7 posts tagged with "Censorship Resistance"

Why Sovereign Speech Is the First Layer of Digital Freedom

Over the past decade, Ethereum has built something unprecedented: a neutral, persistent digital substrate where value, rules, and coordination mechanisms can exist without centralized ownership. It gives us shared state without a sovereign.

But shared state is not enough.

Before finance, before governance, before markets — there is communication. And if communication is not sovereign, none of the layers built on top of it are stable.

Sanctuary technologies begin there.

Vitalik Buterin recently wrote a thread on X about why surveillance is bad — and why calling it "dystopian" isn't enough. He pointed to a powerful article on Iran's surveillance state and argued that we need to be precise about why this stuff matters. Below are reflections on his post, with a few reactions to the lines that stuck with me.

Internet-based voice and video calling is often assumed to be a basic layer of digital infrastructure. Yet current estimates indicate that approximately 29 percent of the global population—nearly 2.3 billion people—lives in countries where internet calling (VoIP) is restricted, censored, throttled, or banned in some form.

For leaders building global technology platforms or shaping digital policy, this is not a marginal edge case. It represents a structural constraint affecting billions of users, with consequences for regulation, product design, analytics, and global scalability.

Just hours ago, Vitalik Buterin declared "The decentralized renaissance is coming" — and called on developers to buidl decentralized. This is exactly what Spritz has been doing.

Around 2.3 billion people in 17 countries are affected by full bans, partial bans, throttling, or interference with popular messaging and calling applications. These restrictions impact text messaging, voice calls, and video calls, often across national borders. As a result, families, friends, and communities are unable to communicate freely.

A major reason these restrictions are effective is how most communication platforms identify users.

Communication is a universal human right recognized by the United Nations. Yet billions of people are denied meaningful access to it.

Nearly a third of the world does not have reliable access to voice or video communication. Families are separated not only by geography but by digital barriers. Geo blocking and censorship shut down conversations between people who simply want to speak to one another.

We believe this is unacceptable.

The internet was supposed to be a decentralized network—a place where anyone could communicate freely, share ideas, and build communities without gatekeepers. But somewhere along the way, we lost that vision. Today, a handful of corporations control our digital lives, deciding what we see, who we can talk to, and what we're allowed to say.

We built Spritz because we believe it's time to take back control.