The Future of Privacy: Exploring ZK, Quantum, and Beyond

good afternoon everyone I hope you are doing well that's the one of the latest panel of the naulet event today we are doing a pretty unique track following Quantum uh crypto this morning and today we are doing more privacy related questions so just to give you a context uh today there is a main focus on privacy uh talking about General privacy concerns in our industry and how we can address them so for the people that don't know me I am januca one of the organizer of npet I also run a development company in Amsterdam Netherlands where I live but I'm from Naples and that's why we're organizing this amazing event I really hope that you are enjoying and right now let's dive more in our panel so uh welcome everyone again let me introduce uh the panelist danela and Lawrence so we are curious to know more about you if you can briefly introduce yourself okay can yeah hi I'm Lawrence from extrap uh we are a uh ZK and uh blockchain consultancy uh we do lots of Education uh we do auditing uh we've done development uh in terms of privacy we've done we've developed uh proof of concepts for clients to try to use things like ZK technology to introduce or give the option uh of privacy uh in some of the applications cool cool cool Hello I'm Danelle and I work for 20 squares we're a Consulting uh in the well well usually we take care of the whole uh economic stack so privacy it's not one of our main concerns but personally I've been uh I mean I'm uh privacy afficionado and uh personally I've been Consulting uh uh together with um colleagues from the ethics uh part and then the legal u i mean parts of the the Privacy space about uh AI the European digital identity initiative uh yeah so nice to have you all here amazing amazing you are building such crazy projects guys really really interesting so let's start with an opening question um so we know uh maybe for the people that don't know our industry start with the concept of cyber punks right but with the evolution of the industry we focus on the mass adoption do you think that our industry has maintained the focus on Cyber punks and what is your takes about that okay so I mean a small group of uh like the ogs uh survived and is stilling strong but it seems to me that the industry in general well having become an industry rather than a like a niche thing has moved towards other kinds of uh like ways of of looking and using block looking at and using blockchains uh so like most of the original ethos of say like the OG blockchains like Bitcoin and ethereum has been almost completely lost except for like small groups that are surviving yeah what is your take lence yeah I would agree with that I think as one maybe one of the ogs from that time maybe uh yeah it's that certainly seems to be the case uh you can see this uh in conferences where uh it used to be the case where there would be uh signs about you know no photography and they would be trying to Prov uh preserve privacy way and that's just not the case in most of them now uh even on uh transactions on on zcash uh you think that's be uh uh obviously that's privacy preserving but then most of those are not shielded so people are just really not not using that so much I think as we've increased the adoption then we've we've left that behind to some extent yeah yeah yeah that that's that's completely true so we saw that the Cyber Punk's movement is kind of changing right and just a few ogs are keeping that Concepts but we know that our industry is like our goal is to on board users right so it's all my opinion about users it's user Centric and like you know one of the main pecularity of the blockchain technology is to spread decentralization and decentralized products right and in terms of like uh this tradeoff of decentralization and privacy um do you think that building the centralized protocol um in in that sense we are kind of like losing the Privacy for users in terms of like respect of users and data control like if we build the centralized application the data of the users are still safe yeah I think uh certainly one of the aspects I also used to stress about uh decentralized applications was the fact that we could have control over our data and for me that was very important but I think you know I'm in a minority here with uh demanding that uh for example on you know on social media I lie I put lies out there because I don't want people to take uh personal details from me uh and I I think it is less important as we get more mass adoption I think it's just going to reflect what we see in web 2 where people are just not so interested in privacy and uh there was a a survey on on binance where people had to rank various features and there's decentralization usability cost and privacy and privacy came last I I think it's just not so important but on the positive side uh you know as users if we want that we should be demanding it and we can demand that this is built into these systems so that going forward uh as these systems are built uh the Privacy is there by default uh and even if you know it's not important as important to everyone uh then it's there for the people who it is important for yeah yeah I totally agree actually also I mean uh the thing is uh the user has also to be educated uh about I mean preserving its priv their own privacy uh I mean it it's it's not something everyone uh like manages to like conceptualize in their head uh like by themselves so well I I think this is also like the the the the fact that users don't care that much about privacy is is uh like a purely uh like cultural fact rather than a like technological one or whatever yeah in the end user don't really care right but maybe maybe the provider the company that build products should care more for the Privacy for the users right or is more like an user s thing again I mean the the users should care about their own privacy the the provider doesn't care about obviously anything that's not that that does not entail direct profit for them correct so like offering a like a privacy a more privacy minded uh service is uh profitable when the user cares about privacy so that that's I mean they they