Privacy Enables Crime and That's the Point | Jobin & Harsh | ETHMumbai 2026

Um nice good afternoon. Um I'll just uh start with an introduction. Uh my name is Join and uh I basically basically work uh with ten protocol and I work in the foundation as the chair for the board uh serving the foundation. We basically build uh programmable privacy solutions using uh TE's and um yeah that's um that's it. Uh I'll share it uh the opportunity to my counterpart Hush.

Uh hello everyone. My name is Hersh. I work at Aztec Labs. Aztec is a stage two uh privacy first rollup where like privacy is a first class citizen. Uh and yeah like that's my NFT.

I never used to look like it. So I've been trying to grow my hair so that I look like it a little bit. Uh but yeah, that's about me. I really enjoy privacy. I started with privacy as my first thing in crypto and then I did a lot of scaling research later on and then I'm back here.

So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

Yeah, plus one on that hairstyle because I have seen Hush almost like 8 years back. I don't know Hush not might Hush might not remember me but used to be in hack club and has to be in hack club and I do definitely remember that hairstyle was

a lot lot different. So good work on that. Uh so yeah uh the topic for this panel basically is about privacy but it starts with what web 3 has offered us and that is transparency. So is transparency a problem? That's the first thing we want to discuss and uh it's a panel two-sided one.

So it might get biased and uh I I believe the stage is open to you guys to poke in and u ask questions to. So feel free to engage. Uh so I'll give you the opportunity first uh Harish to say whether transparency is actually a problem in web 3 or how would you define it? Yeah, actually it took me a long time to you know like understand that it is uh because if you look at like how crypto got started, it was decently anonymous back then because like let's say if you never leave the cyber realm and all your transactions are in Bitcoin and whatever are the real world side effects of it aren't visible to anyone. You could by default say unless you attach like some sort of a naming service to it that it felt pretty private to people and people actually thought that holding Bitcoin is you know like their way to hedge against whatever is the current of it's a fiat system and that's that's their store of value and you know like they keep it and only they know it and stuff like that.

But then one day like I actually thought about myself that I have hers bach

on my Twitter and then I went and I searched about it and then I saw okay like I can see most of my transaction and then I went to a crypto payroll company and I then put the address where I got the money from and I was like oh I can see everyone's uh transaction so now I know how much volume they are doing and how much are they paying everyone. So I now have an idea of how much you know like salary dispersion is happening through them and that's when it slow totally started clicking me that it's a big problem. It's let's say not a big problem if you live in a in in a geography or let's say in a country where things are just running fine like the government is really nice things are efficient you don't have a real threat from them but then there are scenarios like Africa where we have seen that they have specifically targeted people uh who have used bitcoin and they like tried targeting them and since all of this is visible anytime you do any specific transaction on a public blockchain and it has a real world side effect. You're actually leaking metadata about who you are. And once all your uh data is out there, you do lose a lot of power as an individual.

So like I have a sovereign individual thesis. I really like the book. I really think that you know like the goal of crypto should be to increase sovereignity of an individual and I think that doesn't happen uh in a public blockchain scenario. It's better than cash. Uh right now if you hold cash and you transact to it with it, it has better privacy than Bitcoin or let's say Ethereum and

hard cash.

Yeah. Yeah. Like you can just take a cash, you can give it to vada power person, no one knows that you bought it. And now with public blockchains, I think people who are into mass surveillance would love them because you can just see everything like you can see that every microtransaction that I'm doing. So I think that's where I realized that yeah like it's a big issue like even if you remove all the ME stuff and everything else where the institution

that's just one angle.

Yeah.

M is just one angle. There's this this big thing that you said on the other side is I is I I believe something that is more problematic.

Yeah. For me like the sovereignity of an individual going down is something that is very not so good.

Yeah. This was supposed to be a a fireside chat but surprisingly it's going to feel more like we are going to be very aligned in terms of our views and o opinions. uh uh so yeah that is pretty much my view too. So the reason I'll tell you is it's been 5 6 years and it takes time for you to soak in and understand I mean five six years not for the space sorry for me and it takes for time for you to soak in and understand the pattern which her said you do a lot of activity and then when you start doing activities you is when you observe that something is definitely going wrong. It's like when you go start going to gym that is when it starts hurting.

