Transcription complète de The Private World Computer | Aztec Co-Founders Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews

slash bankless, Frax designed for the future of compliant 64 00:03:39.080 --> 00:03:40.080 digital finance. 65 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:42.680 Zach Joe, welcome to bankless today. 66 00:03:42.680 --> 00:03:46.200 Thank you so much for having us, so much for having us. 67 00:03:46.200 --> 00:03:51.760 Really excited about this, so it's been five years almost since we've had you on bankless. 68 00:03:51.760 --> 00:03:58.320 This is actually a screenshot from a very young babyface looking David, I think, from 69 00:03:58.320 --> 00:04:03.600 one of his many places he's lived around the world, and the two of you guys from five 70 00:04:03.600 --> 00:04:08.960 years ago, four months or four years and eight months ago, I guess, starting the question 71 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:12.080 out, what have you guys been doing over the past five years? 72 00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:18.160 Well, I guess the obvious one is I've regretted some hair, and this was in the depths of COVID, 73 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:19.160 I think. 74 00:04:19.160 --> 00:04:24.680 And yeah, we hadn't seen each other all the team for a while, so we all went a bit crazy 75 00:04:24.680 --> 00:04:30.920 in the UK and COVID, but apart from that, we've been chipping away and bringing privacy 76 00:04:30.920 --> 00:04:31.920 to Ethereum. 77 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:38.120 I think, since we, since we last spoke, we had a roll up on Ethereum called Aztec Connect. 78 00:04:38.120 --> 00:04:42.040 We've now built a brand new version of that that brings, you know, fully programmable 79 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:48.560 privacy to Ethereum, and it launched its ignition chain last week at DevConnect, so lots 80 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:49.560 of them happening. 81 00:04:49.560 --> 00:04:54.160 We've been kind of keeping beating on the same drum of bringing privacy to Ethereum, and 82 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:57.040 yeah, it's been, it's been crazy to kind of see the progress. 83 00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:59.040 So Zach, how do you explain your hair situation back then? 84 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:00.480 There's an all-covid. 85 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:02.880 And you know, how things, yeah, don't care if it's pretty hard. 86 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:06.320 Joe and I, we took the opposite approaches, Joe was like, I'll cut my own hair, I was 87 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:10.080 like, I won't bother having a hair. 88 00:05:10.080 --> 00:05:13.600 And yeah, you know, I was going on research benders back then trying to figure out how to 89 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:18.120 like fix certain existential issues with, with privacy tech, so I don't know maybe the 90 00:05:18.120 --> 00:05:20.960 hair helped the channeling, channeling Albert Einstein. 91 00:05:20.960 --> 00:05:21.960 Are those things fixed now? 92 00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:24.120 Well, I mean, I think we'll fix it. 93 00:05:24.120 --> 00:05:29.320 But we'll find out, because we're going to be completely devoid of our network early 94 00:05:29.320 --> 00:05:30.320 next year. 95 00:05:30.320 --> 00:05:35.080 And the issues I was trying to figure out was effectively, how do you actually take a 96 00:05:35.080 --> 00:05:39.120 smart contract, platform like Ethereum, programmable blockchain or world computer, how do 97 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:45.160 you make that fully private without destroying the user experience, the developer experience? 98 00:05:45.160 --> 00:05:46.160 And that's a hard problem. 99 00:05:46.160 --> 00:05:47.160 Stickers are all to solve. 100 00:05:47.160 --> 00:05:51.560 It's why we've been building for five years, but we're pretty confident we've solved 101 00:05:51.560 --> 00:05:52.560 it. 102 00:05:52.640 --> 00:05:54.320 We're building there's so much to get into today. 103 00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:56.120 I guess I'll give listeners some context. 104 00:05:56.120 --> 00:06:00.200 So the Aztec ignition chain is a newly launched chain. 105 00:06:00.200 --> 00:06:01.560 It's not fully launched. 106 00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:03.200 It's in one of the launch phases. 107 00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:04.520 We'll talk about that. 108 00:06:04.520 --> 00:06:09.040 I'm actually at the time, about five years ago, we were talking about one of the first 109 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:15.560 Ethereum rollups, which was a rollup that Aztec team had come up with. 110 00:06:15.560 --> 00:06:17.200 And you guys deployed that. 111 00:06:17.200 --> 00:06:21.000 And then I believe that went into legacy maybe a few years later. 112 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:26.200 But we'll talk about the story of that and now where we are with this new ignition chain 113 00:06:26.200 --> 00:06:31.080 and what all of the features and all of the things that you've built up into that chain 114 00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:32.080 in a moment. 115 00:06:32.080 --> 00:06:34.400 But I guess I want to start with the high level here. 116 00:06:34.400 --> 00:06:43.400 So as you think in about 2025 and going into 2026, can you describe the state of privacy 117 00:06:43.400 --> 00:06:46.720 in Ethereum today, like have we made any progress? 118 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:47.960 Where are we right now? 119 00:06:47.960 --> 00:06:50.240 This has clearly become more of a core value with Ethereum. 120 00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:51.240 People care about it. 121 00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:52.920 People talk about it. 122 00:06:52.920 --> 00:06:58.400 The quality of privacy that you have today versus five years ago, not a huge amount has changed 123 00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:00.520 to be honest. 124 00:07:00.520 --> 00:07:03.040 You know, we're starting to see the seeds of that. 125 00:07:03.040 --> 00:07:06.320 But ultimately Ethereum is a completely transparent network. 126 00:07:06.320 --> 00:07:08.720 When you send transactions through Ethereum, everybody can see what you're doing. 127 00:07:08.720 --> 00:07:09.720 They can see who you are. 128 00:07:09.720 --> 00:07:11.200 They can see who you're recipients are. 129 00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:13.760 They can see the smart contracts you're

calling the programs you're using. 130 00:07:14.080 --> 00:07:16.600 The amount of money that you're sending around. 131 00:07:16.600 --> 00:07:20.760 And this is hugely restricting on what you can actually do with Ethereum. 132 00:07:20.760 --> 00:07:25.160 Just purely being able to not being able to hide your balances is a big problem if you 133 00:07:25.160 --> 00:07:30.560 want to use Ethereum for anything competitive or professional, for example, if you have 134 00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:34.760 a portfolio on Ethereum and you've hedged it and you're trading, well, people can see 135 00:07:34.760 --> 00:07:37.360 your hedges and so they can undermine those. 136 00:07:37.360 --> 00:07:40.800 And we've seen demonstrated tax against that that have happened on Ethereum. 137 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:43.080 They've happened on Hyperliquid. 138 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:48.040 It's also extremely limiting the lack of identity on Ethereum. 139 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:51.240 But I think I can go into that in a separate topic. 140 00:07:51.240 --> 00:07:55.600 So how is the case act that over the past five years, we've made almost, like, has 141 00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:56.920 there been any progress made? 142 00:07:56.920 --> 00:08:00.600 I mean, there are some privacy protocols out there right now. 143 00:08:00.600 --> 00:08:04.320 So there's rail gun, I mean, to know the cash is no longer sanctions. 144 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:07.080 I believe it's no longer considered a terrorist by the American government. 145 00:08:08.080 --> 00:08:14.080 You have a lot of toolkits available that could be used to build products as well. 146 00:08:14.080 --> 00:08:18.080 Kahaku is something which has been developed by Ethereum Foundation. 147 00:08:18.080 --> 00:08:21.080 That's a wallet that uses rail gun, I believe. 148 00:08:21.080 --> 00:08:24.080 But ultimately, and there's been a lot of technological innovation. 149 00:08:24.080 --> 00:08:31.080 The reason for the lack of the limited progress in terms of user-facing products and services 150 00:08:31.080 --> 00:08:34.080 is just it's an extraordinarily hard problem. 151 00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:38.080 We crack this a few years ago, like, how do you do private token balances? 152 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:39.080 How do you transfer them around? 153 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:40.080 Do you use e-cash with pioneers? 154 00:08:40.080 --> 00:08:43.080 Then you have things like rail gun, you had asked to connect. 155 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:47.080 But the challenge is, how do you add probability into that? 156 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:51.080 Because if you want to do anything really advanced with privacy, you need an understanding 157 00:08:51.080 --> 00:08:52.080 of who somebody is. 158 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:57.080 Because you probably need to be able to distinguish reaching good and bad actors just somehow, 159 00:08:57.080 --> 00:09:03.080 given current climates, given user preferences, given the basic, 160 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:06.080 basic needs to create legitimate systems. 161 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:08.080 And that question, who are you? 162 00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:12.080 That's very hard to answer in a permissionless, fairly decentralized network 163 00:09:12.080 --> 00:09:14.080 without having to rely on centralized third parties. 164 00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:18.080 Is that something that the ignition change has kind of cracked? 165 00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:20.080 Who are you talking to about that? 166 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:22.080 Ah, interesting. 167 00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:27.080 Yeah, so I think at a high level, like, the way we've kind of solved identity 168 00:09:27.080 --> 00:09:31.080 is actually, it doesn't just happen to be on kind of the ignition chain. 169 00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:35.080 It's more about kind of, in general, the state of CK technology. 170 00:09:35.080 --> 00:09:38.080 There's kind of teams now building proof of identity. 171 00:09:38.080 --> 00:09:43.080 And previously that was kind of, you know, credentials signed by kind of third parties 172 00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:44.080 like five years ago. 173 00:09:44.080 --> 00:09:49.080 Now we can take your passport and we can verify on chain that it's a valid passport 174 00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:52.080 issued by the UK or issued by the US. 175 00:09:52.080 --> 00:09:56.080 And you can effectively do a proof of personhood 176 00:09:56.080 --> 00:10:00.080 using your existing passport or identity card with a smart contract. 177 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:06.080 And you can selectively disclose any information you want to the chain in that, in that check. 178 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:11.080 So I could prove I'm above 18 or I could prove I'm not from the sanctioned country 179 00:10:11.080 --> 00:10:13.080 or my name's not on the sanctions list. 180 00:10:13.080 --> 00:10:18.080 And so we're now in this world where you can take a zero knowledge proof, 181 00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:20.080 send it to a smart contract. 182 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:23.080 And instead of getting privacy through kind of centralized intermediaries, 183 00:10:23.080 --> 00:10:26.080 you can just directly interact with the blockchain 184 00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:31.080 and make a compliant application that effectively knows that you're not someone. 185 00:10:31.080 --> 00:10:33.080 And that's a huge breakthrough. 186 00:10:33.080 --> 00:10:38.080 And so that's powered by a lot of the technology we've been building over the last five years. 187 00:10:38.080 --> 00:10:41.080 We were programming language called MLA, which makes that very easy. 188 00:10:41.080 --> 00:10:45.080 And Aztecs kind of the default place where you can now deploy these applications. 189 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:50.080 And so I think it's more like, as I was saying, the core tech has come on a long way, 190 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:55.080 but we're still seeing kind of maybe the, maybe the industry catch up. 191 00:10:55.080 --> 00:10:59.080 There was a bit of a chilling

effect that came into effect around tornado cash 192 00:10:59.080 --> 00:11:06.080 and kind of the ban of privacy in the US, which I know you guys are fighting for as well on the front lines. 193 00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:12.080 I think that has maybe slowed down where privacy adoption could be relative 194 00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:14.080 to kind of why it isn't the background. 195 00:11:14.080 --> 00:11:18.080 But we feel very confident that the tech now is ready to kind of make a breakout 196 00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:23.080 because we have these amazing tools like ZK Possible that can put it front to the center again. 197 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:26.080 Let's talk about ZK Possible for a minute in this idea of identity 198 00:11:26.080 --> 00:11:28.080 because I do think you're right. 199 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:34.080 Privacy and identity seem to coexist or at least grow together in some way. 200 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:38.080 And I think the lack of identity solutions, private identity solutions 201 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:43.080 has maybe prevented us from scaling privacy in the way that we want to scale it. 202 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:47.080 I was looking at a lot of bunch of tweets on my timeline over the past few days 203 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:49.080 that looked something like this. 204 00:11:49.080 --> 00:11:53.080 And I think this is a tweet from Martin over at the NOSSAF project. 205 00:11:53.080 --> 00:12:00.080 And he's tweeting a picture of a Google Gemini AI generated deep fake 206 00:12:00.080 --> 00:12:02.080 of somebody with a passport. 207 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:05.080 Actually, this is him with a passport. 208 00:12:05.080 --> 00:12:12.080 He's using an AI prompt to basically deep fake AML KYC Gemini style. 209 00:12:12.080 --> 00:12:18.080 I think everyone listening to this has probably signed up for some sort of digital bank online, 210 00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:23.080 maybe an exchange, and there's some sort of AML KYC type of service. 211 00:12:23.080 --> 00:12:27.080 And the way this goes is usually take a picture of your driver's license 212 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:30.080 or your passport and you send it in. 213 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:35.080 And then there's a proof of personhood type real-time checker 214 00:12:35.080 --> 00:12:37.080 where you take a selfie of yourself. 215 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:40.080 You might look into the camera, you might stare left, you might stare right. 216 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:45.080 And it signifies that this is a human, that this is Ryan S. Adams 217 00:12:45.080 --> 00:12:48.080 and we can let this person in because he's not on a sanction list. 218 00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:52.080 It's interesting that AI is going to break this completely. 219 00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:53.080 Is it not? 220 00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:55.080 I mean, the ability to just deep fake this. 221 00:12:55.080 --> 00:12:58.080 It's like, and I don't know that world governments 222 00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:04.080 or existing compliance regimes have caught on to how fast this is going to happen 223 00:13:04.080 --> 00:13:06.080 and it has already started now. 224 00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:09.080 That method is basically broken. 225 00:13:09.080 --> 00:13:13.080 Can you talk about this and how is something like ZK passport 226 00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:16.080 a change from this regime? 227 00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:18.080 Yeah, maybe I can start. 228 00:13:18.080 --> 00:13:20.080 I think I've got a few good analogies here. 229 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:24.080 So I think since about 12, 15 years ago, 230 00:13:24.080 --> 00:13:29.080 I can, who are the kind of civil aviation kind of body, 231 00:13:29.080 --> 00:13:32.080 started creating e-passports and they created the standard 232 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:37.080 that means that kind of all modern passports and identity cards, 233 00:13:37.080 --> 00:13:38.080 they have a chip in them. 234 00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:42.080 And that chip can be read by an NFC scanner and inside it 235 00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:46.080 it has data that's signed by the issuing authority. 236 00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:48.080 So your government who issued the ID card, 237 00:13:48.080 --> 00:13:50.080 you know, you may not trust fully, 238 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:53.080 but if you live in that country, they're a good source of trust 239 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:56.080 as kind of like a trust authority. 240 00:13:56.080 --> 00:14:00.080 And so what ZK passport does is it uses the same tech that lets you enter 241 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:03.080 through an e-gate when you scan your passport in an e-gate. 242 00:14:03.080 --> 00:14:06.080 What's interesting is they're reading that chip. 243 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:10.080 They're kind of using the, there's a decryption key embedded into the image. 244 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:12.080 They're decrypting information in that chip. 245 00:14:12.080 --> 00:14:15.080 And they're making a zero knowledge proof that that's valid. 246 00:14:15.080 --> 00:14:17.080 So you can hold on for a second here, Joe, 247 00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:21.080 so an NFC chip inside of a nation state password. 248 00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:23.080 Is that counterfeit resistant? 249 00:14:23.080 --> 00:14:25.080 Is that tamper resistant? 250 00:14:25.080 --> 00:14:26.080 Completely. 251 00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:27.080 Yeah. 252 00:14:27.080 --> 00:14:29.080 And then see, it's kind of all of the chips. 253 00:14:29.080 --> 00:14:32.080 There's a big kind of like tree of trust. 254 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:34.080 And so at the top of that tree, 255 00:14:34.080 --> 00:14:37.080 there's a private key stored by a nation state. 256 00:14:37.080 --> 00:14:40.080 And then you can verify that every chip that's issued 257 00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:42.080 and the sign has been signed by that key. 258 00:14:42.080 --> 00:14:45.080 So unless you can get hold of a nation state's private key, 259 00:14:45.080 --> 00:14:49.080 you can't issue and verify a fake passport. 260 00:14:49.080 -->

