What should the goal of crypto be?

Using MLK Day to talk about crypto feels like the kind of thing that would be parodied in an episode of Silicon Valley. 

And yet, after reading the Trustless Manifesto recently co-authored by Vitalik, I can’t help myself from doing just that — because at least one of the lines sounds as if it could have been pulled from a stem-winding sermon delivered by Dr. King. 

Ethereum, its co-founder says, "was created to set people free."

That is lofty language for something as utilitarian as a blockchain. But maybe it’s not too much of a stretch for an industry with roots in the anti-authoritarian cypherpunk movement.

Of course, advocating for the freedom to get your crypto transaction included in a block hardly compares to fighting for the freedom to sit at a lunch counter or have your vote counted. 

There is no bridge at Selma to cross here. Just some blog posts to write.

But getting a transaction included might mean donating to a political dissident, sending money across a closed border or preserving your financial privacy.

MLK would have seen the value in that, I think — especially the privacy part (having been relentlessly surveilled by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI for years).

Today, banking and finance has become an integral part of the surveillance state and transferring value on permissionless blockchains may be the best way to resist it.

Crypto investors, by contrast, don't always see the value in that. Instead, they increasingly view blockchains as businesses, and value them by the amount of revenue they generate.

That’s understandable. You can't blame investors for wanting to make returns on their investments.

But it's not how Vitalik views blockchains, or what he thinks the crypto community should be building. 

"Crypto is building toward human empowerment," he recently added on X.

That kind of cypherpunk sentiment seems increasingly at odds with the priorities of crypto investors. And maybe incompatible, too.

"Trustlessness is expensive," The Manifesto declares, in what sounds like a rebuke to crypto’s more profit-minded builders.

But maybe principles and profits are not mutually exclusive? 

In fact, it might be just the opposite.

"The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won't succeed," John D. Rockefeller warned. "You must have a larger ambition."

Crypto's larger ambition is freedom (however technical and narrow that might be defined in what is ultimately just code) and losing sight of it might be exactly the kind of thinking Rockefeller warned against — even for investors who are out to make money. 

Because the blockchains and protocols that endure — the ones that matter when crypto is finally profitable — might turn out to be the ones that never forgot their lofty goal: freedom.

— Byron Gilliam

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