Protocol Berg: Costanza Gallo - Will your crypto project be censored Philosophy and practice

foreign thank you so much for being here um if the last talk before lunch I'll try to be quick so my name is Costanza and I work for this worm Foundation it is centralized storage solution so before I start um some disclaimers so first of all we're going to be talking about extreme violence genocide and blasphemy so if you're not comfortable or for whatever reason you feel like you want to leave the room that's totally fine with me second of all I'm not a lawyer and this talk is not legal advice and finally whatever I'm saying is my personal View and I do not represent any organizations that I am or I was affiliated with so we can start we're gonna see the interplay between censorship and freedom of speech how those elements comes into play when it comes to transferring a crypto products and to do so we're gonna look at the three elements of chancellorship low and how low is a tool for censorship governments and institutions and so we're gonna see the spectrum between censorship and freedom of speech and what we can do to prevent the project from being transferred today so I guess everyone here is for freedom of speech so question is why would you draw the line for freedom of speech are you okay with willingly install someone as a matter of fact I am and in fact this is a cartoon made my father when the pope say that God was a little bit like Mom a little bit like that so now what is freedom of speech according to the universal Declaration of Human Rights everyone has the right to the freedom of opinion and expression this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek receive and impart informations and ideas through any Medias and regardless of Frontiers now yes the United Nations is a very western-centric institution so we might like need to charge big what we take from them but I like this article because it's very comprehensive now question is a shall we draw a line at some point um if you could if you could go back to Rwanda in 1994 where the radio was promoting the genocide will they try to stop it if you could go back and stop Hitler's propaganda will you do that because those are the real questions and those are the questions that those are the elements that governments use today to say that they should be able to transfer any form of media and technology in order to prevent those cases and um but on the other hand like um it was like today we can transfer tornado cash because it's promoting terrorists and money laundering tomorrow only fans because it's immoral and how long it goes before we end up in a hands male tale reality it is a very fine line so you can stop it in my opinion so here was it the U.S Iran platinum and the Bible have in common anybody knows they're all in a way are in favor of censorship the U.S and Iran they both stopped tornado cash and many more Plateau it was all for transferring the speech to prevent pesticide and the Bible it says that you should not name the name of your lord in vain this is because censorship is not something from a particular culture or a time but it is as old as the history of humankind everyone is doing it everyone has been doing it so here today we're gonna talk about the actions that are being taken to prevent people from using software analyzing censorship as a whole maybe a little complex and we only have 25 minutes so we're gonna focus on that use case now we're gonna see the three elements that are affecting products and people we're gonna see the low we're going to see governments and institutions and how those come into play to prevent people from using software so first of all low this guy here is malinowski and you're the father of modern anthropology and it's saying that in looking for low and legal forces we shall try merely to discover the rules acted upon as binding obligations because no Society can work in an efficient manner unless the laws is being obeyed spontaneously and willingly and I really like this way of seeing things because it's very practical and very handsome so there are three elements in what he said first of all violating the rules can mean the end of an institution the final end of low if the preservation of society and lowers should be obeyed willingly and spontaneously and this is very important and we will see why and how it comes into play now the question is what happens if we don't do that and without willingly as spontaneously means so we're gonna see that so for example Platinum it was saying that it will control the speech of people otherwise they're gonna tell tales about the gods and the fathers and children with the nap killing their fathers and their families so according to platinum we need the chance of shift to prevent pesticide foreign another element is that Tech goes faster than the low there is no way of telling it like let's be honest technology is way faster than the low end it takes time to catch up and that is good because it means that everything not illegal is legal unless you're in Italy but it doesn't matter but that also means that crypto project exists in a gray area and I think that that is good because it gives us a lot of freedom but also something important is that low is not exactly a smart code it's not like you kill someone you go to jail it's like way more advances so it's not that simple and it's not that straightforward and and this is because there were governments that comes into play like we said before that governments say that they need to be able to transfer in order to save Society from terrorism from money laundering from your name it like anything dangerous they need to be able to control it so that they can save us um is that the case let's play game and let's get out of Link's amazing bubble here and we tap into the issues of a fictional government official same old Skinner we should all know it and so we heard of like all those crypto things um there's a like cyberpunk lunar Punk solar punks they preach from freedom from Central governments uh they want to be borderless they want privacy they want to be anonymous um they don't want anyone to control them how can they like be a society if nobody's controlling it how can there be a society without central governments How can there be a society if there is no Central Authority so we are scarce I mean come on like like say that we don't need exist so we don't understand what's happening we don't understand all those crypto weapon people uh the shadow is super cold airs and we are afraid that what we're doing might be irrelevant that they might get out of job so what do we do in that case we fly it fried or thrilled so we cannot go to Mars so we need to stop it and we transfer the projects and and this is why governments come into play and why they try to stop to stop us now we saw the low we saw the government let's get into our institutions and and this is because as much as we're trying to break from that we gotta be honest and we do have institutions in