An interesting "coincidence"—the Ethereum community often refers to the Dark Forest theory...

The "Dark Forest" idea, explained in Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, describes a universe where survival depends on extreme secrecy. Any civilization that reveals its existence risks annihilation. This concept closely aligns with cryptographic communities focused on privacy.

The cypherpunk movement, closely tied to Ethereum, shares this perspective. As Vitalik Buterin notes in Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum:

"Cryptography is truly special in the twenty-first century because cryptography is one of the very few fields where adversarial conflict continues to heavily favor the defender. Castles are far easier to destroy than build, islands are defendable but can still be attacked, but an average person’s ECC keys are secure enough to resist even state-level actors. Cypherpunk philosophy is fundamentally about leveraging this precious asymmetry to create a world that better preserves the autonomy of the individual, and cryptoeconomics is to some extent an extension of that."

As early as 1993, Eric Hughes in A Cypherpunk's Manifesto wrote that privacy is essential for an open society and that protecting anonymous transactions is a core goal of cypherpunks. This vision laid the foundation for many cryptographic tools used in Ethereum today. Historically, cypherpunks have advocated for cryptographic tool as a means of ensuring individual sovereignty. This philosophy is reflected in Ethereum through:

• Ensuring financial anonymity;

• Cryptographic protection of communications;

• Autonomous governance mechanisms without centralized control.

I often wonder what Ethereum is conceptually, beyond being an L1 blockchain. Vitalik Buterin himself describes it as:

"Systems like Ethereum (and Bitcoin, and NXT, and BitShares, etc.) are a fundamentally new class of cryptoeconomic organisms—decentralized, jurisdiction-less entities that exist entirely in cyberspace, maintained by acombination of cryptography, economics, and social consensus."

Ethereum has long surpassed the stage of being just a blockchain. It is a network where:

• Economic "sanctions" (slashing) are enforced;

• Tokenized assets emerge;

• Alternative voting systems (DAOs) operate;

• Collective budget management is facilitated through multisignature wallets and much more

Ethereum functions as an alternative system of private contractual law, enabling parties to use smart contracts (self-executing agreements). The network already hosts decentralized arbitration (Kleros) and legal mechanisms such as the presumption of innocence (Railgun). As Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright describe in Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code:

“Through the implementation of lex cryptographica—blockchains both support and undermine existing laws, and how the technology is poised to impact current social and political institutions in a variety of contexts, ranging from payments, contract law, and finance to information and communication systems or machine-to-machine interactions."

If Ethereum is no longer just L1, what is it?

According to classical political theory, a state requires physical territory, an army, and other "attributes." In Politics, Aristotle defines the state as a polis—a community with sovereignty over a specific territory:

"Out of many settlements arises a city or state. Hence, the state (i.e., polis) came into being to secure the well-being and self-sufficient life of its citizens."

Ethereum lacks a physical territory. However, in The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan argues that networked communities can function as states without geographic constraints.

Real-world experiments are already attempting to establish blockchain "citizens" in temporary cities like Ipe City and Zuzalu City, and even sovereign states like Liberland.

Political entities require not only shared values but also mechanisms of power implementation. As Vitalik Buterin writes in Proof of Stake:

"By necessity, crypto communities were experimenting with new kinds of governance and decision-making processes—voting systems that balanced the power of tokens and people, identity systems based on relationships among users rather than their relationship to the state."

However, political entities typically have physical territories where power is exercised. In this sense, Ethereum is not yet a fully-fledged political formation. The question of territoriality remains open.

Rousseau’s The Social Contract explains how individuals unite to form a state that protects their rights and property without depriving them of freedom. Each individual voluntarily submits to the general will, which represents a collective agreement, thereby remaining free since the rules they follow are set by the collective.

This principle mirrors Ethereum’s consensus mechanism. There is no centralized authority in blockchain, yet all participants adhere to mutually agreed rules to ensure security and coherence. Just as in Rousseau’s model, people voluntarily accept the network’s rules (such as Proof-of-Stake) for its stability, maintaining their independence while being part of a cohesive system.