00:14:51.080 And so this is how we let people into countries. 261 00:14:51.080 --> 00:14:53.080 This is how e-gates work. 262 00:14:53.080 --> 00:14:58.080 And what we're doing kind of in ZK passport is we're taking that same signature 263 00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:00.080 that's embedded inside your passport. 264 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:04.080 And we're verifying it in zero knowledge and getting Ethereum to say, 265 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:05.080 hey, is this valid? 266 00:15:05.080 --> 00:15:09.080 So you can kind of think of like Ethereum is now an e-gate for transactions. 267 00:15:09.080 --> 00:15:13.080 And you know, the same with the same security as you have to enter the US 268 00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:18.080 or the UK or any kind of country we can now get the same either station 269 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:22.080 that you're not on a scientist list or you're from a certain country. 270 00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:25.080 Which is crazy that this is going to never happen before. 271 00:15:25.080 --> 00:15:30.080 And all of the web two companies are still using kind of pictures of your ID 272 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:32.080 and aliveness check. 273 00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:38.080 And so yeah, we're very bullish on this as being kind of a much more private way of doing things. 274 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:43.080 It takes a little bit of a mental model switch because at first when people hear about privacy 275 00:15:43.080 --> 00:15:46.080 they're like, oh, I don't want to put my ID into something. 276 00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:48.080 But that's because Ethereum's fully public. 277 00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:53.080 Now we have like strong zero knowledge proofs and a way to kind of actually encrypt that information 278 00:15:53.080 --> 00:15:54.080 and send it to the blockchain. 279 00:15:54.080 --> 00:15:58.080 You can start to send this information as part of transactions 280 00:15:58.080 --> 00:16:00.080 and prove interesting things about it. 281 00:16:00.080 --> 00:16:05.080 So I think that shift is going to start to come and I think it's really the only way 282 00:16:05.080 --> 00:16:08.080 we have to kind of resist against kind of deep fakes. 283 00:16:08.080 --> 00:16:10.080 So it's going to be exciting 2026, I think. 284 00:16:10.080 --> 00:16:12.080 You can make sure I understand the user flow for ZK Passports. 285 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:15.080 It's been on my list to go, you know, try this and check this out. 286 00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:19.080 And I know it's kind of integrated into the part of the onboarding experience of AsTech 287 00:16:19.080 --> 00:16:21.080 which we'll talk about in a minute. 288 00:16:21.080 --> 00:16:25.080 But so you're saying basically I take my government issued passport. 289 00:16:25.080 --> 00:16:26.080 I have one from the US. 290 00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:28.080 Let's say it has an NFC chip in it. 291 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:30.080 And what do I do? 292 00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:37.080 My phone, like my iPhone with the ZK Passport app can actually has the ability to scan an NFC chip and validate it. 293 00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:38.080 Yeah, I can run through it totally. 294 00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:40.080 So you know, you tap your passport to your phone. 295 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:42.080 It'll scan the chip. 296 00:16:42.080 --> 00:16:43.080 What's going to happen is it's good. 297 00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:47.080 So that chip will give your phone a digital signature of like all the possible data, 298 00:16:47.080 --> 00:16:51.080 like your photo, your passport number, your data birth, your name, blah, blah, blah. 299 00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:54.080 Stuff you don't want to share with the world and what's going to happen is 300 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:58.080 ZK Passport uses our technology to create a zero knowledge proof saying 301 00:16:58.080 --> 00:17:01.080 here's a hash of all this data, like an untouchable hash. 302 00:17:01.080 --> 00:17:04.080 I'm not going to tell you what's inside it, but I can prove to you two things. 303 00:17:04.080 --> 00:17:08.080 A, you know, it's like this person is not from a sanctioned list. 304 00:17:08.080 --> 00:17:10.080 And B, this is quite important. 305 00:17:10.080 --> 00:17:17.080 This person's phone has like what it asks the app is you do is it asks you to take pictures of your face 306 00:17:17.080 --> 00:17:21.080 and your phone's secure on clear that little secure chip in this will say, 307 00:17:21.080 --> 00:17:26.080 this photograph that I've taken, it lines up, it matches the face of the, 308 00:17:26.080 --> 00:17:28.080 it matches the face of the passport. 309 00:17:28.080 --> 00:17:30.080 And so that's also wrapped into the proof. 310 00:17:30.080 --> 00:17:34.080 So you don't just know that somebody possesses a passport from a certain region. 311 00:17:34.080 --> 00:17:39.080 You know that they're also like their life is in like the person holding the passport 312 00:17:39.080 --> 00:17:42.080 is the person running the app. 313 00:17:42.080 --> 00:17:49.080 Okay, so the ZK Passport not only verifies that I have a passport in my possession 314 00:17:49.080 --> 00:17:54.080 and FC chip, but it also does that like as well with my face and sort of matches that. 315 00:17:54.080 --> 00:17:59.080 But that information stays effectively within the secure enclave of my phone. 316 00:17:59.080 --> 00:18:03.080 It doesn't leave your phone because the secure enclave creates a digital signature going, 317 00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:04.080 yeah, this is good. 318 00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:07.080 And then that signature is validated within the ZK Passport proof. 319 00:18:07.080 --> 00:18:11.080 So that's, you know, I think is that works. 320 00:18:11.080 --> 00:18:15.080 You basically, you know, like, yes, they're like, there's a, there was a live this check 321 00:18:15.080 --> 00:18:18.080 formed by like an iPhone or an Android phone. 322 00:18:18.080 --> 00:18:23.080 Of a photo that somebody that matches the photo in the passport. 323 00:18:23.080

--> 00:18:28.080 And that passport is like from a certain region or not from a certain region. 324 00:18:28.080 --> 00:18:30.080 And that's the data that gets broadcast. 325 00:18:30.080 --> 00:18:35.080 So the things that your photograph, your name, data, birth, that stuff, that stays, stays on your phone. 326 00:18:35.080 --> 00:18:36.080 Wow. 327 00:18:36.080 --> 00:18:40.080 Okay, so I mean, even that alone, I know this is a powerful application of ZK. 328 00:18:40.080 --> 00:18:43.080 And it's broader than Aztec. 329 00:18:43.080 --> 00:18:49.080 But that alone with the advent of basically AI deep fake coming out over the next six to 12 months. 330 00:18:49.080 --> 00:18:57.080 I mean, don't all Web2 companies, doesn't the entire financial system, doesn't like everything need to de facto adopt that? 331 00:18:57.080 --> 00:18:59.080 Like, what's the alternative? 332 00:18:59.080 --> 00:19:01.080 Everything happens in person again? 333 00:19:01.080 --> 00:19:03.080 Like that can't be what we do. 334 00:19:03.080 --> 00:19:09.080 Zach keeps saying the privacy is eating the well, but I think this is a clear case of like, like, where is it? 335 00:19:09.080 --> 00:19:10.080 It has to ride a minute. 336 00:19:10.080 --> 00:19:14.080 It's like, I think otherwise we have to stop doing things on the list. 337 00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:15.080 Right. 338 00:19:15.080 --> 00:19:17.080 We're just, you rely on social third parties, right? 339 00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:19.080 Like, everything the ZK passport app does. 340 00:19:19.080 --> 00:19:20.080 Yeah. 341 00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:23.080 You could get the same effect if you just send all your data to a server. 342 00:19:23.080 --> 00:19:25.080 And then that server has your passport data. 343 00:19:25.080 --> 00:19:27.080 And that's often how it works today. 344 00:19:27.080 --> 00:19:31.080 And then you get those servers get hacked and your passport if it gets leaked and it's a nightmare. 345 00:19:31.080 --> 00:19:32.080 Yeah. 346 00:19:32.080 --> 00:19:35.080 But doing it the zero knowledge way is to secure Web doing it for sure. 347 00:19:35.080 --> 00:19:36.080 Okay. 348 00:19:36.080 --> 00:19:38.360 The ZK passport piece of this. 349 00:19:38.360 --> 00:19:42.600 And I guess that that works very natively inside of a crypto system, right? 350 00:19:42.600 --> 00:19:46.720 Because then you know that, you know, this person is who they say they are and maybe they're 351 00:19:46.720 --> 00:19:47.720 not sanctioned. 352 00:19:47.720 --> 00:19:53.880 Just briefly though, how is ZK passport related to the Aztec project? 353 00:19:53.880 --> 00:20:01.400 Is it sort of just an adjacent type of application that can is useful for privacy or are you guys 354 00:20:01.400 --> 00:20:02.400 tied into it? 355 00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:03.400 So a few ways. 356 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:05.760 So it's a team we funded in our ecosystem. 357 00:20:05.760 --> 00:20:08.560 So that's kind of the main, main kind of relation. 358 00:20:08.560 --> 00:20:11.560 But beyond that, there's a few other places where there's overlaps. 359 00:20:11.560 --> 00:20:14.120 So you can take ZK passport proofs. 360 00:20:14.120 --> 00:20:15.960 You can verify them completely off chain. 361 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:19.200 It's a kind of like proof of age on kind of websites. 362 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:24.280 You can verify them in this Ethereum smart contracts or you can also verify them natively 363 00:20:24.280 --> 00:20:26.240 inside Aztec transactions. 364 00:20:26.240 --> 00:20:30.680 And so you can take the zero knowledge proof and Aztec is kind of like the best place to 365 00:20:30.680 --> 00:20:31.680 verify these proofs. 366 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:35.360 So that's kind of one area where they're also related. 367 00:20:35.360 --> 00:20:39.120 And then secondly, we're also using this in our token cell, which is happening at the 368 00:20:39.120 --> 00:20:40.120 moment. 369 00:20:40.120 --> 00:20:46.520 So we've been able to convince Swiss regulators that using a zero knowledge proof of non-sanctions 370 00:20:46.520 --> 00:20:49.120 is a valid form of sanctions check. 371 00:20:49.120 --> 00:20:55.000 So if you want to participate in token cell, you can go and use ZK passport. 372 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.320 And I think for the first time, you can use this kind of zero knowledge proof to prove 373 00:20:59.320 --> 00:21:04.120 to an Ethereum smart contract that you're not on the sanctions list, which is incredibly 374 00:21:04.120 --> 00:21:05.120 exciting. 375 00:21:05.120 --> 00:21:09.320 You can obviously go and do the old way of doing KYP or KYC if you want to, but there's 376 00:21:09.320 --> 00:21:13.160 now a privacy preserving alternative. 377 00:21:13.160 --> 00:21:17.840 And the last way it's related is it's also using is written under the hood in this programming 378 00:21:17.840 --> 00:21:22.240 language we've built called NOAA, which is going to very develop a friendly language 379 00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:24.040 for writing zero knowledge applications. 380 00:21:24.040 --> 00:21:29.120 So because ZK passport team is in our ecosystem, they've been building this in NOAA for the 381 00:21:29.120 --> 00:21:32.480 last kind of 12 or so months, which is exciting to see. 382 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:38.440 So for the ICO, the coin sale that's ongoing right now, ZK passport is effectively used 383 00:21:38.440 --> 00:21:43.680 in lieu of a traditional AML KYC check just to make sure that the entity has not been sanctioned 384 00:21:43.680 --> 00:21:46.080 and is eligible for the token sale. 385 00:21:46.080 --> 00:21:47.080 That's correct. 386 00:21:47.080 --> 00:21:52.800 Yeah, we were able to get the Swiss regulators to kind of first do you know? 387 00:21:52.800 --> 00:21:57.120 This was like a valid form of sanctions check for individuals, so it's pretty exciting. 388 00:21:57.120 --> 00:22:01.160 But will individuals need like later when we go form a net and start, you know,

and 389 00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:03.160 users start using the Aztec chain? 390 00:22:03.160 --> 00:22:07.120 Will they need ZK passport in order to interact with the rest of the protocol or is that 391 00:22:07.120 --> 00:22:08.120 part completely perishing? 392 00:22:08.120 --> 00:22:09.120 That's completely perishing. 393 00:22:09.120 --> 00:22:12.640 You know, from day one on Apple's permission is decentralized. 394 00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:13.800 We have account abstractions. 395 00:22:13.800 --> 00:22:15.880 So how one chooses authorised account? 396 00:22:15.880 --> 00:22:20.920 That's up to up to anyone, but, you know, we weren't to be stressed, we wouldn't be using 397 00:22:20.920 --> 00:22:24.920 ZK passport for that because it's not what we don't think uses will application develop 398 00:22:24.920 --> 00:22:27.920 as well because it's not convenient to carry a passport around everywhere to log into 399 00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:29.880 a Web 3 account. 400 00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:35.480 But if I could segue a little bit, this kind of touches on something with quite a core 401 00:22:35.480 --> 00:22:40.000 issue and value proposition in it inside Aztec, which is, how do you know somebody who 402 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:41.000 somebody is? 403 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:46.560 Let's say you're building an application like a private stablecoin and you need some understanding 404 00:22:46.560 --> 00:22:49.960 that like, for example, like, you know, the person isn't North Korea, right? 405 00:22:49.960 --> 00:22:53.760 Because funds are not, if you can't see what's going on, you need some understanding 406 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:54.760 you're not about. 407 00:22:54.760 --> 00:23:01.400 It's also very important for us to ask Aztec as a network that we give application developers 408 00:23:01.400 --> 00:23:07.440 the tools and the resources to program their applications such that they can give guarantees 409 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:11.440 to their users that their users are not facilitating bad actors. 410 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:15.360 You know, we don't mandate any of this, we just want to make it possible. 411 00:23:15.360 --> 00:23:21.040 And so this ties into something which we're very, very keen on pursuing with Aztec 412 00:23:21.040 --> 00:23:25.480 as an Android ecosystem, which we're calling holistic identity effectively. 413 00:23:25.480 --> 00:23:30.600 Right another way the world works when it comes to identity is, you know, you have some 414 00:23:30.600 --> 00:23:34.200 centralized third party comes up with some kind of standard that's like 200 pages long 415 00:23:34.200 --> 00:23:39.200 and that it gets implemented and it doesn't change because changing it's just too much 416 00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:40.200 effort. 417 00:23:40.200 --> 00:23:44.200 And it means that, you know, this, this kind of identity standard is very rigid and flexible 418 00:23:44.200 --> 00:23:47.720 and can't get used by a lot of applications that could benefit from it. 419 00:23:47.720 --> 00:23:51.240 What we want to do in Aztec is the complete opposite instead of top down as bottom up, 420 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:55.360 the idea is let's say you're an app developer, maybe have some identity needs. 421 00:23:55.360 --> 00:23:59.760 Well, it should be very easy to program those like checks and checks into your application. 422 00:23:59.760 --> 00:24:02.040 You know, we'll provide the libraries and resources. 423 00:24:02.040 --> 00:24:05.600 And in doing so, that application developer is effectively issuing a credential on chain 424 00:24:05.600 --> 00:24:09.440 like an NFT or a token, which is a testing something about a user. 425 00:24:09.440 --> 00:24:13.040 It might be as simple as, you know, this user has a Twitter account with over 100 followers 426 00:24:13.040 --> 00:24:14.960 so they're probably not a bot. 427 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.360 It could be this user has received an email from a certain company. 428 00:24:19.360 --> 00:24:22.200 So I know they have an account for that company and you can use the K, 429 00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:25.600 not zero knowledge as you can email our technology to prove that. 430 00:24:25.600 --> 00:24:29.600 If you have enough of these people participating in that with building these applications, 431 00:24:29.600 --> 00:24:34.720 building these credentials, issuing platforms, then you can start to create meta credentials 432 00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:35.720 on top of that. 433 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:40.440 You can start to wrap a lot of these tokens so that you consistently more concrete about 434 00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:41.440 an individual. 435 00:24:42.120 --> 00:24:44.440 And in doing so, I think you can end up in a while. 436 00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:46.880 We have very strong identity checks. 437 00:24:46.880 --> 00:24:50.000 I didn't understand this, but what's happened is twofold, two things. 438 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:52.600 First of all, it's all using ZK. 439 00:24:52.600 --> 00:24:54.960 So none of the data is leaving the user's device, right? 440 00:24:54.960 --> 00:25:00.200 There's no actual data on chain on the network that is telling you about what somebody is. 441 00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:01.440 It's all encrypted. 442 00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:04.560 But the other important thing is, there's these credentials are not being issued 443 00:25:04.560 --> 00:25:09.440 by centralized third parties that can exert a lot of control over a few participants in the network. 444 00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:14.040 The idea is, we don't want like one identity provider saying, 445 00:25:14.040 --> 00:25:18.160 oh, you're Ryan, you're Joe, we want smart contracts to be able to go, 446 00:25:18.160 --> 00:25:23.480 oh, yeah, you're probably Ryan, but that knowledge has come from possibly hundreds of different 447 00:25:23.480 --> 00:25:24.480 sources all on chain. 448 00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:29.680 That are issued by hundreds of different counter parties so that you have a fully

