Cypherpunk Guild Community Call Recap
On 4 June 2021, the Cypherpunk Guild held its second community call, together with ZK Validator’s Anna Rose and Thore Hildebrandt, and its first as a legal entity. President Frank Braun announced that the CPG became a Swiss association in mid May, and now is finishing its branding and website.
Frank described the CPG’s top grant-funding priorities:
- Private transactions (including every aspect of DeFi with more privacy)
- DAO/governance technology (including private voting)
- Messaging and social networks
The list is of course not exclusive, and the CPG would be happy to receive proposals in new and innovative areas.
The CPG is already supporting three projects that use zero-knowledge proofs for privacy: ZeroPool, Suterusu, and Zecrey.
Participants noted some other inspiring projects in these spaces, e.g.
- MACI (Minimum Anti-Collusion Infrastructure): Uses cryptography to create a voting system that discourages collusion, e.g. vote-buying
- ZeroNet: “Open, free and uncensorable websites, using Bitcoin cryptography and BitTorrent network”
- Weavemail: Private, uncensorable email based on the Arweave blockchain
CPG Program Manager Steve Cobb reviewed the grant-application process, which is handled in the NEAR community forum. Anyone interested in the Cypherpunk Guild is strongly encouraged to join the forum anyway, but it is essential for applying for grants. Starting a new topic in the Cypherpunk Guild category brings up a grant-application template.
Arto Bendiken, CPG council member and EVM team leader, gave an update on the Aurora project. Unlike other EVM projects, Aurora is completely compatible with Ethereum, so that Ethereum smart contracts can be redeployed truly seamlessly, and currently without gas costs. Still under discussion is the possibility of adding NEAR’s feature of 30% of transaction fees going to contract developers. NEAR is spinning off Aurora as a separate legal entity, to be governed via a Sputnik DAO.
