Full Transcript for The Race for Private Ethereum | Zac Williamson

00:04:46.384 Yeah, there was some minor debate about the stage two thing with L2Beat, but yeah, we intended it to be stage two. 54 00:04:46.644 --> 00:04:49.167 The current version that's live now, it is stage two. 55 00:04:50.508 --> 00:04:52.871 So yeah, straight off the top, stage two. 56 00:04:53.672 --> 00:04:55.954 Because for us, it's important. 57 00:04:56.054 --> 00:05:04.983 If you're a privacy network, then if you're not fully decentralized, then those, as I said before, those centralized actors have a responsibility to surveil and monitor your network. 58 00:05:05.603 --> 00:05:09.127 And we just didn't want to be in that position at all. 59 00:05:09.629 --> 00:05:17.035 So when you come, when you talk to like institutions and you tell them, hey, like we are fully private and we don't have a viewing key for you. 60 00:05:17.095 --> 00:05:18.476 No one has a viewing key. 61 00:05:19.016 --> 00:05:21.478 Does that scare them or does that actually interest them? 62 00:05:21.498 --> 00:05:23.400 Is that a carrot or a stick? 63 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:28.564 It would scare them if that's what Aztec was, but it's different. 64 00:05:29.284 --> 00:05:32.367 The Aztec protocol at the network level doesn't have any viewing keys. 65 00:05:32.387 --> 00:05:32.587 Yeah. 66 00:05:32.647 --> 00:05:35.029 But we're fully programmable and privacy preserving. 67 00:05:35.069 --> 00:05:39.933 So if you as an application, if you're some bank or some tradfire institution, you don't care about decentralization. 68 00:05:39.953 --> 00:05:41.134 You're like, yeah, I love censorship. 69 00:05:41.654 --> 00:05:47.058 And you just you want blockchain because it's a more efficient way of settling transactions or because you want access to liquidity. 70 00:05:47.419 --> 00:05:48.620 Well, you know, you're in charge. 71 00:05:48.820 --> 00:05:52.243 When you're building your app, your code, you can put in a viewing cube you want. 72 00:05:53.203 --> 00:05:55.345 You know, Aztec is a neutral network. 73 00:05:55.365 --> 00:05:57.587 We don't get to have a say on what you do with it. 74 00:05:58.147 --> 00:05:58.808 It's kind of the point. 75 00:05:59.398 --> 00:06:04.022 So what you're saying is that if they want to have a viewing key, they can have one. 76 00:06:04.062 --> 00:06:11.048 They just need to build it into their application layer because it's not being given to them in the protocol layer. 77 00:06:11.308 --> 00:06:13.810 It's not on the layer one, but they can have it in their app. 78 00:06:14.210 --> 00:06:14.811 Precisely. 79 00:06:16.032 --> 00:06:25.180 And I think where we differ from a lot of other chains is like we are genuinely focusing on building solutions that don't have these backdoors. 80 00:06:25.880 --> 00:06:28.042 You know, generally most other apps, they're like, 81 00:06:28.202 --> 00:06:29.943 okay, probably USDC, call it A. 82 00:06:30.084 --> 00:06:40.952 It's like, well, okay, fine, but A is backdoored, and B, you've got a private

token, but you're not a privacy-preserving network because you don't have this concept of private composability. 83 00:06:41.652 --> 00:06:44.434 You don't have this rich way of writing... 84 00:06:45.435 --> 00:06:51.482 smart contracts, financial instruments, whatever it is, where you can define your own private checks. 85 00:06:51.602 --> 00:06:54.145 Maybe it's, I want to do something with identity. 86 00:06:54.165 --> 00:06:56.107 Maybe I need to get a credit score from Web2. 87 00:06:56.187 --> 00:06:58.870 Maybe I need to check digital passport signatures. 88 00:06:59.731 --> 00:07:05.397 Maybe I am doing some weird trademark algorithm that's privacy preserving. 89 00:07:06.477 --> 00:07:12.680 And I want other people to use my smart contract as an ingredient in other products, like in a DeFi ecosystem. 90 00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:21.663 That facility doesn't exist anywhere else in a way that's remotely decentralized, but it does on Aztec. 91 00:07:22.128 --> 00:07:29.353 We kind of exist in this equilibrium in crypto where like 99 plus percent of crypto transactions are done on public blockchain ledgers. 92 00:07:29.733 --> 00:07:29.973 Oh, yeah. 93 00:07:30.473 --> 00:07:39.519 And I think if you asked me back in like, you know, 2018 through 2022, it's like, hey, David, what will the future of privacy on crypto be? 94 00:07:39.539 --> 00:07:41.220 And I'm like, oh, yeah, eventually it'll just flip. 95 00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:42.461 It'll go from 99% public to 99% private. 96 00:07:45.045 --> 00:07:54.469 The public side has been really sticky and we haven't really made too much progress in flipping the equilibrium from public chains to private chains. 97 00:07:55.510 --> 00:08:02.052 Where do you think that, do you think that we can make that flip to at least 50-50, anywhere close to that? 98 00:08:02.093 --> 00:08:03.033 And what will it take to get there? 99 00:08:03.313 --> 00:08:04.594 I think we can make that flip. 100 00:08:05.494 --> 00:08:07.435 But I'm not surprised at where things currently are. 101 00:08:08.055 --> 00:08:11.076 I've been working on Privacy Texas 2018. 102 00:08:11.757 --> 00:08:17.839 And even back then, I knew that individuals don't pay for privacy. 103 00:08:18.699 --> 00:08:28.884 If you have two comparable products, but one is spying on them and sending all the data and doing goodness what with it, and the other one is like super privacy preserving, the user will pick them on that's cheaper and has the better user experience. 104 00:08:30.065 --> 00:08:40.296 And this is very much a tragedy of the commons-like situation where people don't really fully understand just how their data is being harvested and weaponized and used against their interests. 105 00:08:41.197 --> 00:08:45.622 And so it's hard to fight against that. 106 00:08:47.505 --> 00:08:55.887 My thesis has always been that privacy is going to win because it enables products and applications that cannot exist without it. 107 00:08:56.167 --> 00:09:05.389 It's not a feature, it's a requirement for a lot of different types of applications, financial instruments and assets that you don't see on public blockchains today. 108 00:09:06.249 --> 00:09:11.130 And that's going to be what tips are balanced in my opinion. 109 00:09:11.526 --> 00:09:12.487 What are those applications? 110 00:09:12.607 --> 00:09:16.429 What are those applications that require like cypherpunk levels of privacy? 111 00:09:16.830 --> 00:09:34.241 Well, I would say it's the majority of TradFi eventually, because if you want to do anything that touches the real world, so let's say you want to trade a real world asset like mortgages or bonds or something like that, then generally you need an understanding of who the holder is. 112 00:09:34.281 --> 00:09:34.681 You need... 113 00:09:35.602 --> 00:09:40.526 You need some level of compliance because these assets exist in the real world, in a real legal system. 