Arms of Peace in Defense of Liberty: Proof-of-Work & Proof-of-Stake
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
— Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
Among the many blessings secured by the American Constitution, the right of the People to maintain the full expression of their Liberty remains paramount. In the careful architecture of our Union, the preservation of free governance was not entrusted to mere parchment, but empowered by a continual and participatory mechanism of stewardship—vested in the citizen. This stewardship extends beyond the political cycle and into the daily maintenance of the system itself, secured by a great and enduring principle: that the People shall retain the Arms necessary to guard, uphold, and perpetuate the liberty entrusted to them.
In the late 18th century, the Founders, writing with an eye toward both history and posterity, bequeathed a Constitution unlike any other. Within its Second Amendment, the term “Arms” was selected with studied precision, not as a limitation to a particular implement of defense, but as an enduring recognition of the inalienable right to preserve Liberty in whatever form technological evolution might furnish. It is vital to understand that the Second Amendment was never merely about muskets or the weaponry of the age, but about the enduring and adaptable power of the citizen to defend Liberty in all its future forms. The term “firearms” was known and used broadly at the time; yet the Founders, led by the wisdom of Madison, chose instead the term “Arms”—a broader, more resilient word capable of accommodating future instruments of civic strength.
Today, in the age of cyberspace, computation, and digital consensus, new forms of Arms have arisen—more peaceful and more powerful than any previously conceived. Chief among these are the mechanisms of distributed systems which reassert the citizen’s role in safeguarding both economy and governance: the systems known as Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
Washington’s Asymmetric Tactics vs. British Formations
Washington’s use of decentralized, flexible, and adaptive tactics—citizen sharpshooters, hit-and-run raids, winter ambushes, and terrain advantage—represents the spirit of a citizen force preserving liberty through ingenuity and resilience rather than brute force. This is a perfect analog for:
Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake: Decentralized tools of peaceful resistance and governance, not based on confrontation but on persistence, openness, and strategic asymmetry.
Running nodes and validating governance: Much like citizen defenses acting locally but contributing to a larger cause, each node operator or delegator exerts a small but sovereign power in a broader constitutional defense.
Proof-of-Work as Economic Arms of the People
Proof-of-Work represents the labor of computation made manifest—a peaceful store of power bound to the natural scarcity of energy. In a PoW system, the People invest time, energy, and capital into a shared infrastructure which resists alteration by any singular authority. This energy expenditure is not incidental; it is foundational, as it ties the digital to the physical, the abstract to the real, and aligns with the ancient understanding of work as revealed in scripture.
From the beginning, the Creator established work as a sacred commission—'to dress it and to keep it'—assigning Adam stewardship over the garden, and later declaring, 'Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work.' Labor, therefore, is not punishment, but purpose: a form of ordered, divine participation in creation.
In this light, the computation of miners becomes a modern expression of that original dignity: productive, transparent, incorruptible—reflecting both the physical expenditure of energy and the moral clarity of honest work in service of the common good.
This infrastructure—secured by Bitcoin in its most secure form—anchors economic sovereignty in a manner consistent with the Constitutional design. It does not derive its force through legislation, but through mathematics and consensus, immune to the winds of political fluctuation. To participate in mining or to run a node is to engage in a constitutionally meaningful act of free association and public utility.
Just as the plough and the press were once Arms of productive and intellectual liberty, so too is the Bitcoin node today an instrument of peaceful defense. Running a node is an assertion of rights. It affirms one's ability to verify, to transact, and to communicate through an open protocol—without censorship, discrimination, or centralized interference. It preserves the People’s right to hold value and to construct market systems without coercion.
In storing this economic power, the People keep the flame of free exchange alive—ensuring that no standing economic force may override the distributed will of free individuals. At its core, this activity protects the most fundamental principle upon which the free State rests: the right to property, expressed here in its purest economic form.
Proof-of-Stake as Governance Arms of the People
Where Proof-of-Work secures economic liberty, Proof-of-Stake empowers the structures of governance. In PoS, the act of participating in governance—by running validator nodes, delegating stake, and proposing or ratifying protocol changes—mirrors the constitutional processes envisioned by Madison in the formation of the compound republic.
Each validator stands as a digital steward, not unlike those early citizens who gathered in town halls or served in state assemblies. Delegators, in choosing whom to empower, reflect the federal model of representation. Protocols may be proposed, debated, accepted or rejected—by process, not by decree. And most critically, all power remains distributed among the People, not concentrated in any bureaucracy.
In this structure, the citizens do not merely vote—they bear Arms of governance. They help shape, maintain, and secure the system itself. They operate in alignment with an open protocol, one that imposes no barrier to entry, and no dependence on third-party permission to participate. This openness reflects the original constitutional intent that each citizen be empowered by right, not privilege.
The blockchain-based governance process is not limited to participation, but extends to verification, enforcement, and rule amendment. It operates like a digital version of Madison’s vision: layered, federated, and secured by checks and balances. Validator operators act in the role of representatives—chosen not by faction or force, but by stake, transparency according to apportionment. They serve as the stake delegated observer of constraint adherence, continuously renewing consent and epochal legitimacy.
To govern one’s own stake is to declare allegiance to Liberty; to validate the rules of a network is to enact the constitutional virtue of self-governance. This is not a simulation or abstraction—it is a living system of governance protocol, law, constraint, and accountability, built for peace. It is a revival, not of rebellion, but of stewardship—an ever-active, ever-peaceful defense of republicanism in its purest form.