Civil society has several key characteristics:

John Locke, in Two Treatises of Government, emphasizes that society exists before the formation of the state; it is "natural," whereas the state is an artificial construct created as a result of popular sovereignty. Society always precedes the formation of the state, so it is ‘natural,’ whereas the state is merely an artificial creation, a consequence of the realization of popular sovereignty.

This means that civil society can function independently, with the state being only a derivative structure.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in The Philosophy of Right, defines civil society as a system where private interests and individuals will acquire general significance through the recognition of law:

“In the civic society what is intrinsically right becomes law. What was formerly the simple and abstract realization of my private will becomes, when recognized, a tangible factor of the existing general will and consciousness."

This underscores that in civil society, the rule of law allows individual interests to be transformed into collective decisions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in The Social Contract, describes the social contract as a mechanism that limits the individual's natural freedom but grants them civil liberty and property protection:

"What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he can obtain and retain; what he gains is civil liberty and ownership of all that he possesses."

This means that civil society is based on a voluntary limitation of certain natural rights in exchange for guarantees of security and property.

In my view, while Ethereum is not yet a full-fledged state, it has the potential to become one in the future. A state is, above all, an instrument for society. A state is the result of a social contract, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes.

Let’s take a brief detour into Ancient Greece—the birthplace of direct democracy, where civil society actively participated in governance.The origins of Ethereum’s Name:

In 2014, Vitalik Buterin stated:

"I immediately liked this name [Ether] more than all the alternatives I had seen; I think it was because it sounded beautiful and contained the word ‘ether,’ referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."

In ancient Greek, Αἰθήρ (Aithḗr, Ether) referred to the purest, highest layer of air breathed by the Olympian gods. It was a celestial medium distinct from the ordinary air humans breathe.

The word ἔθνος (ethnos) meant a group of people, a community, or a nation united by common culture, language, or traditions. Unlike πόλις (polis)—a structured city-state with its own laws and political system—ethnos could describe tribes or groups without centralized governance but with a shared identity.

The word ethnos implies a decentralized but cohesive community. In this sense, Ethereum contributors can be characterized as an ethnos—a digital nation that transcends geography.

Could future generations recognize Ethereum’s ethnos as the most effective form of civil society—one built on freedom, responsibility, and shared purpose?

As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in On the Genealogy of Morality:

"We then find the sovereign individual as the ripest fruit on its tree, like only to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual (because ‘autonomous’ and ‘ethical’ are mutually exclusive), in short, we find a man with his own, independent, enduring will, whose prerogative it is to promise – and in him a proud consciousness quivering in every muscle of what he has finally achieved and incorporated, an actual awareness of power and freedom, a feeling that man in general has reached completion."

Ethereum’s ethnos might one day be recognized as the most advanced form of civic society—one where individuals remain free, yet collectively create an autonomous, resilient, and self-governing system.

The future of Ethereum is bright. Ethereum nihilism is impossible. In my opinion, it is a very powerful tool in the hands of civil society. It enables the creation of a financial system where healthy competition and fair rewards exist, laws are enforced, and every voice is heard. This is a bright future that is already in our hands.

P.S. To further develop this concept, I created the ΞTHNOS NFT collection, built on Ethereum. This is the NFT collection that represents the concept of a free digital civil society that uses Ethereum as the main instrument.

*50% of the proceeds will be sent to Serhii Sternenko, which belongs to a Ukrainian volunteer and journalist with one of the highest levels of trust among Ukrainians. If you want, you can donate to him directly. Here is the link to his crypto wallets and fiat accounts. Ukraine needs your help.*

You can mint the NFT here

https://app.manifold.xyz/c/ethnos

Extra details:

• Mint price: symbolic infinite 0.00314 ETH ♾️

• Unlimited minting supply

• 1 mint per wallet

• 50% of proceeds will be donated to charity ❤️

Claim code: ETHEREUMISTHEKEY

Reporting will be available on Twitter and Farcaster.