kind of go depends from the products and the use case in that sense um yeah I I mean uh the I mean users should be more educated towards uh I mean preserving their privacy and about what this entails like giving a the Privacy uh and and this will obviously cause as as um as Lawrence was saying earlier uh the these will cause a response from the I mean the the providers okay whoever develops products yeah I see thanks guys for for those akes so we kind of address the issue of the users data control but a lot of times when we discuss about privacy and generally speaking I think that uh privacy is really related to UI in that sense in terms of a user acquisition uh what is your take about in terms always of the Privacy concept of this issue of cross chains networks like what do you think you know like this uh fragment uh fragmentation around many many many layers many many networks uh decrease the privacy in terms of user experience uh from the part of the user from the point of view of the user or is not that an issue in your opinion it is an issue and it most certainly can decrease I mean and compromise the privacy of the users and that's why uh I mean we I I I I will stress that several times during this uh this panel but uh you're welcome yeah uh I mean privacy and uh like U all across the stock like cryptographic Primitives uh like ZK proof systems Etc uh I mean they have to be standardized a bit on their interface uh so that this is obviously something that will help preserve the user privacy uh like at these interfaces uh another thing that I mean it seems kind of obvious uh but uh one other thing that could could cause friction is like uh some uh mismatch of uh whatever values one platform has with respect to the other and obviously at the boundary you lose some something if you're switching for something that's more privacy mind minded to something that doesn't really care about preserving your privacy so one thing one fundamental thing that's on the user side so that the ball is in uh is in the user's court is is to obviously engage only with stuff that's aligned with their values yeah exactly yeah I think that's that's spot on really the on the the issue of the standards I think there is a possibility here because for for example with some of the the L3 options we're getting that are going to be built on things like the op stack and the ZK stack we have the possibility there to introduce these standards but on the other hand at the moment it is very ad hoc and yeah I think that that's spot on yeah okay great so in the end always depends from the users right if you would like to use some protocol that you are sure that is safer you use that one if you would like to be more risky or try to know catch things you you will use maybe other types of of protocol always be aware of how connect your wallet generally speaking in uh in those strange interfaces and these new protocols okay so I think that we addressed the the users data control uh the issue of cross chain privacy now I would like to go more technical in my opinion one of the major uh narratives of the next years and also we saw in the in last year and maybe also um even before um I think that zero knowledge is one of the best components and best use case that we can build on top of uh of blockchain technology so before to dive into zal Age We would like to introduce to our a audience what is zero proof okay so in a simple terms in a Nal please okay well got some details on my t-shirt if you want to to read that uh yeah so with a zero knowledge proof you can uh create a proof that you know something or something exists uh send that to someone to who can verify that proof but you have the zero knowledge aspect so the person verifying the proof doesn't gain information uh other than the fact that this the proof is valid so if you have some secret input to the proof then that remains secret it's fine that was that was the lesson okay F lesson about DK in one minute guys that's really Alpha so um again we we saw that ZK proofs uh are a generally speaking a major Innovation for privacy right so that's the main concept and uh how do you see the future of the implementation of the ZK technology and also what are the main challenges for the implementation yes so I think at the moment we're seeing uh ZK used in a couple of ways there a couple of aspects uh there's the uh there's a privacy side uh but there's also the the fact that it can be used to prove computation and you can ignore the the Privacy aspect and so a lot of the use of ZK at the moment is on the the the proof of computation which helps which we're using for ZK rollups we're using for for scalability uh so yeah sorry I forgot the question that but I mean like I just said how do you see the future of DK in terms of like real use cases implementation and also what are the main challenges regarding this so yeah so in terms of the Challenger certainly it is a very complex technology it's very specialized we uh we have some very clever cryptographers who are building this but they are few uh and so you know we need more people uh to to help with that we also need more education around ZK and around cryptography great what is your take Danny yeah in general uh I think uh I mean developing a a product that relies on ZK right now is uh maybe a bit more complicated than what would be desirable yeah uh so I mean the ux could most certainly go a long way and in getting better more accessible to people who don't necessarily need to know what the like Primitives are right now I mean proof systems are a bit I mean they require like a non-trivial knowledge of of um in general what what's behind CK um another thing as I anticipated uh is I mean standardization of I mean in general um like the interface of this proof systems and how to have UI yeah U ux and then Dev X more than uh yeah um than that but yeah it's it's on another side yeah I see um yeah another thing is on the like let's say technical side uh I mean ZK proof systems have still a long way to go uh proofs are still quite quite big they're still quite intensive to check and produce I mean we we have gone a long way obviously uh also I mean as uh we've been