genuine 449 00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:34.920 decentralized commission with a network that can provide strong identity, strong privacy 450 00:25:34.920 --> 00:25:35.920 benefits. 451 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:41.120 In that world, the nation states and government and passport issuers are just one more tester 452 00:25:41.120 --> 00:25:42.120 essentially. 453 00:25:42.120 --> 00:25:45.520 And they're able to attest citizenship and some other things with some certainty. 454 00:25:45.520 --> 00:25:48.440 But there are many hundreds of attesters. 455 00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:53.240 This has been kind of a promise that Ethereum has made for quite a while. 456 00:25:53.240 --> 00:25:57.120 There's kind of like an Ethereum identity protocols that have been proposed. 457 00:25:57.120 --> 00:26:01.000 How come we've not gotten this on Ethereum already? 458 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:11.320 And what is Aztec specifically doing to bootstrap, ZK, attestation, to be able to provide 459 00:26:11.320 --> 00:26:13.040 richer identity services? 460 00:26:13.040 --> 00:26:17.320 I think the main thing is that the early versions of this required an intermediary. 461 00:26:17.320 --> 00:26:19.960 So it was like, hey, give your data to the service. 462 00:26:19.960 --> 00:26:23.080 Then they'll sign a message saying you did the thing. 463 00:26:23.080 --> 00:26:28.240 So it could be that you control this email account or that you have this money followers 464 00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:31.760 on Twitter, but it was all intermediated. 465 00:26:31.760 --> 00:26:32.760 Then there were some projects. 466 00:26:32.760 --> 00:26:39.000 I think probably one had a project around kind of like ZKID, but a lot of it, like the credentials 467 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:45.400 that you want use Web2 cryptography, which notoriously is very hard to kind of prove things 468 00:26:45.400 --> 00:26:46.400 about in ZK. 469 00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:52.040 And so we needed some breakthroughs in the kind of cryptography technology to actually make 470 00:26:52.040 --> 00:26:53.040 this possible. 471 00:26:53.040 --> 00:26:56.600 So I think like now we're in a world where it is possible. 472 00:26:56.600 --> 00:27:00.280 It's always been the promise, but I think we haven't been there today because either 473 00:27:00.280 --> 00:27:05.200 the tech wasn't fast enough to prove things locally on your device, or it was just done 474 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:07.920 through intermediaries before and that didn't really catch on. 475 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:12.440 It was going to be against the whole thesis of Ethereum, which was like removed into 476 00:27:12.440 --> 00:27:13.440 intermediaries. 477 00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:17.080 And so I think those two reasons are why it hasn't happened in Aztec. 478 00:27:17.080 --> 00:27:22.040 I think the main reason why we think it's going to take off is because every transaction 479 00:27:22.040 --> 00:27:23.320 is a ZKID proof. 480 00:27:23.320 --> 00:27:27.400 So there's no way for you to kind of like leak this information. 481 00:27:27.400 --> 00:27:32.600 You can bring in all different types of data sources into one transaction on Aztec and 482 00:27:32.600 --> 00:27:37.800 verify them all succinctly and cheaply when you send that transaction to the blockchain. 483 00:27:37.800 --> 00:27:44.120 So I think that alone should encourage developers to start experimenting, and we should just 484 00:27:44.120 --> 00:27:47.880 see this take off naturally as much as we can expand on that as well. 485 00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:53.080 One other key thing is you really need a fully private by default blockchain for any 486 00:27:53.080 --> 00:27:57.640 of this to work, and this concept of private composability, basically. 487 00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:01.080 I can write a private smart contract and I can just code it up like in a regular normal 488 00:28:01.080 --> 00:28:05.480 looking programming language, like noir, and my contract can call other private smart 489 00:28:05.480 --> 00:28:08.960 contracts written by other people and they can call other private smart contracts. 490 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:11.840 And this all gets bundled up into in a single transaction that user sends. 491 00:28:11.840 --> 00:28:13.760 It just works. 492 00:28:13.760 --> 00:28:15.520 That's not possible anywhere else. 493 00:28:15.560 --> 00:28:17.480 I'll give an example of why it doesn't work on Ethereum right now. 494 00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:21.000 Let's say you want to build some kind of identity standard system on Ethereum, right? 495 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:24.000 You need ZK because that data can't be transparent. 496 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:26.440 You can't, you know, you're not going to put passport, number, social security numbers 497 00:28:26.440 --> 00:28:28.280 on a public ledger. 498 00:28:28.280 --> 00:28:30.320 So you do something in ZK. 499 00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:34.040 And that right now on Ethereum, because Ethereum doesn't have default privacy requires 500 00:28:34.040 --> 00:28:39.160 you writing some complicated ZKID circuits and providing some complicated ZKID software 501 00:28:39.160 --> 00:28:43.640 for users to generate this required proofs sent into Ethereum. 502 00:28:43.640 --> 00:28:46.960 So now let's see if someone's built that and now I come along and I have an app and 503 00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:49.920 I'm like, well, I need a slightly different concept of identity. 504 00:28:49.920 --> 00:28:52.080 So I've got to build my own and I've got to do this for again. 505 00:28:52.080 --> 00:28:55.960 And I've got my own ZK system stuff and my own ZK software and let's see if there's 506 00:28:55.960 --> 00:28:59.720 a third app, which is like some exchange or an AMM in it and it says, okay, well, I want 507 00:28:59.720 --> 00:29:04.160 to interface with these two identity platforms because I need both of them to interoperate. 508 00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:07.800 Well now I have to inherit their complicated tooling and software on

my end. 509 00:29:07.800 --> 00:29:10.840 And if anybody wants to incorporate my app, they have to do the same. 510 00:29:10.840 --> 00:29:16.600 And you have this kind of explosion of complexity because every privacy solution on Ethereum 511 00:29:16.600 --> 00:29:20.360 has to be its own like hand-coded circuit with its own tool chain. 512 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:21.840 That's not the case on Aztec, right? 513 00:29:21.840 --> 00:29:26.280 You can code up your whatever your program's doing, it was doing identity or games or whatever 514 00:29:26.280 --> 00:29:27.280 it's doing. 515 00:29:27.280 --> 00:29:32.600 You just code it and not and your contract has an interface that gets exposed, right? 516 00:29:32.600 --> 00:29:36.800 And then you can just ask your nodes to call the contract and it just works. 517 00:29:36.800 --> 00:29:41.120 So you can actually start to build these composable private systems with a real network 518 00:29:41.120 --> 00:29:42.120 effect. 519 00:29:42.120 --> 00:29:46.480 One of the things that I feel like has always been central to the Aztec project as you've 520 00:29:46.480 --> 00:29:51.120 moved through different iterations of what this looks like is actually bringing privacy 521 00:29:51.120 --> 00:29:53.840 to Ethereum specifically. 522 00:29:53.840 --> 00:30:00.800 And I think maybe the reason for that is because you want to make privacy programmable. 523 00:30:00.800 --> 00:30:04.760 So privacy does exist in pockets. 524 00:30:04.760 --> 00:30:10.360 You have a chain like Zcash, for instance, which tries to accomplish kind of a Bitcoin 525 00:30:10.360 --> 00:30:18.240 transactional UTXO model style chain and provides privacy around that. 526 00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:25.000 We also have things like rail gun or tornado, which maybe allows for privacy pools and 527 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.240 kind of like shielded transactions in some small form. 528 00:30:29.240 --> 00:30:34.560 I think the main thing behind Aztec and why I've long thought that this was sort of 529 00:30:34.560 --> 00:30:41.360 the promise at least is the Holy Grail is actually bringing Ethereum's Turing complete 530 00:30:41.360 --> 00:30:48.520 programmability, which implies all of DeFi and everything that can be built on top of 531 00:30:48.520 --> 00:30:51.440 Ethereum, bringing privacy to that. 532 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:52.440 You talk about that. 533 00:30:52.440 --> 00:30:55.440 Is that still kind of the mission behind Aztec? 534 00:30:55.440 --> 00:31:01.280 I think part of my question going to this is like, okay, this took a long time. 535 00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:02.800 I know you guys have been hard at work. 536 00:31:02.800 --> 00:31:05.560 I know it's not like you've been slacking off for the past five years playing with meme 537 00:31:05.560 --> 00:31:06.560 coins. 538 00:31:06.560 --> 00:31:07.880 You've been hard at work on this. 539 00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:08.880 Is that the big thing? 540 00:31:08.880 --> 00:31:12.720 Is that why

it took so long is because you needed to preserve the programmability? 541 00:31:12.720 --> 00:31:13.960 Maybe talk about that. 542 00:31:13.960 --> 00:31:15.280 Why is that the mission? 543 00:31:15.280 --> 00:31:16.280 And why was that so hard? 544 00:31:16.280 --> 00:31:17.280 Yeah, 100%. 545 00:31:17.280 --> 00:31:22.040 So that does definitely still the mission and we're going to get there in two ways. 546 00:31:22.040 --> 00:31:27.400 I think the first way I think is to maybe look back at what we talked about last time 547 00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:31.960 on the podcast, which was kind of how we can bring privacy to existing DeFi. 548 00:31:31.960 --> 00:31:35.280 And that was with a product we called Aztec Connect. 549 00:31:35.280 --> 00:31:40.440 And what we had with Aztec Connect was a way to effectively have Cache style transactions 550 00:31:40.440 --> 00:31:46.400 for any ERC20 on a roll-up with built, but we gave that roll-up the ability to interact 551 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:48.640 with other Ethereum smart contracts. 552 00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:54.240 So if you send a transaction from the kind of Aztec Connect to back then, you could bridge 553 00:31:54.240 --> 00:31:58.600 funds effectively to any DeFi on layer one. 554 00:31:58.600 --> 00:32:04.400 We have built that functionality into kind of every smart contract on the new Aztec 555 00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:05.400 chain. 556 00:32:05.400 --> 00:32:10.920 And so by default in this chain, you can now bridge funds from many Ethereum smart contract 557 00:32:10.920 --> 00:32:13.480 and any Ethereum out to smart contract. 558 00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:17.960 And the reason this works is because Aztec's block space is differentiated. 559 00:32:17.960 --> 00:32:21.280 If you send a transaction from Aztec, the block space is private. 560 00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:27.560 And so you can bridge funds to base or to arbitrary or to optimism, can bridge an intent 561 00:32:27.560 --> 00:32:29.040 to those networks. 562 00:32:29.040 --> 00:32:34.200 And you can interact with existing pools of DeFi without having to rebuild Uniswap or 563 00:32:34.200 --> 00:32:38.400 are they on Aztec itself, which is really exciting. 564 00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:43.360 And the reason it's taken so long is exactly kind of what you were trying to say earlier 565 00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:46.000 around preserving composability. 566 00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:50.600 When we had the old version of Aztec, we wrote all the smart contracts that existed 567 00:32:50.600 --> 00:32:51.600 inside Aztec. 568 00:32:51.600 --> 00:32:54.160 Effectively, there were three smart contracts. 569 00:32:54.160 --> 00:32:59.720 There was an account contract, a joint split contract for transfers and a DeFi contract. 570 00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:02.160 And we had to kind of audit them all against each other. 571 00:33:02.160 --> 00:33:06.480 They were all written in C++ and composability was a nightmare. 572 00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:11.160 What we realized

kind of with that old version of Aztec is that in order for this to take 573 00:33:11.160 --> 00:33:17.720 off, we had to build programmability and composability between smart contracts into the protocol 574 00:33:17.720 --> 00:33:22.000 and have it such that a smart contract could call another smart contract without the core 575 00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:24.360 team having to kind of audit it and write it. 576 00:33:24.360 --> 00:33:29.000 So that was the big breakthrough that took many years to get right. 577 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:33.560 But effectively, what it means now is that you can have this programmable composability 578 00:33:33.560 --> 00:33:34.960 within Aztec. 579 00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:40.360 And each Aztec contract can call five contracts within Aztec, the L2. 580 00:33:40.360 --> 00:33:44.600 And then you can also have the result end up on another L2 or Ethereum. 581 00:33:44.600 --> 00:33:48.040 And you get incredibly strong privacy guarantees as a result. 582 00:33:48.040 --> 00:33:53.000 So we kind of view also a bit like a privacy left for all of Ethereum. 583 00:33:53.000 --> 00:33:59.080 And it doesn't matter kind of where the transaction ends up because you're kind of moving funds 584 00:33:59.080 --> 00:34:02.600 as a user through Aztec, you get privacy as a result of doing that. 585 00:34:02.600 --> 00:34:04.080 It's a private world computer, right? 586 00:34:04.080 --> 00:34:05.080 Right. 587 00:34:05.080 --> 00:34:06.080 Right. 588 00:34:06.320 --> 00:34:12.400 Like our goal of being a private Ethereum, yes, you know, that privacy check, I think, 589 00:34:12.400 --> 00:34:16.640 right now, before Aztec, I know there's been some years away from this, but as largely 590 00:34:16.640 --> 00:34:19.040 in terms of the applications you can use, it's private Bitcoin. 591 00:34:19.040 --> 00:34:19.960 That's what it really is. 592 00:34:19.960 --> 00:34:22.640 And we want to make it with privacy tech, private Ethereum. 593 00:34:22.640 --> 00:34:27.360 That programmable world computer is the thing that really captured us in the early days. 594 00:34:27.360 --> 00:34:32.880 You know, the idea that you can write any kind of software you can write like a decentralized 595 00:34:32.880 --> 00:34:35.680 bank, you can do assets, you can do finance, you can do derivatives, you can do voting, 596 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:37.200 you can do governance. 597 00:34:37.200 --> 00:34:41.000 It makes Ethereum, it's not just a financial technology like Bitcoin. 598 00:34:41.000 --> 00:34:42.000 It's a social technology. 599 00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:47.040 It's a way of organizing people and organizing communities and getting them to like coordinate 600 00:34:47.040 --> 00:34:49.760 and collaborate on shared projects. 601 00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:54.760 And that's that side of Ethereum, I think, is very constrained and limited because of the 602 00:34:54.760 --> 00:34:55.760 lack of privacy. 603 00:34:55.760 --> 00:34:57.880 The financial side is limited by the lack of privacy. 604 00:34:57.880 --> 00:34:58.880 It's all limited by privacy. 605 00:34:58.880 --> 00:35:01.800 You know, we came into this looking at privacy, thinking, well, this is like the missing 606 00:35:01.800 --> 00:35:07.600 ingredient to make Ethereum really big, really, really big, you know, like the world-spanning 607 00:35:07.600 --> 00:35:09.840 financial infrastructure. 608 00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:12.640 So yeah, we've been obsessed with it for years. 609 00:35:12.640 --> 00:35:18.920 The private world computer bringing privacy to all of Ethereum, the Aztec ignition chain 610 00:35:18.920 --> 00:35:20.120 is a layer two. 611 00:35:20.120 --> 00:35:26.920 And Joe, when you were talking about this, you were using terms like composability. 612 00:35:26.920 --> 00:35:32.240 And I think the experience that users have with layer two is not quite composability. 613 00:35:32.240 --> 00:35:36.480 In fact, they might use the term fragmentation instead. 614 00:35:36.480 --> 00:35:41.240 So the typical experience of using a layer two is it almost feels like going to a separate 615 00:35:41.240 --> 00:35:43.280 country, you know, a separate chain, right? 616 00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:49.560 So like, I take my whatever asset on Ether and if I want to go trade it for an asset, 617 00:35:49.560 --> 00:35:53.240 on Ethereum rather, if I want to go trade it for an asset on base, I have to go through 618 00:35:53.240 --> 00:35:58.080 this whole process of like bridging to this layer two and there's a different set of liquidity 619 00:35:58.080 --> 00:35:59.480 and there's kind of a different UX. 620 00:35:59.480 --> 00:36:02.360 I feel like I'm in a different land altogether. 621 00:36:02.360 --> 00:36:11.200 How does, I guess, how does Aztec in because it is a layer two, how does it blanket existing 622 00:36:11.200 --> 00:36:14.680 Ethereum with privacy and preserves from that composability? 623 00:36:14.680 --> 00:36:19.520 It would be helpful here is if you took listeners through a typical flow. 624 00:36:19.520 --> 00:36:25.680 Let's say they have Ether as an asset and they want to get some USDC, okay, and they 625 00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:32.040 want to make a trade, exchange my ether for USDC and they want to do that privately, okay? 626 00:36:32.040 --> 00:36:37.040 Do they have to go through this process of I got to go bridge my ether all the way to Aztec? 627 00:36:37.040 --> 00:36:42.840 I get to Aztec and there's limited liquidity for USDC. 628 00:36:42.840 --> 00:36:47.680 I'm getting worse trade execution and I'm in this Aztec world and by the way, it took 629 00:36:47.680 --> 00:36:52.160 a long time to bridge and it's a pain in the ass and then when I want to move my USDC 630 00:36:52.160 --> 00:36:58.800 back to Ethereum someday, then it's a whole nother process, is that the user experience 631 00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:00.640 or can we do something better? 632 00:37:00.640 --> 00:37:05.520 When you said composability, I was

