From paragraph by Jason Chaskin

“Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it.”

- Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

A couple of weeks ago, I started looking into cypherpunk stories using Ethereum. When I first heard the word “cypherpunk,” I thought of it as an adjective describing actions that use privacy to bypass government surveillance. For instance, one story that came to mind was from a couple of years ago when Vitalik said he used Tornado Cash (before it was added to the OFAC list) to donate to Ukraine after the Russian invasion in 2022 but didn’t want the Russian government to see the details of his donation.

I went to YouTube looking for more cypherpunk stories, and the algorithm gods blessed me with a talk "I read every single 1990s Cypherpunk email. Here's what you should know. | Devcon SEA" from Devcon by Porter. I’d been meaning to watch it but had forgotten about it until now. After watching, I realized I really didn’t know much about the cypherpunks. I had only a vague sense that they were deeply respected in the Ethereum community and had pushed for privacy through an email list, that was about it.

Porter’s talk sparked my curiosity, and since then, I’ve been learning about the cypherpunks. I watched the documentary Cypherpunks Write Code, listened to the podcast The Cypherpunks - How Hackers Prevented the Ministry of Truth, and read the two most famous emails: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. Neither is long, and I highly recommend reading both.

Let me just say, holy shit. The cypherpunks left an incredible mark on society; they were fearless, visionary, and undeniably badass. The cypherpunks were a group of nerds driven by one simple motivation: they wanted the world to be freer. They weren’t building tools to get rich or for recognition—they were building because they believed freedom and privacy were fundamental rights. And they were willing to go to jail to defend those rights.

What made them truly badass was their unwavering confidence in what they were creating. They knew that what they were building was legal, ethical, and objectively good for the world. They trusted that if it ever came to a court battle, the law would side with them—and history proved them right. Cypherpunk Phil Zimmerman created encryption software, PGP, and it spread internationally, and the U.S. government accused him of illegally exporting “weapons,” this is privacy code, do you hear how crazy that sounds. Confident in their cause, cypherpunks rallied behind him, printing PGP’s code as books to prove it was protected speech under the First Amendment. The government eventually dropped the case, and courts later ruled that code is indeed free speech.