114 00:09:41.226 --> 00:09:54.535 And so right now, if you want to tokenize those assets, you make some rather fatal trade-offs because you have to have a data custodian in the mix. 115 00:09:54.555 --> 00:10:00.560 You have to have somebody that understands who a user is and what they're doing and what their accounts are and says, okay, fine, you're allowed to trade this asset. 116 00:10:01.060 --> 00:10:05.541 But then you can't easily then use those assets in a DeFi ecosystem. 117 00:10:05.641 --> 00:10:09.702 I can't build applications and products that use those assets. 118 00:10:10.242 --> 00:10:18.124 And so, you know, what we've seen over the last year, it's, you know, one of the taglines has been the institutionalization of crypto. 119 00:10:18.764 --> 00:10:21.585 What's really happening is crypto is moving off chain. 120 00:10:21.825 --> 00:10:30.607 It's moving into proprietary networks and other L2s where you can perform these kinds of checks because it's not going on a public network that everybody can see. 121 00:10:32.588 --> 00:10:36.391 But the downside is, A, it's not happening on real blockchains. 122 00:10:37.111 --> 00:10:39.873 But what you sacrifice is composability. 123 00:10:40.133 --> 00:10:52.702 You no longer have a world where I've got some novel, new, interesting asset or DeFi primitive and I can plug that into all these other assets and protocols that other people have built, almost like Lego bricks. 124 00:10:52.762 --> 00:10:54.944 This is how DeFi summer originally happened. 125 00:10:54.984 --> 00:10:55.644 Instead, you're getting 126 00:10:56.685 --> 00:11:06.947 off-chain mega-apps, really, where maybe it might be something running on Robinhood chain, or it might be Hyperliquid, or it might be Polymark. 127 00:11:06.967 --> 00:11:12.829 But generally, people will be using one crypto application, they won't be using anything else. 128 00:11:13.829 --> 00:11:16.309 And that application is going to be very vertically integrated. 129 00:11:16.329 --> 00:11:17.530 And... 130

00:11:19.451 --> 00:11:28.741 I think this is a fundamental bottleneck on how quickly crypto can grow, how many assets it can access, the total liquidity you can get on chain. 131 00:11:30.062 --> 00:11:34.687 And I think privacy is the necessary ingredient to really solve this. 132 00:11:35.231 --> 00:11:36.732 Can you illuminate that just a little bit more? 133 00:11:36.752 --> 00:11:43.898 Because I think people, you called like an application on Robinhood as like off-chain activity, but people on Robinhood chain was like, what do you mean? 134 00:11:44.078 --> 00:11:45.119 That's on-chain stuff. 135 00:11:45.520 --> 00:11:49.343 What's the actual off-chain component that you're talking about? 136 00:11:49.363 --> 00:11:50.464 Could you make this a little bit more tangible? 137 00:11:50.484 --> 00:11:52.185 Well, I mean, it depends what you mean by chain, right? 138 00:11:52.205 --> 00:11:57.449 But it's a pretty, like Robinhood is not a permissive, complete open ecosystem. 139 00:11:59.070 --> 00:12:11.617 And generally, if there's compliance credentials that you need, like KYC that you need to do, those records aren't on-chain. 140 00:12:11.757 --> 00:12:18.060 So if I want to integrate with those applications as assets, I need a relationship with that data custodian. 141 00:12:19.501 --> 00:12:21.643 which is complicated. 142 00:12:21.984 --> 00:12:33.316 And if you have multiple different candidate custodians for different platform services now, I as an app developer, if I want to use all these components in my app, I now need relationships with all these entities on behalf of my users. 143 00:12:33.376 --> 00:12:34.597 It doesn't really scale 144 00:12:36.679 --> 00:12:53.746 And this value is not being captured by distributed blockchains, ones like Ethereum, where they're not operated by relatively centralized actors. 145 00:12:54.113 --> 00:12:55.613 So it's the data that you're talking about. 146 00:12:55.653 --> 00:13:01.895 I think what you're referring to is assets and financial activity that is highly tradfi. 147 00:13:02.455 --> 00:13:08.317 Because when I send you, Zach, Ether on the Ethereum layer one, there's no data custodian there. 148 00:13:08.357 --> 00:13:09.497 That's not what you're talking about. 149 00:13:09.517 --> 00:13:14.058 You're talking about tokenized stocks that need to do a KYC check. 150 00:13:14.278 --> 00:13:16.099 Or when you're talking about mortgages, there's some... 151 00:13:16.379 --> 00:13:19.460 There's some provider there. 152 00:13:19.820 --> 00:13:22.060 But how does Aztec fix this? 153 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.221 Because you guys aren't a data custodian either. 154 00:13:24.321 --> 00:13:32.143 And so what about Aztec actually fixes this problem of allowing composability with compliance? 155 00:13:32.643 --> 00:13:33.043 It's simple. 156 00:13:33.063 --> 00:13:36.864 You put the data on chain and you don't worry about it because it's encrypted and it's private. 157 00:13:37.444 --> 00:13:41.325 Oh, and you can't put the data on chain in any other context because it's public. 158 00:13:41.585 --> 00:13:42.025 Precisely. 159 00:13:43.352 --> 00:13:43.612 Okay. 160 00:13:43.912 --> 00:13:45.753 But how do you actually put data on chain? 161 00:13:45.773 --> 00:13:50.956 So like a KYC check, how does that standard actually emerge on a private chain? 162 00:13:52.237 --> 00:13:54.479 Well, this is, uh, devil's in the detail, isn't it? 163 00:13:54.839 --> 00:13:55.099 So the, 164 00:13:56.857 --> 00:13:59.418 we have to almost put it together from scratch. 165 00:13:59.458 --> 00:14:00.458 You know, we're doing this. 166 00:14:01.218 --> 00:14:02.318 World is doing this as well. 167 00:14:02.918 --> 00:14:07.399 But generally, there's a lot of traditional flows you can just replicate on chain. 168 00:14:07.419 --> 00:14:12.260 You know, like if you're doing a passport check, you can do that on chain with, you know, digital signatures in your passports. 169 00:14:13.280 --> 00:14:15.561 We already have that with something like ZK Passport. 170 00:14:17.081 --> 00:14:22.282 You know, or a lot of identities around things like uploading documents, doing document scanning. 171 00:14:22.462 --> 00:14:23.202 Yeah, you can do that. 172 00:14:23.462 --> 00:14:25.503 You can do that in a smart contract if it's private. 173 00:14:26.643 --> 00:14:42.497 So, it's certainly not going to be instant, but I think that this is the inevitable future if we want to preserve a lot of the value adds that made blockchain successful in the first place. 174 00:14:42.617 --> 00:14:55.132 If we want to preserve this concept of composability, which allows for a wide ecosystem of applications to be built upon shared primitives with shared liquidity, and you want access to that liquidity, this is going to be very important. 175 00:14:55.353 --> 00:15:00.859 It's going to be important to stop this fragmentation that we're currently seeing in this siloing of liquidity. 176 00:15:01.604 --> 00:15:09.436 Maybe now's a good moment to talk about the ZK Passport product that comes out of Aztec so that listeners kind of understand what that is and how that works. 177 00:15:09.936 --> 00:15:10.217 Totally. 178 00:15:10.257 --> 00:15:11.999 So it's a little app on your phone. 179 00:15:12.901 --> 00:15:16.486 So, you know, generally if you have to sign up for something like, you know, in 180 00:15:16.746 --> 00:15:17.907 relatively important. 181 00:15:17.947 --> 00:15:20.988 You might be asked to download some kind of KYC app. 182 00:15:21.308 --> 00:15:24.810 What it does is, you know, you tap your passport to your phone and then it takes a picture of your face. 183 00:15:24.830 --> 00:15:26.491 You know, you go left, right, blah, blah, blah. 184 00:15:26.831 --> 00:15:29.932 And it matches your face to the passport picture and then it validates. 185 00:15:29.952 --> 00:15:30.573 Yeah, okay, fine. 186 00:15:30.593 --> 00:15:31.673 This is a legit passport. 187

