Original title: Golden Path (p1)
Original author: Evgeny Gaevoy, founder of Wintermute
Original translation by AididiaoJP, Foresight News
I've been pondering this article for a long time. My views on whether cypherpunks can succeed, whether libertarianism can succeed, and whether cryptocurrency is viable have been constantly changing.
Below are my recent thoughts on where cryptocurrency stands philosophically. It's more like a manifesto, explaining "why we're here."
Golden Road
For a long time, Dune was one of my top three books. Things may have changed in recent years (for example, the Culture series is now ranked higher), but it still holds a special place in my heart, after all, it shaped my thinking when I was around twenty years old.
Most people focus on the first three books in this series, but for me, it's the fourth, *The Dune God Emperor*, that has stayed with me and genuinely influenced my views on the value of progress and diversity, as well as questions like "what the world should be like." The core idea of the series up to that point was that the only way for humanity to survive is through diversity. The "Golden Path" is a millennium-long plan that first forcibly imposes a stable constraint on humanity; once this constraint is removed, humanity will fundamentally hate this stability and any form of centralization. In the book's words, it's about...
"This teaches humanity a lesson etched into its very bones: protected comfort is no different from total death, no matter how long it can be prolonged."
We are inherently drawn to stability, to organization, and to combat chaos and disorder. We are naturally inclined to build empires, whether nations or corporations. We know all empires crumble, all corporations die, yet we keep building, each one bigger and stronger than the last. But the larger we build, the more devastating the collapse. Even more terrifying is that this ultimate imperial construction could drag humanity to extinction, either because excessive centralization cannot withstand external attacks, or because internal "evolution" leads us to abandon our existence as societies. Thus, history cycles repeatedly: from chaos to self-organization, to empires, and then to collapse. The most important lesson I learned from the "Golden Road" is that during the integration phase, we should embrace diversity and reject empires, no matter how tempting the stability (and promised prosperity) they offer.
There is too much "protected comfort" in our country today. There is also too much "protected comfort" in our corporate/financial machinery. I think both of these are slowly pushing us towards inevitable collapse. To be clear, this is not against capitalism or progress. On the contrary, capitalism in this system is decreasing, and there is more of a terrible and unambitious nationalism. In short, the following are some of the major monsters that may emerge in the future:
• Anarchic capitalism: corporations win, governments lose. Whether it's the world of Tessier-Ashpool, CosaNostra Pizza Inc., or Weyland-Yutani, everyone except the big cogs in the machine has a hard time.
• Nationalism : Nation-states control everything and divide the world. Whether it will ultimately lead to something like 1984, or something slightly better, is hard to say.
Fascism: Corporate and government collude. This is the Galactic Empire in Star Wars—rebellion is almost inevitable. Which country might go down this path?
What's on the other side? What doesn't give you "protected comfort" but instead forces you to prioritize personal sovereignty and independence? What strives to transcend national borders and completely disregard closed financial systems? What treats "insecurity" as a characteristic rather than a disadvantage? Good question. The answer is cryptocurrency.
The road ahead
I've been in this "industry" for almost nine years, and I've never felt such a sense of uncertainty. It feels like there's nothing to look forward to. On the surface, it seems we've gotten most of what we wanted: institutions have entered the market, and people are using the technology. But something feels missing, not just in terms of price, but in terms of the "soul"—the feeling of "what are we actually doing?" is gone. And the world outside keeps moving forward; now there's an even hotter new thing ("artificial intelligence"). We're completely lost.
Of course, not everyone feels this way. Some believe that the rise of stablecoins is a victory. Others are celebrating the victory of decentralized perpetual contract trading platforms over traditional and centralized finance, those "old fogies." Still others dream of building their own empires at the intersection of DeFi and traditional finance. We've seen "enterprise blockchains" emerge again, and enterprise blockchains are once again proclaimed "great." So yes, some people are quite excited, but I'm not, even though Windemute could potentially make a lot of money if it integrates with traditional finance.
I'm not excited because I see several different paths ahead, but only one is both feasible and worth taking:
Traditional finance is swallowing up cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins are becoming widespread, with KYC-compliant enterprise blockchains and KYC-compliant decentralized exchanges. The financial machine is running faster, with fewer intermediaries. Bitcoin is becoming digital gold, mostly held by sovereign governments, corporate treasuries, and ETFs. Or perhaps the world is adopting CBDCs, and our (financial) privacy is completely controlled. The technology is indeed impressive, but we've lost completely—isn't that obvious? Probability: Maximum
Governments surrender to blockchain; everything runs on a permissionless ledger, KYC/AML systems can go to hell. Cryptocurrency taxes are only levied when converted to fiat currency, and the token market capitalization is in the trillions. A free and glorious world. Also, a purely imaginary world. We win (but only in the dream). Probability: Minimal.
