Every myth has it’s origins. Cypherpunk goes like awareness of the selected few tech individuals to challenge governments desire to control population and suppress individuals. Cypherpunks has their manifesto, knowledge exchange tools, actionable software & means of selfdefense aka encryption.
The term has been coined by women Jude Milhon. But it has been hijacked by white American men. And the rest was a glorious creation myth’s history.
Fast forward. 32 years after The Cypherpunk Manifesto… Internet grew to unprecedented places, dreamed cryptographic tools has been implemented, hacktivism culture is blooming, we even have a first internet-native generation at play! Not even talking about Snowden, Manning, Anonymous, wars, surveillance capitalism, pandemic, mobile phone, AI, or “digital cash”.
Don’t you feel an urgency to crack original myth and reboot it? So historical cypherpunk roots will enable progress, but won’t lock it down within an “old world”, so centric around the States.
Chasing shadows of the past
This essay is a call to unlock imagination of the radical cypherpunk futures around the world - an invitation to make culture accessible to more people from different countries & continents, cultures & origins, devices & degrees, communities & affiliations.
Example of what impacts cypherpunk conditions:
I propose to diversify cypherpunk concept by mediating on a new type of cypherpunks that already exist in the world, embody original ethos, but push the boundaries of techno-political activism forward.
Close your eyes for a moment, try to imagine new just world where everyone can become a cypherpunk…
ChinaCypher - local cypherpunk
purpose: protect communication (1on1 & communal) from internal surveillance actors.
tools: Signal &/or Matrix,, Proton, Brave
Recently Chinese Ethereum community members approached us in need to boost privacy education behind local community.
Covid-19 increased surveillance, and raised alert within government ability to dominant both digital & physical space. Here cryptography & privacy-boosting tools can help protect millions of people.
Yisi Liu from Mask Network
ChinaCypher can be a young Ethereum community member exploring human rights, privacy & secure online cross-border communication (remember, that crypto is a global phenomenon).
bottlenecks:
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language barrier - English isn’t the first language
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cultural differences in a cross-cultural communities
note: did you know that many Chinese people participated in AssangeDAO & helped to significantly impact Julian’s defence campaign?
AccidentalCypher - one-time cypherpunk
purpose: wants to have a healthy internet experience.
Check the most popular privacy tools in the world. AdBlocker will be #1 - because advertisement pollution distracts us from what matters, and drives into never-ending consumerism. So millions of people empowered themselves with practical & simple tooling like plugins to make internet life more meaningful.
AccidentalCypher uses cryptography & privacy in a plug’n’play way. It’s not a life commitment, but case-by-case scenario:
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travels into UAE - uses VPN
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wants to decrease cookies - uses Brave browser
From time to time they advocate for privacy, but in a non preaching way - just occasional recommendations.
bottlenecks
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technical complexity - don’t have time to read manual or watch long-explainers
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UI-dependency - habitual connection with a simple screens & big buttons (anti-CLI)
FemCypher - “killjoy” cypherpunk
purpose: protect communication (1on1 & communal) from internal surveillance actors. tools: Signal &/or Matrix, VPN, Proton, Brave, mixnet
There aren’t so many “official” female cypherpunks. While women actively contributed to the freedom of press, exposed internet surveillance, became whistleblowers, & even were imprisoned for protecting social justice.
Chelsea Manning is a perfect example of a female cypherpunk. OG of internet anti-surveillance, contributing to Nym mixnet, leaking to Wikileaks, you name it.
bottlenecks
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patriarchal culture
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peer exclusion mentality (how many female CTOs are there?)
Observation
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1993 required coding-first approach (tools weren’t mainstream)
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2025 requires advocacy, education, community building and nurturing around collective privacy-focused tooling usage. Think of this as a low-code or no-code environment.
WellCypher - caring cypherpunk
purpose: protect communication (1on1 & communal) from internal surveillance actors.
tools: Signal &/or Matrix, VPN, Proton, Brave
WellCypher is a person preoccupied with an internet well-being.
She is aware of internet harmful impact on attention span, misinformation, negative thinking acceleration & so on. She clearly understand Big Tech’s role in the state of internet 24’.
WellCypher wants to protect themselves & family from the constant urge to have a screen from the first thing in the morning to a bedtime’s endless scroll.
They experiment with the different tools to decrease internet noise, boost productive time, care about sleep, ability to read books & concentrate on a one subject. Through experimentation processes they came to different tools like OpenOffice to AdBlock.
bottlenecks
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long time to search & test meaningful tools
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different privacy-readiness within the family members (from newbies to mid-tech savvy people)
TransCypher
purpose: protect communication (1on1 & communal) from external bad actors.
tools: Signal, Google Drive, Proton, Brave
McKenzie Wark is a philosopher who wrote Hacker Manifesto among many other books.
Recently she curated Hacker manifesto’s anniversary E-flux mag (influential contemporary art magazine) opening “hacking” concept to different disciplines like “smartphone illegal repair culture” in China.
She is a scholar who supposedly use private messaging tools & is actively engage in the pro-transgender rights community.
bottlenecks:
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Google Office dependency - editors, academia & publishers use it massively for collaboration
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traditional social media dependency - Facebook, Twitter etc are tools for connection with the community, people interested in transformative justice
PoorCypher - low-income cypherpunk
purpose: protect communication (1on1 & communal) from external bad actors.
tools: Signal, Google Drive, WhatsApp
PoorCypher has a basic laptop, cheap Chinese phone & limited internet connection.