hopeful for a feeling that I'm still on layer one 633 00:37:05.520 --> 00:37:10.080 but I'm somehow in my wallet, I'm being able to click a button that says like do this 634 00:37:10.080 --> 00:37:16.360 incognito or do this transaction privately and it just seamlessly happens for me. 635 00:37:16.360 --> 00:37:18.080 Is that a world we could live in? 636 00:37:18.080 --> 00:37:23.240 I think the answer is yes and no, under the hood, bridging still has to occur. 637 00:37:23.240 --> 00:37:27.680 It depends on how much you abstract that from the user. 638 00:37:27.680 --> 00:37:31.600 To walk through the flow, there's two ways it can work. 639 00:37:31.600 --> 00:37:36.840 One way is the user moves their funds to Aztec and you do have to go for a bridging 640 00:37:36.840 --> 00:37:42.600 flow but when you do the bridging from Aztec, you can pick any destination chain, you can 641 00:37:42.600 --> 00:37:48.040 pick which liquidity you want to trade against and you get privacy as a result of doing 642 00:37:48.040 --> 00:37:49.040 it. 643 00:37:49.040 --> 00:37:54.240 It's like you take the existing bridging flows which can suck but you're at least giving 644 00:37:54.240 --> 00:37:58.360 them a reason to go through them because when they go through them from Aztec, you will 645 00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:01.080 get privacy by default. 646 00:38:01.080 --> 00:38:03.920 That's one flow and maybe let's just make it up. 647 00:38:03.920 --> 00:38:08.560 If I'm bridging and I want to go to base, you're saying I can go through Aztec first 648 00:38:08.560 --> 00:38:14.240 and then I'm starting from privacy, so the private instance of base. 649 00:38:14.240 --> 00:38:17.000 Aztec is your pass through chain. 650 00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:18.880 That's the best way to think about it. 651 00:38:18.880 --> 00:38:24.000 It's a bit like the whole intent meta, near intent is a great example of what's happening 652 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.240 going up with near intent on Zcash. 653 00:38:27.240 --> 00:38:32.000 Effectively, as an Aztec user, you would have, let's say, you have ten-eat on Aztec 654 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:36.320 and you decide you want to switch it for the USDC on base. 655 00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:42.400 We use a transaction on the Aztec out too that says, I want to swap ten-eat on base 656 00:38:42.400 --> 00:38:50.440 for USDC and the world sees someone on Aztec wants to swap ten-eat for base on USDC and they 657 00:38:50.440 --> 00:38:54.040 want the funds to be sent back to Aztec. 658 00:38:54.040 --> 00:38:58.000 What happens under the hood is a relay comes along and they pick up that intent, they 659 00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:02.480 fill it for you and they return you the funds and they can return the funds to Aztec, 660 00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:07.200 they can return the funds to a brand new account, a transaction account on base that's 661 00:39:07.200 --> 00:39:11.560 controlled by Aztec, they could even return the funds to a Ethereum mainnet if they wanted 662 00:39:11.560 --> 00:39:12.560 to. 663 00:39:12.560 --> 00:39:17.960 There's lots of different ways this pans out, but effectively because the user who's 664 00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:23.600 doing the transaction is not known inside Aztec, you get a degree of privacy doing this. 665 00:39:23.600 --> 00:39:28.360 There are other ways to do this directly from your Ethereum wallet, but that requires 666 00:39:28.360 --> 00:39:33.760 a little bit of adoption on the L1 wallet stage, which obviously hasn't happened yet 667 00:39:33.760 --> 00:39:37.800 because Aztec is brand new, but over time, I think there will be ways to streamline this 668 00:39:37.800 --> 00:39:41.760 under the hood, so you may not even know that you're bridging when you do this and there's 669 00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:46.760 a lot of work going on in the Ethereum space right now to try and unfrag my Ethereum and that 670 00:39:46.760 --> 00:39:51.080 will just make it even easier for us to bridge privately to other chains. 671 00:39:51.080 --> 00:39:57.840 I think it's going to be exciting to see this bridging or private intent play out and 672 00:39:57.840 --> 00:40:01.600 the way I think about Aztec in the short term is kind of what percentage of transactions 673 00:40:01.600 --> 00:40:06.040 on all these L2s would like to have some privacy, and I think a decent percentage of users 674 00:40:06.040 --> 00:40:12.240 will be about those transactions through Aztec as a way to maintain some of their privacy. 675 00:40:12.240 --> 00:40:16.280 You can go a step further as well and say that when you route through Aztec, you can 676 00:40:16.280 --> 00:40:21.800 enforce logic ahead of those transactions, so let's say you have now a real world asset 677 00:40:21.800 --> 00:40:26.960 pool on Arbitram where only people in the UK can interact with the pool. 678 00:40:26.960 --> 00:40:32.160 You can put as the passport proof ahead of the transactions on Aztec and say, okay, 679 00:40:32.160 --> 00:40:38.280 well we want to enforce the only users who have UK passports can interact with this pool 680 00:40:38.280 --> 00:40:45.400 and the same flow as possible and what you would see in public was someone on Aztec who 681 00:40:45.400 --> 00:40:50.240 has a UK passport wants to trade with this pool and you would have a guarantee from Aztec 682 00:40:50.240 --> 00:40:54.880 backed by Ethereum because we're now too that kind of rolls up to Ethereum that this is 683 00:40:54.880 --> 00:41:01.720 true and so you get this incredibly strong privacy credentials as a result and then 684 00:41:01.720 --> 00:41:07.200 over time we will see let new defies start to be created on Aztec, but I think that 685 00:41:07.200 --> 00:41:13.520 will mostly be, we won't be recreating Uniswakura, we'll be building defy that requires privacy 686 00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:18.600 built into it to function and a good example is maybe the difference between an AMM and 687 00:41:18.600 --> 00:41:19.600 an OTC desk.

688 00:41:19.600 --> 00:41:24.320 So there will be kind of new defy parameters built to Aztec because privacy expands 689 00:41:24.320 --> 00:41:29.040 the design space, but in the short term we'll see a lot of this kind of private intent 690 00:41:29.040 --> 00:41:32.320 flow to kind of bring privacy to all of Ethereum. 691 00:41:32.320 --> 00:41:33.320 Fascinating, okay. 692 00:41:33.320 --> 00:41:37.680 So the private intent flow is really part of the unlock here that really allows Aztec 693 00:41:37.680 --> 00:41:43.200 to blanket the rest of Ethereum and all of the layer 2s, the L1 and the layer 2 with 694 00:41:43.200 --> 00:41:47.360 privacy rather because I think a lot of people listing might be stuck in the paradigm 695 00:41:47.360 --> 00:41:53.720 of rollups from 2023, 2024 and even 2025, which is if you start a new rollup, the 696 00:41:53.720 --> 00:41:58.400 number one thing you have to do is you have to go copy paste all of the existing Ethereum 697 00:41:58.400 --> 00:41:59.600 defy protocols. 698 00:41:59.600 --> 00:42:06.120 So I need my version of Ave, I need my version of Uniswak, I need all of the different 699 00:42:06.120 --> 00:42:11.400 primitives that I find on Ethereum and they have to copy and paste this and then bootstrap 700 00:42:11.400 --> 00:42:16.560 the liquidity and of course these ecosystems need to port their contracts and that gives 701 00:42:16.560 --> 00:42:19.520 me a little containerized ecosystem, right? 702 00:42:19.520 --> 00:42:23.840 That's the way maybe I was thinking about Aztec going in or some listeners are thinking 703 00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:25.320 about it going in. 704 00:42:25.320 --> 00:42:27.120 You're saying that's not the case. 705 00:42:27.120 --> 00:42:32.680 Effectively, the entire Ethereum ecosystem, all the layer 2s, all of the defy protocols 706 00:42:32.680 --> 00:42:39.960 on Ethereum mainnet, they can using private intents basically tap into Aztec privacy on 707 00:42:39.960 --> 00:42:45.240 demand, you know, at request and I guess, you know, maybe talking about the user experience 708 00:42:45.240 --> 00:42:50.040 of that, if that's painful at first because it's not directly integrated into wallets, 709 00:42:50.040 --> 00:42:55.440 I don't know if that causes additional transaction fees or delays, but the idea is you're able 710 00:42:55.440 --> 00:43:00.800 to link at the entire Ethereum ecosystem and everything in defy all of the liquidity 711 00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:05.040 with privacy rather than having to copy and paste and start from scratch. 712 00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:06.640 Am I understanding this correctly, Joe? 713 00:43:06.640 --> 00:43:07.640 Yeah, definitely. 714 00:43:07.640 --> 00:43:13.120 All we need kind of when the chain, like transactions are enabled on the chain is one UI that enables 715 00:43:13.120 --> 00:43:18.120 you to deposit a Ethereum wallet and you could have, because we have really a native account 716 00:43:18.120 --> 00:43:22.800 abstraction features, you could just go to that UI, that data, and it can give you access 717 00:43:22.800 --> 00:43:24.200 to all of the Ethereum privately. 718 00:43:24.200 --> 00:43:28.120 So that's like one smart contract on Aztec, which enables all of that. 719 00:43:28.120 --> 00:43:33.120 And obviously, you could have much more expressive contracts and so we're excited about the 720 00:43:33.120 --> 00:43:38.720 design space kind of expanding, but it was one simple kind of bridging contract and 721 00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:40.640 we have, I think, two teams have built them already. 722 00:43:40.640 --> 00:43:46.480 The one whole team and a team called, let's get their name for now, but the one whole team 723 00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:51.800 is photo bridge and yeah, that basically gives you that functionality for free and you 724 00:43:51.800 --> 00:43:54.600 don't need to bootstrap any new liquidity. 725 00:43:54.600 --> 00:43:59.680 You just need users to kind of decide they want privacy, which I think most people do. 726 00:43:59.680 --> 00:44:01.640 And that should be a very compelling use case. 727 00:44:01.640 --> 00:44:06.360 So in my wallet, I want privacy for this particular swap transaction. 728 00:44:06.360 --> 00:44:12.080 This is in the far future, maybe, and I click the make my transaction private button. 729 00:44:12.080 --> 00:44:17.520 Will this require additional fees from user perspective, does Aztec kind of take a cut? 730 00:44:17.520 --> 00:44:21.920 And what about the time, right, like to bridge to get the kind of the water filled, all 731 00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:22.920 of that. 732 00:44:22.920 --> 00:44:25.320 Will that add some delay to my transaction as well? 733 00:44:25.320 --> 00:44:27.000 Yeah, it does add some fees. 734 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:31.440 You have to send a transaction through Aztec, but we're led to some like most other transactions 735 00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:36.460 will have kind of two to five cent transactions, so there'll be some, some fee you have to 736 00:44:36.460 --> 00:44:41.200 pay to Aztec, it's fairly nominal and a fixed fee. 737 00:44:41.200 --> 00:44:45.880 And most of these use cases require one block on Aztec and one block on the destination 738 00:44:45.880 --> 00:44:47.320 chain to kind of fulfill. 739 00:44:47.320 --> 00:44:52.640 So there's a little bit of latency, but with block times coming down to be kind of like 740 00:44:52.640 --> 00:44:57.920 some Ethereum blocks, like it should be, it should be kind of a pretty great UX in the 741 00:44:57.920 --> 00:44:58.920 near future. 742 00:44:58.920 --> 00:45:04.520 I think it's, you know, from, from a kind of, when the transactions confirm to when 743 00:45:04.520 --> 00:45:08.080 actually settles, there's a difference there, but from a user perspective, they should 744 00:45:08.080 --> 00:45:10.440 just send the transaction and it's kind of set up for you to add to that. 745 00:45:10.440 --> 00:45:14.120 I think it's, I think it's a substance

lapse in train and the other other engineering 746 00:45:14.120 --> 00:45:17.280 partners that we're tapping to, that we're working with. 747 00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:22.520 I think it's just a true, like high level, like the fundamental reason why we are doing 748 00:45:22.520 --> 00:45:27.080 this, what we can do this is because, like, bridging into an out of Aztec, in my opinion, 749 00:45:27.080 --> 00:45:32.120 is very positive sum and it's quite unique because most, most delties are parasitic to 750 00:45:32.120 --> 00:45:36.840 their L ones because, you know, you want your own liquidity, as you said, it's fragmented. 751 00:45:36.840 --> 00:45:38.040 That's because of the incentives, right? 752 00:45:38.040 --> 00:45:41.800 Every protocol wants to send a legal system and they're all largely undifferentiated, right? 753 00:45:41.800 --> 00:45:45.040 They all have AMMs, they all have lending markets, they all, they all have the same stuff 754 00:45:45.040 --> 00:45:48.000 and so they're all trans-compute with the same liquidity. 755 00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:52.960 With Aztec, there's a very unique distinction, which is that there is value in bridging 756 00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:59.080 not assets, but information into an out of Aztec, where if a transparent network wants 757 00:45:59.080 --> 00:46:03.160 to either, like, do some kind of permission request that requires knowledge of a user, 758 00:46:03.160 --> 00:46:06.720 they can send a request into Aztec going, hey, is this person who they came to be, are 759 00:46:06.720 --> 00:46:07.720 they allowed to do this? 760 00:46:07.720 --> 00:46:11.760 And then, yes, the network can perform the checks encrypted in an encrypted way and then 761 00:46:11.760 --> 00:46:17.680 send back guests or no, or you can use intense perform bridging to get access to private 762 00:46:17.680 --> 00:46:18.680 funds for DeFi. 763 00:46:18.680 --> 00:46:24.720 By the way, the assets, they're long, some home is on some other network. 764 00:46:24.720 --> 00:46:29.240 What's happening inside Aztec is really information processing, but we get fees from that. 765 00:46:29.240 --> 00:46:33.760 So we're happy as an network and the other L2s and L1s are happy because they get added 766 00:46:33.760 --> 00:46:36.200 value from connecting with Aztec. 767 00:46:36.200 --> 00:46:40.680 So I think you're going to see a very different dynamic between Aztec and the rest of the ecosystem 768 00:46:40.680 --> 00:46:44.040 that you don't see with transparent L2s. 769 00:46:44.040 --> 00:46:45.040 So is this it? 770 00:46:45.040 --> 00:46:46.800 Does this solve privacy on Ethereum? 771 00:46:46.800 --> 00:46:47.800 Like, are we done? 772 00:46:48.040 --> 00:46:52.480 And here, once I know Aztec isn't fully made net, we'll talk about that, but once it 773 00:46:52.480 --> 00:47:00.640 is, once Wallace integrated, we have private transactions for everything in DeFi, correct? 774 00:47:00.640 --> 00:47:01.640 Is that it? 775 00:47:01.640

--> 00:47:04.400 Or is there is there something that Aztec doesn't solve here? 776 00:47:04.400 --> 00:47:10.360 Well, I'll try and be, it's more I know, I mean, it does largely solve it on my opinion. 777 00:47:10.360 --> 00:47:13.840 I think that the challenges execution, right, we know a lot of app developers that grind 778 00:47:13.840 --> 00:47:15.680 to the call face to build these systems. 779 00:47:15.680 --> 00:47:18.680 We need to look like we need work from Wallace developers to integrate. 780 00:47:18.680 --> 00:47:23.120 But fundamentally, yes, we're way, basically, when Aztec launches where Ethereum was in 781 00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:25.120 2015, but for privacy. 782 00:47:25.120 --> 00:47:28.560 So we have a lot of work to do, like we're not going away, we're going to keep pushing 783 00:47:28.560 --> 00:47:30.520 the boundaries because we want the network to scale. 784 00:47:30.520 --> 00:47:33.360 We want it to be faster, more throughput, we want it to be cheaper, but we want it to 785 00:47:33.360 --> 00:47:35.680 be more seamless, faster block times. 786 00:47:35.680 --> 00:47:39.960 So there's all sorts of work we can and I'm are going to do that. 787 00:47:39.960 --> 00:47:45.160 But the fundamental primitives of what you can do, yeah, they'll be, they should be 788 00:47:45.160 --> 00:47:46.160 possible. 789 00:47:46.160 --> 00:47:50.200 You know, feel free to call me and jump out on this in 12 months time, right? 790 00:47:50.200 --> 00:47:54.040 If you can't do this stuff, if you can't bridge privately, you can't tap into Ethereum, 791 00:47:54.040 --> 00:47:57.280 if I privately call ourselves on this because this is our goal, this is our dream. 792 00:47:57.280 --> 00:48:00.040 Wow, that's amazing. 793 00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:03.800 So this is not live yet completely, let's talk about what is live. 794 00:48:03.800 --> 00:48:10.320 So there was a mainnet launch of the Aztec ignition chain, but I think this has been 795 00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:15.000 described to me as almost like a beacon chain type launch, whereas it's, it's available 796 00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:21.040 for sequencers or maybe call them validators, I wanted to find that role to just sort of 797 00:48:21.040 --> 00:48:24.400 get involved in the network and help run some of the infrastructure. 798 00:48:24.400 --> 00:48:26.560 It's not available for users yet. 799 00:48:26.560 --> 00:48:32.240 It will be available for users, I think in 2026, all of the flows that we talked about 800 00:48:32.240 --> 00:48:33.560 will be possible. 801 00:48:33.560 --> 00:48:39.480 You talk about what has launched specifically right now and what is yet to be launched, 802 00:48:39.640 --> 00:48:44.840 we're waiting kind of last week at 1am in DevConnect for the ignition chain to launch 803 00:48:44.840 --> 00:48:45.840 decentralized. 804 00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:51.320 So we don't run a single node, the community runs all its nodes, so it's very easy to run 805 00:48:51.320 --> 00:48:52.320 a node. 806 00:48:52.320 --> 00:48:55.360 So if there are people listening who are kind of home-stakers, there are things you could 807 00:48:55.360 --> 00:48:59.920 do today whilst you're waiting, you can go and help secure the ignition chain and test 808 00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:00.920 it out. 809 00:49:00.920 --> 00:49:06.360 So you just need some Aztec tokens and you can stake as a sequencer and validator at the 810 00:49:06.360 --> 00:49:11.320 same meaning on Aztec and you will be elected for a committee and you can help produce 811 00:49:11.320 --> 00:49:12.320 blocks. 812 00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:16.360 The difference between kind of the ignition chain and kind of what's happening next 813 00:49:16.360 --> 00:49:19.600 year is just that the gas limit right now is set to zero. 814 00:49:19.600 --> 00:49:24.120 So it's actually the same full execution environment Aztec is built, we're just waiting 815 00:49:24.120 --> 00:49:29.720 for some audits to complete and we want to ensure that, you know, as one of the first 816 00:49:29.720 --> 00:49:35.200 layer tools to launch fully centralized, we want to ensure that everything runs as intended 817 00:49:35.200 --> 00:49:39.680 on mainnet, we've been running this on testnet for many months, but the final missing 818 00:49:39.680 --> 00:49:45.840 piece was kind of economics and making sure this works in a mainnet setting with spending 819 00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:52.040 actual eth on gas and sequences and proofers getting Aztec tokens as incentives on the 820 00:49:52.040 --> 00:49:53.040 network. 821 00:49:53.040 --> 00:49:56.480 And so the ignition chain is kind of that running on mainnet. 822 00:49:56.480 --> 00:50:01.920 It's been running flawlessly for the last week, four to five days now and yeah, at some 823 00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:07.160 point early next year, there will be a governance vote by those sequences to turn on transactions 824 00:50:07.160 --> 00:50:09.880 and then all of these flows we talked about will be possible. 825 00:50:09.880 --> 00:50:16.680 So it's really exciting to kind of see decentralized decentralization in action and see this thing 826 00:50:16.680 --> 00:50:17.680 come alive. 827 00:50:17.680 --> 00:50:23.120 I think kind of we're targeting the audits to be complete kind of early to mid-February 828 00:50:23.120 --> 00:50:27.520 and so that will be kind of when the change fully goes live and the gas limit gets raised 829 00:50:27.520 --> 00:50:28.520 from zero. 830 00:50:28.520 --> 00:50:31.560 First layer two to launch that's fully decentralized. 831 00:50:31.560 --> 00:50:32.560 What do you mean when you say that? 832 00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:37.160 I think when I think of a layer two being fully decentralized, I'm thinking of layer two 833 00:50:37.160 --> 00:50:41.760 beats and it's gotten to maybe stage two, all of the requirements there. 834 00:50:41.760 --> 00:50:47.880 And then if I'm thinking even beyond that, maybe the full sequencing is also

