The backgrounds takes inspiration from the cypher and cyberpunk imaginary. Some include excerpts from the farsighted works by Timothy C. May (Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1988) and Eric Hughes (Cypherpunk Manifesto, 1993), including the following prophetic one:

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. [...] Cypherpunks write code. We know that software can't be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down. Eric Hughes, Cypherpunk Manifesto, 1993

swifteagle.eth

Holy Tapestry

Hackatao

In Italian "dress" translates as "abito" which also means "inhabit". Hence ‘dress’ refers both to the habitat (house) and to what we wear (dress). It also concerns the habits that are a persistent form of our being. And so the Cypher::Prophet dress contains elements of our digital crypto habitat, with references to its cypherpunk origins.

The prophet's robe

We find it in the hands of shamans, wizards, witches and prophets, the staff is a vehicle for journeys through different planes and worlds. Like the tree, the staff connects heaven and earth. It is a symbol of clairvoyance and serves to indicate the way, as did the inspirers of cypherpunk and the creators of the blockchain.

basileus.eth

The Staff of Cryptopower

Whether they are two, three, green or ball, the eyes see the present, the past and imagine the future.

The eyes of the visionary

The classic laptop becomes the tablet of the law, as if to say: everything was already written. On the screen it appears the following citation from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare:

Time's glory is to calm contending kings
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light
To stamp the seal of time in aged things
To wake the morn, and sentinel the night
To wrong the wronger till he render right

As well as this one by Juvenal (Satire VI, lines 347–348, circa 100 A.D.):

But who will guard the guards themselves?

and the original Latin:

Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

Both citations are contained is the seminal paper of Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta (How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document, The Journal of Cryptography, 1991) proposing for the very first time the idea of blockchain.

The code tablet

A prophet without a beard loses his visionary authority, so it is no coincidence that Eric Hughes and Timothy C. May were bearded.

The Beard of divine authority

The mouth is the door through which truth and lies, joys and sorrows pass. Open or closed, it gives the work different meanings.

The Mouth of Post-truth

Cypher::Prophet is an artwork dedicated to the punk origins of blockchain designed and realized by hackatao and hex6c. In the transposition into images we started from the iconographic canons of the hacker (hoodie, laptop, cryptographic elements) and associated them with the figure of the prophet, thus highlighting the predictive nature of the works of Eric Hughes (Cypherpunk Manifesto, 1988) and Timothy C. May (Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1993) as well as of the blockchain inventors Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta (How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document, The Journal of Cryptography, 1991). Read the full story on https://medium.com/@hex6c/cypher-prophet-the-punk-origins-of-blockchain-1e8fce311e72

Cypher::Prophet

Layers for "Cypher::Prophet"