Our Constitutionally Protected Right to Build and Maintain These Arms
The Constitution is not a relic to be preserved behind glass, but a framework to be enlivened by continuous improvement. In affirming the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, the Second Amendment affirms more than the tools of kinetic defense—it affirms the right to build the very structures that maintain liberty.
The Bill of Rights, more properly understood as the Bill of Constraints on government, exists as an interconnected system of protections, each reinforcing the others. The First Amendment guards the foundation of liberty through its recognition of the rights to speak freely, publish openly, share information without permission, assemble peaceably, and worship according to one’s conscience. These freedoms are the informational lifeblood of a free society.
Yet it is the Second Amendment that safeguards the continued vitality of these protections by empowering the People to maintain peaceful defensive structures—both physical and digital—that uphold constitutional order. In the modern era, these structures include decentralized digital systems that resist coercion, ensure transparency, and make surveillance or censorship by centralized powers unworkable. When coupled with the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth’s guarantees of due process and property rights, a fuller architecture of privacy, consent, and self-determination emerges.
Importantly, the right to keep and bear Arms is not external to the system of governance—it is written into it. It is not only a right to protect governance, but a right that is part of governance itself. The structures through which citizens bear responsibility—by validating rules, securing public consensus, and holding authority accountable—are not merely supportive of the republic; they are constitutive of it. These digital Arms are instruments of participation, not simply defense. They are embedded in the process of self-governance.
Systems such as decentralized digital networks, when built and maintained by the People for the preservation of self-governance, are modern Arms in the truest sense. They are not destructive, but constructive. They are not weapons of war, but instruments of peace. And because they arise from voluntary association and decentralized participation, they cannot be co-opted by any singular force. They are the living embodiment of the compound republic: distributed, limited, and accountable.
These systems mirror the original checks and balances envisioned by the Founders. They contain their own separation of powers: validators ensure constraint, citizens empower consent through stake delegation, and protocols enforce with equal treatment. They are transparent, tamper-evident, and publicly verifiable. And most importantly, they require no central administrator to function—only citizens willing to participate, contribute, and secure.
The act of building or joining such a system is akin to the act of citizenship. Each line of code, each signed transaction, each staked token and validated transaction is a form of peaceful engagement in the republic. This is how the People assert their sovereignty—not through resistance, but through creation. In this way, these digital Arms restore not only the function of the republic, but its spirit: lawful, deliberative, and secure through the collective vigilance of a free People.
The Most Fortified Arms Ever
It is a fortunate moment in history that such Arms are not forged in iron, but in code. They do not destroy; they preserve. They do not disrupt peace; they guarantee it. By distributing economic and governance power among the citizenry, we reduce the need for confrontation, for protest, or for conflict. Instead, we align with the Founders’ greatest hope—that the People would, in every age, find the means to perpetuate their liberty in accordance with their time.
These new Arms, built of computation and consensus, fulfill every aspect of the republican ideal. They allow each individual to secure property, to protect privacy, to participate in lawmaking, and to verify the rule of law without reliance on centralized force. They are as much a part of the constitutional structure as the branches of government or the vote itself. Because they enable enforcement of rights without violence, these Arms stand as the most civilizing tool ever placed in the hands of the People.
Just as a tank in battle is armored to withstand direct attack, so too are these blockchain systems armored by design—protected by cryptographic immutability, decentralized validation, and consensus algorithms. Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake networks are technically fortified against manipulation, coercion, or unilateral control. They resist subversion not through force, but through incorruptible logic and distributed consensus. This makes them the most peaceful and durable architecture for preserving liberty yet devised.
As such, building and participating in these decentralized systems is a sacred act. It is the modern analog of keeping watch at the frontier, of deliberating in the halls of assembly, of guarding against the slow centralization of unchecked authority. These systems allow the First Amendment to be practiced without censorship, the Fourth to be secured by cryptographic privacy, and the Tenth to be honored by local control and sovereign choice. Each amendment supports the others; each balance sustains the whole.
This is not a call to arms in the old sense—but a call to keep and bear the new Arms of the Information Age: node by node, validator by validator, sovereign stake by sovereign stake. In this calling, every citizen becomes a steward—not only of protocol, but of liberty itself.
The Great Experiment Continues
The Second Amendment, read with understanding and foresight, is not static, but enduring. It does not rest solely on the armaments of the past, but embraces the tools of the present and future by which Liberty is preserved. The Founders, by enshrining the right to bear Arms, entrusted us not merely with defense—but with the constitutional mechanisms required to advance the great American experiment in self-governance. That experiment lives on today not through resistance, but through innovation—by the voluntary construction of resilient, peaceful systems that secure individual liberty, economic sovereignty, and participatory governance.
To run a node is to stand watch in the digital commons; to delegate stake is to choose leadership; to validate a block is to affirm the rule of law. These are not acts of opposition, but affirmations of our national covenant—a continuous act of citizenship and constitutional fidelity. These peaceful Arms, fortified like armor through cryptographic consensus, uphold our unalienable rights with transparency and incorruptibility.
So long as these Arms are built, borne, and maintained by the People, the Constitution shall endure not only as a document, but as an ever-improving participatory system of governance. In this, we fulfill the sacred trust of the Founders and carry forward the great experiment they began: through peaceful action, sovereign stewardship, and unwavering commitment to liberty in every age.
At United States Lab, we are implementing the United States Constitution's compound republic governance model in web3. If you are interested in this research, please follow our R&D work.