# Neocypherpunk Summit #1 Source: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info Gathering at Berlin's historic Funkhaus, the Neocypherpunk Summit brings together a global network of hacktivists, researchers, technologists, whistleblowers, philosophers, lawyers & policy-makers. From defending resistance networks under political duress to scaling cryptography as civic infrastructure, the summit explores how open protocols and privacy tools become a resilient, shared foundation for digital autonomy, free assembly, and accountability. What to Expect Dialogue Discourse to identify and bridge gaps in knowledge, alignment, values and vision. Knowledge Exchange Develop skills, strategies and intuition for hacking, organizing and advocacy. Rituals Activations and participatory programming inviting exploration through creativity and play. Field Building Nourish a cross-disciplinary community of practice exploring how privacy mediates power. Showcases Discover bold ideas, meet the makers, and explore innovations shaping the future. Debates World-class leaders go head-to-head, rethinking the systems and norms that shape our world. Discourse to identify and bridge gaps in knowledge, alignment, values and vision. Develop skills, strategies and intuition for hacking, organizing and advocacy. Activations and participatory programming inviting exploration through creativity and play. Nourish a cross-disciplinary community of practice exploring how privacy mediates power. Discover bold ideas, meet the makers, and explore innovations shaping the future. World-class leaders go head-to-head, rethinking the systems and norms that shape our world. Neocypherpunk Themes Cryptography as Civic Infrastructure How do privacy tools become essential infrastructure for democratic participation serving technologists, journalists, organizers, and citizens? Encryption, anonymous communication, and verifiable credentials are no longer niche concerns. Digital systems have become ubiquitous surveillance machines and cryptography is our defense. Applied cryptography functions as civic infrastructure: enabling whistleblowing, protecting protest movements, securing elections, and preserving press freedom. Resistance Networks How can privacy infrastructure be maintained under political duress to ensure the resilience and censorship-resistance of social movements? This theme centers practical, field-tested approaches to censorship circumvention, mesh networks, and secure coordination in hostile environments. It foregrounds the people deploying these tools in the hardest conditions, asking what builders need to hear from them about case studies, operational security, and the gap between what exists and what's needed. Open Protocols & Digital Autonomy How do open protocols and p2p systems reshape power dynamics on the internet? The open social web, federated infrastructure, and peer-to-peer architectures offer alternatives to extractive platforms and surveillance wrapped as advertising. This theme explores stack independence, protocol governance, interoperability, and practical shifts from centralized services to digital autonomy. Digital Rights & Legal Defense How do current legal and regulatory frameworks impact the right to privacy, and what strategies are being used to navigate these changes? As state security mandates increasingly clash with civil liberties, a coordinated defense is no longer optional. This theme maps the shifting regulatory landscape from EU Chat Control to global digital identity schemes. We explore the legal strategies human rights lawyers, researchers, and technologists are using to safeguard the right to privacy. Privacy for the Commons What strategies can we use to embed privacy as a collective habit instead of an individual burden? Privacy is often framed as personal protection. This theme reframes it as a public good, examining community threat modeling, collective data stewardship, mutual aid security practices, and the cultural work of normalizing encryption. The central question is how those that need it the most can adopt privacy infrastructure at critical mass. AI, Power & the Surveillance Economy What is the relationship between AI development and mass surveillance, and what does a privacy-respecting alternative look like? The AI industry was built on the infrastructure of the surveillance economy: the same data collection pipelines that have tracked users' behavior at scale trained the models reshaping public life today. This theme examines how AI systems extend surveillance with new surface areas for attacks, how power is concentrating, and what it takes to build AIs that respect the digital commons. How do privacy tools become essential infrastructure for democratic participation serving technologists, journalists, organizers, and citizens? Encryption, anonymous communication, and verifiable credentials are no longer niche concerns. Digital systems have become ubiquitous surveillance machines and cryptography is our defense. Applied cryptography functions as civic infrastructure: enabling whistleblowing, protecting protest movements, securing elections, and preserving press freedom. How can privacy infrastructure be maintained under political duress to ensure the resilience and censorship-resistance of social movements? This theme centers practical, field-tested approaches to censorship circumvention, mesh networks, and secure coordination in hostile environments. It