decentralized 835 00:50:47.880 --> 00:50:51.440 as well and that's fully permissionless for everyone to participate. 836 00:50:51.440 --> 00:50:58.200 So of course, layer two's consensus happens on Ethereum, I suppose, but they're using 837 00:50:58.200 --> 00:51:04.360 layer two's use some sort of a sequencer to kind of order blocks and fully decentralized 838 00:51:04.360 --> 00:51:10.920 to me would mean also decentralizing the ordering of blocks into some sort of permissionless 839 00:51:10.920 --> 00:51:11.920 network. 840 00:51:11.920 --> 00:51:16.440 But Joe, when you said that, the first layer to to be fully decentralized, what do you mean? 841 00:51:16.440 --> 00:51:17.440 What's your definition here? 842 00:51:17.440 --> 00:51:19.480 Yeah, it's all of that and more. 843 00:51:19.480 --> 00:51:24.600 So yeah, as I think of it as a stage two roll up, it's kind of not stage two's doesn't 844 00:51:24.600 --> 00:51:27.320 have transactions, but it will be once it launches. 845 00:51:27.320 --> 00:51:30.480 So we have we have decentralized sequencing. 846 00:51:30.480 --> 00:51:36.040 So anyone can be a validator is fully permissionless to sign up and be a validator as currently 847 00:51:36.040 --> 00:51:39.080 about 600 validators on the main net. 848 00:51:39.080 --> 00:51:42.640 And we should see many more comment over the validator is a sequencer. 849 00:51:42.640 --> 00:51:48.320 Those are one and the same in a sec because you have two roles as a someone who's taking 850 00:51:48.320 --> 00:51:52.080 your sequencing when you're when it's your turn to produce a block and you're validating 851 00:51:52.080 --> 00:51:54.440 when you're helping other people make blocks. 852 00:51:54.440 --> 00:52:00.800 And the reason we have the distinction is because we as a as a layer two on a theorem, 853 00:52:00.800 --> 00:52:05.280 we need to we need to basically submit the validity proofs to a theorem every kind 854 00:52:05.280 --> 00:52:07.000 of 20, 30 minutes. 855 00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:10.280 That would be a terrible UX if we had to wait for that to settle. 856 00:52:10.280 --> 00:52:16.120 And so the kind of sequences and validators can run ahead of a theorem to give good UX 857 00:52:16.120 --> 00:52:17.120 to users. 858 00:52:17.120 --> 00:52:22.960 And so if you have these two roles that that kind of when you stake as token, you fulfill. 859 00:52:22.960 --> 00:52:27.240 So that's kind of on the validating side, so we take that box. 860 00:52:27.240 --> 00:52:33.120 The second kind of thing in being fully decentralized in my definition is decentralized proving. 861 00:52:33.120 --> 00:52:38.680 So a lot of chains kind of maybe started to think about decentralizing the validator set 862 00:52:38.680 --> 00:52:43.480 moving away from like a single kind of team validator or sequencer. 863 00:52:43.480 --> 00:52:46.640 And that they still have a centralized proving system. 864 00:52:46.640 --> 00:52:48.720 So we also had to kind of decentralize that. 865 00:52:48.720 --> 00:52:52.240 It's fully permissionist to be a prover in the Aztec system. 866 00:52:52.240 --> 00:52:56.200 And then the final kind of metric is around governance and ownership. 867 00:52:56.200 --> 00:52:58.520 And I think this is the one that's usually forgotten. 868 00:52:58.520 --> 00:53:03.840 Like if you have the first two done, but you know, the core team controls the protocol, 869 00:53:03.840 --> 00:53:08.840 they can decide what upgrades happen, they decide kind of what happens on the network 870 00:53:08.840 --> 00:53:13.240 and the community doesn't own the network, then you haven't really decentralized. 871 00:53:13.240 --> 00:53:16.840 And so we've tried to achieve kind of all three of those. 872 00:53:16.840 --> 00:53:20.200 And the initial chain is kind of that in action. 873 00:53:20.200 --> 00:53:26.200 And the kind of ongoing token sales are attempt to decentralize the last one, which is governance 874 00:53:26.200 --> 00:53:27.680 and ownership in the network. 875 00:53:27.680 --> 00:53:32.000 So I think we are the first kind of fully decentralized there too. 876 00:53:32.000 --> 00:53:36.800 And I think the reason for that is that privacy just shouldn't be owned by anyone. 877 00:53:36.800 --> 00:53:39.200 It's not owned by anyone on the internet. 878 00:53:39.200 --> 00:53:44.200 We kind of take that for granted when we kind of use as a sale transactions, like this 879 00:53:44.200 --> 00:53:45.680 podcast is encrypted. 880 00:53:45.840 --> 00:53:50.320 Like the way we send this information over the internet is it's not going over a public 881 00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:52.000 connection. It's encrypted. 882 00:53:52.000 --> 00:53:57.560 And so we want to make sure that when this amazing kind of privacy comes to Ethereum, 883 00:53:57.560 --> 00:54:00.400 it's not controlled by one entity or one team. 884 00:54:00.400 --> 00:54:04.080 And so we have we took decentralization very seriously as a result. 885 00:54:04.080 --> 00:54:05.120 How did you guys? 886 00:54:05.120 --> 00:54:08.640 How the world did you guys have the confidence to completely one shot this? 887 00:54:08.640 --> 00:54:13.240 All right. So we've got we've got all of these rollups right now going through stages 888 00:54:13.240 --> 00:54:16.600 of decentralization right and kind of graduating. 889 00:54:16.600 --> 00:54:18.600 It's taking a long time. 890 00:54:18.600 --> 00:54:20.880 Part of the reason for this is there could be bugs. 891 00:54:20.880 --> 00:54:21.920 There could be issues. 892 00:54:21.920 --> 00:54:27.160 You need some sort of centralized tax task force to step in and you'll fix something. 893 00:54:27.160 --> 00:54:32.040 You know, some of the technologies right here and your Aztec is and you guys are one 894 00:54:32.040 --> 00:54:36.160 shotting this all the way to kind of stage two where correct me if I'm wrong. 895 00:54:36.160 --> 00:54:39.560 But you you can't there's no security can't counsel.

896 00:54:39.600 --> 00:54:42.200 You can't shut this thing down. 897 00:54:42.200 --> 00:54:44.000 You can't censor. 898 00:54:44.000 --> 00:54:51.320 You can't steal funds like it's a decentralized network in the way Ethereum was at launch 899 00:54:51.320 --> 00:54:52.320 essentially. 900 00:54:52.320 --> 00:54:58.120 And you guys are starting all the way there at the finish line and basically leapfrogging 901 00:54:58.120 --> 00:54:59.120 everybody. 902 00:54:59.120 --> 00:55:03.800 I thought there were good reasons for this not to be one shot and for this to be some 903 00:55:03.800 --> 00:55:04.880 sort of progression. 904 00:55:04.880 --> 00:55:08.320 And yet Aztec is starting at the at the end. 905 00:55:08.320 --> 00:55:09.320 I can feel that. 906 00:55:09.320 --> 00:55:10.600 I mean, there's two things going on here. 907 00:55:10.600 --> 00:55:14.680 One of them is just the reason for this progressive decentralization out there is fundamentally 908 00:55:14.680 --> 00:55:16.200 misaligned in centers. 909 00:55:16.200 --> 00:55:20.640 If you have a fully transpired layer to then your value proposition is your transactions 910 00:55:20.640 --> 00:55:23.560 are cheaper and they're faster. 911 00:55:23.560 --> 00:55:28.240 And this creates a bit of a race to the bottom because adding in decentralization will 912 00:55:28.240 --> 00:55:31.240 have a mix of transactions slower and more expensive because you have higher coordination 913 00:55:31.240 --> 00:55:32.240 costs. 914 00:55:32.240 --> 00:55:34.640 So why do you centralize? 915 00:55:34.640 --> 00:55:39.200 Save your running an L2 in your sequences collecting all the fees. 916 00:55:39.200 --> 00:55:42.000 So there's a misaligned in centers that we don't have an Aztec because we're privacy 917 00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:43.000 in network. 918 00:55:43.000 --> 00:55:48.160 We really need to be a fully neutral network where participation is permissionless where 919 00:55:48.160 --> 00:55:53.720 we're not just like responsible for like forwarding and examining your traffic. 920 00:55:53.720 --> 00:55:55.160 So the incentives were aligned. 921 00:55:55.160 --> 00:55:59.840 And as you said, you know Ethereum did it back in the day, so it's not impossible. 922 00:55:59.840 --> 00:56:05.360 There are never the relics, this technical risks that we need to mitigate because we're 923 00:56:05.360 --> 00:56:10.120 fully decentralized, you know, bugs, we can fix bugs, but it's not the fastest process 924 00:56:10.120 --> 00:56:14.120 in the world because we need to get our sequences to upgrade the network. 925 00:56:14.120 --> 00:56:16.440 And so we're doing, this is why we're doing a phase drawlats. 926 00:56:16.440 --> 00:56:21.880 You know, when we, we're starting with ignition, but when we turn on transactions, a next 927 00:56:21.880 --> 00:56:24.560 year, that's going to come with a lot of health warnings. 928 00:56:24.560 --> 00:56:29.480 We're going to be very open and transparent about this that this network is not, we cannot 929 00:56:29.480 --> 00:56:30.480 guarantee it secure. 930 00:56:30.480 --> 00:56:33.640 We will have performed extensive internal audits, we will have performed external audits, 931 00:56:33.640 --> 00:56:38.240 we will have done everything we can to ensure that it's secure, but we can't rule out the 932 00:56:38.240 --> 00:56:39.240 probability of bugs. 933 00:56:39.240 --> 00:56:44.080 And the only thing that really demonstrates a network of secure is time, time in production 934 00:56:44.080 --> 00:56:46.960 where there are no bugs where it's not being exploited. 935 00:56:46.960 --> 00:56:51.320 And so in the, in the early days of the network, we're going to have a very generous bug 936 00:56:51.320 --> 00:56:52.320 value. 937 00:56:52.320 --> 00:56:54.320 We're going to be very open about people saying, hey, this is, like, this is going to 938 00:56:54.320 --> 00:56:56.360 be a dangerous network for a while. 939 00:56:56.360 --> 00:57:01.800 So don't, don't go nuts, don't, don't, don't ape in with, with all your money. 940 00:57:01.800 --> 00:57:03.120 It will be at risk. 941 00:57:03.120 --> 00:57:09.160 And then when we hit second security milestones, I believe they are, if we go three months without 942 00:57:09.160 --> 00:57:15.320 a critical or serious bug report, and we have 99% network up time, we'll be like, okay, 943 00:57:15.320 --> 00:57:18.120 now we're comfortable calling us something more than just purely experimental. 944 00:57:18.120 --> 00:57:21.680 Now we think it's a bit more set, it's a bit safer, but we're going to have, it's going 945 00:57:21.680 --> 00:57:25.840 to be quite a, quite a long rollup process before we are probably saying, hey, this 946 00:57:25.840 --> 00:57:29.360 network, like we have confidence in it and it is completely safe. 947 00:57:29.360 --> 00:57:30.440 You can do whatever you want with it. 948 00:57:30.440 --> 00:57:31.600 That's going to take some time. 949 00:57:31.600 --> 00:57:35.480 What's nice, I think, from my perspective, too, is I don't, I guess as a user, I don't 950 00:57:35.480 --> 00:57:41.000 have to start by moving all of my assets essentially to Aztec, right? 951 00:57:41.000 --> 00:57:44.280 So the use case, Joe, you were talking about, it's basically I could use kind of private 952 00:57:44.280 --> 00:57:48.920 intents to get privacy on a specific transaction. 953 00:57:48.920 --> 00:57:55.560 And I'm only at risk of some sort of, you know, bug, major failure in Aztec for a brief 954 00:57:55.560 --> 00:58:00.040 moment of time, that would be different than storing my value on Aztec. 955 00:58:00.040 --> 00:58:05.840 So that's kind of a nice way to start and gives me the privacy effectively I'm looking 956 00:58:05.840 --> 00:58:11.680 for as a DeFi user without risking it all inside of an early network like Aztec. 957 00:58:11.680 --> 00:58:12.920 Am I understanding that correctly? 958 00:58:13.000 --> 00:58:17.920 Yeah, that's exactly

what I was going to say is that because we don't have these pools 959 00:58:17.920 --> 00:58:23.520 of capital being built on day one, those kind of early users who are kind of bridging funds 960 00:58:23.520 --> 00:58:27.960 through and the assets manned up on base or somewhere else as a result once they're out 961 00:58:27.960 --> 00:58:31.160 of Aztec again, they're kind of not, they're not at risk. 962 00:58:31.160 --> 00:58:36.760 And so you're only at risk for that period whilst assets are in flight. 963 00:58:36.760 --> 00:58:41.840 The other interesting side as well, which we haven't talked about yet, is that for private 964 00:58:41.840 --> 00:58:45.120 smart contracts, you can't see the funds that are inside them. 965 00:58:45.120 --> 00:58:50.240 So the attack surface of a fully private smart contract is actually reduced compared to 966 00:58:50.240 --> 00:58:53.440 a public smart contract because it's fully private smart contractor. 967 00:58:53.440 --> 00:58:59.000 That would be something that was built natively on inside of Aztec using your VM, your programming 968 00:58:59.000 --> 00:59:00.000 language. 969 00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:01.000 Yes. 970 00:59:01.000 --> 00:59:02.000 Yeah, correct. 971 00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:04.840 So there's kind of two types of applications that are quite safe at Alpha. 972 00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:10.040 There's kind of fully private applications where the source of value is either native 973 00:59:10.040 --> 00:59:16.120 to Aztec or it's off chain value or kind of these inflight kind of privacy requests, 974 00:59:16.120 --> 00:59:19.320 like bridging bridging kind of privacy to other altos. 975 00:59:19.320 --> 00:59:24.320 The only thing that's kind of very risky in the early stages is like large public balances 976 00:59:24.320 --> 00:59:28.200 inside Aztec because those could be attack services. 977 00:59:28.200 --> 00:59:32.880 So I think the attacker doesn't know how much is in any of these things, right? 978 00:59:32.880 --> 00:59:36.840 So they don't know to prioritize one versus the other would be much more difficult for 979 00:59:36.840 --> 00:59:37.840 them to tell. 980 00:59:38.200 --> 00:59:41.680 If there was a bug, they could potentially do this on lots of private smart contracts, 981 00:59:41.680 --> 00:59:46.200 but the key thing about Aztec native assets or off chain assets is that if the source of 982 00:59:46.200 --> 00:59:51.440 truth is off chain, then it's a bit like the USDC kind of situation with Ethereum. 983 00:59:51.440 --> 00:59:56.840 Like if there was a bug on Ethereum, USDC can kind of choose where the funds are. 984 00:59:56.840 --> 01:00:02.600 And so it's only kind of assets that are Ethereum backed that are very susceptible to kind 985 01:00:02.600 --> 01:00:04.160 of bugs in the early days. 986 01:00:04.160 --> 01:00:08.520 So there's ways to also work around this is kind of where I was trying to get with this. 987 01:00:08.520 --> 01:00:13.160 And I think for the basic DeFi use cases as well, you should be able to use this for kind 988 01:00:13.160 --> 01:00:19.360 of smaller medium, kind of like DeFi transactions, payment is a great use case like the age-old, 989 01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:22.600 hey, we've been to DevConnect and I want to pay you for dinner. 990 01:00:22.600 --> 01:00:27.160 We can suddenly start to do that without leaking my entire wallet history to have one who's 991 01:00:27.160 --> 01:00:28.160 incredible. 992 01:00:28.160 --> 01:00:31.240 So those ones I think we should be fine with in the early days. 993 01:00:31.240 --> 01:00:33.960 Ethereum's layer two universe is exploding with choices. 994 01:00:33.960 --> 01:00:37.240 But if you're looking for the best place to park and move your tokens, make your next 995 01:00:37.240 --> 01:00:38.240 stop Unichain. 996 01:00:38.240 --> 01:00:39.240 First, liquidity. 997 01:00:39.240 --> 01:00:43.480 Unichain hosts the most liquid Uniswap V4 deployment on any layer two, giving you deeper 998 01:00:43.480 --> 01:00:46.320 pools for flagship pairs like ETH USDC. 999 01:00:46.320 --> 01:00:50.440 More liquidity means better prices, less slippage, and smoother swaps, exactly what 1000 01:00:50.440 --> 01:00:51.440 traders crave. 1001 01:00:51.440 --> 01:00:52.440 The numbers back it up. 1002 01:00:52.440 --> 01:00:55.960 Unichain leads all layer twos in total value locked for Uniswap V4. 1003 01:00:55.960 --> 01:00:59.320 And it's not just a deep, it's fast and fully transparent, purpose-built to be the 1004 01:00:59.320 --> 01:01:01.680 home base for DeFi and cross-chain liquidity. 1005 01:01:01.680 --> 01:01:04.080 When it comes to costs, Unichain is a no-brainer. 1006 01:01:04.080 --> 01:01:08.560 Transaction fees come in about 95% cheaper than Ethereum maintenance, slashing the price 1007 01:01:08.560 --> 01:01:10.600 of creating or accessing liquidity. 1008 01:01:10.600 --> 01:01:12.160 Want to stay in the loop on Unichain? 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1045 01:03:14.440 --> 01:03:15.440 Yeah, correct. 1046 01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:18.840 So we actually ever use this transaction as kind of a ZK proof. 1047 01:03:18.840 --> 01:03:23.240 Our contracts can have private and public components, developers get to choose. 1048 01:03:23.240 --> 01:03:28.560 The public component has its own kind of ZKVM and then those are all aggregated up into 1049 01:03:28.560 --> 01:03:33.520 one single proof that's submitted on Ethereum and once that proofs verified, we get kind 1050 01:03:33.520 --> 01:03:38.440 of the economic and kind of censorship properties of Ethereum for all of the Aztec transactions 1051 01:03:38.440 --> 01:03:39.440 that were inside that. 1052 01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:45.040 So yeah, we're full, full L2, we inherit all the properties from Ethereum and that's 1053 01:03:45.040 --> 01:03:50.360 one of the main reasons we were on Ethereum is that kind of consensus and also the kind 1054 01:03:50.360 --> 01:03:52.840 of capital and developers that I did in Britain. 1055 01:03:52.840 --> 01:03:57.680 So with our Ethereum aligned here on the Aztec side, in order to provide the privacy blanket 1056 01:03:57.680 --> 01:04:01.160 for all of Ethereum, of course, you're going to have to support some throughput. 1057 01:04:01.160 --> 01:04:05.360 Some of these later too are getting pretty high in terms of the amount of transactions 1058 01:04:05.360 --> 01:04:09.520 per second that is available in those ecosystems. 1059 01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:14.960 Let's sort of throughput, can the Aztec ignition chain support, are you in the hundreds 1060 01:04:14.960 --> 01:04:16.960 of transactions per second? 1061 01:04:16.960 --> 01:04:17.960 Not yet. 1062 01:04:17.960 --> 01:04:22.960 So this is one thing where things are going to get much better at a time quite quickly 1063 01:04:22.960 --> 01:04:25.520 because our focus right now is on launching and on security. 1064 01:04:25.520 --> 01:04:30.680 So we're not at 100 TPS yet, but there's no fundamental reason why we can't scale 1065 01:04:30.680 --> 01:04:36.200 to that with engineering improvements alone inside the network. 1066 01:04:36.200 --> 01:04:40.560 I think beyond 100 to getting to thousands of TPS that will be challenging as an L2 1067 01:04:40.560 --> 01:04:47.440 because privacy does increase coordination costs because the data that you're broadcasting 1068 01:04:47.440 --> 01:04:50.200 is now encrypted, which means it's more of it. 1069 01:04:50.200 --> 01:04:53.520 The transactions has their own proofs, which need to be verified, which makes peer-to-peer 1070 01:04:53.520 --> 01:04:55.480 coordination a little bit harder. 1071 01:04:55.480 --> 01:05:00.760 So we're never going to get thousands of TPS on the L2, but this is where the Aztec 1072 01:05:00.760 --> 01:05:04.880 stack comes in, which is something that we are going to be developing with gusto, a 1073 01:05:04.880 --> 01:05:10.360 slow launch, basically because our network, because of our private state model, if you 1074 01:05:10.360 --> 01:05:14.000 have a block that just has private transactions, because we're a hybrid system, so you can 1075 01:05:14.000 --> 01:05:18.200 have private and public stuff, but if you just have private transactions, that block can 1076 01:05:18.200 --> 01:05:23.160

