With privacy and cypherpunk values entering back into the conversation, and people like
@0xmert exposing lots of new people to privacy, it’s important to get to know some of the early cypherpunks. A few themes run throughout…privacy, the fear of government control and pseudonyms.
If you are here for “crypto” and are not familiar with the people who helped get us here, it’s time to educate yourself. Starting with 10 people you should know about and I highly suggest reading more about them and digging iinto
Know your roots. Thank you to these pioneers who changed the world for the better.
“If you’re not writing code, you’re not a cypherpunk — you’re a cypher-groupie. Get off your ass and hack!” - Saint Jude Milhon
David Chaum (@chaumdotcom / @xx_network)
Invented digital cash (eCash) in the 1980s and blind signatures, pioneering anonymous electronic payments and foundational concepts for privacy-preserving transactions. Currently working on XX Network.
“In a new paradigm, individuals provide different “pseudonyms” or alternate names to each organization. A critical advantage of systems based on such pseudonyms is that the information associated with each pseudonym can be insufficient to allow data on an individual to be linked and collected together, and thus they can prevent the formation of a dossier society reminiscent of Orwell’s “1984”.
“A digital pseudonym is a public key used to verify signatures made by the anonymous holder of the corresponding private key. A roster, or list of pseudonyms, is created by an authority that decides which applications for pseudonyms to accept, but is unable to trace the pseudonyms in the completed roster”
Timothy C. May
Wrote "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" in 1988, laying the ideological groundwork for using cryptography to create a stateless society free from government surveillance.
“Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures.”
“Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re-routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.”
Eric Hughes
Authored "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" in 1993, outlining the movement's core philosophy that privacy is a fundamental right and must be built through cryptography and code.
“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.”
Wei Dai
Proposed b-money in 1998, an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system that inspired Bitcoin's design for peer-to-peer digital currency. Created the first general purpose open source cryptography programming library (Crypto++)
“I am fascinated by Tim May’s crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word “anarchy”, in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary. It’s a community where the threat of violence is impotent because violence is impossible, and violence is impossible because its participants cannot be linked to their true names or physical locations.”
Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4)
Conceptualized "bit gold" in 1998 and smart contracts, providing key intellectual foundations for decentralized finance, smart contracts and blockchain technology.
“The problem, in a nutshell, is that our money currently depends ontrust in a third party for its value. As many inflationary and hyperinflationary episodes during the 20th century demonstrated, this is not an ideal state of affairs.”
“Thus, it would be very nice if there were a protocol whereby unforgeably costly bits could be created online with minimal dependence on trusted third parties, and then securely stored, transferred, and assayed with similar minimal trust. Bit gold.”
“My proposal for bit gold is based on computing a string of bits from a string of challenge bits, using functions called variously “client puzzle function,” “proof of work function,” or“secure benchmark function.” The resulting string of bits is the proof of work. Where aone-way function is prohibitively difficult to compute backwards, a secure benchmark function ideally comes with a specific cost, measured in compute cycles, to compute backwards.”
John Gilmore
Co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and hosted the original cypherpunks mailing list, fostering discussions and collaborations that advanced privacy technologies.
Gilmore, Mitch Kapor, and John Perry Barlow founded the EFF in response to Secret Service raids on hackers and bulletin board operators. Their mission was to defend digital civil liberties, free speech, privacy, and innovation in the face of government overreach.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” -John Perry Barlow - 1996 (EFF Founder)
Phil Zimmermann
Developed Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) in 1991, making strong public-key encryption accessible to the public and sparking debates on export controls for crypto software.
PGP was inspired by a 1991 Senate bill that proposed mandating "trap doors" in encryption systems to enable government decryption of messages upon legal request, undermining user privacy under the guise of counterterrorism measures.
He viewed strong cryptography as essential to restore individual control over personal information, stating that "the only way to hold the line on privacy in the information age is strong cryptography."
Adam Back (@adam3us - @Blockstream)
Invented Hashcash in 1997, a proof-of-work system to combat email spam that directly influenced Bitcoin's mining mechanism. Early employee at PGP with Zimmerman.
Suggested proof-of-work difficulty adjustments to Satoshi (like used in hashcash).
Cited in the Bitcoin Whitepaper, "Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote... The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making." — Satoshi Nakamoto citing Hashcash
“A publicly auditable cost-function can be efficiently verified by any third party without access to any trapdoor or secret information.”
He’s the current CEO of Blockstream, building Bitcoin infrastructure who supported small blocks + Layer 2 solutions in the block size wars.
Hal Finney
Created the first reusable proof-of-work system (RPOW) in 2004 and was the first recipient of a Bitcoin transaction, bridging cypherpunk ideas to modern cryptocurrencies.
He got his start in crypto working on an early version of PGP, working closely with Phil Zimmermann. When Phil decided to start PGP Corporation, Hal was one of the first hires. He worked on PGP until his retirement. At the same time, Hal got involved with the Cypherpunks. He ran the first cryptographically based anonymous remailer.
“One concern I have is that the move to electronic payments will decrease personal privacy by making it easier to log and record transactions. Dossiers could be built up which would track the spending patterns of each of us.”
“If we want freedom and privacy, we must persuade others that these are worth having.”
Jude Milhon (aka “Saint Jude: Patron Saint of Cypherpunks”)
Jude coined the term “cypherpunk” in 1992, co-founded the Cypherpunks mailing list with Eric Hughes and Tim May, championed women in hacking and privacy as empowerment. She mergedthe riot grrl movement, diy punk ethics and code into revolutionary action.
Jude encouraged women in tech and taught Perl, Unix and crypto at CypherPunk gatherings. St. Jude Founded “CypherGrrls” — a women-only crypto study group.
“Cypherpunk” came from combining “Cipher + Cyber + Punk” and was first used in print in Eric Hughes’ “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” (March 1993)
“If you’re not writing code, you’re not a cypherpunk — you’re a cypher-groupie. Get off your ass and hack!”
This is Part 1...more to come.
- Ebullition
