In 2019, I was working on AI. I'd spent years learning machine learning, building models, following the research. I thought it was the future.
But the more I worked in the space, the more uncomfortable I got. Not with the technology itself, but with what it was being used for.
Every AI system I saw was designed to centralize power. Extract more data. Optimize for engagement and profit. Make decisions that used to require human judgment. And all of it flowed upward, to a handful of companies that controlled everything.
It wasn't neutral. It was deeply political.
That's when I made the shift. I dumped my AI work and went all in on blockchain. Not because I think crypto is going to make everyone rich, but because it's one of the few technologies fundamentally about distributing power instead of concentrating it.
That's how Project Voyager 03 started.
Nothing is neutral
We like to pretend technology is neutral. Just tools. Just code. But that's bullshit.
Every platform makes political choices. Facebook decides what you see. Google decides what's true. Amazon decides what you can buy. Apple decides what apps you can use.
These aren't technical decisions. They're political ones. They shape information flow, economic opportunity, cultural norms.
And the people making these decisions? A tiny group of executives and engineers at a handful of companies. The rest of us have no say.
That's not neutral. That's concentrated control with good marketing.
Why blockchain is political (and that's good)
Blockchain gets dismissed as just being about finance or speculation. And yeah, there's plenty of that. But the core idea is political in the best way.
It's about building systems where:
- The rules are transparent
- Ownership is real, not granted
- Governance is distributed
- You can verify everything yourself
- If you don't like it, you can fork it
Every smart contract is a political document. Every DAO vote is governance. Every wallet is an identity that no platform can take away.
At v03, everything I build reflects this. It's not just about making better apps. It's about building alternatives to centralized control.
What I'm building at v03
All the projects I've been working on — Carbide, HashHeal, Celluloid, Inscribe, Orbital, Harbour, Jezero — they're all pieces of the same vision.
A vision where:
- You own your data
- You own your creative work
- You own your health information
- You have alternatives to centralized infrastructure
- Communities can coordinate without extraction
- Contributors actually benefit from what they build
This isn't just technical. It's political. It's a bet that distributed systems can work better than centralized ones. That people deserve to own what they create. That power should flow down, not up.
I don't know if it'll work. But I know the alternative — just rebuilding the same extractive systems with new branding — isn't acceptable.
Voyager City and beyond
The end goal of v03 is something I'm calling Voyager City. A place where this cypherpunk vision isn't just theory — it's real, implemented, tested.
Where protocols and products work together. Where ownership is default. Where communities thrive without platforms extracting value. Where infrastructure is owned by the people using it.
I'm exploring ways to implement this in an actual city. To take all these pieces and show they can work in practice, not just in whitepapers.
It's ambitious. Maybe impossible. But that's kind of the point.
Because if we're going to build a different kind of internet — a different kind of digital civilization — we need to actually build it. Not just talk about it.
Why I'm here
Web3 is political. Blockchain is political. Building protocols instead of platforms is political.
And I'm fine with that. I'd rather be honest about it.
Behind every line of code is a set of values. Behind every protocol is a worldview.
v03 is my bet on distributed power over centralized control. On ownership over access. On communities over platforms.
I don't know if we'll win. But I know it's worth trying.
Because the internet we want won't build itself.