Combatting Onchain Surveillance Infrastructure | Common S3nse 2026

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Hello. Okay. Hi everyone. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Um so, hi.

I'm Dan, uh head of product at Availe, uh and we've been working on a project called Shield TX. And yeah, I have some some thoughts about uh building products that offer privacy under like in an in an environment where there is actual adversarial pressure. Um so, first to um set the stage, uh it in in our opinion, um the uh Cypherpunk dream is uh uh not fully here, let's say. Um we we thought we were building a a system that had like consensual disclosure and where you could be private uh online um until you disclose something and you could disclose uh in a narrow way, and in fact, what we have built is uh um uh like this uh this uh prison where everybody looks looks at you. Um where basically it's a it's a ledger, public ledger, it's there forever.

If at any point you get de-anonymized, uh you know, you can kind of trace your transactions back into the beginning of time. Um and this has uh uh created a a pretty different world that we intended. Um there are actually companies that uh specialize in uh selling this as a data feed. So, people try to protect themselves by creating a different wallet and moving funds around, and and um the fact is that that that it these are just small-scale mitigations uh to a much bigger problem um than than can currently be uh be addressed. Um, [snorts] the the harm to users, um, even in a narrow uh constrained space, like we're currently looking at traders, um, it goes to uh P&L impact, reputational impact, um, there's social risk, uh there are um there's all all kinds of exposure from the fact that your privacy is uh is always at peril when you are working on a public blockchain.

Um, so there's a there's a big need here. Um, and um um Yeah, like we really want to go back to this dream of uh being able to um to uh let users choose consensually when they want to uh share when and what they want to share with the world, um, or with specific uh folks, uh and and prevent um this uh like if you don't find a solution uh for building um privacy-enabling solutions, the the status quo, like if the status quo evolves on its own as it has been, um, it will continue uh to be adopted in this this uh this way that is is not privacy-preserving. Um, so first I like let's take a step back and think about um how to meet users where they are. I think this is this is very important to me and part of the philosophy for how we've been building our solution. Um, so uh like a small digression, like uh some um many moons ago, I um I uh I was part of the Firefox team and we were building identity solutions for the web, for how people sign into websites.

And our our first attempt was to like of course we're browser people, so we modified the browser to make it so that the browser could help you log into websites. And we had the password manager already, so this was like an extension of the password manager. We called it account manager. And it was like this whole scheme for how the browser could like interact with websites and like discover oh this is a login page, this is your you know password field, whatever. And we thought like from a browser point of view it made sense, but then we went out into the real world and we actually talked to websites and we're like hey would you adopt this?

And they were like hell no. Like that's cute what you've built, but like I'm not going to spend, you know, weeks of engineering work to build a thing that maybe like, you know, 30% of your users will support and this is when Firefox was riding high and we had like 22% of the market or something, but you know, so it's still like a very small percentage of of the of the website visitors. Um and the lesson there for us was we really needed to like again like to the title of the section is like we needed to meet users where they are. Like users are using these sites. These sites are the ones that are getting adoption.

Like we needed to build something for these sites to use and if we couldn't do that we were just building in the abstract and not for any particular real use case. And so at the time we we pivoted, we built this thing called browser ID where we directly address this issue and it ended up failing and it's still but it failed for other reasons. And I think it didn't fail for this one. Um we made it with scaffolding all around so that we could directly focus only on websites. Only websites had to adopt us.

We had it would work on 100% of web browsers past some, you know, modern bar. Uh it even worked on like mobile Safari and everything. Um and it worked with uh, emails at the time and it worked with 100% of emails. So, as long as you could receive email, you could sign in with our system. So, we didn't have to convince and this is again in the identity space.

We didn't have to convince identity providers, we didn't have to convince um, browsers. We just had to convince websites to use it. Um, so bringing this back like this lesson really stayed with me and thinking about how we can make change in the current environment, like we're thinking specifically about uh, you know, on blockchains there's a ton of activity that are that done by traders. And so, we want to build something for them. And we want to do it in a way where we can kind of just convince them.

