I decided to donate $500K to @rstormsf’s legal defense. Originally, we planned to give $50K, but after what happened to me, I need to take a clear position so everyone understands what @class_lambda stands for. I understand that the @ethereumfndn will be matching donations up to another $500K for Roman Storm’s defense, which means our contribution can have double the impact. Our team is currently moving money to execute the transaction. It should be done in the next few hours. I'm going to sleep after not sleeping for the last 48 hours. Open source and decentralization are not just philosophical ideals. They are practical necessities for building crypto. Success in this space comes from building in the open, onboarding others, and creating movements that grow beyond the original project. That is often hard to explain to people who do not share this ethos, because we are not optimizing for the same outcomes. Our mission is to help build the highways of the new internet in sustainable ways. Economic sustainability is one part of that, but not the only one. We also exist to counterbalance the natural pull toward centralization, a side effect of pure optimization. Centralization is easier and cheaper in the short run. If our only goal were to make money, there are far simpler ways to do it. But money, to us, is just a tool to reach our goals. Roman’s legal defense matters because builders everywhere need to know they can push innovation forward and that the community will stand behind them when they do. The West became powerful because it embraced freedom and its innovators. Progress came from protecting those who challenged the status quo and building systems that allowed their ideas to scale. When we stop defending our innovators, we stop building the future. The community can contribute to @rstormsf's legal defense here: freeromanstorm.com