Cypherpunk for Centuries: Coordination and Secrecy Across the Ages

Transcript

[Music] [Music] all right what's good Devcon how are you feeling excellent thank you so much for being here today my name is Evan McMullen and I am CSO and co-founder of provado ID along with a handful of other honors throughout the ecosystem throughout my career how many of you would consider yourselves to be cyber Cipher punks seeing I'm seeing some hands here this week there are a lot of brand new members of our community who haven't yet had the opportunity to identify with

that term cyer Punk and I keep hearing things in the hallways like privacy doesn't matter so I think we need a little refresher of the reason why we come to Devcon the reason we build with blockchains the reason this industry exists at all the cipher Punk movement originated in the late 80s as a response to the growing threat of centralized Powers invading individual privacy however the origin of this ethos and Associated Tech far precedes the era of networked Computing so let's look at the root of what got us here today around 2600 BC the um the Mesopotamian Kings had servants take a block of stone and carve their names into it placing it in the

middle of the Town Square in a show of force and Declaration of power then after that King the next king had his name carved on a giant block had his servants come down to the town square and put his block on top showing the closure of one Epic and the opening of a new window of time under his Reign this stack a physical chain of command became the first calendar and ancient Mesopotamia a thriving ecosystem who whose governance was anchored in a protocol that measures time based on blocks perhaps the first literal blockchain in the Joe Dynasty people started producing these metal pieces shaped like Spades but too thin for practical use instead they were monetary instruments inscribed with characters

indicating denominations that facilitated transactions providing access to Services um representing a assets but having no intrinsic physical use in medieval gent not far from Brussels there's a belfrey where the city documents are stored inside of this chest but this chest has three padlocks each with separate Keys held by separate parties the room that holds it is also locked by three separate padlocks requiring three separate people two three of three multisig required to push updates to the protocol during 1870s Singapore there were secret societies each with their own rituals practices and S and symbols these groups of people

self-organized into cooperatives to provide employment wellness and address one another's social needs secret society membership was only valid if they were marked with seals on the bottom the leaders of the secret societies the signers had seals carved in wooden blocks that they would stamp in these documents secret society stamps zero knowledge attestations only valid with the right private key signature Barcelona in Spain was and still is the heart of the catalonian economy in the 1500s Barcelona's mints produced Fiat tokens which contributed to their wealth and global course the church saw this practice and forked the protocol to create their own tokens the design of the tokens would change seasonally so

you'd get new season drops only if you were locked in on the right day as members of the congregation participated in the Liturgy they could earn additional tokens if they held for a long time they would get more there were withdrawal periods when they could swap for Fiat and even greater rewards for keeping those tokens sounds like an incredible proof of work token with season-based airdrops a robust incentive and staking program and withdrawal periods also in the 1500s the term privato was used to refer to a highly trusted adviser of the Spanish Monarch the provado was often a close Confidant of the king and held significant influence over Royal decisions sometimes wielding even more power than the Kings themselves or than other Royal ministers

themselves the provado was not an official government position but rather a personal one that usually involved advising matters of State diplomacy and even personal issues making the provato one of the most powerful sources of security in the Kingdom unlike the rest of our examples today we actually don't see a huge difference in implementation when it comes to pado pado is still the most powerful source of security and discretion for decision-making based on highly sensitive and contextual data provado is the most powerful source of security and discretion The Trusted adviser to The Sovereign and certainly to the cipher punks my name is Evan McMullen I encourage all of you this Devcon to hydrate be excellent to each

other and be Cypher punks thank you so much for being here and I'll see all of you on chain thank you very much now we'll have the chance to have a Q&A session any question did anyone in here learn something new today excellent that was the goal I really appreciate your guys' attention I'm not going to quiz you on medieval meme and cryptography