We don't want to build a castle in the sky that requires everybody to buy into, you know, this thing for us to get the the security and privacy properties that we want. So, we want to nudge the world uh, in the real world as directly as possible. Um, so we are focusing on traders. Um, surveillance hurts their P&L. So, they have a very direct reason that they want to adopt this.

They It also has reputational impact to them. Um, every time their positions are are copied, uh, their strategies are stolen, um, they they basically disclose their trading strategies by the fact that they trade from their public wallets. And so, we can we can test uh, privacy solution in a place where there's like real consequence. People really want some solution. Um, so, um, in practice, um, like what what do we want?

We we want, um, like currently it's opt-in and and uh, and tech like there are these technical solutions that you can change to a new wallet. There are uh, maybe mixers that you could use. There are all kinds of complicated workflows. Um, but these are all patchy. Uh, there's tons of friction, um, and it's it's just a wrong set of solutions.

Um, so what we want is something where you opt to use our system, we convince the one type of party that we want to use our system, and you get privacy by default, and you get control. Um, we, um, running a bit late, but, um, we, um, we want, uh, to separate, like, verification from attribution. So, we want, uh, like, if you're a trader, we want your your trades have to be verifiable, of course, but we don't want necessarily for them to be attributable to you. Um, this is a key key thing about, um, trust. So, let me just quickly share what we're doing.

We've we're building, um, a a shielded trading system on Hyperliquid, um, that, um, like, why are we choosing Hyperliquid? It's a huge, uh, huge decks, of course. Uh, there's real adversarial pressure. There are people, copy bots, thousands of copy bots actually looking at big accounts on Hyperliquid and copying their every move. Um, and, uh, institutional adoption, like, they are interested, but this is a huge, uh, a huge gap for them.

So, it Institutional adoption cannot really happen unless this is solved, in our opinion. Um, so, um, this the solution that we built, uh, like, first first we built this, uh, scanner that lets you see you just type in an address, and you can scan it, and you can see all this public data, how your positions are, you know, correlated together, even if you use multiple wallets. Uh, everything can be correlated, and you can see all of these other, uh, players that are are copying you. So, this like this this data being there is very convincing to a lot a lot of folks. And we estimate, you know, how you can even estimate how many bips uh, they're losing per trade.

Um so, that's why this is a real like really good place to focus. Um What what we're building is a um is essentially a a vault. It's a ZK chain uh that uh you can deposit into. You get private notes in the system. And then we have a whole UI where you can trade using the private notes that you have in um the ZK chain.

And so, you can place trades on directly, like hyperliquid trades, and they get um they get filled by a solver. Uh it's still non-custodial, so it's still your account. Uh it just gets filled by a solver, so it's unlinked to your deposit address. So, you deposit with one address, but when you when you execute trades, they get filled into different addresses that are not cryptographically connected. Um They're um Yeah, like I said, it's a it's a it's a it's a vault on on Arbitrum.

Um there's zero knowledge proofs of the chain. Um and it's so, it's like a full uh non-custodial crypto solution to doing this. And the UI looks like this, so it looks like a like a regular, you know, trading terminal. So, you can see there you can set your leverage, set your position, the all the usual stuff that that traders are used to. You check to open your position.

Uh you you get your details. You say, "I want to fill it." And then uh a solver goes and um you know, you create a position wallet, a solver fills it, and then there you go. It's now filled. Um And uh you can close it in the same way.

So, uh fully private, that address that was created, that position wallet is completely unconnected to um any any of your other positions or your deposit address. Um So, yeah, that's the basics of it. Um Um yeah, so to kind of close uh if we don't do this uh like the status quo will continue to get worse and worse in our opinion. Um and we should do it in a way where we meet users where they are. Um the next phase of adoption, like getting professional capital and institutional capital, I think really depends on this or will continue to happen through intermediaries, like it cannot really happen directly on chain uh with the current tools.

And um yeah, we're pretty excited about our our approach. Um if you are, you know, interested in the topic or uh want to engage, want to come find out more, like please hit me up. Um I'll be here for uh a while and uh yeah, excited to um talk more. If there are any questions, happy to answer. I think we're over time, though.