00:15:31.813 --> 00:15:36.696 It's got a, all modern passports have little chips in them where you can get attestations. 188 00:15:38.076 --> 00:15:43.119 So you read the chip, you check that the face match works, et cetera. 189 00:15:44.079 --> 00:15:46.761 And great congratulations, you've been identified as a human being. 190 00:15:47.641 --> 00:15:54.725 Only problem is generally that works today by all of that data, including your passport information, is sent to some random server somewhere where you don't. 191 00:15:54.825 --> 00:15:56.026 You have no idea what's going on. 192 00:15:56.046 --> 00:15:57.207 It could be left unencrypted. 193 00:15:57.227 --> 00:15:58.088 It could be insecure. 194 00:15:58.489 --> 00:15:59.009 Usually it is. 195 00:15:59.189 --> 00:16:00.871 Usually this stuff gets attacked and hacked. 196 00:16:01.272 --> 00:16:04.475 And obviously you can't put that on a transparent blockchain. 197 00:16:04.655 --> 00:16:09.660 What CKPossible does is it runs all these checks using zero-knowledge privacy tech. 198 00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:10.040 So 199 00:16:10.761 --> 00:16:13.964 what's leaving your phone isn't your passport data. 200 00:16:14.024 --> 00:16:14.744 It's a proof. 201 00:16:14.805 --> 00:16:24.052 It's a mathematical proof saying, yeah, like the phone's camera took a picture and I matched it to this passport's data. 202 00:16:24.092 --> 00:16:26.715 And this passport data has been signed by a specific government. 203 00:16:27.055 --> 00:16:32.880 And so I can now prove to you that there is a human being who is a citizen of a country. 204 00:16:32.940 --> 00:16:38.385 Or the proof, the claim could just be as simple as this person's not on a sanctions list and you don't know anything else. 205 00:16:38.965 --> 00:16:40.186 Nothing else leaves your device. 206 00:16:40.426 --> 00:16:50.051 And then that can then become a credential inside an Aztec smart contract that can be repeatedly reused and queried by a whole ecosystem of applications. 207 00:16:50.371 --> 00:16:59.636 Right, and so if you're an institution who is interested in privacy because that's how their current systems work, this is how you can offer them compliance. 208 00:16:59.776 --> 00:17:06.040 Or it's like, well, how do I know that North Korea isn't buying my tokenized security or whatever? 209 00:17:06.060 --> 00:17:06.160 Yeah. 210 00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:15.645 It's a contract call to the ZK Passport smart contract that has a hook to the web app or the mobile app? 211 00:17:16.325 --> 00:17:17.646 Yeah, precisely. 212 00:17:17.666 --> 00:17:22.969 Or like the mobile app uploads a credential onto the ASIC blockchain, and then you can just query that inside your smart contract. 213 00:17:24.402 --> 00:17:29.443 you know, that's kind of like that's the highest quality way of doing this. 214 00:17:29.463 --> 00:17:30.823 There's much simpler solutions as well. 215 00:17:30.843 --> 00:17:40.305 It could just be simply like, you know, you run some

off-chain process, right, and some guy that you trust gives, like, has a little stamp and go, yes, okay, fine, this person is legit. 216 00:17:40.705 --> 00:17:50.247 But then with Aztec, you can put that credential on-chain and use it without it being linked to any of your crypto accounts. 217 00:17:50.687 --> 00:17:51.207 And for 218 00:17:52.807 --> 00:18:04.690 For restricted tradify type activities, this is quite important because we're talking about asset classes or users where portfolios can be extremely large, extremely sensitive. 219 00:18:04.730 --> 00:18:09.392 You don't want people to know about what's being traded or how it's being traded. 220 00:18:09.672 --> 00:18:13.373 You don't want yourself open to the kind of transparent analytics that exist on chain. 221 00:18:15.013 --> 00:18:18.574 And you can get that privacy on Aztec. 222 00:18:19.034 --> 00:18:28.977 So the answer as to like, why can't we do that same system on Ethereum where you do a passport check or a general credential check and you can do it in the public context? 223 00:18:28.997 --> 00:18:36.679 The answer is, well, if you do that with enough activity, you can kind of Sudoku puzzle your answer into who that credential is. 224 00:18:36.739 --> 00:18:40.060 So the credential doesn't tell you, hi, I'm JP Morgan. 225 00:18:40.720 --> 00:18:43.641 But with enough activity on chain, somebody could like kind of just like... 226 00:18:44.961 --> 00:18:48.764 figure out with enough data who this credential likely is associated with. 227 00:18:49.164 --> 00:18:50.885 And so that's why you can't do it in the public context. 228 00:18:50.925 --> 00:18:51.285 Is that right? 229 00:18:51.565 --> 00:18:52.065 Precisely. 230 00:18:52.205 --> 00:18:57.969 And this also goes back to when I was talking about how privacy wins when it's a requirement and not a feature. 231 00:18:58.549 --> 00:19:06.253 For example, right now, David, would you be willing to take your passport and put it up to your camera and show the whole world your passport details? 232 00:19:07.374 --> 00:19:08.494 I'm not willing to do that. 233 00:19:08.714 --> 00:19:09.295 Precisely. 234 00:19:09.915 --> 00:19:11.276 That's why it doesn't go on chain today. 235 00:19:11.676 --> 00:19:13.317 Even though I do have my passport right here. 236 00:19:15.780 --> 00:19:16.180 Closed. 237 00:19:16.501 --> 00:19:17.501 Closed for the listener. 238 00:19:17.521 --> 00:19:18.142 Did not see it. 239 00:19:18.182 --> 00:19:19.562 Yeah. 240 00:19:20.143 --> 00:19:22.004 So privacy is important in some respects. 241 00:19:22.044 --> 00:19:23.505 Things like that are important. 242 00:19:23.725 --> 00:19:26.046 You know, people don't want their identity to be stolen. 243 00:19:26.406 --> 00:19:30.689 And so that flow I talked about, you can't do it on a transparent blockchain. 244 00:19:30.709 --> 00:19:32.110 You can do it on Aztec. 245 00:19:32.475 --> 00:19:35.236 Your checking account isn't public, so why should your crypto