He lives in Texas. Has internet connectivity by megabytes (prepaid), occasionally has unlimited internet in public places.
WhatsApp offers E2EE and a low-bandwidth connectivity with peers. That can be use as a means of collaboration in relations with its massive adoption and low-threat actor’s activism.
bottlenecks
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low income - can’t afford new laptops & smartphones
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no peers - lack of community to educate & support on a privacy-focused journey
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limited internet - fragmented access to knowledge
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non-technical - can’t assess open-source x github culture, install GrapheneOS etc
IndigenousCypher - spiritual & non-linear cypherpunks
purpose: protect community & sovereignty from both external actors (governments) and neo-colonialism
tools: Signal, Google Drive, WhatsApp
IndigenousCypher is a “subject” of neo-colonial “barbarian” projection. Meanwhile they are actively supported by hacktivists helping to document deforestation with drones, use mesh-networks for local collaboration etc.
There’s a tendency in art circles to study indigenous communities and practices. Whole Biennale are dedicated to “indigenous gaze”. Giving technology to indigenous activists - invitation to non-linear thinking.
UACypher - self-defence cypherpunk
purpose: protect communication (1on1 & communal) from internal surveillance actors.
tools: Signal, VPN, Proton, Brave, AdBlock
The Ukrainian-Russian war accelerated necessity for an online-safety (both within Ukraine & especially on an occupied territories). Suddenly thousands of people learned how to store (or rather, not to store) sensitive data on the phone, not erase all data, because it can look suspicious etc.
UACypher can be a volunteers who fundraise for a humanitarian cause. They want to feel emotionally stable online (in times of informational warfare), build a meaningful collaboration with peers and decrease amount of misinformation.
As a non-technical person UACypher prefers tools with appealing interfaces, simple to use. From AdBlock to Signal messenger. They are preoccupied with a secure communication, but Signal is enough since they have different age groups in their non-profit. We cover privacy-personas impacted by Ukrainian-Russian war here
GovCypher - institutional cypherpunk
purpose: empower civic society while working from within a government
tools: mix of corporate SaaS, plus open-source, and custom coordination tooling at scale (based on government issued IDs).
Does cypherpunk loses its values once working with government? What happens when cypherpunk integrates cryptography, hacktivism and coding into governmental body? Especially, when large civic society is protected from misinformation, or potential disruption by big players like China?
Unlike heroes of the past, some talented hacktivists & cryptographers have chosen state affairs as an actionable way to shape local & global digital landscape. Think of them as ambassadors of encryption and ethics of data usage within the system.
bottlenecks
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governments can influence individuality and corrupt personal ethics
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every large system requires tradeoff on the road to cypherpunk standards implementation
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not every cryptographer or activist is good in state management and complex negotiations
Citizen Lab that tracked NSO Group’s spyware by using cryptographic, surveillance, and security tooling is based within university (public institution). They serve society and practically empower security standards within your devices on a global scale (example: Apple or WhatsApp pushed updates within their devices and software).
Summary
Cypherpunk culture is locked within the old cabinets of American men above 60s. Many original cypherpunks are dead. Even Cypherpunk manifesto has been published 30 years ago.
Diversity directions
Decolonial thinkers propose frameworks of “unlearning”. They help to be free from mental concepts of privilege, class, history. It’s an invitation to break the chains, and let imagination spark changes related to geo, age, gender, income, beliefs, habits, culture, politics, mind, body, communities…
Open question
“Cypherpunks write code” manifesto says, but its challenged these days…
There's a new kind of coding I call "vibe coding", where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists, - Andrej Karpathy
Maximalist approach will be no to “vibe coding” or “give away code responsibilities to LLMs”. But people are different. And many will benefit from self-hosted LLMs, and beyond.
How cypherpunks x LLMs will look alike? How it can still be in-sync with original values, but unlock access and potential to local cypher-activists?
Cypherpunk 2.0 transition checklist
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Closely observe local context: how economics, politics, tech adoption and customs impact encrypted and privacy-focused tools.
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Imagine different cypherpunk scenario: smaller or even granular - performing cypherpunk ritual via E2EE Signal with one contact is enough for a start.
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Not everyone is a Snowden. You or your community don’t need to make cryptographic tooling, but have free access to them - also enough.
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Imagine totally radical cyborg-cypherpunks, otaku-cypherpunks, or even sifpunks.
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Radical futurisms will belong to non-anthropocentric creatures, but rather kinship between fungi-alikes and biosphere. Cypherpunks will be part of bio-techno-scene on the ruins of capitalism.
Radical cypherpunk imagination has its home - Cypherpunk Congress.
Continue diving into Cypherpunk 2.0 imagination: Make Cypherpunk - one Ethereum at a time article
Mykola Siusko, Web3Privacy now
Useful literature
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Anna Tsing - The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
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Chelsea E. Manning - README.txt
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McKenzie Wark - A Hacker Manifesto
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Various - e-flux Issue #146 A Hacker Manifesto at Twenty
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Nicolas Nova - A Bestiary of The Anthropocene
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Corinna Lenhardt - Cyberpunk and Indigenous Futurisms
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Rasheedah Phillips - Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space, and Time
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Audrey Tang, E. Glen Weyl & co - PLURALITY: The future of collaborative technology and democracy
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Ronald J. Deibert - Chasing Shadows Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy
p.s. Dr. Ambelin Kwaymullina:
Through the paintings that follow, I explore non-linear time; the nature of knowing in Aboriginal worldviews; and the processes by which true futures can be reached in the form of nurturing relationships that do not embody the unequal dealings that have marked the past.