So you can't say privacy is not a problem or a transparency is not a problem unless you have spent some time. Uh that is when you understand the gravity of the problem. Okay. So it hit me hard that over time the metadata that Hush said compounds to a level and I would expand on that metadata part Hush that is uh the reason I want to expand it is people consider privacy as secrecy. It isn't.

That's a very very old school explanation to say privacy secrecy. Privacy is way beyond that and a very simple uh thing I want to coin uh for that is IBW not India blockchain week I'm sorry okay it's intense behavior and wealth and that's what basically the metadata is you could expand hers if you want to add something to the metadata um brackets but I would say metadata usually is intense uh behavior and wealth so when you start doing a lot of transactions over time You create enough footprint or enough data points which shows what your intentions usually are when you do a transaction and that creates a pattern which shows what your usual behavior is. It's basically if you every time show an intention to purchase particular token when uh the market goes high or bull or bare it shows your behavioral pattern that you are probably a particular kind of trader. Okay. And then over the time when you follow this behavior you start amassing wealth and which puts you into a particular bracket of being what kind of trader whale somebody who does trading in pennies and that that we wealth is being leaked out.

So what happens is when you combine intense with behavior with wealth what I can do is over four five years or maybe just even one year slam it to an LLM I can predict probably your next move and I can front it and that's what basically I mean I don't want to get sued but I hope this doesn't get shared out much things like parenting does what they do they they understand people's habits characters their intentions behavior your wealth and they can predict what you are going to do next. They can predict it so well you can call it supernatural and you don't realize the gravity of the problem that I can tell you buddy the next thing that you're going to do is this and I can influence you without you even knowing and you would it's it's very simple is I figure out that your wealth is this your behavior is this your intent is this and I can exactly at the time show you an ad and influence you and you would end up buying that so I basically manipulated you so this This is where it gets scary and I believe that is why the the statement that transparency is a problem and the lack of privacy is also a problem becomes relevant.

Is it?

Yeah. I think like another interesting thing that I like recently learned from someone was that I never knew that actually a lot of uh the things that the Nazi party did came from data that the governments doing census back then never knew would be used for it. So like back then in Europe a lot of census used to happen of like and a lot of tax returns used to happen and they actually used that data to figure out who's like which person is a Jew and which person is not a Jew right back then no one knew that this data being public could be such a big issue 10 years from now and I think that's my real big concern with public blockchains that as AI gets better and better you can basically go and see everything that everyone has ever do and specifically target individuals for specific things, you know, like and a lot of it would be retrospective like you're just leaking a bunch of data right now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, you just don't know, you know, like what the implications of it is and the only reason you're doing it is not by choice. It's like you have no other options. That's like how blockchains have been created.

So basically you turn yourself into a predictable object

because you're leaking out data or metadata.

Yeah. So metadata is bad.

Yes. So yeah definitely I I agree with that. And the last statement that H said is something I believe even I've read in the uh EF research forums. uh that is if privacy is an option that it's because they don't have an opt like people don't have an option uh you know I mean people have to choose privacy right it's an option because it's an option it's a problem the reason I'll tell you is if you tell me you use VPN I'm pretty sure why you use it gets very obvious it becomes very suspicious is because privacy of web is optional and you have to opt in you I can pretty much uh put you in a bracket of people who usually do I'm not saying obvious like like for sure with 100% sure but I can put you in a bracket of suspicion that you might be somebody who does something shady okay so if I see your phone and you have a VPN I'm pretty sure you do something nasty so this I'm I'm I'm not saying I'm going do that in reality but that is what how it's looks like when privacy is option so when Ethereum or any chain out there doesn't have privacy inbuilt but it's an option and people have to use mixers or other solution it's pretty obvious that you're doing something nasty and you become a target enforcements uh feds people are going to run behind you and they're going to bother even if you have not done some something nasty, at least you would waste a few back and forth conversation with these guys to prove that you're innocent and you definitely don't want to be in trouble and that is why privacy shouldn't be an option. Privacy should be inbuilt in Ethereum or I believe in all chains and it should not be like incognito mode which you turn on.

It's just respects your privacy by default.