be? 246 00:19:35.476 --> 00:19:38.557 As AI gets more powerful, your privacy gets weaker. 247 00:19:38.657 --> 00:19:45.260 Connecting your identity to your financial history on chain or off is the easiest it's ever been and will only get easier from here. 248 00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:47.561 Every data breach adds another piece to the puzzle 249 00:19:47.761 --> 00:19:50.442 And every public transaction leaves a trail back to you. 250 00:19:50.562 --> 00:19:53.243 And when your wealth is visible, you become a target. 251 00:19:53.323 --> 00:19:55.544 Money that can be seen can be stolen. 252 00:19:55.664 --> 00:19:59.246 Being in control of your money should include controlling who sees what you do with it. 253 00:19:59.446 --> 00:20:00.466 Zcash fixes this. 254 00:20:00.726 --> 00:20:05.128 Zcash is private digital money with privacy enforced by zero-knowledge cryptography. 255 00:20:05.348 --> 00:20:10.230 Zcash-shielded transactions let you send and spend without publicly revealing who you're paying or how much. 256 00:20:10.430 --> 00:20:12.631 When it comes to privacy, there is no second best. 257 00:20:12.811 --> 00:20:17.793 Get started with Zcash using Visor, the wallet Zcash devs and enthusiasts use to encrypt their money. 258 00:20:17.933 --> 00:20:23.314 Zcash wallets are non-trivial, and Visor goes the extra mile to make sure your money and privacy are fully protected. 259 00:20:23.514 --> 00:20:25.755 Open source, self-custodial, fully private. 260 00:20:25.935 --> 00:20:28.916 Use the link in the show notes to download Visor on mobile or desktop. 261 00:20:29.076 --> 00:20:29.757 Protect your future. 262 00:20:30.037 --> 00:20:30.757 Use Zcash. 263 00:20:30.957 --> 00:20:34.399 Dollar stable coins taught Latin America how to store value on chain. 264 00:20:34.559 --> 00:20:39.181 Ripio is taking that same idea and bringing it to the currencies people actually use every day. 265 00:20:39.301 --> 00:20:51.306 With wrapped fiat, Ripio is putting more than a decade of experience powering crypto infrastructure for leading companies across Latin America behind a suite of six local currency stable coins covering Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. 266 00:20:51.386 --> 00:20:59.457 Each is pegged one-to-one to its local currency and fully backed by reserves held in regulated financial institutions with independent attestations published for each token. 267 00:20:59.537 --> 00:21:02.541 But wrapped fiat is not just designed to sit there, it's built to move. 268 00:21:02.681 --> 00:21:09.450 The suite is live across 10 EVM chains with liquidity and integrations already spanning platforms like Morpho, Uniswap, and Chainlink. 269 00:21:09.590 --> 00:21:18.913 Users can move between local payment rails like PIX and SPAY and matching wrapped fiat one-to-one in real time with zero fees on both on-ramps and off-ramps and no FX conversion. 270 00:21:19.033 --> 00:21:20.974 Local rails in, on-chain in the middle. 271 00:21:21.134 -->

00:21:26.075 And for builders, Ripio offers APIs, webhooks, widgets, and a sandbox just from day one. 272 00:21:26.255 --> 00:21:29.877 Start building with wrapped fiat today at platform.rippio.com. 273 00:21:30.137 --> 00:21:30.457 I see. 274 00:21:30.597 --> 00:21:30.837 I see. 275 00:21:31.517 --> 00:21:41.925 Is there, I suppose there's also a conversation here about, there's been just a growing crescendo of AI driven exploits with a PHP exploit. 276 00:21:43.466 --> 00:21:52.273 This topic feels adjacent to what we're talking about now, because like, that's how you would probably back into who this credential is in the public context. 277 00:21:53.293 --> 00:22:01.476 How does the rise of data breaches or just the rise of AI capacities to exploit vulnerabilities, how does this conversation relate? 278 00:22:01.716 --> 00:22:08.799 This is going to change the world, and the world is not ready for what's going to be happening with all these AI attacks. 279 00:22:08.939 --> 00:22:17.582 What used to, maybe even six months ago, what used to require very high-skilled, highly paid labor to find all these bugs and exploits? 280 00:22:18.902 --> 00:22:37.371 now you can spin up millions of little minions that are just as capable or almost as capable that can just scour the web for you for every single little vulnerability and exploiting an attack and then find a way of using them and even autonomously executing on these attacks, possibly even billions of these little minions soon 281 00:22:39.012 --> 00:22:44.835 And it's going to change the web because right now most internet applications are slop. 282 00:22:45.195 --> 00:23:05.484 Either it's AI slop or it's human slop, but very little attention is being paid to security because there's this principle of obscurity because who is going to be looking at some random ass website where there's a server in Utah that's running some old PHP code that's managing, I don't know, like a customer order book for $10,000? 283 00:23:05.724 --> 00:23:07.825 You know, it's not worth anyone's time to look into that. 284 00:23:08.265 --> 00:23:10.486 It's worth an AI agent's time to look into that now. 285 00:23:11.026 --> 00:23:14.688 And yeah, we're not ready for what's going to happen. 286 00:23:14.848 --> 00:23:19.370 The whole trusted operator model of the internet is going to get destroyed. 287 00:23:20.270 --> 00:23:22.672 And the idea that you can just trust 288 00:23:23.792 --> 00:23:31.594 websites with your sensitive information, with your card details, with your passport, you know, with anything is going to rapidly erode. 289 00:23:32.074 --> 00:23:33.854 Blockchains are part of the solution here. 290 00:23:34.635 --> 00:23:43.677 Because blockchains, they've already existed and live in this highly adversarial environment where, you know, if somebody can attack you, it's going to happen. 291 00:23:45.117 --> 00:23:46.837 And, you know, as we've seen with 292 00:23:54.658 --> 00:24:01.482 they are going to

become hardened and secure much, much faster than the rest of the internet. 293 00:24:01.502 --> 00:24:07.245 We're already seeing that Zcash, their circuits are formally verified. 294 00:24:07.445 --> 00:24:12.948 Aztec, we formally verified large parts of our protocol, and we're not going to stop until we formally verify everything. 295 00:24:12.988 --> 00:24:22.213 So you've got basic mathematical theorems about what this protocol should be doing that you've proven mapped to the code and said that mathematically can't be any bugs there. 296 00:24:24.237 --> 00:24:25.638 This is the environment that blockchains live in. 297 00:24:25.918 --> 00:24:41.543 And so we're going to see a move where people are going to stop trusting third-party operators and they're going to want to use decentralized, hardened infrastructure, these ledgers where transactions are completely trustless. 298 00:24:41.983 --> 00:24:48.605 You massively minimize the number of third parties and middlemen you need to trust because that's going to be really, really dangerous. 299 00:24:49.209 --> 00:25:07.977 I've been looking for an articulation about why this rise of AI-driven vulnerabilities, discovery of vulnerabilities, but also exploitation of vulnerabilities, it feels like it is a boon to crypto, but I've never really heard it articulated so clearly as what you've said just now is... 300 00:25:08.837 --> 00:25:13.498 Well, the internet has always been in an adversarial environment. 