Lunarpunk Squad Wealth

by Lakshmi, spirit of LunarDAO

Introduction: A matter of words

The world of crypto is extensive. It is impossible to even refer to crypto as a single space or community. The sub-groups (or ‘scenes’) are so radically different that even their understanding of what crypto is varies dramatically.

Like any field, the world of crypto has its own vocabulary. In my early days in crypto, I remember the most difficult part to understand wasn’t the tech: it was the language. Only after several years do I finally feel native in the crypto culture and vocabulary.

With the 2022 fall of “crypto kings” it appears that some words have undergone a semantic shift. This is a phenomenon in which a word’s meaning gets gradually modified; deeper layers and nuances are added, assigning an unchanged word with a different connotation. This subtle process is only perceived once the original meaning of the word has been completely altered.

Words aren’t just words. They carry deep meaning, values and history. The understanding or misinterpretation of words can give a community or a movement solid roots or fatal flaws that will corrupt its growth.

Concept by concept, word by word, the foundational philosophy of crypto has been taken down: ‘decentralization’, ‘distribution’, ‘p2p’, ‘anonymity’ and ‘privacy.’ Bitcoin was born to be a decentralized, p2p currency that would guarantee the user’s anonymity without interference from third parties. This revolutionary idea developed into KYC services, scams and regulations while privacy projects like Tornado Cash are criminalized.

The Lunarpunk Squad

Squads have been around for thousands of years as a basic form of social and economic aggregation driven by a specific common purpose. In modern times, they reemerged as an antidote to blind individualism, proliferating in group chats, forums and privacy-oriented platforms.

A 2020 article by Sam Hart, Toby Shorin and Laura Lotti titled “Squad Wealth” states:

Squads are both a product of — and a response to — contemporary social atomization.

Crypto is a large community composed of many squads. There is a common fabric that connects the people in the ecosystem, but there is also a great degree of diversity. Perhaps we can break this community into smaller sub-communities, like the Bitcoin community, DeFi or NFT collectors.

Some of these communities form squads, but not all sub-groups are squads. Consider Bitcoin maxis. They have a clear, shared belief: that Bitcoin is the only real crypto. They are not a squad because they lack a shared methodology and strategy to work towards a common goal.

Inside the vast communities of cryptocurrency, technology and privacy, lunarpunks form squads. The unifying mission is the expansion of the dark forest of anonymity as a space for development of a moral and political society. The strategy is derived from philosophy and realized in lunarpunk culture, knowledge and technology as self-defense against surveillance.

For lunarpunks, self-defense includes all actions taken to protect the community while enabling the growth of autonomous structures that exist parallel to the flat and hegemonic desert imposed by the state and proprietary tech corporations.

The tactics of lunarpunk are diverse. Some tools advocated by LunarDAO include: blockchain privacy solutions, anonymous organizations, communication tools, guides for opting out, media and publishing, community spaces and events.

Yet while the tactics are diverse the aim is common: to compose an ecosystem of projects based on sovereignty, anonymity, privacy and p2p distribution.

Squad Wealth

I come from a background of anarchist organizing. For decades, I have resisted against capitalism within cultures that share a general antagonism towards value and wealth.

But anarchist circles have become corrupted. In its most corrupted form, being poor becomes an identity or a lifestyle choice. The culture is disconnected from the goal of transforming society.

Poverty keeps anarchists in a constant state of reaction, of putting out fires and surviving instead of focusing on the steps necessary to win. Anarchists live in a comfortable state of discomfort. Our struggle is composed of known patterns, repeated individually and within communities, which are largely unsuccessful.

An absence of any foundational philosophy it a key reason why this movement is failing. It also lacks a practical approach to building the counter-economy. The movement is centered around individual lifestyles and it cannot gather the resources to become operational and strong.

In the history of revolutions all successful movements prioritized resources, logistics and material infrastructure. Successful movements address the question of wealth and its protection independently from the state.

Wealth is the social fabric that connects us. It is our knowledge, resource and infrastructure. One can argue that wealth means power. That’s what we are aiming for- power to the people!

Instead of shying away from wealth, we are coming together to form autonomous squads. Our aim is to establish democratic governance and counter-economics while spreading our narrative and acquiring resources. In other words, we are establishing squad wealth.

On economy and anti-economy

In the contemporary mindset, the economy is fundamentally profit-driven and based on private property. The neoliberal process of financialization has further shifted the idea of economy to the accumulation of money and capital.

Liberals advocate for a free-market economy that includes state intervention. In reality, liberal economy is anything but free. It is dominated by the logic of profit at all costs and benefits only a select few. This so-called “free market” is actually hypercontrolled, regulated and monopolized by conglomerates.

The oldest known economies of the Neolithic Revolution (early Ur or Göbekli Tepe), had different kinds of economies. The original form of economy is ‘oikonomos’ or household management. This economy was alien to the concept of profit and was based on providing the food and shelter required to give society a future.

Economy was born in the shape of a matriarchal culture of giving. In other words, economy was born to produce and fairly redistribute a community’s wealth, in order for the community to live well.

What we call ‘economy’ in modern, liberal terms is the highest form of ‘anti-economy’- a negation of the essence of oikonomos itself. Capitalism is anti-economy and anti-society.

One may be enchanted by the dialectic of anti-economy and its shining lies, but its essence is brutal. Liberalism is a master of illusions. It is also the philosophical backbone of capitalist modernity. It sold people the greatest lies humanity has ever faced:

• That the monopoly of resources in the hands of a few means wealth for all.
• That the monopoly of violence in the hands of central authority (the state) means protection for all.
• That there is no other way things can be.

LunarDAO squad

Society has lost its agency and has become unconscious of itself. Lunarpunk is the story of how humanity will liberate itself from this delirium. We are the guerrilla of this revolutionary struggle. We build tools to empower society.

Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less.
— Lucy Parsons

Unlike large communities, squads are highly organized. This implies an incredibly efficient ability for action within the framework of their methodology. It’s what they’re made for.

Such cell-like organizations have always existed for this reason. People have greater economic power when they allocate resources together rather than acting as individuals. Squads can ensure agency and decision making in the different matters that impact our lives.

This needs to be well organized and focused on the well-being, participation and development of everyone. A squad can take away the middleman and organize its own logistics and infrastructure, because there is a purchasing power to create leverage and negotiate prices. A squad can lend support and direct funds to projects that are building tools and infrastructure.

In time, when the squad can use the tools they support and co-own assets that increase in value, they reap the benefits. Squad wealth grows.

LunarDAO squad was founded to ensure that the lunarpunk future is realized. This is the continuation of a privacy-oriented narrative and the beginning of the lunarpunk cycle.

The beginning of any cycle doesn’t happen by accident. The lunarpunk cycle is a result of decades of work. This movement has been led by free software developers, cypherpunks, privacy projects, hackers, DAOs, privacy activists and many others.

By focusing on the sovereign structures we want to build and investing in them, by learning from each other on how to opt out and making this knowledge available to others, we render the state and its surveillance agents obsolete.

Our philosophy, ideology, technology and economic power is our squad wealth. It is our first line of defense in the dark forest of anonymity.