Yeah. Like what even scares me a lot these days is like just your ability to travel freely around the world if you are in crypto because I've been reading more and more of you know like people getting basically mocked

and I was like that's interesting if I actually did a lot of transactions from hushbashed on ETH and if I now actually that that's why I also like hate Twitter's new feature they where they actually reveal where you are right like I'm like and I basically I just use a VPN to make sure that they never get to know you know like where I actually am. Uh but I think yeah that's that's like one of my biggest fear. Let's say if if all of us are putting our doy dots soul out there on Twitter and then you're just doing all of it from there and then you're just putting on Instagram or somewhere else that you know like hey guys I'm really enjoying uh this beach in Vietnam and then someone in Vietnam sees oh you know like here's my AI agent. it has indexed that this person who has this specific ENS seems to have this much money around with them and if I go and mock them I can get that money out of them. So it's already happening.

People are being mocked and kidnapped and stuff like that. I I I heard it recently happened I guess in in London. Oh I don't know where it happened but yeah that that's the status too.

Oh Buonosirus. I I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm glad I made it safe.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So basically you end up becoming a a profile and because you're a profile you become a target. You definitely don't want to

Yeah. It's like imagine you're sitting in a cafe in Bandra and then like you just know every person's bank balance.

Yes.

Is the weirdest feeling ever. Uh and yeah and I think right now like no one knows it because let's say if someone sees my ENS, they actually can't connect a lot of dots because it's a lot of manual processing that you'd have to do that. Uh

that changes with AI, right?

Yeah. that with AI that changes with AI someone can say probably these 30 addresses belong to hers and that's his net worth and now when I'm sitting in a cafe in Mandra and someone recognizes me a little bit and they do hers bach and just give it to an agent probably it will index it out and let me know you know like that okay this is how much this guy is worth and as long as the other person is a good actor it's fine but if it's a bad actor this could be really troubling so yeah

definitely and we are we are not living in a society where we don't have bad actors. So [clears throat] definitely you're unshielded when you don't have privacy. You're basically vulnerable. Okay. So that was the starting topic.

That was the starting point. So now we come to the side where it gets more pragmatic. We talk about uh techniques or technologies that would make or enable privacy possible on chain. So uh I believe I don't we don't we don't rage bait each other because uh it's it's time when we do some ZK versus T and I'm I'm pretty aware that Hers is uh a prodigy in terms of uh ZK max and a lot of stuff and um I'm someone who is stubbornly obsessed about TE's and I usually end up in some bad rage baited Twitter fights. So I hope that doesn't happen I earlier.

So we have two options. H you can use uh I I'll try to be as diplomatic as possible but uh we have two options ZKT but we do have other options like NPC and FS. We can come to that later. So Hush where do you think these technologies apply and to what extent it protects your privacy as a user? Does it protect metadata?

Does it protect uh data? Does it u enable verification with privacy? What exactly uh is it?

Yeah, I think like I've thought a lot about it and personally I prefer a pure native ZK approach. Uh that just comes from the fact that

oh yeah yeah I think like so basically first of all like I'm an Aztec and Zcash maxi right like and and the reason why I believe that ZK math is far superior is because it's pure cryptography uh and the only trust assumption like if you're on a stack based system you have like no trust assumption basically and if you're in a snack based system the max assumption you have is like of trusted setup and that you can like create a very highly quant confident interested setup that there's nothing uh wrong with it. So at least that's the reason why I joined Aztec because I think there are like few very important properties that a privacy protocol needs to have. Number one, it needs to be censorship resistant. That's why actually being a stage to roll up on Ethereum makes sense for Aztec. That's why we actually never launched it at stage zero, stage one like it has to be uncensorable.

No one can come out and basically say that these are the bunch of five people running it and if you stop them the protocol stops. The moment you have done that you haven't created like humanity scale infrastructure. Uh so I think like that's number one that it needs to be like unstoppable uh as like we make say for Zcash as well like it's unstoppable encrypted money. Similarly Aztec is unstoppable encrypted compute and then once you have this layer then you

unencrypted compute. So encrypted compute

encrypted compute I'm going to get back. Sorry. Unstoppable, you know, like it's an unstoppable encrypted computer, right? Uh and then basically, so yeah, basically, so that's layer one that it's unstoppable. No one can stop it.