seeing today uh in on the main stage this morning there's been a lot of talk about Quantum yeah and uh at at this precise moment in time we don't have a very good approach to I mean fast and uh like size efficient contained um ZK proof systems there's like people from time to time say oh but yeah but there's uh there's Starks yeah but Starks are huge and slow that that's that's the problem with Starks not scalable right yeah yeah yeah that's a huge scalability problem scalability like even if we should compare like DK networks as DK sync or Linea with for example optimistic collapse right like is the main challenge about that in my opinion maybe the scalability that still an issue right yeah that's still an issue for like classical ZK like elliptic curve based DK I mean stuff that relies on hardness of of the discrete logarithm problem if you go to the like post Quantum uh side then it's it's we're Way Beyond behind schedule I see yeah you want something yeah I just add so there are there are some things coming up in ZK I think that will help with this so there's a lot of the work done like things like folding schemes and aggregation of pruce recursion is helping and also we we're seeing some work now being on uh hash based not just stocks but other hash based ZK so that that could be promising but I I agree that yeah there are potential problems there still a long still a long way to go so I would like to follow your take about Quantum and yeah this morning we had like an amazing uh Quantum stock in our in our M stage and so basically like DK uh is one of the you know best narrative and best technology that we can build on blockchain but there is like this issue of uh computation that we have and especially in terms of like scalability as as we spoke but another issue that we will have once the quantum Computing will happen will be more uh uh large scale in in terms of use cases I also see this as main issue and as a main uh uh as main problem for for our industry and also always in terms of like regarding the Privacy how do you think that um the quantum Computing in that sense has the potential to disrupt current cryptographic standards right obviously and what do you think in terms of like this how this could impact the privacy in the blockchain world and J speaking in the blockchain word yeah so uh yeah obviously there's the potential there for uh disruption but there are technologies that can help with this uh as well I think there are potential Solutions out there we can use different signature schemes uh there are also uh things that are perhaps more traditional even before we look we had blockchain there's uh there's differential privacy which is a different way to to get privacy into statistical operation so I think there are options around there um but how close we are to Quantum I'm not sure about perhaps you know better than me what do you think I mean I mostly agree with Lawrence uh so actually the scary part of quantum for blockchain is uh like for ethereum in particular is more around uh like for example aggregation signal aggregation so like on the Privacy side um we can also afford to be a bit slower so maybe I mean as I was saying earlier uh in general postquantum cryptography still has a long way to go like Primitives are lower than uh obviously elliptic curve curves Etc otherwise they will be the standard there would be no reason to not use them um but yeah uh I mean privacy is uh I mean I see that on a like more relaxed time scale than other kinds of applications so I mean we can afford to be a bit slower okay we we can do it slower yeah not the M issue it's not as bad as with like the whole cryptoeconomic part hopefully yeah that's a good that's a good thing and also I mean sense yeah and also there's a lot of of postquantum Primitives or or I mean by postquantum I just mean they are plausibly I mean they they can plausibly be not broken by a like a modern like a future quantum computer okay we don't have algorithms right now that will allow to BR to us to break uh these like cryptographic schemes and um I mean we already have a lot of stuff like for example Ash based cryptography is uh it works cool thanks guys for for this interesting uh discussion about ZK and Quantum also that was really interesting to follow the the track of this morning and I would like now to address a bit like in terms of like you know we we mentioned the the scaling issues of the of this industry right and I would like to understand your opinion regarding how we can achieve the growth of our ecosystem without compromising the Privacy right because the scaling uh of our ecosystem in terms of like user acquisition and uh products that actually can can assist to those user boarding do you see like as a tradeoff like you know can we scale while keeping the Privacy uh that's a very nice question i1 million I don't know if I know an answer to that but I mean in general I agree with the fact that there is a trade-off to be made uh now if there's like like satisfying enough Middle Ground I don't know yeah I think yeah I I can see that see the problem I I would also just repeat what I what I said earlier really you know if we have uh standards that can help if we can build things in uh there doesn't need to be this problem but I think also comes back to what you said earlier about the culture as well that users have to be educated and incentivized to to demand privacy and I think that's going to make a big difference okay okay makes sense that's like you know really a tough Topic in my opinion and we need to see in the next years how the products and companies will help uh to scale while keeping the Privacy we'll see we'll see so now uh we are watching like you know the growth of the uh advancement in terms of like technology in writing uh um cryptography and uh you know focus on to build the new uh cryptography products generally speaking like how do you think that um let's give some some Alpha to our audience right like in your opinion what are the recent developments in cryptography that are the best Solutions in your opinion always uh that are kind of like you know promising to preserve privacy uh so there's there's