Zcash weighs cypherpunk ideals amid compliance trade-offs

Answer: Crypto remains partly cypherpunk; institutions impose new compromises

The core of the question, Is crypto still cypherpunk?, lands on a qualified yes with caveats. The ethos endures in technologies and projects that prioritize privacy, self-custody, and censorship resistance, but institutional adoption is reshaping how those ideals show up in practice.

Efforts such as Polygon Miden and Zcash keep privacy and self-sovereignty central, often via zero-knowledge proofs. At the same time, institutional custody, compliance-first product design, and market infrastructure introduce new trade-offs that narrow pure permissionlessness in favor of scale and usability.

Why it matters: privacy, self-custody, censorship resistance, and trust

For users and builders, the stakes are practical: who controls keys, who sees transaction data, and whether onchain activity can be censored or de-platformed. As reported by Cointelegraph, Sebastian Bürgel has argued that financialization, MEV extraction, and centralized infrastructure complicate decentralization’s original objectives, even as public demand for privacy and self-custody grows.

According to Galaxy Digital, Zcash has been framed as a form of “encrypted Bitcoin,” using zero-knowledge proofs to enable shielded transfers that mitigate onchain surveillance risks. That positioning highlights a path where privacy-by-default can coexist with broader adoption, even as other networks tilt toward compliance and performance.

Editorially, these perspectives converge on a single concern: without credible privacy and user control, trust in the system degrades. “Crypto started as a cypherpunk movement … if you read … the Cypherpunk Manifesto … it’s … yet so applicable right now,” said Sebastian Bürgel, VP of technology at Gnosis and founder of Hopr.

Immediate impact: trade-offs in compliance, custody, MEV, and performance

Compliance pressures are pushing designs that blend selective disclosure with privacy, often using zero-knowledge proofs to validate rules without exposing full transaction details. Custody models continue to split between self-custody and intermediated solutions, with the latter improving convenience while diluting self-sovereignty.

MEV realities force networks to grapple with fairness and censorship resistance at the mempool and sequencing layers. Performance trade-offs are equally present: Azeem Khan has emphasized a privacy-first direction for Polygon Miden and argued that privacy and regulatory compliance must coexist, including work that references Polygon’s Agglayer for confidential transactions, as stated by Azeem Khan in a LinkedIn post. He has also contrasted earlier privacy ventures that sacrificed speed with newer ZK stacks that aim to reduce those costs.

At the time of this writing, figures for Polygon (POL) indicate a spot price near $0.0958, with very high measured volatility and an RSI reading in the low 30s. These data are provided for context only and do not indicate any outlook.

Define cypherpunk values: privacy, self-sovereignty, permissionlessness, censorship resistance

Cypherpunk privacy means minimizing unnecessary data exposure while proving correctness, an area where zero-knowledge proofs allow validation without revealing underlying information. Self-sovereignty centers on user control of keys and funds, reducing reliance on custodians whose incentives or obligations may not align with users.

Permissionlessness and censorship resistance describe systems where access is open and transactions cannot be arbitrarily blocked by intermediaries. Projects like Zcash and privacy-first rollups such as Polygon Miden reflect efforts to preserve those properties while acknowledging that institutional engagement imposes new operational and regulatory constraints.