301 00:25:13.518 --> 00:25:16.439 You know, Facebook, for example, Facebook servers gets attacked. 302 00:25:16.619 --> 00:25:20.600 You know, everyone's trying to attack the Facebook servers, and it's been that way for a decade. 303 00:25:21.280 --> 00:25:26.781 But that's really, like, the largest honeypot that's out there, one of them, until crypto came along. 304 00:25:26.901 --> 00:25:38.424 And then, you know, Bitcoin and the whole innovation of, like, decentralized systems exists with the assumption that people are trying to attack it all the time, every moment of the day, every second of the day. 305 00:25:39.264 --> 00:25:44.007 And that's been the way that Bitcoin and blockchain systems have been built under. 306 00:25:44.027 --> 00:25:55.432 And it's kind of been unique to crypto that we exist in this like inside out world where we have like the normal world, the Web2 world, where it's just like security. 307 00:25:55.772 --> 00:25:59.154 Like I remember Andreas Antonopoulos called this like the bubble boy world. 308 00:25:59.674 --> 00:26:05.840 where the silos, all the valuable data was contained in this bubble, but they were really fragile. 309 00:26:06.761 --> 00:26:11.806 And so if the virus ever got in, it was dead, you were exposed. 310 00:26:12.026 --> 00:26:22.657 Whereas like Bitcoin is like the sewer rat version where like, yeah, Bitcoin has 10,000 diseases on it in every one given moment, but it's immune because that's the environment that's born in. 311 00:26:23.213 -->

00:26:31.100 And what you're saying is like, because the cost to attack these systems has dropped so dramatically low because of the reduction of token costs. 312 00:26:31.480 --> 00:26:33.522 Well, actually the web two world now exists. 313 00:26:33.622 --> 00:26:40.288 Like the diseased rat is inside the bubble and all of these systems are now inside of our world. 314 00:26:41.108 --> 00:26:47.895 And this is a boon to decentralized open source code because this exists because this is the environment that we live in. 315 00:26:48.375 --> 00:26:48.676 Exactly. 316 00:26:48.696 --> 00:26:57.924 The question I have for you is why is that any better for Aztec than it is, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, any other public ledger? 317 00:26:57.964 --> 00:27:01.508 Why does Aztec benefit uniquely more than the public chains? 318 00:27:01.888 --> 00:27:03.229 Because it's private. 319 00:27:03.690 --> 00:27:05.832 And this is the really, this is the core part. 320 00:27:06.192 --> 00:27:31.082 if I want to migrate more of my Web2 type systems into something which is a little bit more hardened to trust it, maybe I want to use payment rails that aren't using Visa, I want to use blockchain, and I want to do a lot more checks and queries directly on that blockchain layer because I don't want to trust that. 321 00:27:31.122 --> 00:27:32.743 I don't want to trust some rickety server somewhere. 322 00:27:32.763 --> 00:27:33.223 I want to trust... 323 00:27:33.863 --> 00:27:37.186 blockchain as a, to quote a very overused phrase, the world computer. 324 00:27:37.526 --> 00:27:41.149 Well, how do you like enforced transparency? 325 00:27:41.509 --> 00:27:44.571 Because the internet doesn't run on enforced transparency. 326 00:27:45.091 --> 00:27:50.636 You know, like this, we're now talking about a very, very different environment to the regular blockchain environment. 327 00:27:50.676 --> 00:27:57.541 We're talking about one where you have proprietary information, you have custom data, you have sensitive user information, all of this 328 00:27:58.181 --> 00:28:06.107 information is required to construct and execute these transactions, to create these records, that you just can't put that stuff on Ethereum. 329 00:28:06.127 --> 00:28:13.532 You can't put it on Solana because you'll get sued by 50 million people because you've just put all that sensitive data on a transparent network. 330 00:28:13.692 --> 00:28:14.293 It just doesn't work. 331 00:28:14.313 --> 00:28:14.933 It doesn't compute. 332 00:28:15.694 --> 00:28:17.395 But it does compute on Aztec. 333 00:28:17.755 --> 00:28:18.496 And that's the difference. 334 00:28:18.876 --> 00:28:32.303 One of the conversations I've been having with John from Venice is that like one of the best strategies to reduce your company's vulnerability of getting your data exploited is to just not put the data on the Internet in the first place. 335 00:28:33.263 --> 00:28:34.724 And it seems like that's kind of similar. 336 00:28:34.784 --> 00:28:46.589 It was just like, well, if just don't reveal it just and the way that Venice's solution is like, we'll never ever put it on a trusted, trusted third party operator service, Venice being the third party operator. 337 00:28:46.889 --> 00:28:51.571 And what you're saying is like, well, any system with a third party operator is going to be attacked, exploited. 338 00:28:51.612 --> 00:28:53.112 That's what we just talked about. 339 00:28:53.432 --> 00:28:59.175 But in addition to that, if you just don't reveal the data at all, you don't have an attackable surface area. 340 00:28:59.960 --> 00:29:04.964 Yeah, I would even go further and say it's like from the application's perspective, it's not their data. 341 00:29:05.585 --> 00:29:17.674 If I'm as a user, if I'm putting encrypted credentials, sensitive information is encrypted inside a smart contract, and I hold the decryption keys, nobody else holds the decryption keys, right? 342 00:29:17.814 --> 00:29:19.716 They don't leave my device, they're not leaving my laptop. 343 00:29:20.156 --> 00:29:22.358 Then it's, you know, and I'm using some site like Venice. 344 00:29:22.538 --> 00:29:24.240 It's not Venice's data, it's my data. 345 00:29:26.042 --> 00:29:27.303 And so it's exactly the same. 346 00:29:27.623 --> 00:29:44.042 And this is all about effectively risk arbitrage, where you can use a network like Aztec to de-risk your application and remove this thorny problem of potentially holding all of this data which can get hacked and attacked and leaked. 347 00:29:44.588 --> 00:29:57.971 So, Zach, we've talked, I think, a bit about kind of the macro tailwinds behind privacy and private chains, like the big underlying theses, the fundamentals behind why private chains are valuable. 348 00:29:58.031 --> 00:29:58.991 Let's talk about the short term. 349 00:30:00.831 --> 00:30:08.033 What is the incentive for the average bankless listener who's a typical retail ledger button presser 350 00:30:08.613 --> 00:30:09.093 Mm-hmm. 351 00:30:09.133 --> 00:30:15.397 What's in it for them or for the people who listen to Bankless inside of Wall Street and like are a part of like larger Wall Street institutions? 352 00:30:15.737 --> 00:30:18.038 Why should they come on to Aztec in 2026? 353 00:30:18.118 --> 00:30:22.761 Well, there's only a couple of months left to 2026, but why should they come on in 2026? 354 00:30:22.821 --> 00:30:24.382 Sure, okay, in 2027, yeah. 355 00:30:24.982 --> 00:30:26.083 Why should they come on in the next year? 356 00:30:26.583 --> 00:30:26.843 So, 357 00:30:28.153 --> 00:30:32.295 Part of it is, you know, there's going to be very little reason why not to. 358 00:30:32.315 --> 00:30:37.016 You know, already with apps like ZK Money, you can just get privacy for free. 359 00:30:37.136 --> 00:30:40.818 You can earn your yield in L1 DeFi the same way you normally do. 360 00:30:41.338 --> 00:30:42.818 You just, it's private. 361 00:30:43.339 -->

