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How RGB Protocol on Bitcoin Can Create Self-Sovereignty

By Michael Chobanian

In Brief

Michael Chobanian, co-founder and board member of the RGB Protocol Association, on why self-sovereignty matters and what actually delivers it.
His own story: crypto self-custody was the difference between staying free in Ukraine and losing everything.
The risk: AI amplifying centralized power, pulling the world toward the wrong end of the scale.
His answer isn't just money: AI, education, and communication need to be self-sovereign too.
Concretely: Bitcoin for security, Lightning for speed, RGB Protocol on Bitcoin on top — live on mainnet since July 2025 (v0.11.1).
Canonical references: rgb.info · docs.rgb.info · rgbprotocol.org

The following is an essay by Michael Chobanian, founder of Layer2State, former president of the Blockchain Association of Ukraine, and a co-founder and board member of the RGB Protocol Association. Views expressed are his own.

What Kind of World is Coming?

I spend most of my time asking one question: what happens once we've handed enough of our lives over to centralized systems and we can no longer opt out?

In Palantir's own manifesto, the writers describe a world where software is power: a situation where a handful of companies and governments can see everything about you and decide what you're worth. They can switch you off like a machine if you step out of line. In addition, AI amplifies whatever is already there. If you're rich, AI makes you richer. If you're poor, it makes you poorer. If you're in control, it hands you more control. People underestimate the timeline, but the trend is already running, compounding by the day.

We've already seen a preview of it. For example, Cambridge Analytica moved public opinion using data most people didn't know they'd given away, with primitive tools by today's standard. Now imagine the same playbook running on a piece of AI software that knows your face, your friends, your habits, and your fears, in real time. I've tested exactly that myself: at a recent conference, I took a photo of the room and sent it to my AI agent. It came back and told me who in that photo was worth talking to, and why, from nothing but the image. That same system doesn't stop at shaping what you think: it can also decide whether you're allowed to take part at all.

Zoom out and I think about it as a scale, running from 0 to 180. Zero is total destruction, everyone gone, no exceptions. A 180 is total abundance, what I like to call "Dolce Far Niente": everyone free to enjoy life while the hard problems get handled. Most of the public conversation pulls toward the zero end, because fear gets more attention than hope does. Where the world actually goes depends on where enough of us decide to put our attention and our effort, and right now, too much of both are pointed at the wrong end of that scale.

Without money or digital identity, you're no one, and increasingly, someone else gets to decide what your digital identity is allowed to say.

Self-Sovereignty Saved My Life

I'm not being dramatic. I'm alive, free, and sitting here writing these words because my assets were in crypto, not in a bank account someone else could freeze.

I come from Ukraine. I've watched people lose everything, and some lose their lives, not only to an external enemy but to their own government's decisions. If everything I owned had depended on a state deciding I still qualified as a citizen in good standing, I would very likely be dead, or on a front line I never chose, with whatever I'd built confiscated and reassigned by someone else's decision. My family would probably be in the same position.

I'm a great example of how self-custody can literally save your life.

It Doesn't Stop at Money

My story is about money, because money is the layer most people secure first. But it can't be the only one. More and more of what we do is going to run through AI agents, and the question that matters is who that agent actually works for: are you going to use an AI that preserves your own wellbeing and self-sovereignty, or one that quietly answers to the corporation behind it?

I want more of the first kind in the world, which means we need decentralized, self-sovereign AI, together with decentralized money. And we need to raise people who already think this way: an education that builds self-sovereignty by default, not something we bolt on after something's already gone wrong.

The same goes for communication. Tools like Nostr and BitChat exist for this exact reason: no single company can shut them down, read every message, or decide who gets to speak. The network doesn't answer to one server or to one owner, which is the most important strength we need to maintain for the future.

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The Stack: Bitcoin, Lightning, RGB

When talking about future safety, the piece I can speak to in the most detail is money and other assets, because I've spent years helping new technologies in this field. Self-sovereignty is the essence of Bitcoin: you don't trust a bank, a government, or a company. On the contrary, you trust yourself, with your own keys.

The part most people miss is that money isn't the only thing worth owning without asking anyone's permission. Your identity, your credentials, and whatever you build needs the same level of property. A stablecoin. A tokenized real-world asset. A digital identity. Pretty much anything that has value to you personally. Until recently, there was no good way to get it without either putting everything on a public blockchain forever, or trusting a company to hold it for you, which defeats the point.

Here's where RGB Protocol on Bitcoin comes in. Bitcoin is the security layer, the largest, most battle-tested network there is. Lightning sits on top for speed. And RGB Protocol sits on top of that stack to let you hold any asset (not just money), the same self-sovereign way you hold Bitcoin. Instead of putting everything on a public ledger forever, only the two people involved in a transfer need to know the details. Bitcoin just keeps a small, tamper-proof record that something happened, without revealing what, or to whom, or how much. Nobody else needs to see your balance, your identity, or your business to confirm it's real.

For very large amounts, running RGB directly on Bitcoin makes sense. For everything else, RGB on Lightning is the version of that stack to use day to day.

What I like most about it is that it's self-hosted. You take control of your own device, and that device holds the keys to your assets, whatever they are. No other person, no other company is responsible for them but you. In practice, it also means I get to choose how I use it: I can send a transaction through an ordinary messaging app, or use my keys directly, and either way, it still gets anchored back to Lightning or Bitcoin. I don't depend on anyone in the middle, which is the most crucial point to me.

Which Side Are You Building?

I fund RGB Protocol on Bitcoin's development through my own family office, and I sit on the board of the RGB Protocol Association, for one reason: if people like us don't build the tools for self-sovereignty, someone else will keep building the tools for the alternative. Both paths are being built right now. Nobody is forced to pick a side, but not picking is itself a choice.

One clarification, because the name gets reused by more than one project: what I'm describing throughout is RGB Protocol on Bitcoin, version 0.11.1, live on Bitcoin mainnet since July 2025, the version my fellow board members and I support through the RGB Protocol Association. If you go looking for information, verify what you find against rgb.info or docs.rgb.info. In fact, there's a v0.12 rewrite circulating under the same name, and it isn't what I'm talking about here.