Engineer Paul Baran made a number of breakthroughs that are relevant to the public, decentralized technologies to this day, including “message blocks” (a component in blockchain technology) and advocacy for private digital networks via cryptography.

The Cypherpunks were united by a belief that people should be able to live free from state interference in private matters, and a conviction that this freedom could be achieved through the use of digital encryption technology that allowed people to communicate without being surveilled.

Public key cryptography, or the use of encryption to secure information against unwanted access by third parties, was discovered in 1973. Research on and access to encryption technologies were highly embargoed.

This presented the idea of Bitcoin, a “peer-to-peer electronic cash” representing the first public, permissionless, cryptographically secure peer-to-peer protocol.

So, pursued the development of decentralized, cryptographically secure digital infrastructure.

In 2008, a group of developers released a whitepaper on the Cryptographers Mailing List.

The Cypherpunks Mailing List was a little-known ’90s email server started by three Silicon Valley misfits with interest in digital privacy.

FROM CRYPTOGRAPHERS TO CYPHERPUNKS (1990S - 2008):

They hoped these technologies would make it possible for people to inhabit “temporary autonomous zones” — the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces in the physical world or cyberspace that elude formal systems of control.