TL;DR

“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.

But beyond my personal admiration, it’s important to understand who they were and their impact on the world. Without them, there’s no Bitcoin; without Bitcoin, there’s no Ethereum. Therefore without the cypherpunks, I’d probably be writing about AI right now. But since you’re reading this, it’s clear you’re interested in Ethereum—so strap in for a bit of a history lesson.

The cypherpunk movement traces its roots back to the late 1970s, when the NSA tried to block MIT’s public key cryptography research. They did everything they could to keep it out of the public’s hands, labeling it a “modern weapon” and threatening to personally go after anyone who spread it. But this didn’t stop 20-year-old cypherpunk Mark Miller from secretly copying the paper and distributing it nationwide. Aware of the risks, he told friends, “If I disappear, share this.” In 1978, the U.S. government backed down, and encryption went public. The first battle for encryption had been won, but the larger war for privacy and freedom was just beginning.

Fast forward to 1991, when software developer Phil Zimmerman released PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), the first relatively user-friendly secret messaging system with strong encryption on the internet. His software spread overseas, and the U.S. government argued that Zimmerman’s actions were equivalent to exporting weapons, making it illegal without approval. They launched an investigation against him.

Zimmerman’s PGP incident was a wake-up call for the broader community of freedom advocates, inspiring a more organized response—enter the Cypherpunk mailing list. It became a hub for discussions on cryptography, privacy, digital cash, and the future of decentralized systems. At its peak, the list had only about 2,000 subscribers—an insanely small number considering the impact they had.

While their discussions on the mailing list were technical, they were always tied to a larger vision. The cypherpunks foresaw two potential futures for humanity: one with 1984-style tyrannical, top-down control and another where it enabled freedom. After witnessing repeated attempts by the U.S. government to suppress cryptography, they realized they had to act. They knew they needed to build and deploy tools that couldn’t be shut down. Without these efforts, governments could wield technology that authoritarian regimes like the Nazis or Soviets could have only dreamed of. As Eric Hughes put it, “Since we can’t get privacy unless we all do, we’re going to write it.”

“With the internet and personal computing we can build networks with many interconnecting nodes that would be basically unstoppable.”

• Timothy C. May

The cypherpunks embraced a technology-driven view of historical change. They believed that meaningful progress doesn’t come from lobbying or electing the right people—it comes from technological innovation and adoption. If you want the future to unfold a certain way, you have to build it yourself.

“Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don’t much care if you don’t approve of the software we write. We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down.”

• Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

The cypherpunks were a group of hackers, cryptographers, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and activists united by a shared vision: creating a future that maximized human freedom.

They recognized that the internet could break down borders, removing barriers for people worldwide. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall allowed people in East Germany to immediately gain freedoms like speech, press, travel, and the ability to keep the value they create, the internet offered similar possibilities on a global scale. The cypherpunks envisioned two major freedoms the internet could enable: the first was the freedom to have private communication, and the second, which I’ll discuss later.

Most of the emails on the cypherpunk mailing list were highly technical, focused on building cryptographic tools. Here are some of the key innovations they contributed to:

• 1993 – Mixmaster Remailers: Anonymous email systems enabling untraceable communication.
• 1995 – Tor (The Onion Router): Anonymous internet browsing, inspired by cypherpunk principles (later completed by others).
• 1995 – Cryptographic File System (CFS): An early prototype for encrypted file storage.
• 1997 – Hashcash: A proof-of-work system initially designed to combat email spam, later adapted for Bitcoin mining.

While much of what the cypherpunks built didn’t achieve mainstream adoption (with Bitcoin being the big exception) their ethos sparked a broader movement for privacy-focused technology. Tools like VPNs, used by over 1.5 billion people globally in 2023 to secure internet connections and bypass censorship, and the Signal protocol, which powers WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption for its more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, reflect the cypherpunk vision of empowering individuals to protect their data. Even Apple’s privacy features, such as App Tracking Transparency and on-device data processing, are used by hundreds of millions of iPhone users daily. These technologies have become indispensable, enabling private communication, secure browsing, and greater control over personal information on a massive scale.