00:30:47.540 And so it makes you more secure. 362 00:30:48.621 --> 00:30:52.102 Right now, we're in a world where everybody's throwing all their data on chain. 363 00:30:52.122 --> 00:30:55.043 You know, everybody can see the transactions, trade histories, portfolios, blah, blah, blah. 364 00:30:55.919 --> 00:31:04.581 Another danger of AI is it's making it much cheaper to make sense of this data and to categorize and systematize it and actually use it in adversarial ways. 365 00:31:04.901 --> 00:31:07.882 And so the less data you're putting out there, the better, the safer you're going to be. 366 00:31:09.202 --> 00:31:18.304 But even with, you know, ASIC only launched in April, you know, we're doing a major upgrade, which I think will have landed by the time this goes out. 367 00:31:18.464 --> 00:31:19.665 It's called ASIC Tierra. 368 00:31:26.286 --> 00:31:29.268 new capabilities that you're going to be able to do on Aztec. 369 00:31:29.288 --> 00:31:50.402 You can't get anywhere else beyond things like simple things like private deals, things like private AI inference, where we're going to have ways of paying for inference without that leaking, without that going all over the internet, which, again, I think in this very adversarial environment that we're working in, that's going to be pretty important. 370 00:31:52.170 --> 00:31:57.794 And, you know, we're also, we're ramping up what you can do on Aztec. 371 00:31:57.814 --> 00:32:06.039 You know, we're going to have private perps, private futures, and we're just growing that ecosystem of giving people 372 00:32:07.080 --> 00:32:14.243 Step one is just giving people what they already have, but just making sure that they're more protected than they currently are because people can't see what they're doing. 373 00:32:15.724 --> 00:32:22.727 If you're a DGN trader and you're really good at it and people are starting to copy you, well, this protects you from that. 374 00:32:23.507 --> 00:32:40.727 In the near term, I'm really bullish on being able to connect what we're building with Aztec with private identities, things like reputation networks that will allow people to be building and deploying products and services that... 375 00:32:42.945 --> 00:32:53.531 go far beyond what you normally get on transparent networks because they're going to be able to know things about you without that data really leaving your control. 376 00:32:53.831 --> 00:33:06.178 And it's going to open up a lot of new things, things like, you know, basic things like under-collateralized lending and novel forms of DeFi primitives, you know, 377 00:33:07.219 --> 00:33:15.262 Something that we're going to see in Aztec very soon, I'm pretty hopeful about, is a fully indulgent private stablecoin with private issuance and settlement, things like that. 378 00:33:16.122 --> 00:33:23.465 So we're just going to be opening up Aztec to just a world of new capabilities that hasn't been seen before. 379 00:33:23.885 --> 00:33:35.473 When you think about onboarding new users, new transactions, new assets, do you think that the idea here is to bring on a lot of existing crypto users? 380 00:33:35.954 --> 00:33:44.400 Or are you also trying to go to the world of Wall Street and be like, hey, I know you've never touched a blockchain before, but we actually have the solutions to the reasons why you haven't. 381 00:33:44.800 --> 00:33:47.022 Is it net new users or existing users? 382 00:33:47.322 --> 00:33:48.323 We're doing a phase draw. 383 00:33:48.343 --> 00:33:59.269 Right now, it's going to be... We're focusing on Web3 users because they already understand the blockchain paradigm and it's much easier to communicate with them. 384 00:34:00.810 --> 00:34:08.074 We want to focus a lot more on hardening our network and making it a lot more turnkey before we start going to Wall Street. 385 00:34:08.254 --> 00:34:11.596 Like I said, we formally verified major parts of our protocol. 386 00:34:11.896 --> 00:34:13.137 I want to formally verify everything. 387 00:34:13.697 --> 00:34:14.398 I don't want... 388 00:34:15.418 --> 00:34:22.162 Because when I'm talking to somebody who has very little literacy in blockchain, they have zero risk appetite. 389 00:34:22.202 --> 00:34:24.784 Even the idea of having a private key is scary. 390 00:34:25.765 --> 00:34:29.987 I want a solution to them, which is this turnkey and white label, where they can get their team. 391 00:34:30.007 --> 00:34:33.289 They will have some weird derivative or trading policy or whatever they want to do. 392 00:34:33.830 --> 00:34:34.570 They can just get their team. 393 00:34:34.610 --> 00:34:35.811 It's not blockchain native. 394 00:34:35.831 --> 00:34:36.631 They don't care. 395 00:34:36.751 --> 00:34:38.192 They don't know anything about privacy. 396 00:34:38.412 --> 00:34:39.773 It just works out of the box. 397 00:34:40.173 --> 00:34:40.754 And it's secure. 398 00:34:41.294 --> 00:34:53.362 I've been in this industry for many, many years and doing privacy, doing the same thing, because I try not to be a bullshit merchant and I don't want to make claims that that can't be backed up. 399 00:34:53.762 --> 00:34:58.566 Like a technology like Aztec, I think is unbelievably compelling and powerful for institutions and enterprise. 400 00:34:59.606 --> 00:35:13.053 But it needs to conform to their expectations, to traditional expectations, not to Web3 expectations, which means we have a little bit more work to do there, a few more months of work to do before it's fully ready for that. 401 00:35:14.014 --> 00:35:16.575 But it's only a matter of time. 402 00:35:16.615 --> 00:35:20.097 Everything is falling into shape with our formal verification work. 403 00:35:20.541 --> 00:35:31.506 I do think that as exploits, it kind of feels like just the world is exploding as we are walking through it, or at least that's what we're going into, according to the AI researchers, which everyone seems to agree with. 404 00:35:32.346 -->

