2026-06-14 –, Hauptbühne (Saal 1)
The cypherpunk movement today sits too high in the stack. It secures the message layer while leaving the substrate unexamined — silicon, firmware, supply chain. AI accelerates threats at every layer: below, it enables supply chain attacks at a scale and speed no human adversary could sustain; above, AI-generated code is quietly expanding the attack surface of the very tools the movement relies on.
A more secure substrate directly addresses both: verified hardware and software supply chains limit the blast radius of upper-layer compromises, and provide the trust anchor that makes anything built above them meaningful. If the substrate is compromised, no amount of encryption or zero-knowledge proof above it means anything. The only adequate response is sovereignty at the infrastructure layer: hardware transparency, certainty that the software is what it claimed to be, and distributed networks that are structurally resistant to capture or compromise by any actor, public or private.
Practitioners working on hardware, supply chain, security, and human rights shine light on this topic.
Sudo is Project Lead at Sovright (fka Electric Coin Company). She spends her time in the related spaces of privacy, security and hardware. She's worked at a range of defi and institutional projects in crypto, including Anchorage, Synthetix and BitPay. A few career pivots ago, she worked in private equity and at a DNA testing company.
"Zaki Manian wears many hats in the blockspace. I am currently a cofounder of the iqlusion. We are working Armistice, an open source hardware security solution. Iqlusion advises, and supports a number of blockchain projects and you might see my name on their websites for that work. I’m an advisor to the Electric Coin Company.
I went to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 2005. I studied History of Science. I taught myself after college software engineering, programming and computer science. From 2008-2013, I was tech lead on scientific instrumentation product at ReaMetrix. I started an enterpise blockchain company called Skuchain in 2014 and started teaching myself cryptography. I started contributing more to projects like Bitcoin, Zcash, Tendermint, Ethereum etc. I got interested in weird ideas like scalable public blockchains.
In 2017, I co-founded the Trusted IoT Alliance and iqlusion. I also started contributing more to Cosmos. I helped build the first validator dashboard and then Figment ran with the idea. I helped launch the first public Cosmos testnets. I spent a lot of 2018 working part time at All In Bits, building out the validator ecosystem, and figuring how do actually do quality assurance to enable the Cosmos launch. In 2019, after the Hub launch, I joined All in Bits as Director of Research. Where I worked on finishing the Cosmos design goals by completing IBC.
After All In Bits proved too unstable to finish the work, I resigned in Feb 2019 and am completeing the IBC work with the community from contributors from Agoric, Interchain Berlin and Informal."
"Cameron Colby Thomson has extensive experience in various roles and positions. Cameron Colby is the Chief Executive Officer of Good Ancestor, a public charity that promotes long-term thinking, arts, and freedom. Additionally, they serve on the Board of Directors for the Human Rights Foundation.
Thomson is also involved in the insurance industry, having founded and served as the Chairman and Founding CEO of Honest Policy, Inc. Cameron Colby has expertise in rating and analyzing insurance companies and creating tools to help consumers make informed choices.
Cameron Colby is a Founding Board Member of Open Source Ecology, an organization focused on creating sustainable and open-source solutions. Thomson is also the Chairman and General Partner of Allied Strategy, an investment partnership with a social mission. Cameron Colby founded this venture during their time at University and later restarted it as an impact and management consulting vehicle.
Thomson co-founded the Turbine Flats Project, an NGO that renovated a warehouse to create an innovation community. The project hosts startups, maker spaces, and community events.
Cameron Colby is a Charter Board Member of the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management, an experimental college program aimed at developing leaders at the intersection of business, technology, and global issues.
Thomson has also worked as a Partner at Social Impact Capital, and as the Co-Founder, CEO, and Chairman of SEMCAT Corporation. SEMCAT developed a price comparison tool for insurance agents and was later acquired by Applied Systems.
Lastly, Thomson has served as an Advisor for The Feast Conference, an event focused on social innovation.
Cameron Colby Thomson earned a Baccalaureate Diploma in Biology, Math, English, History, and Philosophy from the International Baccalaureate in 2000. From 2000 to 2004, they pursued a BSc in Computer Science from the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management. Cameron Colby later obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the same institution in 2005."
Systems engineer, software supply chain security researcher.
Who runs your software?
Who has built your compiler?
Can you build your compiler?
Now you need to compile your compiler with previous version of a compiler...
Now you need to compile your compiler with previous version of a compiler...
Now you need to compile your compiler with previous version of a compiler...
Now you need to compile your compiler with previous version of a compiler...
Riley Wong is the Principal of Emergent Research, co-founder of Community Privacy, and researcher at MIT, investigating digital infrastructure for community privacy, agency, and consent. Their work explores community infrastructure, collective data action, data strikes, and privacy-preserving data governance.
Riley co-founded the Community Privacy Residency in Taipei and Berlin, convening an international network of experts to co-create privacy infrastructure by and with vulnerable communities. Their background spans privacy-preserving data governance, consent infrastructure, and decentralized collective governance at Metagov, 0xPARC, and DWeb; machine learning engineering and AI ethics at Google; and award-winning investigative data journalism at ProPublica.
Their work has been published or presented at MIT, Harvard Kennedy School, Yale, and Penn, and covered by TIME, MIT Tech Review, Boston Globe, and Mother Jones.