be commuted with massive parallelism because you don't have any race conditions, you don't 1077 01:05:23.160 --> 01:05:26.800 have multiple transactions modifying the same state, and so in theory, you can process 1078 01:05:26.800 --> 01:05:31.440 this block extraordinarily quickly, particularly if you get rid of the overheads of sequence 1079 01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:35.360 of coordination of data availability and posting to blobs, and so it's something we're 1080 01:05:35.360 --> 01:05:39.000 going to be doing because effectively building out an application-specific rollup stack. 1081 01:05:39.000 --> 01:05:42.560 So if you are building an app where you have some trust assumptions, like let's say you're 1082 01:05:42.560 --> 01:05:46.920 doing micro payments or you know, agentec, AI payment systems where, you know, the values 1083 01:05:46.920 --> 01:05:51.240 are very small, you saw more privacy, but you're willing to trust a central assigment, 1084 01:05:51.240 --> 01:05:55.520 so you're willing to let somebody handle data as a third party. 1085 01:05:55.520 --> 01:06:00.360 The idea is that you can build your application with Aztec's tooling, but when you deploy, you 1086 01:06:00.360 --> 01:06:06.680 don't deploy to Aztec, you deploy to some, you know, locally hosted entity as an effective 1087 01:06:06.680 --> 01:06:12.440 in L3, and then you post your, you settle your rollup blocks onto Aztec, and so you kind 1088 01:06:12.440 --> 01:06:16.400 of get the best of all worlds, you know, you get full privacy, you get very fast transactions, 1089 01:06:16.400 --> 01:06:22.520 very fast transactions, but also you can get private on and off-boarding into your network via 1090 01:06:22.520 --> 01:06:27.840 the Aztec L2, which if you need privacy, you probably care about, and so that's our plan 1091 01:06:27.840 --> 01:06:31.200 for tackling the very high throughput application use case. 1092 01:06:31.200 --> 01:06:33.000 So will that be the main constraint? 1093 01:06:33.000 --> 01:06:35.160 Let's say this is maximally successful, right? 1094 01:06:35.160 --> 01:06:40.640 So 12 months from now, there is that button inside of my favorite crypto wallet to send 1095 01:06:40.640 --> 01:06:46.240 this transaction or execute this trade with privacy, and it uses Aztec, right? 1096 01:06:46.240 --> 01:06:53.720 I imagine that that could be very popular if this is across all of Ethereum, and if transactions 1097 01:06:53.720 --> 01:06:58.640 per second are not yet in the measured in the hundreds, there could be some congestion 1098 01:06:58.640 --> 01:06:59.640 there. 1099 01:06:59.640 --> 01:07:04.000 And as we've seen on other chains, congestion, of course, increases fees. 1100 01:07:04.000 --> 01:07:10.800 I imagine maybe a similar thing would happen with Aztec where, okay, if it's $10 transaction 1101 01:07:10.800 --> 01:07:16.040 over dinner, I don't necessarily want to care about paying a dollar to Aztec for privacy 1102 01:07:16.040 --> 01:07:21.160

of this transaction, but if it's $10,000, maybe that matters a lot more to me, and I'm 1103 01:07:21.160 --> 01:07:26.680 willing to pay a few dollars, and so my transaction goes through because I'm willing to pay more 1104 01:07:26.680 --> 01:07:27.680 fees. 1105 01:07:27.680 --> 01:07:32.440 But this would be a similar situation that Ethereum has found itself in, which is it's 1106 01:07:32.440 --> 01:07:36.920 kind of a victim of its own success, and what it has to do is scale. 1107 01:07:36.920 --> 01:07:42.920 Is that similar to how you expect things to play out on Aztec in a success type of scenario? 1108 01:07:42.920 --> 01:07:44.120 It's exactly the same. 1109 01:07:44.120 --> 01:07:49.040 So on the fee model we've implemented, it's the same, the IP 1559. 1110 01:07:49.040 --> 01:07:55.280 So the base fee will increase once we get above a certain kind of congestion limit for 1111 01:07:55.280 --> 01:08:02.600 each block, and under the token is burned as a result to try and regulate supply and 1112 01:08:02.600 --> 01:08:10.800 demand of Aztec transactions, but if it turns out the 50% of all of L2 users want privacy 1113 01:08:10.800 --> 01:08:15.360 on their transactions, then we need to be more expensive. 1114 01:08:15.360 --> 01:08:19.400 That's kind of, I think, is a good problem to have, and we'll be able to scale that in 1115 01:08:19.400 --> 01:08:26.200 different ways as we start to kind of address that, I think, right now I think actual, it's 1116 01:08:26.200 --> 01:08:32.720 unclear how much of the L2 transaction volume is real transactions versus kind of just random 1117 01:08:32.720 --> 01:08:33.720 transactions. 1118 01:08:33.720 --> 01:08:39.560 So I think we could also see Aztec as a proxy for where are the real users on Ethereum actually 1119 01:08:39.560 --> 01:08:42.440 transacting, like doing things that require privacy. 1120 01:08:42.440 --> 01:08:46.280 And so, yeah, I think we could run into that limit, but I think it's probably more than 1121 01:08:46.280 --> 01:08:47.280 we think it is right now. 1122 01:08:47.280 --> 01:08:48.280 Right. 1123 01:08:48.280 --> 01:08:52.280 So that limit could be, this could be just high value privacy transactions or the thing 1124 01:08:52.280 --> 01:08:53.600 that goes through Aztec. 1125 01:08:53.600 --> 01:08:58.080 So Aztec layer two as well, it's not EVM, correct? 1126 01:08:58.080 --> 01:09:00.840 It's something that you guys have developed from the ground up. 1127 01:09:00.840 --> 01:09:03.240 So maybe I talk about that for a moment. 1128 01:09:03.240 --> 01:09:07.600 It's not as simple as if I was to take sort of existing AVE code on the EVM. 1129 01:09:07.600 --> 01:09:11.080 I wouldn't be able to redeploy that as a smart contract developer. 1130 01:09:11.080 --> 01:09:16.160 I'd have to rewrite this in R, is that the programming language effectively, can you 1131 01:09:16.160 --> 01:09:17.160 talk about the VM? 1132 01:09:17.160 --> 01:09:21.120 So you're right, you would

have to rewrite it in R, and so this kind of it, this very much 1133 01:09:21.120 --> 01:09:27.320 influences who we're targeting as our first users, developers of the platform, basically 1134 01:09:27.320 --> 01:09:32.560 people who are building up the cases that need privacy because the thing about privacy 1135 01:09:32.560 --> 01:09:36.640 is that the model for programming, a blockchain changes radically because you have private 1136 01:09:36.640 --> 01:09:40.320 states and encrypted information that you need to work with, and you need to be sensitive 1137 01:09:40.320 --> 01:09:42.920 about what gets broadcast, what doesn't get broadcast. 1138 01:09:42.920 --> 01:09:49.240 And so the metal model is already slightly shifted, and so I don't believe that requiring 1139 01:09:49.240 --> 01:09:55.400 to learn any language is actually that much of an additional barrier to inertia because 1140 01:09:55.400 --> 01:09:57.880 it's rust like it's pretty as very easy to use. 1141 01:09:57.880 --> 01:10:03.320 And a system metal model of like, oh, it's private now requires a bit of thinking about. 1142 01:10:03.320 --> 01:10:09.160 So with Aztec, the full private parts of like transactions, we don't actually have a VM 1143 01:10:09.160 --> 01:10:10.160 at all. 1144 01:10:10.160 --> 01:10:13.880 What happens instead is that your program that you're writing in August directly converted 1145 01:10:13.880 --> 01:10:20.240 into a zero-in-allage circuit, and then that gets, and then that gets like, when you're 1146 01:10:20.240 --> 01:10:24.320 executing a transaction, right, like your smart contract address is derived from that 1147 01:10:24.320 --> 01:10:26.400 circuit verification key. 1148 01:10:26.400 --> 01:10:30.520 And so yeah, you don't actually need a VM for the private stuff. 1149 01:10:30.520 --> 01:10:36.400 That's a choice you made to maximize speed and efficiency, because these proofs that 1150 01:10:36.400 --> 01:10:39.440 contain all the sensitive data, you need to make them look for your new device. 1151 01:10:39.440 --> 01:10:43.080 So we're talking about potato hardware here, and VMs add overheads that we didn't want 1152 01:10:43.080 --> 01:10:45.080 to pay. 1153 01:10:45.080 --> 01:10:50.000 So yeah, so it's a very different design architecture to other altos. 1154 01:10:50.000 --> 01:10:56.320 Well, what are some of these totally private native applications that you guys are working 1155 01:10:56.320 --> 01:10:58.040 with at launch? 1156 01:10:58.040 --> 01:11:02.760 Of course, the big value proposition for everyone listening who uses crypto and uses Ethereum 1157 01:11:02.760 --> 01:11:08.000 and uses DeFi is Aztec is through kind of private intents, potentially able to provide 1158 01:11:08.000 --> 01:11:12.000 privacy for all of your transactions, everything you do. 1159 01:11:12.000 --> 01:11:16.120 And then also there will be some Aztec native applications that you're talking about that 1160 01:11:16.120 --> 01:11:18.480 are just full stack privacy. 1161 01:11:18.480 --> 01:11:21.120 What types of things can you imagine here? 1162 01:11:21.120 --> 01:11:23.720 And what types of things are maybe people working on? 1163 01:11:23.720 --> 01:11:30.280 The mental model I have is what we have on public Ethereum was designed in a pure public 1164 01:11:30.280 --> 01:11:31.280 execution environment. 1165 01:11:31.280 --> 01:11:35.960 And when you add privacy, you get a much larger and very different design space. 1166 01:11:35.960 --> 01:11:42.760 And so the types of applications we're seeing that require privacy, they can't exist 1167 01:11:42.760 --> 01:11:43.760 on other chains. 1168 01:11:43.760 --> 01:11:48.280 So they look a bit different, perhaps what you see on Ethereum or other altos, because 1169 01:11:48.280 --> 01:11:50.680 it's just not possible to make them there. 1170 01:11:50.680 --> 01:11:55.640 So the ones I'm most excited about are both in the trading side, so dockholes and 1171 01:11:55.640 --> 01:11:56.640 OTC desks. 1172 01:11:56.640 --> 01:12:03.320 Those are kind of types of like dexes that if you were to build a dex that requires privacy, 1173 01:12:03.320 --> 01:12:06.080 you may not be able to construct market maker like UD swap. 1174 01:12:06.080 --> 01:12:10.400 Like that's a fantastic mechanism for a public kind of execution environment. 1175 01:12:10.400 --> 01:12:16.320 But if you have kind of complete privacy, you can do things very differently. 1176 01:12:16.320 --> 01:12:21.920 And OTC desks and kind of traditional financial kind of auto book style exchanges work very 1177 01:12:21.920 --> 01:12:23.400 well in that context. 1178 01:12:23.400 --> 01:12:29.840 So we have a few teams building different types of decentralized exchanges where if you're 1179 01:12:29.840 --> 01:12:34.460 hiding the participants of your trade or you're hiding kind of the total flow going in 1180 01:12:34.460 --> 01:12:40.000 out of exchange or just recreating kind of OTC desks, that's one area. 1181 01:12:40.000 --> 01:12:42.520 Underclass tries lending and consumer finances. 1182 01:12:42.520 --> 01:12:46.840 So when I'm most excited about though, I think for a long time on Ethereum, we haven't 1183 01:12:46.840 --> 01:12:49.240 had proper consumer finance. 1184 01:12:49.240 --> 01:12:55.120 Some teams have tried this, but it hasn't really taken off because what I can do in most 1185 01:12:55.120 --> 01:13:00.360 Western financial ecosystems is get alone based on who I am. 1186 01:13:00.360 --> 01:13:03.280 The inflows and outflows of my bank account. 1187 01:13:03.280 --> 01:13:08.160 And in order to do that on Ethereum, I have to put that information onto the blockchain. 1188 01:13:08.160 --> 01:13:10.560 As Zach was saying earlier, that's a credential. 1189 01:13:10.560 --> 01:13:16.840 Like I want to be able to create a credential, which says, my income is above 5K, my outgoing 1190 01:13:16.840 --> 01:13:20.640 below 2K, and I have a certain credit worthiness.