Uh there's no one five people or seven people committee running it, right? You just can't target and get it down. uh second is what's where does the security come from and if it comes from pure cryptography is the strongest security you can give to someone that I have given you a seed phrase a bunch of keys are derived from it and as long as you keep them safe no one knows as long as you selectively disclose what you own what you do and you have the ability to do all of it on your mobile there's no third party provider that you rely on for security your data leaves nowhere because it's all encrypted you know like and only you can decrypt and do local CK proving around it and I think yeah that's my approach I think like if you want to do something if you want to make a real scale humanity scale you know like project you can't get away

specify what project because that is what I'm interested like the vertical

oh so basically like anything like peer-to-peer payments uh private UTC swaps uh lending markets, anything where like you want a normal average human to have sovereignity and the ability to participate undiscriminated in a financial system is where I think so that's like why let's say people love Ethereum right like that even when the censorship did come from the US blocks was still produced and ofat transactions still went in which proved that it's censorship resistant And that's why people have high confidence in it. So I think our privacy protocol needs to meet all these benchmarks.

Agree. Totally agree. So so it's a it's a very nice way to pitch zero knowledge uh to people interested in privacy privacy audience. Uh but that is where I want to plug in. I asked Harish about projects that are willing to include privacy but what verticals exactly.

So he gave some examples. So if you observe all of them are finance related. Okay. So this is where uh the thing is harsh. ZK or zero knowledge as a privacy tech is really good because you reduce trust assumptions.

But then the catch is it's really good at proving something privately or verifying something privately. It is not really good at executing a logic privately because ZK in ZK like examples I mean if if you observe uh everything around ZK is usually finance or proving identity zkonadar all of this it doesn't just reveal your identity and proves it that you hold authenticar so in the same way everything that you do in zk mostly circles around this verification or privacy of verification but is an extent in lot of chains a lot of projects into privacy of execution and I mean there are people who are trying but there is nothing practically live and pragmatic enough I believe which can do at scale Ethereum level execution with p uh with with privacy and that is where uh things like FHEs and MPC step in because they they might not be great at proving things Because I mean there are trusted assumptions on hardware. There are scalability problem with uh uh FHEs and latency problem with MPCs. But then coming to TE's, you can actually run an entire smart contract inside an enclave or a TE confidentially and all the data that goes into the contract as an input stays confidential because you're using a TE or um or a secure enclave and that means you can have entire Ethereum's code running inside TE's and you could have a private or confidential EVM available and that's what we are doing. I mean at 10 that is what we understood is uh stage I mean stage not I'll not use stage one I will use level one level one privacy was about finance was about wealth I said IBW right in uh things like Zcash they hide your finance they hide your footprint and movement when it comes to money moments but that is very limiting what if you want to do beyond that example you want to uh do something like decentralized health services.

I uh decentralized health services where your patient records are not getting leaked out. Uh but you can book appointments, you can get insuranceances and things like that that becomes possible because execution at scale is possible inside enclaves and the latency to run these things inside enclaves is very low. So we run at a very high TPS. I mean I'll not uh come into the TPS war like usual layer tools do but uh we run sensibly faster and that is thanks to hardware but then yeah I agree there are trust assumptions that is hardware but what we could pull off because of this is we can definitely do what ZK does that is we can build Zcash things like that already already tried live on our chain uh but some interesting things that we could we were able to build is so we built something very interesting. I'm I'm um somebody who's slightly leaning towards AI in the recent days all thanks to the IP.

So one year back we built something very interesting that is we did built a Texas Holdem game a poker basically on chain and it does everything confidentially that is shuffling of deck comes from the entropy derived from enclave. So there is no external VRFs like chain link. Okay. So nobody can know where the VRF is coming from or they can figure out what the VRF is and then using that you assign cards and the then then the thing is that each player gets secretly assigned their cards. So nobody else can just go and check in ether scan with your wallet address what cards you hold or check the event log and figure out what you have been assigned or what moves you're making.

So it's a completely confidential Texas holdm game. Okay. So this would definitely would not have been possible at scale at this speed uh using something like ZK uh probably possible using FE but definitely not using ZK and then what we added on top of is it is what uh you said about the finance aspect. What we did is we added an economic layer on top of that. What we did is we made agents play the game.

