And I think that this is our strength because we know how to govern ourselves, so we should be capable of having ambassadors to represent ourselves and to defend our interest and the interest of those who don't have the choice to use the tools that are not totally decentralized. So, Ethereum as a political laboratory. So, I think that today with DAO, for example, we can find solution to create a way to communicate with the outside

and to to have a voice. And also we know that it is possible to use the cyberspace with a real privacy. I mean today the the state and the Big Tech are trying to change the regulation for more surveillance saying that they need surveillance to for security. And we know as people from the decentralized ecosystem that we can have a privacy and we can have a digital digital space totally secure.

It's also an ideological shift and resistance to control in a sense that we all have a different vision of the world. And I think that different vision of the world can cohabit and go and can coexist in the real life and the and in the digital space. So, we have to discuss how these different vision of the world can cohabit without being dominated by a totalitarianism vision of the world or more powerful clan, group, or community.

Mycronation. Who heard here about a network state? Yeah? So, nice. So, today with the concept of of the network states who was conceptualized by Balaji Srinivasan, we are capable of creating online nation. We can call it micronation. And this micronation is a decentralized governance to create a little community, I would say a little space country in the digital space.

So, network states today are laboratories of hybrid governance. I made here three examples. Liberland because this is the the most the most known and the old one. And they have a territory in the real world. They claimed it. They don't really have it, but it's between Serbia and Croatia and it was a little territory that wasn't claimed by Serbia and Croatia and they decided to be there. So, it's not their their land in in in a right way, but they claimed it and and they want to colonize it in real world. So, that's a concept, too.

There's Dzalou, a community that works on transhumanism. So, lots of researchers, etc., who works on transhumanism. And there's also Vitalik Buterin in this community. And also Il Bermond is a micronation near Marseille and this is one of the micronation I mean and we I'm in and we are working about technorealism. So, each community can have its own space to express itself and to organize itself.

So, characteristic of the of a territory. Why? Because when we are talking about a territory, a digital territory, we can say that it's not a territory, but the it it is because it has all the characteristic of a territory. There's infrastructure, economic flows, networks, rules, and a way to to challenge conflicts. So, cyberspace is a complete civilizational ecosystem. So, why is it important to understand that? Because sovereignty is infrastruc- infrastruc- infrastruc- natural. It's complicated to say it in English. So, when you you you you can manage your

infrastructure, so you are sovereign. And today we have the legacy power by the state and the Big Tech, but we have now an emerging power is that that is the financial system and the protocol builders who are creating their own way of living and using the the digital space. So, for an equitable governance structure, we need a balanced cross-chain alliances in our community, a digital non-dominus charters to be capable of communicating and trusting each other, and a global consultative structures. So, to have a shared

governance and influencing influencing regulations. To have real diplomacy, we need to have a protocol that is capable to have builders to talk for us, market operators, and public institu- institutions. So, if we have these different level of leaders, we can communicate and we can change the world for the better. And when I say for the better, is that a world a world that is inclusive. So, this is finished.

>> [laughter] >> Uh we run out of run out of time. >> We have we don't have time for questions. Uh I'm sorry, but if you like, you can ask your questions later on. But we can take one one question only maybe. If you have questions. No. Yeah, I Thank you. >> Okay, thank you.