00:35:36.949 The formal verification is going to move from just like something aspirational to like something urgent. 405 00:35:37.669 --> 00:35:39.170 Oh, it's already urgent. 406 00:35:39.450 --> 00:35:42.051 People don't realize it yet, but it is so incredibly urgent. 407 00:35:42.291 --> 00:35:48.053 I want to ask about the network, the Aztec network, like the economics of the network. 408 00:35:48.073 --> 00:35:54.376 One of the interesting things about Aztec is that you guys launched stage two, like fully decentralized. 409 00:35:54.656 --> 00:36:02.559 What that comes with is that the Aztec token is a proof of stake token in the same way that you would expect a layer one proof of stake token. 410 00:36:02.579 --> 00:36:03.940 It's just like a layer two on Ethereum. 411 00:36:05.080 --> 00:36:09.442 But because privacy is more, as I understand it, computationally intensive, 412 00:36:10.202 --> 00:36:17.070 How does the just the economics of transactions on Aztec and the Aztec staking token for validating the network? 413 00:36:17.250 --> 00:36:24.798 Is there anything different there because of the privacy or how do people think about this in the Aztec context versus what is kind of the status quo? 414 00:36:25.336 --> 00:36:32.000 Yeah, so honestly, from the tokenomics side and from the staking side, it's pretty straightforward. 415 00:36:32.040 --> 00:36:33.100 Not much changes. 416 00:36:33.821 --> 00:36:36.102 You know, we have a token which powers the network. 417 00:36:36.562 --> 00:36:38.924 The Aztec token underpins everything on the network. 418 00:36:39.984 --> 00:36:41.785 All activity requires Aztec for gas. 419 00:36:42.465 --> 00:36:47.608 And we get the network security through staking Aztec if you want to be a validator. 420 00:36:48.229 --> 00:36:50.090 And all the governance decisions go through Aztec. 421 00:36:50.990 --> 00:37:04.553 When it comes to the economics of like operating the ASIC network, right now the privacy requirements, they add a small amount of overhead because you need these prover entities to prove blocks which you don't normally have on a network. 422 00:37:05.553 --> 00:37:08.534 But their computation requirements are pretty light. 423 00:37:08.554 --> 00:37:14.055 We've just recently made a governance change to fix what was effectively just a... 424 00:37:15.063 --> 00:37:21.445 more of like an, we hadn't quite got the economics right, so we were overpaying our provers. 425 00:37:21.805 --> 00:37:24.645 So that's now been fixed. 426 00:37:25.046 --> 00:37:31.807 Over the next year, we're going to be making some relatively minor changes to make proving much, much cheaper. 427 00:37:33.128 --> 00:37:33.868 So, yeah, 428 00:37:34.608 --> 00:37:45.816 Yeah, I think the kind of the additional overheads of serving privacy from a network operator perspective are basically going to trend down to zero very quickly. 429 00:37:46.036 --> 00:37:51.240 What about just kind of the network when it comes to like UX, for example? 430 00:37:52.481 --> 00:37:53.302 Is it fast? 431 00:37:53.642 --> 00:37:56.184 How was it like to trade tokens on Aztec? 432 00:37:57.625 --> 00:37:59.206 Is there MEV on Aztec? 433 00:37:59.226 --> 00:38:00.507 What about all of these kind of things? 434 00:38:00.787 --> 00:38:17.672 Yes, there can be MEV on Aztec because typically if you're doing trading on Aztec, you want to keep identities private, but the actual protocol needs to be somewhat public for price discovery and that does allow for MEV. 435 00:38:17.912 --> 00:38:27.015 There are solutions around that using a multiple party computation that we very much are exploring, but that's kind of a next level thing. 436 00:38:27.896 --> 00:38:34.202 But when it comes to things like latency, transaction speed, that's where the privacy right now has a little bit of an overhead. 437 00:38:34.823 --> 00:38:43.011 You know, on my laptop, for example, I need to generate this transaction proof because the sensitive data is not leaving my computer. 438 00:38:43.051 --> 00:38:43.992 It's only the proof is. 439 00:38:44.453 --> 00:38:47.216 And that takes roughly five seconds in a web browser on my machine. 440 00:38:47.476 --> 00:38:49.978 It takes one second if I'm running a native app. 441 00:38:51.279 --> 00:38:55.041 So that is one of the costs. 442 00:38:55.481 --> 00:38:56.901 We're working to get that down. 443 00:38:56.921 --> 00:39:00.542 We've got an engineering roadmap to squeeze that down. 444 00:39:00.582 --> 00:39:04.164 There's a lot of low-hanging fruit, particularly open up through AI. 445 00:39:05.984 --> 00:39:08.165 So yeah, there's going to be progress there. 446 00:39:08.413 --> 00:39:13.976 I've been trading crypto for almost a decade, and I've used so many different wallets, exchanges, aggregators, or front ends. 447 00:39:14.116 --> 00:39:25.502 And I'm basically always looking for the same thing, just one interface with a deep liquidity across a bunch of chains and assets, where I can access markets like perps, earn yield, trade confidentially, and still control all of my funds. 448 00:39:25.642 --> 00:39:26.603 And I've never really found it. 449 00:39:26.643 --> 00:39:30.665 And I'm just always switching wallets, juggling gas fees, or getting eaten by slippage. 450 00:39:30.845 --> 00:39:33.646 But near.com feels fundamentally different to me. 451 00:39:33.746 --> 00:39:38.069 I can do anything I want from any chain and keep all of my activity confidential. 452 00:39:38.189 --> 00:39:40.290 Crypto, tokenized assets, perps, payments. 453 00:39:40.470 --> 00:39:42.571 I can even earn yield confidentially. 454 00:39:42.731 --> 00:39:45.853 One account, over 30 chains, confidential by default. 455 00:39:45.973 --> 00:39:47.734 It's the way that crypto ought to work. 456 00:39:47.874 --> 00:39:53.377 And it's powered by Near, which has moved over $30 billion cross-chain, uses post-quantum signatures, 457 00:39:53.537 --> 00:39:56.239 And that's run over five

years on mainnet with zero downtime. 458 00:39:56.419 --> 00:39:59.722 Near.com is the best way to be on chain and be in control. 459 00:39:59.922 --> 00:40:05.266 Get 20% of your trading fees back on near.com using the bankless link in the show notes, not investment advice. 460 00:40:05.506 --> 00:40:06.186 Some exciting news. 461 00:40:06.266 --> 00:40:11.010 We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how to navigate it. 462 00:40:11.090 --> 00:40:13.773 The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael Nato. 463 00:40:13.853 --> 00:40:14.914 He runs the DeFi Report. 464 00:40:14.975 --> 00:40:19.740 This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 1010 price drop happened. 465 00:40:19.920 --> 00:40:22.363 His cycle analysis has been absolutely on point. 466 00:40:22.463 --> 00:40:23.785 I've been following him for years. 467 00:40:23.965 --> 00:40:27.389 And this year, we started recording weekly podcast episodes. 468 00:40:27.529 --> 00:40:35.293 Each one, we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure, entry targets, fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle. 469 00:40:35.413 --> 00:40:37.795 There's new episodes that are released every Wednesday. 470 00:40:37.875 --> 00:40:38.595 They're 30 minutes. 471 00:40:38.675 --> 00:40:39.135 They're short. 472 00:40:39.175 --> 00:40:39.796 They're punchy. 473 00:40:39.916 --> 00:40:42.317 I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most. 474 00:40:42.557 --> 00:40:43.798 So let's do it together. 475 00:40:43.938 --> 00:40:45.139 Go subscribe to this podcast. 476 00:40:45.199 --> 00:40:47.800 Search The DeFi Report wherever you get your podcasts. 477 00:40:47.860 --> 00:40:50.922 YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or find a link in the show notes. 478 00:40:51.042 --> 00:40:52.583 There's a new episode waiting for you now. 479 00:40:52.883 --> 00:40:54.244 What are you guys' goals? 