1191 01:13:20.640 --> 01:13:25.600 And you can start to do that on Aztec by feeding kind of bank statements into a zero knowledge 1192 01:13:25.600 --> 01:13:28.480 proof, proving information about them. 1193 01:13:28.480 --> 01:13:33.640 And then as a result, you can do underclass drives lending, like a loan based on me being 1194 01:13:33.640 --> 01:13:40.240 Joe, not alone based on me overclassurizing, eat into a CDP like we get with kind of traditional 1195 01:13:40.240 --> 01:13:41.240 defy. 1196 01:13:41.240 --> 01:13:43.560 So it's just a different mental model. 1197 01:13:43.560 --> 01:13:48.600 And I think one that's more centered on around even information asymmetries or kind of 1198 01:13:48.600 --> 01:13:51.520 identity being a core part of the transaction. 1199 01:13:51.520 --> 01:13:53.400 So those are the two I'm most excited about. 1200 01:13:53.400 --> 01:13:56.520 There's also a lot of games being built as well, which everybody is exciting. 1201 01:13:56.520 --> 01:14:00.080 Part of the power of the CK technology as well as as we were talking about in the 1202 01:14:00.080 --> 01:14:06.280 ZK passport use case earlier is the ability for me to selectively disclose some of my 1203 01:14:06.280 --> 01:14:11.000 information, and this could come into play with financial transactions as well. 1204 01:14:11.000 --> 01:14:17.480 So I'd imagine if I did do that trade from ETH to USDC, and years later, let's say, 1205 01:14:17.480 --> 01:14:21.800 the IRS and I had some dispute that said, you know, I had different numbers than what 1206 01:14:21.800 --> 01:14:24.320 I was declaring maybe in my income statement. 1207 01:14:24.320 --> 01:14:29.840 Be very nice for me to be able to say, nope, I have ZK proof, so I can selectively disclose 1208 01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:32.000 that this was the trade amount on this date. 1209 01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:34.320 You could see I'm right, IRS. 1210 01:14:34.320 --> 01:14:38.520 Is that ability exist within the Aztec ecosystem? 1211 01:14:38.520 --> 01:14:43.160 Can I disclose things for compliance reasons or to third parties for whatever reason? 1212 01:14:43.160 --> 01:14:44.160 Is that fairly easy? 1213 01:14:44.160 --> 01:14:45.160 It's possible. 1214 01:14:45.160 --> 01:14:48.320 We still need to get build out tooling to make it easy, but it's possible. 1215 01:14:48.320 --> 01:14:51.400 And the intention is to, okay, there's no reason why it shouldn't be easy. 1216 01:14:51.400 --> 01:14:56.600 The hard part is then the area, getting the IRS to go, oh yes, I accept this proof and 1217 01:14:56.600 --> 01:15:00.000 not saying, what is this random junk you've given me? 1218 01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:01.000 I don't care about this. 1219 01:15:01.000 --> 01:15:02.560 I need a balance sheet. 1220 01:15:02.560 --> 01:15:03.560 So that's fair. 1221 01:15:03.560 --> 01:15:08.360 It's going to be the real battle, because you can do so much better than the existing 1222 01:15:08.360 --> 01:15:14.400 financial system with blockchains, with privacy, where you can basically do preemptive compliance. 1223 01:15:14.400 --> 01:15:19.080 So normally the way the financial work works is you want to do transaction, you perform 1224 01:15:19.080 --> 01:15:22.380 your transaction and then you gather up all your paperwork to say, oh yes, I'm not a 1225 01:15:22.380 --> 01:15:23.380 terrorist. 1226 01:15:23.380 --> 01:15:24.380 I'm an architect. 1227 01:15:24.380 --> 01:15:25.380 And then you send it off to the, after the radio. 1228 01:15:25.380 --> 01:15:30.960 And that is terrible model, it doesn't work because it does like that. 1229 01:15:30.960 --> 01:15:33.680 There's loads of innocent activity happening in the real world. 1230 01:15:33.680 --> 01:15:35.360 And on chain, you can do things much better. 1231 01:15:35.360 --> 01:15:39.520 You can say, by definition, the only way this transaction can be executed is if me and 1232 01:15:39.520 --> 01:15:43.560 my counterparty are following the rules are compliant, you know, ZK passports or whatever, 1233 01:15:43.560 --> 01:15:45.800 but using ZK proofs. 1234 01:15:45.800 --> 01:15:48.640 The problem is that we don't live in a world where that's actually accepted as being 1235 01:15:48.640 --> 01:15:49.640 valid regulation. 1236 01:15:49.640 --> 01:15:51.440 The regulator will be like, no, I want to see everything. 1237 01:15:51.440 --> 01:15:52.840 I don't care about these proofs. 1238 01:15:52.840 --> 01:15:54.120 So we've got to get that to change. 1239 01:15:54.120 --> 01:15:58.680 But building applications and demonstrating this tech works is step one. 1240 01:15:58.680 --> 01:16:02.920 To slightly circle about, like, run you asked earlier about like an example transaction 1241 01:16:02.920 --> 01:16:04.160 show over how this works. 1242 01:16:04.160 --> 01:16:08.480 And I'd like to just to highlight one because you know, this podcast is called bankless, 1243 01:16:08.480 --> 01:16:09.480 right? 1244 01:16:09.480 --> 01:16:11.800 So let's talk about how a debank might work on as tech. 1245 01:16:11.800 --> 01:16:16.280 So let's say there is a, there is an organization that is putting say, I don't know, like mortgages 1246 01:16:16.280 --> 01:16:21.400 or equities or some kind of real asset, they're putting it on chain and issuing, issuing 1247 01:16:21.400 --> 01:16:25.320 like liquid tokens that are being traded in a, in a dark pull on as tech. 1248 01:16:25.320 --> 01:16:31.320 And I want to use my debank app to buy some, I have some private USTC and I want to 1249 01:16:31.320 --> 01:16:32.320 buy it. 1250 01:16:32.320 --> 01:16:36.200 So what would happen on chain, right, is the entry part would be my account contract. 1251 01:16:36.200 --> 01:16:39.440 And because we have account abstraction, this account contract, instead of having a public 1252 01:16:39.440 --> 01:16:44.840 private key and checking, checking a signature, it could say, check the Google authorization 1253 01:16:44.840 --> 01:16:45.840

flow. 1254 01:16:45.840 --> 01:16:48.160 So basically I'm signing in with my Google account. 1255 01:16:48.160 --> 01:16:53.040 And you know, Google gets a request that you want to log on, which is a slight centralization 1256 01:16:53.040 --> 01:16:54.040 factor. 1257 01:16:54.040 --> 01:16:57.480 But nobody on chain looking at your transaction can see that you got this account as a 1258 01:16:57.480 --> 01:16:58.880 Google account. 1259 01:16:58.880 --> 01:17:05.040 Once that happens, your transaction gets forwarded to the dark pull contract, which will then 1260 01:17:05.040 --> 01:17:11.720 trigger trades between your USTC contract and this, let's say, this like real asset contract. 1261 01:17:11.720 --> 01:17:15.160 And then that real asset contract will say, well, hmm, who's this person, are they allowed 1262 01:17:15.160 --> 01:17:16.160 to hold this asset? 1263 01:17:16.160 --> 01:17:18.920 Like, they need to, they need to prove they're American, for example. 1264 01:17:18.920 --> 01:17:22.320 So then that contract would make a call out to an identity contract like CK Passports 1265 01:17:22.320 --> 01:17:26.880 which would just say, hey, does this person have an NFT that gets issued if they have 1266 01:17:26.880 --> 01:17:28.880 a USDK pass or proof? 1267 01:17:28.880 --> 01:17:30.560 And then you'd be like, yep, they do. 1268 01:17:30.560 --> 01:17:33.880 That gets returned all back to the dark, well, they're well, then call that triggers the 1269 01:17:33.880 --> 01:17:40.200 token contracts, the trade, you lose your USTC, you gain your real asset token and then 1270 01:17:40.200 --> 01:17:41.200 the transaction ends. 1271 01:17:41.200 --> 01:17:47.760 And that is all an atomic singular transaction, further use it, right, where the proof 1272 01:17:47.760 --> 01:17:51.160 separately is being generated client-side and just executed in one shot. 1273 01:17:51.160 --> 01:17:56.480 And sorry for rambling, but the one last thing is, what does an observacy looking at 1274 01:17:56.480 --> 01:17:57.480 the blockchain? 1275 01:17:57.480 --> 01:17:58.480 What do they see from all this? 1276 01:17:58.480 --> 01:17:59.840 They don't know who you are. 1277 01:17:59.840 --> 01:18:02.680 They don't know the smart contracts you're interacting with and they don't know what 1278 01:18:02.680 --> 01:18:03.920 data you've modified. 1279 01:18:03.920 --> 01:18:05.920 So they see absolutely nothing. 1280 01:18:05.920 --> 01:18:06.920 Very cool. 1281 01:18:06.920 --> 01:18:10.840 Zach, since you were talking about kind of regulators in this being actually in many 1282 01:18:10.840 --> 01:18:16.680 ways, an improvement from the existing system of regulation, both for users, but potentially 1283 01:18:16.680 --> 01:18:20.560 for compliance officials and regulators as well. 1284 01:18:20.560 --> 01:18:22.600 We talk about this for a minute. 1285 01:18:22.600 --> 01:18:26.120 They don't yet understand privacy and crypto, okay? 1286 01:18:26.120 --> 01:18:31.480 And there have been many cases that we've seen recently, you guys were referring to the 1287 01:18:31.480 --> 01:18:36.000 tornado cash developers, there's some privacy devs in the Bitcoin community who are actually 1288 01:18:36.000 --> 01:18:37.000 facing prison time. 1289 01:18:37.000 --> 01:18:41.800 I know it's a different model, completely different sort of thing that we're doing here, but even 1290 01:18:41.800 --> 01:18:42.800 tornado cash. 1291 01:18:42.800 --> 01:18:48.360 I mean, there's intense regulatory scrutiny at the nation state level for anything involving 1292 01:18:48.360 --> 01:18:51.800 privacy and financial transactions. 1293 01:18:51.800 --> 01:18:52.800 How about you guys? 1294 01:18:52.800 --> 01:18:54.400 Are you concerned about this? 1295 01:18:54.400 --> 01:18:59.240 I mean, is there a level of like, we live in fear that regulators and the nation states 1296 01:18:59.240 --> 01:19:04.160 might not understand what we're trying to do here and might persecute us, prosecute 1297 01:19:04.160 --> 01:19:06.160 us in some way. 1298 01:19:06.160 --> 01:19:11.000 And we ever considered like giving up this project as a result of that. 1299 01:19:11.000 --> 01:19:16.320 I just, from my perspective, I do not yet see any bright lines and maybe you guys do, 1300 01:19:16.320 --> 01:19:24.600 but it feels like nation states are very much trying to figure this out and even those 1301 01:19:24.600 --> 01:19:31.680 that bend in the direction of freedom and, you know, civil liberties may make mistakes 1302 01:19:31.680 --> 01:19:36.920 on the way to getting there and it could be catastrophic for crypto privacy developers 1303 01:19:36.920 --> 01:19:37.920 involved. 1304 01:19:37.920 --> 01:19:38.920 How do you guys think about that? 1305 01:19:38.920 --> 01:19:44.000 I think like the bright lines we have is that privacy on blockchain should be the same 1306 01:19:44.000 --> 01:19:45.600 as privacy on the internet. 1307 01:19:45.600 --> 01:19:51.000 We take that for granted today, but that was a battle that was fought on one by, in the 1308 01:19:51.000 --> 01:19:57.000 last privacy wars, around SSL and net scape of kind of pioneers in that regard, like 1309 01:19:57.000 --> 01:20:03.200 getting the privacy, we enjoy the powers most of the internet was not just kind of walking 1310 01:20:03.200 --> 01:20:09.160 the bark exercise, it was something that was fought for and one and so I think as a result, 1311 01:20:09.160 --> 01:20:14.760 we now can enjoy car payments of the internet, like accounts have passwords, most of the internet 1312 01:20:14.760 --> 01:20:18.960 under the hood is powered by a form of encryption under SSL certificates. 1313 01:20:18.960 --> 01:20:24.960 So I view it very similarly to kind of that debate and there's always going to be push 1314 01:20:24.960 --> 01:20:27.280 and pull with regulators. 1315 01:20:27.280 --> 01:20:34.680 I think the reason why things got kind of dicey and kind of people were

kind of prosecuted 1316 01:20:34.680 --> 01:20:37.880 when we first had this technology is because we had a very weak form of it. 1317 01:20:37.880 --> 01:20:40.800 We had a very small sprinkling of privacy. 1318 01:20:40.800 --> 01:20:45.960 All we could do was encrypt a balance and basically hide it from the world. 1319 01:20:45.960 --> 01:20:51.120 And that in its own is actually quite dangerous because you can't do the important thing which 1320 01:20:51.120 --> 01:20:53.960 is tie your identity to that cryptocurrency account. 1321 01:20:53.960 --> 01:20:59.720 So I think now that we've got to kind of like hopefully a higher degree of functionality, 1322 01:20:59.720 --> 01:21:04.320 we've kind of gone to like hopefully a local minimum or maximum in terms of what you can 1323 01:21:04.320 --> 01:21:05.320 do. 1324 01:21:05.320 --> 01:21:09.880 I think it's actually more useful to be able to convince regulators that this is actually 1325 01:21:09.880 --> 01:21:16.800 a force for good, not a lot of force for bad and teams like Zheepar Sport can help convince 1326 01:21:16.800 --> 01:21:17.800 them. 1327 01:21:17.800 --> 01:21:22.280 Ultimately it's going to be up to application developers though some apps will require 1328 01:21:22.280 --> 01:21:27.640 very strong degrees of compliance and regulation based on what they're building and others may 1329 01:21:27.640 --> 01:21:28.640 not. 1330 01:21:28.640 --> 01:21:33.000 Like if you're building low value game that's just kind of no cryptocurrencies, like you 1331 01:21:33.000 --> 01:21:38.680 need a very different compliance tool chain than if you're kind of trading kind of equities 1332 01:21:38.680 --> 01:21:40.280 on on a public blockchain. 1333 01:21:40.280 --> 01:21:46.520 And so the goal with Aztec is just to make a kind of neutral infrastructure layer that powers 1334 01:21:46.520 --> 01:21:51.680 all those use cases and gives developers the tooling they need to make those decisions. 1335 01:21:51.680 --> 01:21:57.560 So I think that making it be neutral and going to not compromising on on that fact that 1336 01:21:57.560 --> 01:22:02.760 we don't control the network is hopefully how we win because it means that the the next 1337 01:22:02.760 --> 01:22:05.720 is point is on the application developer, not the network. 1338 01:22:05.720 --> 01:22:09.520 And I think that's how Ethereum survived all these years as well with teams like tornado 1339 01:22:09.520 --> 01:22:12.920 cash like Ethereum was on the target, it was it was the application. 1340 01:22:12.920 --> 01:22:17.160 Well, that yes, but also we want to make sure that you know application developers can can 1341 01:22:17.160 --> 01:22:21.520 build in the tools and resources to protect themselves, you know, ultimately, yeah, 1342 01:22:21.520 --> 01:22:22.520 yeah. 1343 01:22:22.520 --> 01:22:27.240 So to directly answer your question, are you asked, basically, am I worried that regulators 1344 01:22:27.240 --> 01:22:30.400 weren't understand technology were building a come-off choice? 1345 01:22:30.400 --> 01:22:36.720 And also that does know I'm actually worried that regulators do understand what we're building 1346 01:22:36.720 --> 01:22:41.200 and they come after us because I think the last few years have shown us something as 1347 01:22:41.200 --> 01:22:47.240 that regulators can often act in extraordinary bad faith that you have the desired mandate 1348 01:22:47.240 --> 01:22:51.600 of a regulator, which is to protect consumers, which is very legitimate, and then you have 1349 01:22:51.600 --> 01:22:56.120 the de facto mandate of the regulator, which is in my opinion to protect incumbent economic 1350 01:22:56.120 --> 01:22:57.960 and financial elites. 1351 01:22:57.960 --> 01:23:02.960 And this is why the Gensurism was so hostile to crypto, it's because of the threat. 1352 01:23:02.960 --> 01:23:07.040 I mean, you can even see with the genius act right where banks were doing that absolute 1353 01:23:07.040 --> 01:23:12.160 damnedest to try and make that stable coins unable to pass on treasury yields to the 1354 01:23:12.160 --> 01:23:16.920 stable coin holders, and they're absolutely incensed that products that achieve the same 1355 01:23:16.920 --> 01:23:19.400 outcome are being developed. 1356 01:23:19.400 --> 01:23:22.680 If asset succeeds, you know, it's creating a network where the barriers to entry for 1357 01:23:22.680 --> 01:23:27.400 providing financial services crush through the floor, you know, you no longer need these 1358 01:23:27.400 --> 01:23:34.600 giant information notes, enormous pools of capital access to elite networks of knowledge 1359 01:23:34.600 --> 01:23:35.600 and privilege. 1360 01:23:35.600 --> 01:23:40.120 Instead, you can build these decentralized financial systems on Aztec that compete directly 1361 01:23:40.120 --> 01:23:46.280 with the centralized versions where you can get your equity from the blockchain networking. 1362 01:23:46.280 --> 01:23:48.360 You can get your market from the blockchain network. 1363 01:23:48.360 --> 01:23:53.000 You get distribution basically without having to counter to financial elites. 1364 01:23:53.000 --> 01:23:55.680 And I think it was a class where they're not going to like it and they're going to dress 1365 01:23:55.680 --> 01:24:00.920 up their concerns that were in the language of privacy and safety when in reality, what 1366 01:24:00.920 --> 01:24:02.880 they're upset about is that they're losing money. 1367 01:24:02.880 --> 01:24:03.880 That's my concern. 1368 01:24:04.200 --> 01:24:05.200 Are you guys prepared? 1369 01:24:05.200 --> 01:24:11.160 So if that concern is, you know, strong enough, I mean, I think there's, it's a scary 1370 01:24:11.160 --> 01:24:13.840 time for open source privacy developers. 1371 01:24:13.840 --> 01:24:15.680 I mean, does that ever keep you up at night back? 1372 01:24:15.680 --> 01:24:17.240 It makes me more angry than scared to be honest. 1373 01:24:17.240 -->

