The Enigma Collective is comprised of talented individuals who represent our project and communicate our technology and vision to their communities and industries. Our goal has been to build a program where everyone feels valued, learns daily, builds skills, and has direct access to the Enigma team. Being involved at the early stages of an ambitious blockchain project like Enigma is an incredible opportunity — and joining the Collective can mean gaining lifelong friends and colleagues.

With the Collective active in over 15 countries, we are slowly building what we believe is the best core community in the blockchain space — curious, committed, and kind. Members bring many different skills and backgrounds to their work, including development experience, artistic talents, business acumen, community-building expertise, and much more.

Today we highlight Kristi Yorks, one of the first members of the Enigma Collective and a great contributor to our project. Read her story below.

“I believe that every individual has a story to tell… and I am passionate about projects and technologies that empower individuals to take control of their stories and to imagine beyond pre-established rhetoric.”

Who Are You?

My name is Kristi Yorks. I am a Professor of English and of Writing. I am also a storyteller, poet, snow and singletrack gypsy, and blockchain enthusiast. A child of Thoreau’s rugged individualism, I live, work, and play in the shadow of cowboys and their legends — a small town with more trailheads and horses than stop lights, nestled at the base of the Teton mountain range.

My central themes (and the motivating forces behind my career, actions, and passions) have always been compassion and freedom — a love of humanity and its chaotic, creative glory and a longing for the open spaces, skies, and pages that make this humanity possible. Thus, while I had the option to seek a traditional path (to pursue tenure in a rather large city, a standard, less “messy” career, predestined by those who supported and who came before me), I turned and choose a different path — one that lead into the heart of the mountains and the forgotten promise of the West. Forging a nontraditional path in a rural space (a ski bum turned professor turned remote blockchain enthusiast and writer) has not been easy — but there is no other path I would rather walk.

I believe that every individual has a story to tell (in whatever medium compels that story — words, code, metal, etc.), and I am passionate about projects and technologies that empower individuals to take control of their stories and to imagine beyond pre-established rhetoric.

Why Enigma?

While a poet by trade, I have always been fascinated by technology, software, and mathematics. This does not mean I am skilled in either of these disciplines, but luckily, skill is not always necessary for fascination, understanding, or collaboration. In fact, as a writer, I feel that I have a responsibility to seek out questions, break disciplinary boundaries, and explore that which makes us and our modern world possible.

I stumbled upon Enigma’s whitepaper while conducting research on blockchain technologies and their current limitations. As a writer, a teacher, and a pseudo-philosopher, I know that privacy is critical to freedom, to compassion, and to creativity. Without privacy, individuals cease to be individuals and become, along with their ideas and technologies, cogs within a system bent towards control, conformity, and stagnancy. From a functionality standpoint, without scalability, blockchain technologies have no utility and no opportunity to realize their potential or promise. Thus, the issues of scalability and privacy are critical; our attempts to solve these problems will determine the future of blockchain and its applications.

Will blockchain technologies empower us to realize a truly decentralized future? Or will these technologies serve to reinforce systems of control and the surveillance capabilities of centralized authorities? Enigma, I believe, has not only an answer to the looming questions of blockchain but the technology and the vision to subvert the traditional, centralized systems upon which our world runs. In short, without Enigma, without its team and its solutions, blockchain, in its idealistic glory, is useless.

There are two ways to build the world of our future — control and conformity or freedom and innovation. Our technology can serve one or the other. I am, thus, for my family, for myself, and for our future, dedicated to working for and with those technologies that will empower us to cultivate and realize a truly private, scalable, decentralized world.

“My call to others is to simply be involved. Be active. The Enigma Collective enables exactly this — a call to action and the resources to act.”

What do you enjoy working on?

I live and work in words. As a writer, I understand that stories have no purpose or meaning in the absence of knowledge and of course, storytellers. Thus, as part of the Enigma Collective and as an individual, I am dedicated to not only building the story of our future, but empowering others to enter and contribute to the conversation.

I am currently building a figurative (and literal) bridge between blockchain technologies and the humanities by examining the impact, architecture, and theories of blockchain and Enigma within the lenses of philosophy, literature, and art. Myself and an incredible team of fellow Collective members recently submitted a proposal to the International Colloquium of Philosophy and Technology on dystopian algorithms — a conversation between Foucault’s panopticon of surveillance and control and the architecture of blockchain.

I am also developing cross-disciplinary curriculum and working diligently within and beyond the classroom to open the technical spaces of our digital revolution to those currently waiting on the outside. My written work serves as a catalyst for these expanding conversations, some of which can be found on Medium. Finally, as a writer, I am doing my part to build and share the developing story of Enigma, and through that story, to inspire action within an expanding audience.

Words are an essential part of our decentralized, privacy-orientated future. They are the vehicle through which we will share the story of Enigma, forge the connections that enable our technologies, and give both utility and meaning to blockchain and its applications. And this, building these possibilities, sharing their potential, and cultivating comprehension and action, is not only what I do, it is who I am as an member of the Collective — your unofficial Enigma Poet.

What do you want to see in a decentralized, privacy-oriented digital future?

I am consumed by my passion for great lives and for living greater stories — stories of passion and triumph, of struggle and possibility. These narratives not only inspire our individual lives; they shape and mold the very fabric of our reality. These stories are only possible, however, in the face of an open page (and an open road); this call to freedom, upon which our modern world depends, cannot exist without privacy and decentralization.

Privacy creates a space where individuals can think and act in accordance with their own values, visions, questions, insights, and dreams — a place free from the overarching eyes of external force and surveillance, a space where individuals can be just that.

However, the process of building one’s story doesn’t end with its composition; to have meaning, the story of one’s life must not only be composed — it must be read and lived. Decentralization ensures that these stories (and the data they rely upon) can be shared, free from the well-intentioned violence of censorship and centralized authorities.

I then see our privacy-orientated, decentralized future as a messy, chaotic, utterly-human space — a space in which our technology enhances, celebrates, and enables that which makes us human, in which we are empowered to take control of our data and to use that data to build the diverse and expanding mosaic of our digital future.

Why should someone join the Enigma Collective?

It would be easy to wait and write on the sidelines, to remain an absent and passive critic to the development of blockchain technologies and the outcome of the digital revolution. However, as we will all live and persist within this world, as we are a part of this story, we have a responsibility to do more than await its conclusion. We have a part to play, a chapter to write, and a responsibility to contribute to the technologies and platforms that will shape our lives and our future.

Thus, my call to others is to simply be involved. Be active. The Enigma Collective enables exactly this — a call to action and the resources to act. This is an incredible time and space to live, work, and write — a time in which every individual is capable and able to actively contribute to and thus, shape our digital future. And as an Enigma Ambassador, you have the resources, support, guidance, and the opportunity and the inspiration to dive in, to learn, and to create.

In short, as part of the Enigma Collective, one has access to tools, resources, ideas, and thus, possibilities — and most importantly, one has the ability and power to take an active role within the blockchain space and to participate in its development. It is a platform upon which great minds from a variety of diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skill sets can come together and work together, to realize something greater than themselves. This is your future and your story, after all. It is your responsibility to raise your voice and write (and work) like it.