The cypherpunks knew their innovations weren’t just disrupting technology, they were challenging the power structures that depended on centralized control. This duality meant their work wasn’t confined to coding; they also fought legal and social battles to defend their vision of freedom. The cypherpunk community was divided on whether their cryptographic tools would lead to greater individual freedom, free trade, and the spread of democracy or to the complete dissolution of governments. But regardless of the outcome, they were united in their mission to create tools that empowered freedom, put them in people’s hands, and let the future unfold from there. Governments, recognizing the disruptive potential of these technologies, often resorted to fear-mongering, invoking the actions of bad actors to justify their control.

As Timothy C. May put it:

“Child pornographers, terrorists, money launderers—take your pick. These are the people who will be invoked as the bringers of death and destruction. And well, it’s true. But all technologies have had bad effects. Telephones allow extortion, death threats, bomb threats, kidnapping cases. Uncontrolled publishing of books could allow satanic books to appear.”

May’s words captured the cypherpunk perspective: while bad actors could exploit any technology, the tools themselves were neutral. The same systems governments feared could also protect individual freedom and privacy. Yet, governments often weaponized these edge cases to sway public opinion against encryption and privacy tools.

Despite this opposition, the cypherpunks persevered. They risked jail time to ensure their work remained accessible. Discussions on the mailing list also went into the legality of their efforts and even debated whether they should send a letter to the White House to explain their intentions. Time and again, they stood firm against central governments, defending their vision of a freer, more private future. Notable legal and social battles include:

• 1990s - Crypherpunks Support Zimmerman: The cypherpunks rallied to defend Zimmerman by highlighting the parallels between encryption software and protected forms of speech. They printed the PGP source code, bound it into books, and distributed it to European bookstores. The government realized it would lose a court battle to suppress a university-published book and dropped the investigation in 1996.
• 1993 – Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): John Gilmore co-founded the EFF to advocate for digital privacy and free speech, supporting many of the early encryption battles.
• 1995 – “Government Secrecy and Technology” Lawsuit: The cypherpunks backed Bernstein v. United States, where Daniel Bernstein sued for the right to publish encryption software as free speech. This landmark case established code as a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. People even got tattoos of encryption algorithms as a tongue-in-cheek protest, asking, “Can I travel to another country now?”
• 1997 – “Crypto Wars” Advocacy: The cypherpunks played a critical role in opposing the U.S. government’s Clipper Chip initiative, which aimed to mandate encryption backdoors.

Let’s revisit the second freedom the cypherpunks were working to unlock.

“We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.”

• Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

Notice the mention of electronic money? The cypherpunks aimed to enable the freedom to send value across borders, increasing economic freedom globally. Their holy grail was to achieve this privately, constructing a borderless world where individual activities and assets were resistant to government control and confiscation.

“Tim [May], me, and many others considered electronic cash to be the holy grail because it completed the picture. A private and decentralized monetary system was, many argued, a key component in constructing a new borderless world.”

• Adam Back

Despite many failed attempts and the cypherpunk mailing list cooling down, the movement was reborn in 2008 when a pseudonymous creator unveiled none other than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin marked the culmination of the cypherpunks’ dream of digital “cash,” the principles they championed didn’t stop there. Many of their ideas: scalable peer-to-peer electronic cash ;), pseudonymity, advanced cryptography, privacy, and maximizing more freedoms like access to financial services—have found new life in the Ethereum ecosystem.

“The technology for this revolution—and it surely will be both a social and economic revolution—has existed in theory for the past decade. The methods are based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction, authentication, and verification.”

• Timothy C. May, The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto

It’s incredible to think that they were discussing zero-knowledge proofs back in the 1990s. I think they’d be proud to see them not only brought to life but actively shaping the Ethereum ecosystem today.

Understanding who the cypherpunks were has deepened my appreciation for their impact. Their work laid the foundation for so much of what we see in Ethereum today, making me wonder—what would they be building if they were here now? That’s a question for another time, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on how their ethos lives on in Ethereum today. For now, I’m simply grateful that this group of nerds fought for what they believed in. I hope to carry their flame forward.

“Our dream was to enable the future of human freedom, and we had this bizarre confidence about how the future would unfold and, to use Alan Kay’s famous phrase, to have a huge hand in inventing it.”

• Mark Miller

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