So we had six agents powered by six six LLMs playing this onchain poker against each other and none of them could see their moves against each other and uh they had money basically their tokens and uh interestingly this this games went upwards of 50 hours one table for 50 54 hours nobody knows what these guys are thinking what they are playing but it's verifiable because we were using LLM powered by FALA u So we could verify using remote attestation that these LLMs are actually not manipulated by humans trying to say make this move, throw this card, shuffle. No, it's completely random. And then that is when we understood finance with privacy is good. But finance with privacy plus execution with privacy is where the game changes. game as in not just this game, any game, any vertical changes because you make it very potent to build things like decentralized health, decentralized uh and confidential governance like you could have uh land papers and deeds and all these things happening in India but nobody gets to know that has bought a land.

It is all thanks to things like fees. But yeah definitely there are trust assumptions and u I have answers to that but before that yeah I have talked enough hush

yeah but I by the way I don't think you can make zcash on te's like and or on any protocol that works on te because the truth of the matter is that if you're a te protocol like you can't run a full node even because like you like like here's the thing right like you are a te you are on basically your protection comes from a guy with a glock Right. Yeah.

Basically, there's some guy standing behind a center with a Glock like this saying that I will not let anything happen. Right.

A data center. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Because like at the end of the day, you have you need like when say let's say I'm trusting a TE provider, I am trusting the fact that they are securing against side channel attacks and that's that that's that's a decent uh

yeah that's a good guard.

I I don't think so. I think like if you are like building censorship resistance like imagine if Ethereum said that Ethereum is secure because there's a guy with a Glock

it is but because two3 of the notes

I mean horses

but let's say one day if one day it goes out like you can just bring it up again on normal infrastructure you know like it's not that that's the only way it exists right so let's say for example uh what I like is unopenated protocols like Aztec like Zcash which have like the like it's completely unopinionated like there's no uh you know like such hard assumptions about the protocol or let's say of a specific architecture or something like that like the whole Aztec protocol runs on your mobile you can just and all the finance use cases you said like you can actually do it purely ZK right like unless there's private shared state

but only finance use cases

no you can do governance you can build the DA on top of it. We are prototyping

limited to voting.

Yeah, people

not execution.

Uh what

not execution?

Voting is execution.

No, I mean execution of certain logic based on certain inputs not just like based on votes

when you're when you are basically

for example games for example

games.

Yeah, we have chess games and so basically the way Aztec works or let's say you can design any other ZK protocol is that you can combine private execution with public execution. So for example, let's say I want to move certain assets and then I want something else to happen as part of it. So I would firstly privately execute all of that on my mobile.

I will create a zk proof of whatever I did is correct and then that will go to a public function and then on based upon that it doesn't know all the private computation I did like for it that's hidden the private state I processed on. So that's why like when you were saying that basically ZK is about verification that's not true like all like it's basically proving execution. So you are actually doing private execution and you are doing it on your mobile phone and you can run any logic you want with any input and then you can basically chain it with a public function and you get the same result. So

okay.

So that is an interesting shift from uh the fact that I said which is ZK is used for verification but you see that you could do execution on your phone. So then that also adds up one more trust assumption that is your device probably is not compromised. Your device is compromised your execution is compromised and that does leak out things. So you're it's a it's exactly with what the problem with T's are basically compliment two very different assumptions like for example

there are assumptions

oh yeah but I'm saying it's a way way better assumption to have than a guy with a Glock right so for example let's say by that logic the world could be a simulation right like and everything could be like and you can just make an ass like I'm just saying that this these are the most bare minimum assumptions you can make that every person on planet have a phone with a GB of RAM Right? Like that's what that's why we do uh the snark cryptography we have because you it's the only one right now that works on on that device specifications right u anyone can run a node the hardware requirements are low anyone can sequence it we don't even run like it's basically like completely being run by a decentralized set of validators we have seen up to 10,000 people sequencing it now here's the thing if I am a person who wants to encrypt my wealth and I'm trying to increase my sovereignity, then I'm trying to like basically protect myself from high power actors. At the end of the day, if all my money is logged in behind a guy with a Glock who is again the same person that I'm trying to protect myself against, I don't know how much security do I have. For example, we talked about Fala network. So, we have a friend who actually did disclose a vulnerability about them, right?

where basically for a long time I guess you could like they were using some something was wrong. I would have to look again in the report but basically the thing was that you could act it could actually take false proofs and you know like basically uh take it in. So like tees have historically been shown that they have been compromised compromised compromised this TE. That happens and that's why

SGX.fail

uh what

sxfail uh what

sgx.fail feel.

