Crypto Punk Cultures: Cypherpunk, Solarpunk, and Lunarpunk
Bitcoin and decentralized value transfer are not just ideas created by a single person or group named Satoshi Nakamoto; they are the first successful implementation of a culture that emerged in the 80s. To understand the origin of the idea of peer-to-peer value transfer, we first need to understand the Cypherpunk culture.
Surveillance capitalism is an economic model based on the commodification of personal data. While the increase in data collection can contribute to scenarios such as applications being adjusted based on personal choices or creating smart cities, collecting data for profit can endanger individuals’ privacy and well-being.
The Cypherpunk culture was created by a community of developers who realized that if software and the digitized world were monopolized by governments and large corporations, it would pose significant threats to individual freedom and privacy.
Cypherpunk and the Beginning of Bitcoin
The beginning of the Cypherpunk culture can be traced back to the first article, “Numbers Can Be a Better Form of Cash Than Paper,” written by David Chaum. As the title suggests, this article had a visionary perspective for its time and was the first to discuss the digitization of money. David Chaum also had an initiative called “Digicash” related to the digitization of money, but it was not successful under the conditions of that time.
Blockchain technology was first defined in 1991 by researchers Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta. They proposed applying an immutable timestamp to digital documents using blockchain. This provided a practical solution for preserving the dates of documents and preventing them from being altered in terms of computer power and computation.
In 1992, the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto was published. This manifesto talked about enabling individuals and companies to communicate privately, establish businesses without revealing identities, and potentially change tax and economic systems.
In 1993, the Cypherpunk Manifesto was published, discussing the transition to anonymous systems and digital signature systems, enabling the electronic transformation of money. After this manifesto, the Cypherpunk mailing list was created, and the term Cypherpunk was first used here. The name is a combination of “Cypher,” meaning code, and “Punk,” representing the resistance, forming a combination.
During the 2008 crisis, on October 31, 2008, an email was sent to the Cypherpunk mailing list: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Cash System. This structure promised peer-to-peer, secure, fast, immutable, and low-cost transfers, offering a world quite different from that of the time. However, Bitcoin’s whitepaper was influenced by many ideas and the Cypherpunk movement that came before it.
The Cypherpunk movement paved the way for the aesthetic understandings/movements that would come afterward. As the development of computer power and especially cryptography accelerated, the issue of privacy and community management became even more critical. Today, there are two main aesthetic understandings often seen in the media: Solarpunk and Lunarpunk.
Solarpunk
Solarpunk culture also opposes surveillance capitalism. This movement adopts an environmentalist approach that prioritizes the well-being of society and the planet over individual well-being, as opposed to an approach that focuses solely on individual good.
The Solarpunk aesthetic, aiming to rectify past mistakes with sustainable and renewable technologies, can be considered a form of eco-activism. Envisioning a society where social coordination and justice for the planet are ensured by DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), Solarpunk is an optimistic and utopian approach to the future. If you find this aesthetic appealing, you can explore the works of Kevin Owocki and Manu Alzuru.
Due to its highly optimistic outlook on the world, Solarpunk understanding is not considered an ideal approach by many people. Some argue that for an approach to be considered ideal, it should be more realistic and less optimistic. On the other side of the coin, there are Lunarpunks who find the Solarpunk approach too optimistic.
Lunarpunk
Lunarpunk is descended from Cypherpunks but takes its logic a step further. They oppose surveillance capitalism with privacy improvements provided by variations of zero-knowledge proofs (zk-Knowledge Proof) on blockchain-specific technologies (DAOs, DeFi, NFTs). If you find this understanding appealing, you can explore the works of Rachel-Rose O’Leary.
Lunarpunks are a guerrilla movement dedicated to likening the internet world to an unsupervised digital forest using tools like encryption. Under current conditions, they are identified as crypto anarchists. According to Lunarpunks, the current internet world can be likened to a desert rather than a forest due to surveillance, and monopolies hinder technology from reaching its true potential.
Using DAOs and peer-to-peer (P2P) organizational tools, they aim to make the internet more efficient according to their views by creating “productive lands” (new areas where they can develop new technologies and perspectives). In short, they believe in the need for technology to be actively involved in governance and in the future of non-state systems.
Bu Estetiklerin Anlamı Nedir?
Web3 is not just a new internet technology; it also signifies the transformation of society and the world. The decentralization of money through the development of Bitcoin and Ethereum has been a significant inspiration for communities to govern themselves. These subcultures express the perspectives of communities inspired by the development of blockchain technology.
Web3 provides an opportunity for transformative change to achieve social justice. Like every new technology, Web3 comes with sociological benefits and drawbacks. When used carefully and correctly, Web3 can be a meaningful tool for social change. With the community consciousness created by different aesthetic perspectives and subcultures, technology can enhance our relationships with the environment and each other.
There is no extensive survey on these trends in the Turkish ecosystem. In a mini-survey conducted within the BiLira team, the number of people who feel close to the Solarpunk movement is higher than those identifying with Lunarpunk and Cypherpunk movements. Privacy protection is a crucial concern for many team members. In this regard, many of our team members have indicated an optimistic outlook on the future and technologies.
References
Dylan-Ennis P, (2022). What Are Solarpunk and Lunarpunk Anyway? [online] www.coindesk.com. Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/09/20/what-are-solarpunk-and-lunarpunk-anyway/ [Accessed 9 Oct. 2022].
O’Leary R., (2022). Lunarpunks, Privacy and the New Encryption Guerillas [online] www.coindesk.com. Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/06/08/lunarpunks-privacy-and-the-new-encryption-guerillas/ [Accessed 9 Oct. 2022].
Campbell S., Moore S., (2022). Solarpunk! Reimagining Public Goods in the Age of Ethereum [online] https://society.mirror.xyz. Available at: https://society.mirror.xyz/OuxuYixNEYVX6D0kW6aHMy9g66lEwf5KsnlIha7F0bQ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2022].
All images are created by Dall-E 3
