Prague inherits its crypto-anarchism from a living dissident tradition

OCT 01 2014 · 12:00

Video: Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis 2015 trailer Type: hub · Hub: prague · Tags: prague, paralelni-polis, charter-77, plastic-people, benda, havel, ztohoven, trezor The name Paralelní Polis is not borrowed metaphor — it is a direct citation of a 1978 samizdat essay by a man who was arrested for writing it. Prague is the only city in this archive where the modern crypto-anarchist scene can be drawn in an unbroken line back to a literal underground samizdat lineage. Most cypherpunk hubs have to manufacture their political seriousness. Prague inherited it, across two or three degrees of personal connection, from people who had been imprisoned for typing essays. The pre-history begins in September 1968, when The Plastic People of the Universe formed in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet invasion. Their long-haired refusal of 'normalization' was treated as a political affront, and a 1976 trial that jailed four members of the broader underground scene became the catalyst for Charter 77 — signed January 6 1977 by 242 initial signatories and circulated in samizdat. Václav Havel's October 1978 essay 'The Power of the Powerless,' distributed through the Edice Petlice and Edice Expedice samizdat networks, is the foundational text of living in truth: the idea that an ordinary citizen's refusal to repeat ideological lies is itself a political act. In the same circle and the same year, Václav Benda wrote a shorter samizdat essay simply titled 'Paralelní polis.' Where Havel diagnosed the rot of the official sphere, Benda proposed the positive program: don't reform the regime's institutions, build parallel ones — parallel education, parallel literature, parallel economy, parallel law — until the official polis becomes vestigial. VONS, the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted, founded April 27 1978 by Havel, Benda, and Petr Uhl, was the first of those institutions. Benda was arrested in May 1979 and imprisoned until 1983. Then November 1989, and Havel into the Castle. This is the inherited grammar. The modern braid begins around 2003 with the artist collective ztohoven — core members Roman Týc, Pavel Hampl, Martin Tibitanzl — whose actions subjected state symbolic infrastructure to precisely the kind of irreverent exposure the pre-1989 underground had applied to the party apparatus. Their 2007 mushroom-cloud hack of Czech Television's Panorama weather feed, acquitted in March 2008 on grounds of producing amusement rather than panic, is the closest the post-Velvet generation got to a political trial. Their 2013 'Občan K' action swapped passport photos among a hundred volunteers to stress-test the state's identity infrastructure. In October 2014, ztohoven opened Paralelní Polis at Dělnická 43, Praha 7 — three floors: ground-floor Bitcoin Coffee (cash not accepted, by design, for a decade), coworking in the middle, the Institute of Cryptoanarchy at the top. The name was an explicit citation of Benda, and the founders knew exactly whose tradition they were placing themselves in. The annual Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis ran from 2014 through October 4–6 2024, when the Hardcore edition closed the run. The Czech commercial spine grew alongside: Marek 'Slush' Palatinus and Pavol 'Stick' Rusnak met at the brmlab hackerspace in Holešovice in 2011, prototyped a hardware wallet in 2012, and with Alena Vránová founded SatoshiLabs and the Trezor brand in 2013 — Slush had already invented the first Bitcoin mining pool in late 2010. The Trezor One, shipped 2014, was the first hardware wallet ever produced. Devcon 4 — Prague Congress Centre, October 30 to November 2 2018 — was the moment Prague was anointed as a node in the Ethereum imaginary; the Ethereum Foundation chose the city precisely because the cryptoanarchist lineage made it a credible cultural home. ETHPrague followed in 2022, founded by Czech Ethereum builders adjacent to the Paralelní Polis circle, and runs annually. ETHPrague 2026 — May 8–10 at Obecní dům, the Art Nouveau ceremonial hall where Czechoslovakia was declared independent on October 28 1918 — is the fifth edition and the one being held, for the first time, after the building is gone. On March 2 2026, Second Culture — the successor entity operating Dělnická 43 — permanently closed. Financial pressure, landlord decisions, the same forces that kill any beloved unprofitable institution. The eleven-year arc is closed. What remains is the lineage and the diaspora: ETHPrague, Trezor, brmlab, the people scattered across the Holešovice neighborhood and beyond. A working test of Benda's thesis — parallel institutions are temporary by design; what carries is the habit of building them. Tim May's 1988 specter is haunting the modern world; in Prague, unlike elsewhere, you can trace the haunting all the way back through the walls of the building where people once typed forbidden texts under the neon light of a regime they intended to outlast. Facts • Plastic People of the Universe formed September 1968, immediately after the Soviet invasion • Charter 77 signed January 6 1977; ~242 initial signatories; circulated as samizdat • Václav Benda's 'Paralelní polis' essay written 1978; Benda imprisoned 1979–1983 • Havel's 'The Power of the Powerless' written October 1978; distributed via Edice Petlice • VONS (Committee for Defense of Unjustly Persecuted) founded April 27 1978 • Velvet Revolution: November 17 – December 29 1989 • ztohoven founded ~2003; TV mushroom-cloud hack June 2007, acquitted March 2008 • Marek Palatinus launched first Bitcoin mining pool (Slush Pool) late 2010 • SatoshiLabs / Trezor founded Prague 2013; Trezor One shipped 2014 — first hardware wallet • Paralelní Polis opened at Dělnická 43, Praha 7, October 2014 • HCPP ran annually 2014–2024; final edition 'Hardcore' October 4–6 2024 • Devcon 4 at Prague Congress Centre, October 30 – November 2 2018 • ETHPrague founded 2022; fifth edition May 8–10 2026 at Obecní dům • Dělnická 43 permanently closed March 2 2026 Primary Documents • Václav Benda, 'Paralelní polis' (1978) — English translation via cryptoanarchy.wiki — https://www.cryptoanarchy.wiki/getting-started/parallel-polis • HCPP 2024 Hardcore — final edition site — https://hardcore.hcpp.cz/ • ETHPrague 2026 — https://ethprague.com/