David Chaum Announces XX Network and Nym Partnership

On 16 November 2025 in Buenos Aires, the second edition of the Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress convened over 4,000 builders, activists and thinkers from across 70+ countries under the unifying principle that “without privacy there is no democracy.” Hosted by the Web3Privacy Now collective, the event shifted the spotlight away from speculation and toward the foundational values of cryptographic resistance, sovereignty and decentralised culture — with leading voices from the realms of free software, network anonymity and the Ethereum ecosystem standing in solidarity to re-energise the cypherpunk ethos for the Web3 era.

Closing out the conference, a video rolled for attendees to watch with David Chaum speaking to camera from his home.

You can watch the full video below and read/download the transcript under that.

davidchaum-ethcypherpunkcongress2 Download

In the video, David argued that humanity stands at what he calls a “Chaumian triple point”, a fleeting moment in history where accelerating AI and automated information systems could push society decisively in one of two directions. Looking back on decades of pioneering work in cryptography, privacy and untraceable digital cash, he warned that rising computational “pressure” is driving an irreversible choice: either we enter a “frozen” phase, where elites or AI systems dominate and human freedom is eroded, or we move toward a “liquid symbiosis” where privacy-preserving technology and “machines of loving grace” elevate human potential rather than controlling it. For Chaum, mass surveillance, manipulation, and loss of agency already show how close we are to the wrong outcome – and why robust, quantum-resistant privacy infrastructure is no longer optional.

His call to action was unambiguous: society urgently needs tools that allow people to communicate, organise and participate in movements without fear of surveillance or retaliation. Chaum argued that the foundational answer is mixing – layered, decentralised mix networks that break the link between sender and receiver, enabling truly private communication. Announcing a new partnership between the XX network and Nym, he presented a potentially jointly built, mixnet-based decentralised messaging system as the strongest privacy platform ever made available to the public. Chaum’s message to the community was that small groups can still shape the civilisational “phase transition” ahead, but only if we pull together now to deploy privacy technologies powerful enough to tilt the future toward freedom rather than control.

A post on X also summed this up very well:

In the final words of a legend, you could feel the room shift.

David Chaum reminding us that civilization itself is standing at a triple point – frozen control or liquid freedom – and that the choice will not be made by governments or giants, but by people willing to defend…
— The Book of Ethereum 📘 (@Bookof_Eth) November 17, 2025

As any progress on a collaborative offering between XX and Nym is made, I will cover it on this site.