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title: 'Freedom Tech Challenges: Finding Our Venn Intersection'

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# Freedom Tech Challenges: Finding Our Venn Intersection
*HRF + Christopher Allen + Blockchain Commons Discussion - July 8 2025*

*Note: This is a living document - let's edit together as we discuss*

## 🎯 Core Questions

(To address "where does HRF's mission intersect with my architectural solutions and advocacy efforts for freedom technology")

1. What failure modes you see most often in current tools

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2. What are the most critical technical gaps?

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3. Which communities most urgently need these solutions? And can pilot?

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4. Where do our technical capabilities best match your strategic needs?

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## Working Together

Working to support full stack Bitcoin in authoritarian regimes.
- For people who need it today
- When dictators are going after the funds

- Figure out if a grant or custom (e.g., bounties, sr. fellow)

What Does HRF Do?
- Domestic: only awareness, storytelling
- Beyond that, support technology & people building it

What challenges are of interest?
- Mandate: wallet reliability under adversarial & key management for high-threat users [#1 + #2 on list of Core Challenges below]
- Identity only relevant for Bitcoin devs (but can work for everyone) [#3]
- [#4+#5 more out there]

Can ask how they feel about things before we send a grant!
- Segment as much as possible
- Make it a clean grant: not tied up with complexity
- $10k to $50k is the normal range
- $200k/entity/year is normal max

### Orgs of Note

* Waye.dev
* Bitcoin Design Foundation (bitcoindesignfoundation.org)

## 3️⃣ A Triple Strategy 
_Support, Advocate, Code._


**Not Either/Or but All/And:**

1. **Support Grantees** (Share expertise)
   - Model architectural standards 
   - Architectural review
   - Workshops

2. **Shape Constraints** (Work on Architecture of Autonomy policy)  
   - Model laws, advocacy
   - Make surveillance harder by design

3. **Build Alternatives** (Release pragmatically)
   - Support inclusion of OIB, SSKR, Envelope
   - CSR servers, FROST tools, reference implementations (Gordian Stack)
   - Communities over tools (Exodus Protocol)

**Why This Matters**: Authoritarians adapt. We need architecture, barriers, and alternative escape routes.

## 📊 Core Challenges

1. **Wallet reliability under adversarial conditions**

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2. **Key management for high-threat users**

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3. **Identity and pseudonymous development**

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4. **Systemic vs. symptomatic solutions**

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5. **Digital assembly and collaborative freedom**

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## 🔐 Smart Custody Reviews

* [Gordian Principles](https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/principles/) — Our underlying principles
* [Smart Custody](https://www.smartcustody.com/) — Overall Site
   * [Adversaries](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/SmartCustodyBook/blob/master/manuscript/03-adversaries.md) — Book excerpt
* [Passport Case Study](https://github.com/BlockchainCommons/SmartCustody/blob/master/Docs/Case-Study-Passport.md) — Example Smart Custody Review
* Stack Wallet Review (shared privately)

## 🗳️ Major Advocacy Successes

* [Main Site](https://advocacy.blockchaincommons.com/) — https://advocacy.blockchaincommons.com/
* [HB 0086 (2023)](https://www.blockchaincommons.com/news/PrivateKeyWRDABills/) — Private Key Protection
* [SF 0039 (2021)](https://wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2021/SF0039) — Digital Identity as Principal Authority

## ⚙️ Our Major Technologies

* [CSR](https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/csr/) — Collaborative Seed Recovery 
* [Envelope](https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/envelope/) — Smart Document System
* [OIB](https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/oib/) — Object Identity Block
* [SSKR](https://developer.blockchaincommons.com/sskr/) — Sharded Secret Key Reconstruction
* [Interop & no lock-in](https://hackmd.io/XQeyebUFT2uJQACKuVvXMA)

## 🚨 Urgent: European Identity Wallets Setting Global Precedent

- **eIDAS 2.0**: EU's digital identity legislation
   - **Global template**: What EU normalizes, authoritarians weaponize
- **Big Tech capture**: Google Wallet integration, OS-level control
- **Surveillance infrastructure**: Built into "privacy-preserving" systems
   - **"Phone Home" problem**: Every use potentially tracked

**Support Solutions:**

- **Connect dissidents**: Their needs ignored in current design
- **Support advocacy**: Currently unfunded but critical timing
- **Amplify concerns**: HRF's voice could shift debate

## Some Opportunities for Collaboration


### Freedom Tech Design Workshops
**Use before/after Oslo Freedom Forum**
**Based on RWOT Success**: 70+ papers → W3C DID standard
- 3-day collaborative sessions
- Dissidents + builders + architects
- Output: Specifications, not just ideas
- [How it Works](https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot13-ventura/blob/main/advance-readings/rwot-primer.md)

### Architectural Review Framework
- Systematic evaluation criteria
- "Does this actually protect users under threat?"
- Applied to grant proposals
- Published standards for community

### Reference Implementations
- Open-source patterns for adversarial design
- Starting with pricebleed-resistant wallets
- CSR implementation for key management
- Progressive identity systems

### Builder Community Cultivation
**"Exodus Protocol"** - Communities over tools
- Fund builder networks, not just projects
- Long-term sustainability focus
- Knowledge transfer emphasis
- Phoenix model: rising from platform ashes

### HRF Senior Fellow Program

- Similar to BPI Senior Fellows
- Publish Christopher's "The Architecture of Autonomy" and thought leadership of others