foregrounds the people deploying these tools in the hardest conditions, asking what builders need to hear from them about case studies, operational security, and the gap between what exists and what's needed. How do open protocols and p2p systems reshape power dynamics on the internet? The open social web, federated infrastructure, and peer-to-peer architectures offer alternatives to extractive platforms and surveillance wrapped as advertising. This theme explores stack independence, protocol governance, interoperability, and practical shifts from centralized services to digital autonomy. How do current legal and regulatory frameworks impact the right to privacy, and what strategies are being used to navigate these changes? As state security mandates increasingly clash with civil liberties, a coordinated defense is no longer optional. This theme maps the shifting regulatory landscape from EU Chat Control to global digital identity schemes. We explore the legal strategies human rights lawyers, researchers, and technologists are using to safeguard the right to privacy. What strategies can we use to embed privacy as a collective habit instead of an individual burden? Privacy is often framed as personal protection. This theme reframes it as a public good, examining community threat modeling, collective data stewardship, mutual aid security practices, and the cultural work of normalizing encryption. The central question is how those that need it the most can adopt privacy infrastructure at critical mass. What is the relationship between AI development and mass surveillance, and what does a privacy-respecting alternative look like? The AI industry was built on the infrastructure of the surveillance economy: the same data collection pipelines that have tracked users' behavior at scale trained the models reshaping public life today. This theme examines how AI systems extend surveillance with new surface areas for attacks, how power is concentrating, and what it takes to build AIs that respect the digital commons. Speakers RAMY RAOOF HALIM ex-Tor, Amnesty International, Open Technology Fund Privacy researcher defending activists and journalists against surveillance and digital attacks. ISABELA FERNANDES Tor Executive director, growing one of the world’s most important anonymity networks. MAREK TUSZYNSKI Tactical Tech Executive Director and co-founder of Tactical Tech GEERT LOVINK Institute of Network Cultures Media theorist, professor at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, his latest book - Platform Brutality (2025) XAVIER DAMMAN Open Collective Co-founder of Open Collective bringing transparent funding to digital communities and public goods. TATIANA BAZZICHELLI Disruption Network Lab A curator and researcher on information technology, network culture, hacktivism and whistleblowing MATTHIAS KIRSCHNER President of Free Software Foundation Europe helps organisations, companies and governments to understand how they can benefit from Free Software JAYA KLARA BREKKE Nym Cryptographic geographer exploring privacy tech through politics, culture, and strategy. MARINA MARKEZIC EUCI EU crypto policy advocate translating regulation into practical strategy for the industry. FLORIAN GLATZ Freedom Browser, EUCI Blockchain lawyer shaping European crypto regulation and decentralized public infrastructure. BRETT SCOTT Author Monetary anthropologist unpacking the politics of cash, cards, and digital money. PAUL DYLAN-ENNIS University College Dublin UCD scholar reading crypto as culture as much as code. JULIO LINARES Author, Poetic Technologies Economic anthropologist linking money, basic income, and poetic technologies. TARA MERK PhD BlockchainGov, Metagov Governance researcher studying DAOs, open-source communities, and exit-to-community models. Cameron Colby Thomson Human Rights Foundation Expert in geopolitics and conflict, with a special focus on AI, propaganda, and cyber security tools MIGLE RAKITAITE Swarm Foundation, WinPrivacy Ecosystem organizer connecting decentralized infrastructure with feminist privacy advocacy. SHAYAN ESKANDARI MOAV: Mother Of All VPNs Works on Multi-protocol Internet censorship circumvention stack optimized for hostile network environments WILL SCOTT Protocol Labs, Snowstorm Network researcher helping decentralized internet infrastructure work in the real world. ANDREA LEITER Amsterdam Center for International Law International law scholar studying digital governance, inequality, and private power. CADE DIEHM New Design Congress Researcher mapping how digital infrastructure reshapes power, identity, and society. ALESSANDRO LONGO Reincantamento Reincantamento founder exploring technology through ritual, research, and radical imagination. SEBASTIAN VOGELSANG Eurosky Aadvances digital sovereignty and public-interest infrastructure for ATProto SIMONE ROBUTTI Tech Workers Coalition, Cables Of Resistance Tech Unionism, Algorithmic Accountability, Common Cybernetics MARIO HAVEL Ethereum Foundation Ethereum Foundation researcher focused on protocol thinking and coordination. LEFTERIS KARAPETSAS rotki Long-lasting FOSS, censorship resistance, decentralisation & privacy-principled technologist BINJI Ethereum Foundation Blends culture and communication around CROPS principles Laurenz Sachenbacher Data Workers’ Inquiry Brings together experts in sociology, political science, philosophy to uncover the hidden labor behind AI RACHEL-ROSE O'LEARY DarkFi hacktivist