crypto um as of today unfortunately we rely on centralized infrastructures on code repositories that are being centralized and we rely on Central rpcs that again can stop people because they are in the wrong country they have the brand IP address or because they use a VPN and so we need to stop them and they can do that so those centralized infrastructures are cryptos institutions wait am I like it or not but we do have institutions today so this is because institutions are structured are created to carry out specific functions and have a set of rules that govern their behaviors and this is the same for all the institutions including the one that we do have today in crypto so we're gonna see how that works in practice um now freedom and censorship is not like black and white it is a wide spectrum and on the extreme left of the spectrum you have yeah that's a lot for you we have total freedom on the extreme light of the spectrum you have chancellorship now let's go into a fictional society and on the one land we have no compliance we have over compliance where we go beyond merely and willingly obeying the law and we have perfect compliance which is what the lowest kind of asking us to do now here in perfect compliance we have a dual class citizens and this is being forced by the government so we have people that can use the software and people that can't use the software now we belong to each class if the side by the governments and this is where you personally respect the law when those centralized institutions are being very precise and are enforcing what they're being told think of that sometimes some they go beyond that and they go beyond obeying willingly and spontaneously they got the extra mile and so they transfer people for reasons that we don't understand and in this case we have a double-class citizens and it is being enforced by infrastructure players and the institutions them some crypto institutions they are being the enforcement branch of government's office today and then on the extreme left we have the non-compliance and this is a very recent spot because if you're here then what you're doing might be considered illegal you might be persecuted you might record myself down you might be real as we all know apparently unfortunately it's happening and you're here bottom line thing is that it should be your choice and if you like depends on a centralized crypto institutions whether you are in this spot or in the previous thought or in the previous one it should be you if your code is alive and should be your responsibility and your choice now the question to ask to know if your product is going to be transferred is how much does the fictional government official feels that you are threatening them are you posing a risk are you really being that dangerous for them how do they feel about you like the person I'm not asking about the institution I'm asking about a person that can take an action against you do they understand you did it feel that you are somewhat a wild card and then what if the risk appetite of the centralized platform that you rely on because also them unfortunately come into play and they can enforce and stop your code so if you answer those two questions you might have a framework on what happens and now I'm optimistic because I'm seeing more and more projects coming out and trying to work around that to overcome all the all the issues that are decentralizing so for example ethereum blocks being transferred are we're in Decline and while one block is one to menu let's be optimistic and let's do the pattern coming and then also we do have tools to replace the current infrastructure so we should decentralize everything so that we can be stopped and finally and this is legal advice get yourself a Shadow super lawyer so that they can help you thank you [Applause] any questions that's good thanks Costanza for the uh overview um is there any call of call to action that you want to maybe like what sort of stuff would you want us to do on maybe like what do you what do you envision as something that needs to be done I think the first thank you for the question the first step is to analyze all the elements and your infrastructure from why you're storing the code uh to the hardware to everything and make sure that every step every single piece of your precious is being decentralized so that you don't rely on the centralized platform the centralized institutions that can block you uh this is the first thing the second thing is to protect the people that work for you because like we saw they might just arrest you and decide that code is not speech when you shouldn't be doing that so you need to find the legal framework to protect the people you're working for and on that everything is going very fast so what happened last year maybe today will be different today there were projects that are making sure for example that you can make your transaction Anonymous without using tornado cash for example so protect your people protect every single element of your architecture and seriously get a super cool lawyer thank you yo who do you think have like bigger chances to stay out of out of jail is that Alexa perceive or Sam bankman freed of FTX I am I can answer that question I'm sorry I don't have enough knowledge to do that thank you um you say you're optimistic uh are you at all concerned that the presently dominant solutions to scale uh blockchain transactions in the form of Roll-Ups um seem to have left behind censorship resistance uh technically and sometimes even as a goal um if the end game of ethereum is only having roll up Bridges where would that leave tornado cash I'm not sure I'm hearing very well from here um so are you concerned that currently how we're scaling uh Roll-Ups is abandoning censorship resistance and if Ultra if all transactions of all it's more contracts other than roll-up Bridges and ethereum were on layer twos where would that leave something like tornado cash the good thing is that we don't have one relaxing so we don't rely on a single solution and anyway the solution takes the security layer from ethereum so that is still ensuring chance of hip resistance in terms of like I said relapse the main thing that was concerning me about okay like the numbers are showing that it's going fine is that not everyone is running a full load I'm not for example and many people are relying on RPC um like in forum and that they have the power to transfer transactions so because the censorship happen on that level now like thankfully like even ifura is now decentralizing so they're taking steps to make sure that they can do that because then again like with a thing and it makes sense is that if we don't comply with the low of the jurisdiction that we're based on we need to shut down the shop so on some level I understand that they do that and they're taking measures to ensure that the additionalizing so they can transfer anymore so taking a step back and making sure that they can ensure chance of ship resistant in that way