been some around uh ZK as I was saying earlier there's some developments hash based proofs um also I think uh FH is quite interesting uh there's a lot of applications now starting to use that such as Zama uh which uh yeah just going to allow a lot of private things uh MPC as well multiparty computation uh is uh developing and that allows us lots of possibilities collaborative snars I think there's quite a few technologies that are starting to come into their own and starts to be used uh that that can help so I would sorry I've said more than one there but yeah if I had to pick one I would say fhe totally I am I'm a fan of the idea of FH but I mean right now we're in a very still primitive stage of that uh I mean anything that's nonlinear it's very hard to do very time expensive I mean resource expensive with FH like multiplication even it's it's hard to do with FH in a like a decent amount of time and space so there's still a long way to go but yeah it's it's most certainly the most promising uh application like in In classical cryptography right now rather than application like technology let's say that and it I mean it has potentially a lot of interesting applications like in general the idea of uh like offsourcing a computation okay which happens nowadays like always okay yeah it's it's an integral part of of every like internet user technology user users life uh yeah and like of sourcing it in a way that's impossible to like leak data out of it it's it's basically the holy gray of of cryto yeah Okay cool so now like we are talking also about you know uh that our industry is growing a lot and really fast and maybe this fast growth is kind of like you know losing the attention of to care about privacy right because we are tracking more tvl we are we are like Bridging the the liquidity from trade F to this new industry and maybe like the focus is just about that right like just to grab liquidity while we are losing the technical aspects and the main concept that maybe we discussed already we mention it with the famous cyber punks and um do you think that privacy is kind of like being sacrificed in favor of scaling for profit yes it is yes no it's it's not a yes it's a sadly yes Sly yeah uh I mean that's what becoming an actual industry gets you I mean you stop caring about like the the ethical part the I mean the the Cy Cypher Punk it's it's a cultural movement okay it does not make money when VC money comes in that that's the effect it's it's almost inevit unless it it is profitable to actually like uh it's impossible keeping a tradeoff between those two pillars ah maybe with the advancement of technology and if there's a culture shift and so clients like users start pretending more from the product they the products they use yeah it it might become profitable because then you're offering a product that people are willing to pay for but otherwise uh I mean I I see these two things are as basically competing yeah interesting they yeah exactly uh I think you think of the incentives it's just not uh the the the compan just not incentivized to to add this and for example we we did some proof of concepts with with a company who where the the product itself was about privacy but still they wanted to have some aspects that were private and then they wanted to monetize other pieces of personal data so I think that's was going to be was going to be a problem yeah I think that here we are kind of like touching a an angle about ethics also right while while we talk about privacy and uh do you see that like I mean do you think that people like really care about privacy and ethics like I would like to understand your genuine opinion right like do you think that crypto users and generally speaking like uh users of digital products they care about privacy or not what is your take about that uh I would say on the whole people probably don't if they can have other things if they if it's going to cost them to add privacy or demand privacy they will probably not opt to do that uh but some people do uh it's very important to me for example but yeah most people they're not as uh they're not as concerned I mean people have been scanning their eyeballs for a bunch of money so they evidently don't care a lot about their privacy it really depends from the region where you are right I mean like maybe where we have like Advanced region as Europe there is like a more because all depends about ethics in in that sense maybe right like I mean if you have if you are educated with such an ethic that you care about yourself you care about your data you maybe care about uh your privacy but maybe in some like Po region in other countries so that's not the main thing to think about right um I don't think it's it's that I mean probably there's some component but I don't think it's so impactful as uh one might think uh it's more of a general thing it's more of a like so I mean privacy is a bit of an abstract concept to get while money it's tangible right yeah it's tangible so that's the point effects of that that's the point like it's all more about you know philosophical aspect of Ethics right in that sense while money and uh profitability is way more tangible h i mean the average person doesn't really care that much about ethics I mean they have a I mean we all have a some kind of pre-built concept of ethics and but in in general uh I think people tend to go for what's more functional to them uh in general delayed gratification or some kind of more abstract gratification is a is always a harder choice to make yeah true uh Lawrence do you would like to add something regarding just a small Point really I suppose uh with many people they would care about it more if there's been a problem if they have their identity sty so unfortunately at that point it will be uh something that's important to them but perhaps not before yeah okay so we addressed like uh generally what is about you know the focus of the users so we got that users don't really care about privacy but I'm curious to know more about the audience that we are already talking from like actually 20 minutes and I know that are pretty like technical uh topics right guys but do you care about your