accelerating anonymous engineering and it's cultural implications KYLE DEN HARTOG Brave Staff Cryptographic Security Engineer working on accessible privacy for millions of people AHMED GHAPPOUR Flashbots Lawyer-technologist probing the legal edge of privacy, surveillance, and protocol design. MATE SOOS Argot Collective Applied cryptography and verification researcher known for rigorous security engineering. ml_sudo Electric Coin Co. Multiplier helping innovative projects & foundations ship their promises ESLEM DEMIREL No Tech for Apartheid Reclaiming tech via unionising tech workers TOBI No Tech for Apartheid Reclaiming tech via unionising tech workers KATE STAPLETON Fhenix Experienced hacktivist making encrypted computation more approachable to people. DR JOACHIM SCHWERIN Economist Researcher (PhD TU Dresden) on tokenisation, Web3 and DAOs; privacy activist (Digital Freedom Declaration) LAURA LOTTI Other Internet Research Institute Researcher investigating networked organisations and the cultural economy of web3 NICK ALMOND Jito Experienced DAO thinker on governance, infrastructure, and web3 incentives RILEY WONG Community Privacy Residency The Principal of Emergent Research and grad student at MIT, investigating privacy, governance, and data JOSH DÁVILA Bread Coop Cooperative technologist building solidarity finance beyond extractive crypto models. CALLE Bitchat, Cashu Responsible for activating mesh communications for millions of people under pressure from Uganda to China ADAM BURNS free2air, Dyne Connectivity builder linking resilient networks with free software tools. Péter Szilágyi Dark Bio Making genomics cypherpunk Zaki Manian Sovright focus on civil liberties and general privacy) David Dashyan Poetic Technologies engineer focused on software supply chain security SPRING-ONION GrapheneOS Brings deGoogle OS to the people YONATAN MILLER Tech Workers Coalition Berlin Community organizer focused on tech workers solidarity KASSANDRA Kohaku Activist-developer focused on censorship-resistant finance ARTURO FILASTÒ OONI Works on open-data measuring internet censorship MAX HAMPSHIRE Nym DevRel closely working with communities & organisations building on top of mixnet DANIEL CALDERON Independent Researcher Working on privacy tech where protocol design meets politics. BRADLEY CLARK ROYES Foresight Institute Building out Foresight Institute’s first European AI Node in central Berlin. JAKE HARTNELL Layer Verifiable off-chain compute meets decentralised coordination RAPHAEL ROBERT Phoenix R&D co-author of the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol and helped initiate the working group More Instant Messaging Interoperability (MIMI) SUJI YAN Mask Network / Lens Founder of Mask Network and contributor to Lens. Building decentralized social, user-owned identity, and privacy infrastructure for a freer internet. NIKOLINE ARNS HUBS Network Governance designer, civic-tech entrepreneur, and founder of HUBS Network — connecting hacker spaces, cultural centers, and regenerative communities through decentralized coordination. CAROLINE PAULICK-THIEL Politics for Tomorrow Co-founder of Politics for Tomorrow. Working on democratic innovation, public sector transformation, participatory governance, and human-centered systems design. ZIMT BlockchainGoc Crypto lawyer and systems thinker researching governance, decentralization, and regulatory infrastructure. LIZ STEININGER Least Authority, Private Storage Security expert auditing and building privacy-first infrastructure for decentralized systems. UNA WANG ETHZurich Researcher bridging academic rigor and emerging cryptographic systems at ETH Zurich. VIKTOR TRON Swarm Building decentralized storage and communication infrastructure for a resilient, user-owned internet. LUIS BEZZENBERGER Shutter Network Working on threshold encryption and privacy-preserving infrastructure for fairer, more secure decentralized systems. BETH MCCARTHY Web3Privacy Now Researcher and strategist exploring privacy, governance, and the social impacts of emerging technologies. MYKOLA SIUSKO Web3Privacy Now Building community and advocacy around privacy, cypherpunk culture, and decentralized public infrastructure. IGOR MANDRIGIN Gateway.fm / FF Consulting Infrastructure builder working on resilient blockchain systems, node operations, and decentralized networks. PIERGIORGIO CATTI DE GASPERI Web3Privacy Now Contributing to privacy advocacy, community building, and the cultural infrastructure of the cypherpunk movement. POLYMUTEX Walletbeat Mapping wallet privacy, security, and usability to help users understand the tools they rely on. FRANCISCO ROLOTTI Bread Cooperative Working on cooperative technology, collective ownership, and digital infrastructure for community-led economies. GILBERTO MORISHAW Morishaw LLC Building at the intersection of cooperative systems, technology, and community-owned digital infrastructure. ANNA THIESER Columbia University Researching the social, political, and institutional dimensions of emerging digital technologies. VIJAY KRISHNAVANSHI Fileverse Building privacy-first collaboration tools for decentralized teams, communities, and digital organizations. JONAS FRANKKI Disruption Network Lab Creative producer, designer, and researcher shaping critical conversations on technology, power, media, and digital culture. BARIŞ PAKSOY Kara Kutu / CORRECTIV.Exile Building censorship-resistant archives and tools for preserving journalism, memory, and