From the perspective of network sociology, interpreting the role of crypto-globalism in the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Original Title: "The Russo-Ukrainian War of Unlimited Warfare: Camera Performance, Social Media, and Crypto Globalization"

Author: Han Ya, The SeeDAO

| Introduction

In February 2022, we witnessed a Russo-Ukrainian dispute that is no longer limited to "traditional military warfare." Beyond infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled artillery in Kharkiv, communication networks, camera lenses, social media, and cryptocurrencies have opened up a battlefield for cyber warfare.

In his interpretation of the concept of "unlimited warfare," Qiao Liang pointed out that the "generalization" of war is an inevitable outcome of the future. Cyber warfare, resource warfare, media warfare, financial warfare, and cultural warfare will all become intensely contested battlegrounds. Clearly, this assertion has now been proven.

Previous analyses of traditional topics such as Russo-Ukrainian geopolitics, ethnic issues, and political interests are abundant. This article will discuss the role of crypto-globalism in this conflict from the perspective of cyber sociology.

Information Guerrilla Warfare in Social Media: From Marcos to Zelenskyy

At the turn of the last millennium, Manuel Castells analyzed the role of information networks in social movements in his book "The Power of Identity," against the backdrop of the unilateral logic of a few stakeholders in globalization igniting resistance based on "identity."

As a cyber sociologist, Castells keenly captured how the logic of "networks" is profoundly changing global political struggles. A typical case is the Zapatista movement, which Castells referred to as the "first information guerrilla movement," aimed at defending the interests of the Maya people.

Zapatista leader Marcos understood the tactics of sociology and communication, building a bridge for communication through internet media and creating a popular image of revolutionaries with unique clothing designs—masks and pipes. This image, along with inspiring movement declarations, spread widely on the internet, reshaping the source of identity: resistance is not due to a single ethnicity but a shared predicament. Castells commented, "In this new world order, information is the most valuable commodity, and the same information can be more lethal than bullets."

Twenty-eight years later, we see the information warfare tactics of the Zapatista movement reflected in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict—specifically, in the Ukrainian resistance movement led by Zelenskyy: a distributed, multidimensional, real-time network communication structure based on the internet. Social media has shaped a global sense of "presence" through open and accessible information flows. In the article "Appearance is Essence, Performance is War," Professor Shi Zhan provides a detailed discussion of this mechanism.

Zelenskyy and the top military figure of Ukraine & Putin with core Russian military personnel

Unlike President Putin, who sits alone in the Kremlin gambling with the fate of the nation, Zelenskyy, dressed in a bulletproof vest, initiated nationwide and global mobilization through political performance in front of a selfie camera. With the instinct of an actor, Zelenskyy used the camera to show the world Ukraine's struggle, supplemented by high-frequency text updates on Twitter and videos from the first-person perspective of Ukrainian frontline soldiers, eliciting increasing empathy on social media.

According to a report by the BBC on the 28th, a sociological group conducted a public opinion survey of 2,000 Ukrainians, and 91% of respondents supported Zelenskyy. The support for Ukraine evolved into an information guerrilla war in the social media space, which is difficult to extinguish. The Ukrainian propaganda has allowed comedian Zelenskyy to successfully portray a tragic hero.

We must recognize that social media has made this era a cacophony of voices, giving rise to what Hector McDonald calls the "post-truth era"—where appeals to emotion and personal beliefs can influence public opinion more than stating objective facts. Different lenses held by different people frame different stories, each story has multiple facets, and there exist multiple "competing facts."

We may feel confused: Ukraine claims that Russia attacks civilians, but Russia claims that Ukraine is attacking its own civilians and then taking photos to shift the blame to the Russian military. Which side is telling the truth? Even if there are people present, do these distributed information sources truly reflect the full picture of events?

Partial truths and manufactured truths are all representations of the positions of information publishers. Thus, we see that Sina Weibo, Twitter, and Reddit present polarized public opinions, each seemingly having information and evidence to support their judgments. Different camps identify "the other" and "the self" within these voices, leading to the emergence of "competing truths" in the Russo-Ukrainian war on social media platforms.

The struggle for public opinion on social media is certainly one battlefield of the Russo-Ukrainian unlimited warfare, but the profound implications of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict are evidently more than this. The intervention of cryptocurrency is a new variable in the Ukrainian resistance movement compared to past wars.

Cryptocurrency enables the free flow of value in the global network—currencies can ignore bank account limits and cross national borders, gathering around a specific consensus. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, cryptocurrency has expressed itself amid dramatic changes in the situation, leading people to discover a historically significant proposition—how will blockchain and cryptocurrency respond in the global political conflict concerning national destinies, becoming a powerful carrier of value recognition?