An uncomfortable coexistence. We built something parallel to the existing system, completely independent. You can stay on both sides, and the government can't touch it because it's designed to be separate. We won, and we won honorably. Probability: entirely up to us.
I hope you sensed it, but I have absolutely no interest in Option 1. It simply makes the existing machine run more smoothly, regardless of which of the three big monsters wins in the end.
I know some people think Option 2 is possible, but that's pure fantasy. Governments won't relinquish sovereignty, just as corporations won't voluntarily give up their monopolies. Casinos can't just open anywhere on Solana. The CFTC won't turn a blind eye to Hyperliquid's lack of KYC and oversight. Do I need to remind you? Which centralized stablecoin issuer can't freeze assets with a court order? For this to happen, the entire socio-economic system would have to collapse. I have three children to support and over a hundred people to manage; I'm not hoping for that.
That leaves only option 3. You can call it the metaverse, the cyber nation, the DAO, or a cultural tribe. What they have in common is that they exist independently and often conflict with, or even oppose, the political and financial systems of the "real world."
matrix
Our biggest problem is that many people have never truly grasped this lesson. Especially those of us in Western countries, who have become accustomed to progress and increasing convenience, have never experienced what it's like to lack sovereignty. Ironically, we experienced it firsthand between 2022 and 2024: on one hand, the SEC and CFTC launched a regulatory offensive, and on the other hand, centralized institutions (FTX/Alameda + venture capital) nearly bought up most of the cryptocurrency market. And what was the result? We learned the exact opposite. Instead of redoubling our efforts to fight for freedom, we thought that simply putting the right people in the right positions would guarantee victory.
Meanwhile, we've been complaining for years about the poor user experience of cryptocurrencies, how Bitcoin isn't a convenient payment tool (and it really isn't), the endless hacking, and so on. What if we're completely wrong? What if these inconveniences are precisely the price we must pay for sovereignty, a culture we should actively embrace? I'm not saying we should think MetaMask is the pinnacle of innovation. Nor am I saying we all have to have seed phrase engraved on metal plates. I'm saying that the user experience we should strive to optimize isn't for the 50% of the world's population who don't need it at all, but for the 50% who truly need sovereignty—whether it's those in developing countries who are watching their democracy erode and become completely controlled by their governments, or those in developed countries that are increasingly resembling China and Russia, enacting anti-privacy laws (such as those in Europe and the UK).
Our goal shouldn't be to fight against "regulation" or "government." Our goal should be to create something they can't control at all. The key is to avoid relying on things that can be shut down: fiat currency inflows and outflows, app stores, DNS resolution, centralized sorting machines, social media platforms, and of course, centralized stablecoins (which can be frozen at will). What we're doing can't be shut down by a court summons or a corporate bureaucrat flipping a switch. The IRS shouldn't be eyeing our non-compliant tokens (unless we convert them to fiat currency). In short: we need to create a place where ordinary people can live without needing anyone's approval.
Specifically:
Embrace permissionless, sovereign protocols, and reject those opaque off-chain solutions.
• DAOs are correct in principle, but I'm referring precisely to those that don't function properly—those that are actually completely controlled by centralized entities, putting on a show of fake governance. We've never truly built a decent community; we've only been thinking about how to incentivize people to post comments.
• Learn to either not rely on centralized systems, or be able to switch immediately if any external system is shut down. This includes infrastructure (cloud, big data), social coordination tools, and of course, stablecoins.
To make algorithmic stablecoins great again, our mistake was being too obsessed with the Ponzi scheme model. The underlying concepts of DAI and UST are correct; the mistake was adding USDC to DAI and piling unsustainable returns onto UST. It's perfectly normal that DAI, supported solely by ETH, can't match Tether's scale—we need to build a parallel economy first, something we haven't truly tried. A better approach would be for us to trade directly with each other using cryptocurrency, although that might be a bit premature.
• It must protect privacy. Any tool will do, as long as it works.
Discrete
The ending of Dune God Emperor is "Dispersal"—the God Emperor dies, and humanity scatters into the void. After 2022, we should have also dispersed, and we should have remembered the lessons, but it's not too late now.
We don't always get to choose where we are in the world. Some are trapped in their countries with no way to leave; others are bound by the responsibilities they've taken on. My pessimistic prediction is that in the coming years, we'll have more and more reasons to want to escape. That monster will grow bigger and bigger, and the oppression will intensify. Completely escaping into a "better" parallel encrypted world is impossible now, even if it truly exists. But at least we can start building something new, so that future generations have a place to escape to, while simultaneously allowing the real world and the encrypted world to coexist.
The only thing worth building is a tool that can be used for escape. Even when cryptocurrency loses its appeal (which it certainly will), it will still be usable, unaffected by the outside world. More importantly, it gives meaning to what we do and what we build.
Most of us will still choose to coexist with the empire. Because of responsibility, comfort, money, or whatever other pursuits—that's understandable, no problem. The remaining small group will create an exit route and then retrieve what we've lost.