media freedom. CHRIS HAUG Futura Building tools and communities for new forms of coordination, digital ownership, and collective action. MOISTCRYPTOGRAPHY Artist Collective Exploring cryptography, identity, intimacy, and networked culture through experimental artistic practice. SUSANNA DAVIES-CROOK Barbican Centre Curating public programmes at the intersection of art, technology, culture, and critical civic imagination. ALISTAIR ALEXANDER reclaimed.systems Researching the ecological and political consequences of digital infrastructure through art, technology, and public engagement. NICOLE YEH Ethereum Foundation Supporting ecosystem growth, coordination, and community initiatives across Ethereum’s global network. SERINKO Nym DevRel and privacy advocate focused on network-level privacy, mixnets, and censorship-resistant communications infrastructure. CONNOR O'HARA Independent Researcher Exploring coordination systems, governance, and the social dynamics of decentralized networks. ROSE REGINA LAWRENCE Open Archive Investigating security, digital rights, and the human impact of emerging technologies. KIMMO SIRÉN Orb, Lens, Mask Network Researching digital identity, decentralized social systems, and user-owned online experiences. KRIS DECOODT Logos Building tools and infrastructure for network states, digital sovereignty, and resilient communities. KOSS p2pmentor, dOrg Helping communities and organizations adopt decentralized governance and collaborative technologies. BASTIN JAFARI MIND Foundation, RadicalxChange Berlin Exploring collective intelligence, democratic innovation, and new forms of social coordination. RAINER REHAK Forum Computer Professionals for Peace and Societal Responsibility (FIfF) Researching technology governance, surveillance, and the societal impact of digital systems. PHAKIN NIMMANNORRAWONG St John's College, University of Cambridge Studying governance, institutions, and the future of technology-enabled societies. PAUL MCCLOUD Traditional Dream Factory Working across storytelling, culture, and technology to imagine alternative futures. GUIL MAUELER Regens Unite Building regenerative communities and systems for collective resilience and long-term stewardship. BAGELFACE Bread Coop Exploring cooperative ownership, digital commons, and community-driven infrastructure. GIANMARCO CRISTOFARI Università degli Studi di Palermo Researching digital governance, privacy, and the social implications of emerging technologies. MIHO SOON Money Trauma Working across art, technology, and activism to examine infrastructures of communication and power. ELA KAGEL Platform Coops eG Advocating for cooperative ownership models and democratic digital platforms. ANDREAS ARNOLD Platform Coops eG Building cooperative alternatives to extractive digital platforms and online services. ROBERT DE GROOT Web3Privacy Now Supporting privacy-focused communities, events, and ecosystem coordination across Europe. JUSTIN SHENK Independent Researcher Exploring artificial intelligence, human flourishing, and the future relationship between technology and society. MEINHARD BENN Freedom Browser Building privacy-first browsing infrastructure focused on digital sovereignty, autonomy, and user control. PETER ChainSafe Systems CTO of ChainSafe Systems, building open-source protocol infrastructure across Ethereum, Filecoin, Polkadot, and decentralized networks. MORE SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED SOON What is Neocypherpunk? The cypherpunk movement, rooted in Eric Hughes' 1993 manifesto, held that cryptography is a political act: writing code to protect privacy is itself resistance to centralized power. That conviction produced PGP, Tor, BitTorrent, and ultimately Bitcoin and Ethereum. But its emphasis was on the sovereign individual, the lone cryptographer building tools in defiance of the state. Neocypherpunk carries that conviction forward while expanding who it's for. Where the original cypherpunks built for rugged individuals, neocypherpunk insists that privacy must be practiced collectively to be sustained. Encryption, open protocols, and decentralized infrastructure are shared resources, maintained and defended by communities. The goal is not withdrawal from public life but building the conditions under which movements and ordinary people can communicate, organize, and hold power to account without being surveilled, silenced, or captured. Discover more about the neocypherpunk movement in essays by Vitalik Buterin and Project Glitch. About Funkhaus Funkhaus Berlin was built in the early 1950s as the DDR's broadcasting headquarters, designed by Franz Ehrlich, a Bauhaus-trained architect and communist who had been imprisoned in Buchenwald for his antifascist activity. The DDR treated it as a demonstration of cultural ambition, marrying Bauhaus functionality with monumental Soviet-era scale: Saal 1 remains the largest purpose-built recording studio in the world, with house-in-house construction so precise that even overhead aircraft could not be heard inside. Artists including Aphex Twin, Nils Frahm, and Depeche Mode have performed and recorded here. At Funkhaus, the medium is the message, inviting guests inside its sonically optimized architecture to experience the dissonance and interdependence between communication and control that informs Neocypherpunk. Thank you to the Funkhaus team and Zuberlin for hosting us here! 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