Global Mobilization of Currency Networks: "Ethereum is Neutral, but I Am Not"

2.1 Cryptocurrency as the Last Asset

Before this, we worried about the volatility of cryptocurrencies, considering them a speculative, high-risk asset. This perception has its factual basis, but in this event, we find that cryptocurrency is a property that individuals can truly control, and this security is guaranteed by the underlying logic of blockchain. In such extreme circumstances, the technical essence of cryptocurrency is revealed.

For the Ukrainian people, the traditional financial system has ceased to function normally amid the war, and personal property has failed to provide basic survival guarantees due to the invalidation of credit cards—@usleepwalker shared his experience on Twitter. When we see the phrase "crypto is the only money I still have," do we not feel a deep sense of empathy?

Tweet content @usleepwalker

Similarly, under conditions where cash systems are also non-functional, a Danish journalist in Ukraine successfully purchased a car using Bitcoin, making cryptocurrency, in a sense, the "last currency."

Cryptocurrency is becoming the safety net for the Ukrainian people: according to a report from Forkast, from February 24 to February 25, the trading volume of cryptocurrencies on the Kuna exchange surged, with more and more Ukrainian fiat currency being exchanged for cryptocurrency.

Kuna trading data Source: Forkast

As Ukraine sees opportunities in cryptocurrency, Russia is also contemplating its historical choices in the face of cryptocurrency. According to a Bloomberg report on February 27, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) stated that it would comply with relevant sanctions against Russia according to legal directives.

Led by Western countries, SWIFT has historically controlled the lifeblood of international payments. Using it as a financial weapon for sanctions certainly causes significant losses to the sanctioned party—for example, the U.S. used SWIFT sanctions to severely impact Iran's oil export trade. However, using SWIFT as a weapon also undermines the international financial system it relies on, forcing the emergence of alternative solutions, or even better ones, thereby dissolving its monetary system and payment foundation.

Some media claim that the financial sanctions imposed by the West on Russia will become increasingly easy to evade, partly because Russia is adopting cryptocurrency on a large scale.

In this view, cryptocurrency is not only the last asset for Ukraine but also the last asset for Russia.

In response, Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation is sending formal letters to eight cryptocurrency exchanges (Coinbase, Binance, Huobi, KuCoin, Bybit, Gate.io, Whitebit, and the Ukrainian exchange Kuna), requesting them to stop providing services to Russian users. On March 1, U.S. authorities also announced new policies requiring exchanges like Binance and Coinbase to prevent Russia from evading sanctions. The new regulations prohibit "any transactions that evade U.S. sanctions, including through the use of digital currencies or assets or physical assets."

Ukraine and the U.S. exerting pressure on cryptocurrency exchanges Source: Coindesk

The new requirements from sovereign nations on CEX are expanding the scope of sanctions against Russia but will only exacerbate distrust of centralized entities, as the latter merely treat cryptocurrency services as tools of power.

Cryptocurrency exchanges serve as a channel for assets to transition from traditional fiat currency to on-chain ownership, but CEX is a centralized "crypto enterprise," subject to the political arrangements of their respective countries. In the Russo-Ukrainian dispute, it is not easy for these enterprises to maintain neutrality, unlike Dmarket, which harms the innocent. This is at most a result of moral pressure; we should not harbor illusions about CEX having a "decentralized" ideology.

Cryptocurrency is attracting followers across various strata—from capitalists and elites eager to transfer assets to civilians worried about property safety who use cryptocurrency to secure their survival. DEX, such as the Uniswap protocol, is the truly transformative infrastructure within this system.

If we view the evolution of the global financial order from a higher level, cryptocurrency may even be the last asset for any entity that no longer trusts the current system. Just as Castells described a resistance to "specific forms of globalization" at the end of the last millennium. If the international community (true global citizens, not just the Western world) fully realizes that the current financial system is merely a unilateral logic of one party's hegemonic expansion globally, then as blockchain-based solutions are proposed, the old order may fade into obscurity as stablecoins take the historical stage.

2.2 Cryptocurrency as Donation Funds

In the past, the results of information warfare were merely to influence public opinion polls, thereby providing a public basis for national policies or military actions. However, in the Russo-Ukrainian war, the targets of Zelenskyy's "camera politics" information tactics have changed compared to the past—behind the screen, we hold digital mobile devices that not only feature the blue bird but also the fiery red fox.

Zelenskyy's political performance is a heavy-toned live-streaming sales pitch, and cryptocurrency donations have officially intervened in contemporary warfare, establishing a transmission mechanism of "camera politics - public emotion - voting with money - intervening in reality."

