Liberation Chronicles

Traversing The Data Dystopia

In 2017, I set out to uncover the wonderful technology known as “blockchain”. At the time, I was a bored college student working an IT desk job that wasn’t quite up to snuff in terms of keeping me engaged. I traversed r/cryptocurrency and r/ethereum with an optimism and excitement for the future that activated my imagination in a way that college courses never could. I was elated - a technology on the cutting edge of money, and the best part was the mystery of it all. What the technology could do (never, of course, asking what it couldn’t or shouldn’t do).

Whitepaper after whitepaper, speculative frenzy built on the inherent hope - no, conviction - that we could make the world a better place. That we could replace the middleman with something neutral AND powerful. We would drive down costs, embed programmatic trust into the fabric of human trade, and empower a world of permissionless and global asset movement.

Property rights would be protected by default, and privacy + sovereignty would be the basic cornerstones of everything that we did. We would increase accessibility for those in need, we would create neutral money outside the talons of the dreaded “system”.

Perhaps we’d aspire even to morality and beauty. The countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears would amount to something meaningful. Something we could be proud of, that we could go to a college lecture and proudly look out into an audience of starry-eyed engaged youth. We’d be contemplative and wise to the risks of the old financial system. Paragons of virtue - the Mark Zuckerberg X Plato of digital finance.

Sweet summer youth.

Jaded by human greed. We saw an epidemic of casino nihilism, as builders slowly started to capitulate away from the possibility of injecting morality into the technology. “...have to give the market what it's asking for…” or “...no one wants this product…” or “...people only care about price go up…” 

Products and fundraising cycles started to deteriorate to our base instincts. Hope began to give way. 

And in fairness, it was largely deserved- ruggers, scammers, rushed & failed economic experiments, extractive and prideful founders, a distaste for long-term thinking by communities and builders alike.

Somehow, someway it is now 2024 - seven years have flown by since I was a starry-eyed unjaded learner. Since then, curiosity slowly dissipated and motioned towards a consensus driven despair. The surrounding nihilism felt suffocating. The evidence in favor of justifying it was… heavy.

This newsletter/blog series is my attempt to reclaim the excitement & autonomy of curiosity & experimentation within the world of technology. This is the Liberation Chronicles - stories of builders and products that inspire & embody the ideals of why we are here in the first place. Amidst this series of stories, I am aiming to 'traverse the data dystopia' as I believe that components of utopia exist, cut right across the human heart.

Good & evil. Fair & unfair. Just, and unjust. Occasionally, I will bring my own moral, ethical, and faith framework into view as I go about investigating things because quite frankly, I am done sitting on the sidelines choosing a muted stoicism which I only break when it is 'safe'.

Interested in joining in this journey with me? I encourage you to reach out and point me in the direction of any protocols or builders you believe fit the bill on the above description.

-Carter Woetzel