the revolution will not be centralized
DESCRIPTION
Speaker: Chris Beams Data / Integration Track Massive government-run data dragnets. Advertising-based "free" cloud services working against the best interests of their users. Giant, unreadable end user license agreements. It seems that everywhere we turn, the walls are closing in on individual privacy and autonomy. The situation is complex. Out of confusion and frustration, many users have already given up. Common refrains are "privacy is dead" and "I've got nothing to hide". But revolution is in the air. The internet and the web are decentralized by design. Protocols like DNS, SMTP and HTTP assume a network of peers, but during the last 15 years—our adolescence with these technologies—we have unintentionally centralized much of the internet's infrastructure. This hasn't been for nefarious purposes; it's been done out of convenience. Having a GMail account is simply much easier than running your own mail server; storing everything in the cloud is easier than maintaining your own backups. As an unintended consequence, we've made surveillance much easier and made invasive ad-based business models the norm. A growing number of technologists are working to re-decentralize the net in surprising and profound ways. Free software and innovative peer-to-peer networks play an important role in this effort, but what may prove to be the most important tool is a new one: cryptocurrency. With bitcoin, we now have a natively digital money; a cash for the web; a currency that is as decentralized and flexible as the rest of the internet was designed to be. At a glance, bitcoin may look like just another payment option, a fad, or a speculative bubble. On closer inspection, one begins to see that it can enable new business models by facilitating previously impossible economic incentives between peers. Once one grasps the fundamentals of cryptocurrency, one sees that its long-term implications and possibilities are as broad and deep as the internet itself. And just like the internet, bitcoin is not a panacea. It is rife with its own problems and faces its own existential threats. In this talk, Chris Beams will share his findings from over two years of research into bitcoin and related technologies: the promise and the peril; how bitcoin may be able to create the first sustainable business models for the development of free software; how privacy may rise from the dead yet; and why the revolution will not be centralized.TRANSCRIPT
The Revolution Will Not Be Centralized
!
bitcoin
magic internet money
!
bitcoin
1AwsMQhSoWxziP3XEnRtNurWuktBDK4GkCLyY7aKc290...
1BzZ2shEZmJUZyPScNTkfVFnSovkJsXeYZ
15Y1QuDTdVmn8HCjMn14VX7CvsLUC3t6oE
1FdJiTCUwWedQvt7TaWouAD3mMPmNLMu4s
1JFda26Z3s5eFHF7QWiVy5FFgoA8Lq8qPR
14XngApwvbbR2zige17mmwRG2GrpPAeDY1
1winnert72Hkk9tqg4xKQJZTEH9vLsAQfS
...Address: 1winnert72Hkk9tqg4xKQJZTEH9vLsAQfSPrivkey: <keep this safe!>
1
2
3
4 profit!
decentralized
protocol
trustless
open
neutral
DECENTRALIZE
ALL THE THINGS!
like what?• Email (GMail -> Bitmessage)
• Storage (Dropbox -> Storj)
• Money (USD, EUR -> Bitcoin)
• Social media (Twitter -> Twister)
• Even companies themselves (status quo -> DAOs, DACs)
why bother?• Freedom (of choice; from censorship)
• Privacy (deciding what to share, with whom)
• Prosperity (fewer middlemen, fewer fees)
• Resiliency (fewer single points of failure)
• Competition (leading to better choices for users)
big challenges• Coordination
• Discovery
• Adoption
• Infrastructure
• Funding
but many are now rising to those challenges
MUSCULAR
TEMPORA
BOUNDLESS INFORMANT
Mastering the
Internet
Global Telecoms
Exploitation
MYSTIC
SURVEIL
ALL THE CITIZENS!
Q: what do we do about it?
A1: absolutely nothing!
Privacy isn't about having something to hide. It's about control.
Either you have it, or someone else does.
"The debate isn't security versus privacy. It's liberty versus control."
!
~ Bruce Schneier
!
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the
protection of the law against such interference or attacks." !
~Article 12, UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
!
~Benjamin Franklin
A2: protest!
maybe
maybe not.
"Don't blame the NSA for being the first to buy a hammer off a store shelf."
~ Jeff Garzik
A3: decentralize.
it shouldn't be this easy :(
A4: encrypt.
1999
2005
... and today?
1. give up 2. protest 3. decentralize 4. encrypt
problem: no incentive
cause: advertising
"It’s time to start paying for privacy, to support services we love, and to abandon those that are free, but sell us—the users
and our attention—as the product."
we're addicted to free services
free services survive on advertising
free services survive on surveillance
free is a lie.
government surveillance
corporate surveillanceenables
if only there were another way...
Alice
Charlie
Dave
50%
25%
25%5%95%
SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY
Alice
Charlie
Dave
50%
25%
25%0%100%
`
oops.
crowdfunding
equity crowdfunding
crypto-equity crowdfunding
CounterpartyMastercoin
Swarm
MaidSafe
(which builds on)
Mastercoin protocol
uses to launch
and
The Four Freedoms1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
OH MY GOD...
WHAT IF STALLMAN WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
free software!+ bitcoin!+ decentralized crowdfunding!-----------------------------! new ways to directly(!) fund FOSS
putting it all together
metered resource consumption and QoS
bitcoin micropayment channels
zero trust
the network is the computer :)
problems and threats
Legal
Silk Road
OpenBazaar
systemic weaknesses
bitcoin itself is decentralizedbut bitcoin exchanges aren't
centralized services
• Web wallets
• Exchanges
• OTC Bureaus
• Coinbase, Circle, ...
Regulatory
BitLicense
Privacy (Transaction Analysis)
CoinJoin / ZeroCash
conclusions
"decentralizing all the things" probably won't be a mainstream
phenomenon anytime soon
but that's okay.
all we need is enough
this revolution is peaceful.
things you can do• Patronize "small businesses" on the web like pinboard
• Or start one :)
• Run a full bitcoin node
• Run a Tor exit node
• Read up, dive in: http://chris.beams.io/posts/bitcoin/
"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model.
You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.
That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called."
~ Buckminster Fuller ~
thanks!
questions?chris.beams.io/talks/revolution
@cbeams