01:24:22.960 I think that's, you know, we're doing, we have unfortunately, we have a lot of precedents 1374 01:24:22.960 --> 01:24:28.760 we can observe to guide our actions very unfortunately. 1375 01:24:28.760 --> 01:24:35.840 So I think that, you know, we are, like, it is going to be a very, very tough battle 1376 01:24:35.840 --> 01:24:38.720 for anybody to come after Aztec because we're doing everything right. 1377 01:24:38.720 --> 01:24:41.920 And, you know, you get some really dark precedents set. 1378 01:24:41.920 --> 01:24:45.880 If some, some judge wants to claim that there's no legitimate use case to something like 1379 01:24:45.880 --> 01:24:48.960 Aztec, you can very, very easily extend that to saying there's no legitimate use case 1380 01:24:48.960 --> 01:24:50.680 for the internet. 1381 01:24:50.680 --> 01:24:55.440 I'm not worried, personally, you know, I just think that this is, I said this years ago 1382 01:24:55.440 --> 01:24:58.320 that this is going to be a long grinding battle of attrition. 1383 01:24:58.480 --> 01:25:03.800 Where there's too much value on the table to destroy this technology, to destroy blockchain, 1384 01:25:03.800 --> 01:25:06.720 to destroy privacy, there's too much value on the table. 1385 01:25:06.720 --> 01:25:12.440 And the first, like, trusted environment that actually embraces us is going to, is going 1386 01:25:12.440 --> 01:25:17.240 to generate so much advanced economic advantage that the others will have to fall, all the 1387 01:25:17.240 --> 01:25:19.400 other jurisdictions will have to fall in the night. 1388 01:25:19.400 --> 01:25:24.040 And so there's this basically because it's gold and goose, lean golden eggs on the table 1389 01:25:24.040 --> 01:25:29.360 at that, and components will try to destroy, but it only takes one of them to pick it up 1390 01:25:29.360 --> 01:25:32.200 and go, actually, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to start using this for myself 1391 01:25:32.200 --> 01:25:35.640 and make mine myself and everybody else will have to fall in line. 1392 01:25:35.640 --> 01:25:40.160 And the question is, what is the conventional damage going to be until that happens? 1393 01:25:40.160 --> 01:25:43.880 Our job is to make sure that both ourselves, the network and our networks, users and builders 1394 01:25:43.880 --> 01:25:44.880 stay out of it. 1395 01:25:44.880 --> 01:25:47.480 We'll see how successful we are over the next five years. 1396 01:25:47.480 --> 01:25:50.280 Completely agree, well said and well done. 1397 01:25:50.280 --> 01:25:54.520 As we maybe draw this to a close, I'm sort of interested in a lot of things about the 1398 01:25:54.520 --> 01:25:58.920 Aztec journey, but one of the things that intrigues me the most is how long you guys have been 1399 01:25:58.920 --> 01:25:59.920 doing this. 1400 01:25:59.920 --> 01:26:02.920 So this has been really an endurance race. 1401 01:26:02.920 --> 01:26:08.960 And I think we're in a world right now in crypto that feels somewhat jaded by short 1402 01:26:08.960 --> 01:26:09.960 termists. 1403 01:26:09.960 --> 01:26:12.360 Like it's kind of like where have all the cypher punks gone, right? 1404 01:26:12.360 --> 01:26:16.200 I thought this thing was about rebuilding something new. 1405 01:26:16.200 --> 01:26:20.720 In fact, you are an ex-particle physicist, I believe, Joe. 1406 01:26:20.720 --> 01:26:25.000 You were a primarily a material scientist, right? 1407 01:26:25.000 --> 01:26:31.160 So you got into crypto, I think, from other fields for a reason. 1408 01:26:31.160 --> 01:26:35.800 You've been working on this project for seven to eight years on Aztec. 1409 01:26:35.800 --> 01:26:40.600 And we haven't gotten into all the commuters of the tech stack, but there's so much here 1410 01:26:40.600 --> 01:26:47.880 that is net new and huge advances in the area of cryptography and ZK in particular that 1411 01:26:47.880 --> 01:26:50.320 I know you guys have built yourselves. 1412 01:26:50.320 --> 01:26:54.600 But this has been almost a decade's long journey already. 1413 01:26:54.600 --> 01:27:02.080 And we're just getting to the starting line now with the Aztec ignition chain. 1414 01:27:02.080 --> 01:27:05.680 I guess my question to both of you is like, what's kept you going? 1415 01:27:05.680 --> 01:27:08.560 And like what keeps you here now? 1416 01:27:08.560 --> 01:27:09.560 Maybe Zach, you first. 1417 01:27:09.560 --> 01:27:12.280 The thing is, honestly, what else is there? 1418 01:27:12.280 --> 01:27:13.280 What else is there? 1419 01:27:13.280 --> 01:27:19.200 Like if I left the space to pivot into some random piece of junk that I didn't believe in, 1420 01:27:19.200 --> 01:27:22.360 then it's like, what's it all for? 1421 01:27:22.360 --> 01:27:27.680 This product is, I drive a lot of meaning of purpose for this project because I can see, 1422 01:27:27.680 --> 01:27:31.440 I can see a world that could exist that needs to be pulled into reality. 1423 01:27:31.440 --> 01:27:35.160 And I feel like we're so close and we've been so close for years. 1424 01:27:35.160 --> 01:27:36.720 And why would I give up? 1425 01:27:36.720 --> 01:27:38.480 Is it to do what? 1426 01:27:38.480 --> 01:27:40.120 Like what else would I do? 1427 01:27:40.120 --> 01:27:42.440 This is the opportunity of a lifetime. 1428 01:27:42.440 --> 01:27:44.800 I wouldn't trade it for anything. 1429 01:27:44.800 --> 01:27:45.800 Yeah. 1430 01:27:45.800 --> 01:27:46.800 So I see it's door-dye. 1431 01:27:46.800 --> 01:27:47.800 Door-dye. 1432 01:27:47.800 --> 01:27:48.800 Yeah. 1433 01:27:48.800 --> 01:27:52.440 I think about it similarly, but it's definitely as well. 1434 01:27:52.440 --> 01:27:57.640 I mean, I kind of viewed as like the promise of this technology, like bringing the world 1435 01:27:57.640 --> 01:28:03.080 on chain without strong privacy is something that terrifies me. 1436 01:28:03.080 --> 01:28:10.520 And I think we have a real chance at preventing that future, like this

dystopia where, you know, 1437 01:28:10.520 --> 01:28:15.560 an MEV bot or some kind of AI agent knows what you're about to do before you've done it 1438 01:28:15.560 --> 01:28:20.840 because they've seen all your future previous transactions and they can just predict every 1439 01:28:20.840 --> 01:28:21.840 move. 1440 01:28:21.840 --> 01:28:26.480 Like if we're going to try and like, meaningfully try and onboard like all of the unbanked 1441 01:28:26.480 --> 01:28:30.880 people in the world to use crypto rails and we're going to take away something we enjoy 1442 01:28:30.880 --> 01:28:35.440 in the Western world, which is basic privacy, like I can't see your bank account, like when 1443 01:28:35.440 --> 01:28:39.800 I go to a shop and pay for something, they can't see how much money I have or like what 1444 01:28:39.800 --> 01:28:44.040 I did last week, I think if we're going to, if we're going to do that and that's the 1445 01:28:44.040 --> 01:28:48.560 world we're trying to kind of kind of put into existence here and we do it without privacy, 1446 01:28:48.560 --> 01:28:49.840 like what are we doing? 1447 01:28:49.840 --> 01:28:54.480 And I feel like compelled to protect that and try and kind of protect the people who are 1448 01:28:54.480 --> 01:28:59.320 ultimately going to be users of those chains who may not know the difference in the short 1449 01:28:59.320 --> 01:29:04.000 term, but we'll have their data kind of extracted in mind if something like Aztec 1450 01:29:04.000 --> 01:29:05.000 doesn't exist. 1451 01:29:05.000 --> 01:29:09.320 So I think it's more kind of this, there's a lot of scope to have a lot of impact with 1452 01:29:09.320 --> 01:29:14.480 this project, but also I think I feel compelled to kind of try and do something about that 1453 01:29:14.480 --> 01:29:20.720 because too many projects just put their users data on chain and we'll see in 5, 10 years 1454 01:29:20.720 --> 01:29:24.000 when it's all over it up, what the effects of that are. 1455 01:29:24.000 --> 01:29:27.720 And I think that's just not a world I really want to see exist, so that's what keeps 1456 01:29:27.720 --> 01:29:28.720 me going. 1457 01:29:28.720 --> 01:29:33.400 So privacy is actually a scary proposition and we certainly wish you well. 1458 01:29:33.400 --> 01:29:36.320 There are many ways to get involved with this project. 1459 01:29:36.320 --> 01:29:40.400 One of the ways right now is there's, I believe, a token sale going on if people want 1460 01:29:40.400 --> 01:29:44.720 to actually participate in that, I get involved in the network. 1461 01:29:44.720 --> 01:29:48.680 They can also use those tokens to become sequencers. 1462 01:29:48.680 --> 01:29:52.520 As we draw this to a close, can you talk about how that works effectively? 1463 01:29:52.520 --> 01:29:55.320 So let's say I want to learn a bit more about this. 1464 01:29:55.320 --> 01:29:57.760 Maybe I want to participate in the token sale. 1465 01:29:57.760 --> 01:30:02.360 Maybe I want

to, I don't run some infrastructure, become a sequencer. 1466 01:30:02.360 --> 01:30:03.360 What do I do, Joe? 1467 01:30:03.360 --> 01:30:07.840 Yeah, so we looked at the ways to kind of bootstruck this network and not many of them 1468 01:30:07.840 --> 01:30:09.080 kind of were shipped for purpose. 1469 01:30:09.080 --> 01:30:14.480 So we ended up partnering with Uniswap on a new kind of distribution auction model. 1470 01:30:14.480 --> 01:30:19.400 It's called a continuous clearing auction and it's designed to kind of prioritize fair 1471 01:30:19.400 --> 01:30:22.320 access to kind of token sales. 1472 01:30:22.320 --> 01:30:28.480 Like historically with token sales, they can be sniped by whales or the price discovery 1473 01:30:28.480 --> 01:30:29.800 doesn't really exist. 1474 01:30:29.800 --> 01:30:36.080 So Uniswap and us have built this new type of auction that prioritizes fair access and 1475 01:30:36.080 --> 01:30:41.160 it will, at the end of the auction, kind of find a fair price for the asset token. 1476 01:30:41.160 --> 01:30:46.200 It creates a Uniswap V4 pool at that fair price and everything's on chain, fully transparent. 1477 01:30:46.200 --> 01:30:47.200 Funnatherian tokens. 1478 01:30:47.200 --> 01:30:48.840 The tokens are an Ethereum layer one, okay. 1479 01:30:48.840 --> 01:30:50.480 Yeah, it's a YC20 on Ethereum. 1480 01:30:50.520 --> 01:30:54.800 The mainnet, the allocations, everything happens in smart contracts on the Ethereum 1481 01:30:54.800 --> 01:30:55.800 mainnet. 1482 01:30:55.800 --> 01:31:00.160 So you just have to head to our website to take part. 1483 01:31:00.160 --> 01:31:04.200 You can either do ZK Passport, proof to prove you're not on a sanctions list or traditional 1484 01:31:04.200 --> 01:31:05.760 kind of KYC. 1485 01:31:05.760 --> 01:31:10.640 And then you can send your eth to a smart contract and place a bid as a result. 1486 01:31:10.640 --> 01:31:14.720 Once the auction's over, you'll go to claim your tokens out out of those smart contracts 1487 01:31:14.720 --> 01:31:16.280 and you can then stake them. 1488 01:31:16.280 --> 01:31:18.800 You'll need 200,000 tokens to stake. 1489 01:31:18.800 --> 01:31:22.680 If you don't receive that many, you can still participate in governance on the network 1490 01:31:22.680 --> 01:31:24.680 and kind of vote for changes. 1491 01:31:24.680 --> 01:31:27.640 But yeah, you need 200,000 tokens to stake. 1492 01:31:27.640 --> 01:31:32.120 You can either do that yourself on kind of a home-staking machine, the Harbour requirements 1493 01:31:32.120 --> 01:31:38.640 are fairly easy on consumer hardware or you can delegate to some of the existing kind 1494 01:31:38.640 --> 01:31:40.680 of lists of stakers. 1495 01:31:40.680 --> 01:31:47.560 We have about 200 genesis kind of entities who accept kind of deposits from other individuals 1496 01:31:47.560 --> 01:31:51.280 and so you can stake that way as well, much like Ethereum staking works. 1497 01:31:51.280 --> 01:31:54.480 You can either do it yourself or you can kind of delegate to a third party. 1498 01:31:54.480 --> 01:31:59.360 And so yeah, it's all running on a Ethereum mainnet and the goal is to really distribute 1499 01:31:59.360 --> 01:32:03.240 ownership of the network and governance to the community. 1500 01:32:03.240 --> 01:32:07.160 And as a result, kind of, yeah, we're doing this token cell. 1501 01:32:07.160 --> 01:32:11.720 And one of the other interesting things to note is that the liquidity for the token 1502 01:32:11.720 --> 01:32:16.360 cell is put into a universal view for pool and the community actually gets to decide when 1503 01:32:16.360 --> 01:32:17.880 TGE occurs. 1504 01:32:17.880 --> 01:32:22.520 So the core team, everyone, has a lock up with the community tokens that are purchased 1505 01:32:22.520 --> 01:32:23.520 in the cell. 1506 01:32:23.520 --> 01:32:28.960 We'll be the only tokens that are 100% unlocked at TGE and the community gets to vote on 1507 01:32:28.960 --> 01:32:29.960 that. 1508 01:32:29.960 --> 01:32:33.640 And so it's kind of doing things the right way, decentralized governance, on a Ethereum 1509 01:32:33.640 --> 01:32:34.640 mainnet. 1510 01:32:34.640 --> 01:32:39.320 So it's been a lot of work, but it's been really cool to partner with one of the original 1511 01:32:39.320 --> 01:32:43.600 DeFi protocols you need to opt to make a new way of doing token distributions because 1512 01:32:44.600 --> 01:32:48.840 we don't think the whole adrop meta was fit for launching a decentralized network, 1513 01:32:48.840 --> 01:32:52.440 especially when people need skin in the game to state and run notes. 1514 01:32:52.440 --> 01:32:54.400 And Joe, I can run these notes from home. 1515 01:32:54.400 --> 01:32:57.040 I can run a Aztec sequencer from home. 1516 01:32:57.040 --> 01:32:58.240 Yeah, you've got a dat mode. 1517 01:32:58.240 --> 01:33:02.800 They're kind of, as a package on the dat mode app store, you can run it alongside your 1518 01:33:02.800 --> 01:33:05.760 Ethereum Validator, which is kind of a great way to do it. 1519 01:33:05.760 --> 01:33:06.760 So, 1520 01:33:06.760 --> 01:33:10.360 I got to tell you guys, you know what? 1521 01:33:10.360 --> 01:33:13.920 And just when I was getting jaded and crypto again, this is the most crypto native project 1522 01:33:13.920 --> 01:33:15.360 I've seen probably in years. 1523 01:33:15.360 --> 01:33:20.680 You guys are doing this bottom to top, and I give you a lot of credit for this, like new 1524 01:33:20.680 --> 01:33:26.240 territory, new frontiers, just about every particular area, layer two, privacy, even 1525 01:33:26.240 --> 01:33:28.200 the ICO and distribution. 1526 01:33:28.200 --> 01:33:29.640 This is really a unique project. 1527 01:33:29.640 --> 01:33:35.400 So I'm hoping the best for it and very excited about the launch and then getting finally 1528 01:33:35.400 --> 01:33:36.400 to, I guess. 1529 01:33:36.400 --> 01:33:39.360 So this is sort of a beacon chain type of mainnet. 1530 01:33:39.360 --> 01:33:41.920 And then what are you calling the main ignition mainnet? 1531 01:33:41.920 --> 01:33:43.680 Is that actual mainnet? 1532 01:33:43.680 --> 01:33:50.040 It's going to go to Alpha and then once we've run that with the kind of security and uptime 1533 01:33:50.040 --> 01:33:53.200 requirements, Zach was talking about earlier, so hopefully three months in. 1534 01:33:53.200 --> 01:33:54.200 We'll call it up later. 1535 01:33:54.200 --> 01:33:55.200 A bit like Cal. 1536 01:33:55.200 --> 01:33:57.200 And that was still in beta. 1537 01:33:57.200 --> 01:33:58.200 Okay. 1538 01:33:58.200 --> 01:33:59.200 Well done. 1539 01:33:59.200 --> 01:34:03.040 Thanks a lot for spending the time with us today. 1540 01:34:03.040 --> 01:34:06.880 This has been absolutely fantastic, Zach and Joe, we're looking for big things. 1541 01:34:06.880 --> 01:34:07.880 Thank you very much. 1542 01:34:07.880 --> 01:34:08.920 Thanks for having us on, it's been a pleasure. 1543 01:34:09.400 --> 01:34:10.400 Yeah. 1544 01:34:10.400 --> 01:34:11.400 Thanks again. 1545 01:34:11.400 --> 01:34:12.400 We'll see you in five years. 1546 01:34:12.400 --> 01:34:13.400 Yeah. 1547 01:34:13.400 --> 01:34:14.400 Oh my God. 1548 01:34:14.400 --> 01:34:18.160 Hopefully next year, I heard a promise earlier, Joe, gotta let you know, bankless listeners, 1549 01:34:18.160 --> 01:34:20.040 of course, none of this has been financial advice. 1550 01:34:20.040 --> 01:34:22.840 You know, crypto is risky, so it's a frontier of privacy. 1551 01:34:22.840 --> 01:34:25.320 You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. 1552 01:34:25.320 --> 01:34:26.320 This is the frontier. 1553 01:34:26.320 --> 01:34:29.040 It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. 1554 01:34:29.040 --> 01:34:29.560 Thanks a lot.