An interesting "coincidence"—the Ethereum community often refers to the Dark Forest theory...

The "Dark Forest" idea, explained in Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, describes a universe where survival depends on extreme secrecy. Any civilization that reveals its existence risks annihilation. This concept closely aligns with cryptographic communities focused on privacy.

The cypherpunk movement, closely tied to Ethereum, shares this perspective. As Vitalik Buterin notes in Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum:

"Cryptography is truly special in the twenty-first century because cryptography is one of the very few fields where adversarial conflict continues to heavily favor the defender. Castles are far easier to destroy than build, islands are defendable but can still be attacked, but an average person’s ECC keys are secure enough to resist even state-level actors. Cypherpunk philosophy is fundamentally about leveraging this precious asymmetry to create a world that better preserves the autonomy of the individual, and cryptoeconomics is to some extent an extension of that."

As early as 1993, Eric Hughes in A Cypherpunk's Manifesto wrote that privacy is essential for an open society and that protecting anonymous transactions is a core goal of cypherpunks. This vision laid the foundation for many cryptographic tools used in Ethereum today. Historically, cypherpunks have advocated for cryptographic tool as a means of ensuring individual sovereignty. This philosophy is reflected in Ethereum through:

• Ensuring financial anonymity;

• Cryptographic protection of communications;

• Autonomous governance mechanisms without centralized control.

I often wonder what Ethereum is conceptually, beyond being an L1 blockchain. Vitalik Buterin himself describes it as:

"Systems like Ethereum (and Bitcoin, and NXT, and BitShares, etc.) are a fundamentally new class of cryptoeconomic organisms—decentralized, jurisdiction-less entities that exist entirely in cyberspace, maintained by acombination of cryptography, economics, and social consensus."

Ethereum has long surpassed the stage of being just a blockchain. It is a network where:

• Economic "sanctions" (slashing) are enforced;

• Tokenized assets emerge;

• Alternative voting systems (DAOs) operate;

• Collective budget management is facilitated through multisignature wallets and much more

Ethereum functions as an alternative system of private contractual law, enabling parties to use smart contracts (self-executing agreements). The network already hosts decentralized arbitration (Kleros) and legal mechanisms such as the presumption of innocence (Railgun). As Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright describe in Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code:

“Through the implementation of lex cryptographica—blockchains both support and undermine existing laws, and how the technology is poised to impact current social and political institutions in a variety of contexts, ranging from payments, contract law, and finance to information and communication systems or machine-to-machine interactions."

If Ethereum is no longer just L1, what is it?

According to classical political theory, a state requires physical territory, an army, and other "attributes." In Politics, Aristotle defines the state as a polis—a community with sovereignty over a specific territory:

"Out of many settlements arises a city or state. Hence, the state (i.e., polis) came into being to secure the well-being and self-sufficient life of its citizens."

Ethereum lacks a physical territory. However, in The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan argues that networked communities can function as states without geographic constraints.

Real-world experiments are already attempting to establish blockchain "citizens" in temporary cities like Ipe City and Zuzalu City, and even sovereign states like Liberland.

Political entities require not only shared values but also mechanisms of power implementation. As Vitalik Buterin writes in Proof of Stake:

"By necessity, crypto communities were experimenting with new kinds of governance and decision-making processes—voting systems that balanced the power of tokens and people, identity systems based on relationships among users rather than their relationship to the state."

However, political entities typically have physical territories where power is exercised. In this sense, Ethereum is not yet a fully-fledged political formation. The question of territoriality remains open.

Rousseau’s The Social Contract explains how individuals unite to form a state that protects their rights and property without depriving them of freedom. Each individual voluntarily submits to the general will, which represents a collective agreement, thereby remaining free since the rules they follow are set by the collective.

This principle mirrors Ethereum’s consensus mechanism. There is no centralized authority in blockchain, yet all participants adhere to mutually agreed rules to ensure security and coherence. Just as in Rousseau’s model, people voluntarily accept the network’s rules (such as Proof-of-Stake) for its stability, maintaining their independence while being part of a cohesive system.