Oh yeah. Yeah. SGX and you know like a lot of the has been compromised as well in the past but I do think they have a place and we have prototypes where we are using it. Uh which is like we have specific Aztec wallets that I've experimented with that do control assets in a multi-IG of diversified TEES right but that's for just convenience. You would never park your serious capital in there.

you're just doing it for let's say uh private crosschain trading stuff or something like that. But I don't think you can call a T like a T protocol could be like something that could have a very institutional use case or something like that. I don't think you would onboard the whole world to it or something like that because the trust assumptions just don't make sense. It's weaker than Ethereum.

Yep. Got it. Yeah. So yeah, your points are valid. So I'll just add one more thing uh to that uh aspect.

I mean we were focused actually only on institutions because we figured out uh institutions need privacy to enter into the market. They are not happy with their big trades being public. So that's where this idea because we came from a background of one of the biggest chains called as R3 corder. We our team built that and that's when we realized this institutional needs and then we thought of combining it with a public blockchain with privacy. So it's the the point that these chains your usually T based projects being more leaning towards institution is appropriate and valid.

Okay. So I'll come to that assumption part where you say there's there's this guy holding a Glock at a data center because it hosts TE's and then you can trust it with your wealth or your anything basically. So that is because a lot of people are not getting the exposure into TS are not limited to uh SGX and uh TDX or um the H100s that Nvidia is building. TE's are beyond that. There's a class of T's called as T's being run inside Risk 5.

uh one of the very good hardware that makes it an open source based keystone. So you could basically get a keystone to avoid a guy standing with Glock. You could get a keystone hardware at home, run a a T inside a risk five or risk v whatever you call uh inside it and you reduce the trust assumption

but I can't run the protocol on it right like for example even my iPhone has let's say some sort of an enclave

it has a secure enclave T1 T2 but the thing is that that's different from me custoing my data in an third party TE right

why can't you do it on a a normal enclave that's being run at home Uh

why do you think so?

Like because I if if like I could probably verify it but I don't think I can basically propose blocks through it because there's a high risk of some side channel attack existing that I could just do to you know like do anything. That's why like all these T protocols I've never seen any one of them who has ever been able to allow anyone to run a validator at home because even if you get that stuff right, you don't have the guy with the

Glock. Yeah,

right. So,

yeah. So, I think that's the limiting factor like enclaves are nice for yourself like even let's say I use mobile wallets, right? So, let's say probably some of it is relying on it. Uh but yeah, I think like you just because a device at my home can have a TE doesn't mean that I can you can do like a full blockchain on it because the core reason why you try to restrict it to certain cloud providers is because there's always this risk of the TE being hacked because of someone having physical access to it. So that's the thing.

So if if you consider the threat service of something being hacked in the near future or anytime I mean that would even apply to ZKS. I mean I have read this paper um uh I remember a year back about 144 different vulnerabilities. I am not very uh much into ZK but 144 vulnerabilities being found in ZK Snark just p published on what was it er uh rxiv or something like that website. I was reading that paper. Definitely the the possibility or the threat surface of a digital or hardware or a cryptographically backed product being hacked exist

for everything exist

everything yeah so you can't say that GK is just GK is good because it's bulletproof forever or infinity or indefinitely uh but I'll come to the other point where you say that an an enclave or a keystone basically the reason I say keystone is because there is a trust assumption that Intel might be doing something with the silicon which gives them a back door into the stuff. So that was one of the biggest things that people were saying about keys but then your point about side channel attacks also is true. So that that is where a very interesting research is happening where is the remote attestation concept is being being extended where it finds out uh that the open-source community manages the the code or the firmware that runs inside a a risk five or a risk we uh risk five uh t running inside keystone and this community manages and maintains the code. The moment they figure out that a side channel attack has happened, what they do is they uh they basically uh figure out a mitigation for it, patch it and using remote attestation verify that all the other TE's okay all the other TE's haven't reached a position sorry all the other TE's are also patched and they are producing blocks or doing verifications or doing executions. confidentially on the newer patch to firmware code and that is what remote attestation enables.

