I have spent years thinking about this, and my opinions are constantly changing. But now I have a clear vision of the true philosophical role of cryptocurrencies and cryptography in general.

The book "Sand Emperor" had a profound impact on my way of thinking. The core idea is simple but powerful: humanity survives only through diversity. We are naturally drawn to stability and comfort, but this always leads us into the same cycle — chaos to order, then to empire, then to collapse. And the problem is that every larger empire falls even more catastrophically.

Today, we look at the world and see three possibilities ahead of us: monopolistic capitalism controlled by big corporations, strict government nationalism, or fascism through cooperation between corporations and the state. All of these reproduce the same pattern — protected comfort that slowly leads us toward collapse.

The real question: what refuses to give you comfort? What makes personal sovereignty a priority? The answer is cryptocurrencies and cryptography.

But here lies the major problem — we in the crypto sector have completely lost our way. Institutions have entered, and we have technologies used by people, but the spirit has disappeared. Instead of building something truly independent, we see centralized stablecoins dominating, decentralized platforms subject to KYC spreading, and Bitcoin becoming digital gold held by governments and funds.

From 2022 to 2024, we experienced a harsh lesson — regulatory attacks from the SEC and CFTC, and centralized institutions like FTX nearly buying half the system. And the lesson we learned was completely opposite. Instead of striving for true freedom, we thought the solution was to put the right person in the right place. A grave mistake.

The truth is, the dualities we complain about — poor user experience, inconvenience, hacks — are the price of sovereignty. We must accept this price consciously.

Our goal is not to fight regulation or government. Our goal is to build something they cannot control at all. We need to avoid vulnerabilities — fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, app stores, centralized platforms, concentrated stablecoins that can be frozen by a court order.

What we build must work without permission from anyone. Unlicensed protocols, true DAOs—not governance shows, but genuine decentralized organizations—an infrastructure that does not rely on a single point of failure. We need to revive the greatness of algorithmic stablecoins — DAI and UST were good ideas, but we made a mistake when we added USDC and carried UST on unsustainable yields.

Privacy must be protected. Whatever tool you use, the important thing is that it achieves the goal.

The ending of "Sand Emperor" talks about dispersion — the death of the emperor god and humans scattering in different directions. After 2022, we should have dispersed too. My outlook is bleak — the coming years will increase the reasons we want to escape. The big beast will grow larger, and pressure will intensify.

Complete escape to a better parallel world is not possible now. But at least we can start building something — a place people can escape to in the future. The tools that enable escape are the only ones worth building.

On the day cryptocurrencies cease to be trendy — and they definitely will — they will still be usable without being affected by the outside world. And more importantly, our actions and projects will have real meaning.

Most of us will choose to stay with the empire. But the small remaining segment will build exits, and reclaim what we have lost.