Civil society has several key characteristics:

John Locke, in Two Treatises of Government, emphasizes that society exists before the formation of the state; it is "natural," whereas the state is an artificial construct created as a result of popular sovereignty. Society always precedes the formation of the state, so it is ‘natural,’ whereas the state is merely an artificial creation, a consequence of the realization of popular sovereignty.

This means that civil society can function independently, with the state being only a derivative structure.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in The Philosophy of Right, defines civil society as a system where private interests and individuals will acquire general significance through the recognition of law:

“In the civic society what is intrinsically right becomes law. What was formerly the simple and abstract realization of my private will becomes, when recognized, a tangible factor of the existing general will and consciousness."

This underscores that in civil society, the rule of law allows individual interests to be transformed into collective decisions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in The Social Contract, describes the social contract as a mechanism that limits the individual's natural freedom but grants them civil liberty and property protection:

"What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he can obtain and retain; what he gains is civil liberty and ownership of all that he possesses."

This means that civil society is based on a voluntary limitation of certain natural rights in exchange for guarantees of security and property.

In my view, while Ethereum is not yet a full-fledged state, it has the potential to become one in the future. A state is, above all, an instrument for society. A state is the result of a social contract, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes.

Let’s take a brief detour into Ancient Greece—the birthplace of direct democracy, where civil society actively participated in governance.The origins of Ethereum’s Name:

In 2014, Vitalik Buterin stated:

"I immediately liked this name [Ether] more than all the alternatives I had seen; I think it was because it sounded beautiful and contained the word ‘ether,’ referring to the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel."

In ancient Greek, Αἰθήρ (Aithḗr, Ether) referred to the purest, highest layer of air breathed by the Olympian gods. It was a celestial medium distinct from the ordinary air humans breathe.

The word ἔθνος (ethnos) meant a group of people, a community, or a nation united by common culture, language, or traditions. Unlike πόλις (polis)—a structured city-state with its own laws and political system—ethnos could describe tribes or groups without centralized governance but with a shared identity.

The word ethnos implies a decentralized but cohesive community. In this sense, Ethereum contributors can be characterized as an ethnos—a digital nation that transcends geography.

Could future generations recognize Ethereum’s ethnos as the most effective form of civil society—one built on freedom, responsibility, and shared purpose?

As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in On the Genealogy of Morality:

"We then find the sovereign individual as the ripest fruit on its tree, like only to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual (because ‘autonomous’ and ‘ethical’ are mutually exclusive), in short, we find a man with his own, independent, enduring will, whose prerogative it is to promise – and in him a proud consciousness quivering in every muscle of what he has finally achieved and incorporated, an actual awareness of power and freedom, a feeling that man in general has reached completion."

Ethereum’s ethnos might one day be recognized as the most advanced form of civic society—one where individuals remain free, yet collectively create an autonomous, resilient, and self-governing system.

The future of Ethereum is bright. Ethereum nihilism is impossible. In my opinion, it is a very powerful tool in the hands of civil society. It enables the creation of a financial system where healthy competition and fair rewards exist, laws are enforced, and every voice is heard. This is a bright future that is already in our hands.

P.S. To further develop this concept, I created the ΞTHNOS NFT collection, built on Ethereum. This is the NFT collection that represents the concept of a free digital civil society that uses Ethereum as the main instrument.

*50% of the proceeds will be sent to Serhii Sternenko, which belongs to a Ukrainian volunteer and journalist with one of the highest levels of trust among Ukrainians. If you want, you can donate to him directly. Here is the link to his crypto wallets and fiat accounts. Ukraine needs your help.*

You can mint the NFT here

https://app.manifold.xyz/c/ethnos

Extra details:

• Mint price: symbolic infinite 0.00314 ETH ♾️

• Unlimited minting supply

• 1 mint per wallet

• 50% of proceeds will be donated to charity ❤️

Claim code: ETHEREUMISTHEKEY

Reporting will be available on Twitter and Farcaster.