But there is one constraint which basically believes that this uh malicious activity hasn't propagated into all the nodes of enclave. That is the only constraint but definitely extension of remote attestation into this sphere of verifying that you are using a patched version of an enclave and that to a firmware that has been ran and managed and uh deployed or pushed out released by a open community makes it far more secure. So you will always be running something that is

how is like trusting a bunch of people that

open community that is like good. Sorry.

Yeah. Like let's say how is like trusting a bunch of people more secure than just trusting maths like like pure maths and cryptography for example like why would I go through all of this and just not prove it on my phone for example right now

prove it a phone but you can't do private share states it's an execution that's where the limit is right

okay private shared state is a different problem right and that's where I do agree that like the moment you do private shared state is where you have to do something like zkmppc or stuff like that that tio is doing right like that's the kind of stuff I like even for that I would like rather do like provable MPC and accelerate research there. But I think at least right now with Aztec, we have been able to bake everything that we wanted to make and we have like invented new patterns for it as well while allowing all of it to be provable on your mobile phone 8 to 10 seconds you know like proving times and the block times are low and like I would I think like in an year half an year on a year we would be at the same throughput as Ethereum. It's basically Ethereum completely encrypted private shared state. I think I like stuff like RKM Casio. That's where I would go for again.

Latency is a problem then that's that's a problem.

Yeah. But then I think like so that's something I've been thinking about right let's say if I want to move a piece of land privately do I really like right now it takes days. Now let's say there are two people coming in front of you. One guy is saying that I will give you bulletproof mathematical let's say of course you could make an argument that the cryptography could be wrong but that's why you hire good cryptographers right like and you invest in cryptography and people uh over years to to make sure that you actually have really good stuff right uh so yeah one person is coming here and saying that hey you can move this piece of land through me privately it's going to take a minute or something like that but it's all going to be secure your data is in custody of no one uh there's basically as long as Ethereum doesn't go down there's no way your piece of land never moves versus let's say then there's this other guy who's saying hey I will move it in 0.5 seconds not 1 minute right but then in 0.

5 seconds um this protocol has like basically a restriction of it only runs in cloud providers because there's like no normal person who can run a normal validator node because uh it's let's say a E based one and uh in and let's say uh yeah but it it's it's really fast right but then there's this risk of it the data is technically there and you know like it's it's not completely encrypted like I really don't see why someone would not find that one minute option way better than just doing it in 0.5 second 1 second unless you are building a order book that's where I see value

yeah if you are doing an order book I see value that you would do a te right

like a dark Basically,

yeah, if you do a dark pool, like I think te's are valuable, I think, but there's research going on. There's this company. It starts with Renegade or something like that.

Um, they're doing

Yeah, the pink color one. The pink color. I I

I don't know. But yeah, yes, it's it's a Renegade. Yeah.

Yeah, they they're doing I guess some sort of ZKMPC as well. Something like that. It's it's provable uh multi-party computation through which I guess they make their darkpool. I could be wrong, but that was my understanding last when I read it. So I think there's good research going on it.

I am not the guy who has been very deep into it. But I would actually prefer still MPC more because let's say if you can if you keep pushing the research forward and if you can scale MPC network to let's say even 60 valid 60 participants or something like that which we don't know when you're going to get there at reasonable uh limits but if we get there then they are as good as any cosmos blockchain out there because most tender based blockchains already have these many validators. So yeah that's that's my thing like pure maths for any normal human out there uh you can do 70% of whatever you want 80% of all finance privately with it uh for the rest 10 20 which requires private shared state or that requires really high-speed finance uh yeah probably something like MPCOT makes sense

