Cypherpunk philosphy (as I attempt to build an Embassy to demo)

Wednesday 30 December 2020 - Filed under Default

I just attempted to build the software for the Embassy, a device that helps you run your own Lightning and Bitcoin node. I gave a mini-review of it here. One of my concerns then was that I didn’t have root access to the device and hadn’t seen that anyone had built the software themselves. I haven’t interacted with the community, but I was just giving my impressions.

Simon on YouTube shared a guide Start9Labs released for those who wish to build the software. Long story short, I wasn’t sure what OS to build on so used Mac but it failed because it’s looking for losetup, a gnu+linux tool. There’s something similar on Mac called hdiutil which didn’t work. Ahh the joys of building software… I’ll try it next on Ubuntu.

That Embassy would be built on Linux makes total sense, and got me thinking about the topic of this post: Cypherpunk philosophy. What does it mean? Why can’t we just use website and apps for everything?

Here are some key principles for you budding cypherpunks:

Freedom – As long as you’re not hurting anyone, you should be able to explore and build what you like.

Privacy – Enables justice to rise above tyranny. Too often in history have tyrants eroded privacy to quell dissidents and maintain power.

Trustlessness – Trusting no-one removes hidden agendas to simplify reasoning about the future.

Decentralization – Cypherpunks support decentralized protocols because they can be designed with the above in mind.  With no head to cut off, decentralized systems imitate the unrelenting and immortal power of nature.

Pretty cool, right? Seriously, though cypherpunks have been behind some of the greatest recent inventions in cryptography, networking and money.

For me, next is to deal with the software-building issue. Hopefully in a future video, I can show a full tour of my second embassy, running software fit for a trustless world.

2020-12-30  »  David Sterry