From 2017 to 2023, thousands of people donated their computers’ spare cycles to get strangers out of jail. Bail Bloc was a desktop application that quietly mined cryptocurrency in the background, using only 10–25% of a machine’s power, and converted 100% of the proceeds into bail for people in pre-trial detention and bonds for immigrants detained by ICE. The project challenged the anti-human logic of the bail system while demonstrating how technology could be repurposed for social justice.

I created the project with the Dark Inquiry collective and led its development: a cross-platform desktop app that had to be trustworthy enough for strangers to install, gentle enough to run unnoticed for years, and reliable enough to sustain a real-world fund. It was covered by The New Yorker, Wired, Vice, The Guardian, and Artforum, among others.