On February 26, 2022, the Ukrainian government officially announced that it would accept cryptocurrency donations. A sovereign nation announcing the acceptance of global cryptocurrency donations to respond to war is undoubtedly another historic event following El Salvador's recognition of Bitcoin as legal tender.

Donation address information released by Ukraine's official Twitter

In civil society, the punk band Pussy Riot, known for its guerrilla-style protests and criticism of Putin, recently announced that it would raise funds for humanitarian organizations like "Proliska" and the Kyiv-based nonprofit "Come Back Alive," thus establishing "UkraineDAO."

UkraineDAO website Source: https://www.ukrainedao.love/

In just a few days, UkraineDAO's Twitter followers reached 12.4K. In the UkraineDAO Discord community, supporters of Ukraine have also gathered, where people can contribute time, information, and art, doing what they can to support charitable actions. UkraineDAO initiated an Ethereum crowdfunding campaign on party.bid, auctioning NFTs featuring the Ukrainian flag. At 2 AM on February 27, UkraineDAO raised 12.15 ETH, and by the evening of February 28, funds from over 2,000 different addresses brought the bidding pool to 1360 ETH.

Comparison of crowdfunding status on the 27th and 28th

Financial sociologist Zelizer pointed out the "qualitatively heterogeneous" nature of money in his book "The Social Meaning of Money." This concept aims to illustrate that money is not just cold numbers but contains different cultural and social value differences.

Zelizer attempts to explain that money, while seemingly homogenized, can be made calculable through what Simmel called the "flattening effect," but money exists within society; it is constructed and shaped by society—due to its uses, motivations, and connections to social relationships and interpersonal emotions, the same currency can differentiate into "different kinds of money."

Vitalik's statement on Twitter

The same applies to cryptocurrency; the crypto community is unfolding its humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in its own way. As Vitalik stated, "Ethereum is neutral, but I am not." The ETH used to donate to the Ukrainian people carries a strong moral and ethical appeal; the characters starting with 0x represent living individuals, and countless Ethereum addresses sending ETH to Ukraine thus become "different ETH."

From Identity Networks to Action Networks

The internet has only achieved the globalization of information, while crypto has achieved the globalization of value. Supported by social media networks and cryptocurrency networks, the values of pacifism and liberalism are transforming into the actions of countless individuals.

Through social media networks, individuals can receive necessary information (even though it may be biased), forming their own attitudes and positions. However, in traditional environments, it is difficult for these attitudes to translate into concrete actions and political participation; ordinary people often feel powerless. But the peer-to-peer payment characteristics of blockchain networks provide a form of agency through cryptocurrencies. As David Phelps said: web2 monetized scale, while web3 monetizes passion.

David Phelps' tweet

For the younger generation of crypto enthusiasts, in the past, we could only donate through large charitable organizations like the Red Cross, but now everyone can do something; we are no longer helpless: through cryptocurrency, even a little bit of "concern" can influence events happening at specific times and places—"How can we not shout just because our voices are small?"

For modern nation-states, global fundraising through cryptocurrency will profoundly change the action logic of future political entities: visible borders and barriers are diminishing, while invisible sentiments, public opinion, and identities will determine their ability to mobilize resources globally. Cryptocurrency is pushing existing global governance toward a new historical possibility.

The underlying logic of cryptocurrency is anti-nation-state; the resistance to centralized financial systems has long been inscribed by Satoshi Nakamoto in the genesis block of Bitcoin. The node access of cryptocurrency networks is unprecedentedly free, meaning that the constraints of power and the expansion of intermediaries find it difficult to exert influence, "the power of flow exceeds the flow of power."

The permissionless nature points to globalization, or more accurately, the self-realization of globalism in the crypto era. A borderless currency medium symbolizes a borderless community of interests. This global community not only needs cryptocurrency as its economic infrastructure but also requires a broader sense of tokens as its identity carriers, even adopting the logic of DAOs and the ecology of web3. Within this, the only variable may be the value positions chosen by each individual.

Conclusion

The Russo-Ukrainian war occurs in a context different from the past; social media, camera politics, global communication networks, and cryptocurrencies are reinterpreting contemporary political conflicts. As stated in the "End of the Essays of Qie Jiting," "The infinite distance, countless people, all relate to me," this is an invisible battlefield and the struggle closest to the individual.

If we can empower individuals with a tangible agency, transforming "it relates to me" from a consciousness into a result, thereby promoting the forces of freedom, justice, and peace, this may be the most noble ideal of crypto-globalism.