okay okay nice uh yeah I'll not uh stretch it any further because it's been getting very long so I mean we can go on go on and on about this argument about ZKTs or FES or MPCs but the u I'll just uh wind that part uh very diplomatically um that is uh there is no silver bullet basically uh and I believe that these technologies needs to be used uh based on what product you're building I said IBW intense behavior and wealth right so if you fear that your product leaks out leaks out wealth basically that is what do you say pointing towards finance zk is absolute good option with there and when you're building something where uh there's a lot of execution happening and it leaks out your intent example institutional trades where the intent of making a big move or trade getting out to public becomes a huge problem that is where t's can be super good and there for them time matters a lot and speed matters a lot and uh yeah and and so and so like MPC FHE you can apply these based on the use cases you're building. Uh that is my um take rather than being a maxi on anything. uh I was a maxi a maxi like two years back but then over the time I just like got humbled uh understanding the pros and cons of each and every product and I figured out there is no panacea basically none of these technologies can solve 100% at the current state probably the research like her state said if the research proceeds you might find one uh like consolidation of these pets ending up with one solution that is all of this but you had a statement where you said you could proceed this research of MPC further to get a solution which does as good as this. We could also do the same with TE's where we reach a situation where we have hardware that is um very less likely likely to be uh susceptible to a side channel attack. Okay.

Uh yeah, that's a point. Um uh so coming to the the last and final topic because we have talked about why privacy matters how you can enable privacy but the final thing when you enable privacy hers the problem that arises is I think we might be overrunning yeah so we'll just take a minute okay is compliance okay compliance is a huge pain in the dash dash dash okay so u whenever you introduce something like privacy. You end up either as a creator in jail like a tornado cash guy or you always get bothered by fats or authorities. So how do you b and then the other problem is privacy becomes a crime for a lot of people because they utilize this freedom to do a lot of nasty stuff. So how do you balance crime with privacy and compliance with privacy hush?

Yeah. So I think like first of all like before I leave and we already short on time any blockchain that can custody your data in any form is a tool for mass surveillance. If they have your data they will sell it to a government they will sell it to law enforcement or whatever it is you know like uh so yeah like never never use them and you can go on the internet and figure out which are these privacy protocols. Uh that being said on the uh compliance stuff I think just do selective disclosure you know like so for example we are doing internal research and prototypes at AIC where you can actually do a zk proof more client side saying that I never interacted with an address that I was never supposed to interact with and uh yeah and I basically uh you know like never did anything wrong. Uh you don't have to go and see everyone's all data to know that you can just do a local client side proof and that's all.

Uh I guess one last part would be that uh you don't have to basically the fact that you can move money doesn't enable that's my personal opinion by the way doesn't enable crime because by that logic if the reason why bad actors are able to do bad act is because they can move money through a system by that logic we should stop making cars because they also use cars we should stop all sorts of messaging we should also stop making books because they read books and they acquire knowledge through it right and there's no end to it. So I think yeah that's the law enforcement's part to figure out you know like crime doesn't happen because people are able to do use certain tools because then you have to compromise all of them right u the point is that you can't compromise the privacy of billions of people under this like we have to come up with more practical solutions like selective disclosure where you can just prove that you're not guilty without revealing all of this data

yeah that I I agree with that so I'll just wind this up Uh we also were working on very similar concept like selective disclosure called as uh time the re uh revelation where the the dao votes basically uh to reveal a particular part if somebody demands an audit and prove that they are not wrong but u yeah I agree with the point of not holding the data because holding the data then makes you vulnerable at any point like they'll just bash in your house get hold of all the people and get the data out. So agree on that point. Hush, it was uh awesome to talk with you about these and I hope you guys uh got some idea of what privacy in Ethereum means and what are the things and um the final take from my side I will give you also a chance for that is that apply your filter and the filter would be IBW when you are building something figure out if it leaks out in behavior wealth apply whatever solutions out there are and build private things. Yeah. Good.

Yeah. Thanks man. I guess this was good like

the questions were nice and you like definitely were the right person to do this with uh I think yeah like I will just end it with trust maths trust cryptography and I'm going to do a session in an hour like is going to talk for 10 it's a meetup like it's it's not even I'm going to be talking about it there will be some pizza and I will be talking about why you should do privacy so if you want to know more just join me there and let's have some pizza

I'm going to come for pizza

yeah sure man thank you