480 00:40:54.264 --> 00:40:56.986 What are you guys working on in the short term? 481 00:40:57.006 --> 00:41:00.109 So you guys are launching Aztec v6, Aztec Tiara. 482 00:41:00.129 --> 00:41:02.991 Talk about the upgrades that Tiara is bringing. 483 00:41:03.071 --> 00:41:07.135 And then once those are up and running in the network, what are you guys working on next? 484 00:41:07.755 --> 00:41:09.276 So Aztec Tiara, it's... 485 00:41:10.097 --> 00:41:11.677 It gives a lot of security. 486 00:41:12.598 --> 00:41:14.098 It gives the upgrades, right? 487 00:41:14.118 --> 00:41:15.578 Like lots more formal verification. 488 00:41:15.798 --> 00:41:23.380 We've run AI audits on our code 24-7 for months now, like throwing the best models at it. 489 00:41:24.980 --> 00:41:27.921 We have halved our proving time. 490 00:41:28.301 --> 00:41:32.082 So basically an over 100% increase in the performance of our tech. 491 00:41:33.362 --> 00:41:38.866 We have much faster transaction confirmations. 492 00:41:38.887 --> 00:41:44.991 I guess it gives a soft finalist where a sequencer is checkpointed onto Ethereum saying this transaction is going in the block. 493 00:41:46.032 --> 00:41:50.735 That's now between 6 and 12 seconds, I believe. 494 00:41:51.095 --> 00:41:58.981 So pretty Ethereum-like, which for privacy transactions, that was very hard to do, but we've done it. 495 00:41:59.001 --> 00:42:00.162 Yeah. 496 00:42:01.643 --> 00:42:05.590 So those are the main things from the net, from the protocol side. 497 00:42:06.732 --> 00:42:12.282 Faster transactions, prudent and less load on your computer to make them. 498 00:42:12.570 --> 00:42:14.691 Yeah, and then what's the roadmap? 499 00:42:14.731 --> 00:42:16.831 What are the things that you guys have left to optimize? 500 00:42:16.871 --> 00:42:19.472 What do you guys think, the work you guys are focused on for 2027? 501 00:42:19.492 --> 00:42:25.915 Yes, the roadmap we're focusing on is, at the protocol level, a lot of it is just security, security, security, security. 502 00:42:25.935 --> 00:42:33.017 We live in the most hostile adversarial environment you could possibly imagine, far worse than anything we've ever seen before because of AI. 503 00:42:33.257 --> 00:42:35.358 So get the thing formally verified. 504 00:42:36.658 --> 00:42:40.540 Make sure that, you know, it's completely ironclad and reliable. 505 00:42:40.560 --> 00:42:41.340 Yeah. 506 00:42:42.140 --> 00:42:46.844 While we're doing that, we want to do things like we want to enable faster withdrawals. 507 00:42:47.464 --> 00:42:53.049 We want to improve the, again, prover speed. 508 00:42:53.169 --> 00:42:56.091 There's still a lot of soft engineering we can do there. 509 00:42:56.532 --> 00:43:04.117 We want to make it cheaper to run a prover and basically get to real-time proving so that we can produce our blocks much faster. 510 00:43:05.178 --> 00:43:20.587 We want to improve hard finality from, right now it's 40 minutes, we want to get down to 5 minutes where basically you have a like the actual, like a full asset lock proved and settled on chain on L1. 511 00:43:20.927 --> 00:43:23.428 That's basically the time limit for how long a withdrawal. 512 00:43:23.528 --> 00:43:24.429 You have to wait right now, it's 513 00:43:24.849 --> 00:43:30.154 40 minutes, we're going to get it down to five minutes, but then include effectively a tipping system. 514 00:43:30.174 --> 00:43:37.900 So as a user, if I want a fast, immediate withdrawal, I can pay a little bit extra, like 10 or 20 cents to get that proof made instantly and put on chain. 515 00:43:40.943 --> 00:43:43.825 So, yeah, from the protocol perspective, that's what we're focusing on right now. 516 00:43:44.192 --> 00:43:49.617 Do you have any main CTAs or just requests for the listener? 517 00:43:49.657 --> 00:43:53.160 If they want to come on to Aztec, what should they do first? 518 00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:54.881 What activities do you have for them? 519 00:43:55.322 --> 00:43:58.364 Go to zk.money and give

that a whirl. 520 00:43:58.664 --> 00:44:03.228 By the time this podcast goes out, we should be also having quite a few other applications you can try. 521 00:44:03.248 --> 00:44:06.371 There's something called P-Inference for private inference. 522 00:44:06.431 --> 00:44:07.031 Give that a whirl. 523 00:44:07.452 --> 00:44:10.014 Pay for your AI privately and have it secure. 524 00:44:10.054 --> 00:44:11.796 Run a secure enclave so that you don't need to... 525 00:44:12.516 --> 00:44:15.457 worry about all your secret information being leaked. 526 00:44:16.638 --> 00:44:20.739 You know, we have a native web wallet called Nolo. 527 00:44:21.079 --> 00:44:21.600 Give that a go. 528 00:44:22.180 --> 00:44:26.662 If you just want a Metamask experience, just get to transfer and trade around tokens privately. 529 00:44:26.682 --> 00:44:32.344 We've got Nix, which is going to be private DeFi, private Yield. 530 00:44:33.865 --> 00:44:35.785 So Nix.xyz is another one. 531 00:44:35.805 --> 00:44:36.626 Yeah. 532 00:44:37.826 --> 00:44:41.150 I'm probably playing favorites here because there's probably a few I've not mentioned yet, which I should be. 533 00:44:42.551 --> 00:44:45.995 But yeah, just go to Aztec.network. 534 00:44:46.595 --> 00:44:52.541 That's where we're going to be broadcasting what you can do with Aztec, why privacy is valuable. 535 00:44:52.681 --> 00:44:56.085 It's going to be describing the tokenomics in more detail as well if you're curious about that. 536 00:44:56.567 --> 00:45:04.859 Zach, I do hope that this is the year, maybe this year or 2027, per your point, that we get off of 99% public transactions. 537 00:45:04.899 --> 00:45:09.044 And hopefully we can get to 90-10, at least by the end of 2027. 538 00:45:09.345 --> 00:45:11.247 And hopefully it goes far beyond that. 539 00:45:11.708 --> 00:45:12.368 I wish you guys the best. 540 00:45:12.389 --> 00:45:14.390 You guys are really moving the ball forward. 541 00:45:14.910 --> 00:45:25.178 I do really like the point that if this is true, that Aztec is the only smart contract chain that has no viewing keys, that kind of puts you in a league above everyone else. 542 00:45:25.218 --> 00:45:27.159 Private smart contract with no viewing keys. 543 00:45:27.240 --> 00:45:27.780 Ask your AI. 544 00:45:27.820 --> 00:45:28.460 It'll agree with me. 545 00:45:29.681 --> 00:45:30.822 Yeah, I believe it. 546 00:45:30.862 --> 00:45:31.283 I believe it. 547 00:45:32.063 --> 00:45:32.904 Best of luck, Zach. 548 00:45:32.984 --> 00:45:35.546 Hope you guys get all the success you guys deserve. 549 00:45:35.566 --> 00:45:38.248 You guys have been working on Aztec as long as I've been in crypto. 550 00:45:39.088 --> 00:45:40.850 And so I think now's the time. 551 00:45:41.640 --> 00:45:54.740 now is the time thanks a lot David thanks for having me on it's been a pleasure Bankless Nation you guys know the deal crypto is risky but if you make it private it's a little bit less you can lose what you put in it's the frontier it's not for everyone but we are glad you're with us on the Bankless Journey thanks a lot