privacy like when once you you use applications that are decentralized or not do you care about when you log in with your data do you take uh care about your data once once you use those application or not yes your there's your answer like do you care about privacy or not okay so as we can see that you know in terms of Ethics the Privacy is a you know an important topic but it's not just about money or scalability there there are some people that care maybe about that I mean uh it's reasonable to expect a higher concentration of uh privacy minded people attending a privacy panel yeah checks out okay so we addressed I think like uh pretty everything in terms of like uh technical points um so like in terms of like you know that's really clear your your opinion in terms of like the scaling approach and how we should keep the privacy but um I would like more now to address uh the regulatory compliance uh topic about privacy so we are in Europe we saw the marar and also we are uh watching like the growth of many new regulation around across the world so in the face of increasing uh uh government regulation how can privacy be maintain it without uh sacrifying maybe you know the main fundamentals of blockchain and decentralization are you scary uh of Regulation or what is your take about that uh I'm not necessarily scared but I'm concerned uh I mean one way to defend ourselves from uh this kind of regulations of or regulatory actions is to actually put in in the like the the decision makers Place uh I mean politicians that actually care about people so this and that do not use cheap uh I mean ethics based tricks like for example chat control okay it's not directly crypto related but I mean it's usually when you start saying okay uh yeah this is to protect uh certain kind of uh like like certain subgroup of the population or whatever uh then you start getting into I mean as a very slippery slope territory um and the I mean the the four reasons are are always unclear um so yeah first of all let's not get uh like subpar politicians yeah like and uh another thing to get around regulatory pressure is uh making privacy not optional but buil in okay mandatory so I mean this is always a good way to get around regulations I mean this system doesn't work with privacy kind of I mean it works doesn't work I don't know but yeah we will see we will see what do you think Lawrence yeah I think uh we've seen yeah soly SE The Regulators taking more positive action and really jumping in more than they used to uh I suppose from the sort of from technical point of view the things we can do is if you're developing you know develop anonymously uh don't put yourself at risk uh from that uh from that aspect uh also I I suppose The Regulators do have a balancing act because they don't want to overregulation that's my okay great great thanks for your take and so you both of you guys you are uh evly working uh in this field right and I'm really curious maybe also the audiences to know what is like the main area of privacy that you are following like what is your main focus with your projects what is your like your main goal to build uh using privacy and leveraging on on the Privacy so uh yeah we're very involved obviously education and and teaching about ZK and raising awareness about this I think one thing that I would say is particularly important is uh because we're seeing an increased use now of uh Ai and uh machine learning is the the intersection of ZK and ML and so uh that area I think is uh very important and needs developing further because we'll see so many more people using that and we need to try to get the Privacy possible for that and there are there are solutions out there even though it's a very uh it's a young field but there there's zkl there's opml there's also Federated machine learning so we we have ways to deal with this but it's going to be a very large uh question for people uh just because that that whole area is picking up yeah nice also I think that we really need more uh educational papers right because okay you are building projects to uh help uh users have their safe experience on digital application but in the same time maybe for devs and for people that are curious about that it's still like really an art topic right there are bias regarding that is really hard to understand I mean it's not for everyone of course it's something that uh objectively speaking is difficult to understand but I really think that we need some help from you guys that are working in this angle and this field to make it easier for the m to understand or at least for to have more developers building on top of of that okay on 20 square side uh we've been hard at work on new interesting cryptographic cryptographic Primitives we've been collaborating with our friends at ashburg uh I mean if you've attended uh this morning talks and panels at the main stage I mean you've probably noticed that I mean there's something like in the works right now you building you are building yeah um for example we're working on a u very interesting um EF project EF backed project on uh Quantum watch signatures s together with ashberg uh and also on the like regulatory side we're working with uh people from uh AI for example the European crypto initiative and yeah we're we getting better and better informed that so we're we're trying to T tackle these kind of issues from different axes so yeah amazing amazing so I think that we uh come to an end of our panel we touch all the main topics regarding privacy uh before like to ask maybe some questions to our audience uh I would like to ask you guys do you have other any topics that you would like to address or to explain that maybe we didn't touch any curiosity that you would like to share any Alpha any opinion that for you is important to mention no uh just that yeah I think it's very much a cultural thing so it's very much up to you out there to demand privacy and demand this of the uh the applications that you are using so it's really in your hands to do this thank you Laurence yeah Danny think so pry the same of you yeah right yeah um obviously I agree I mean it seems like we've covered a lot of ground so maybe let's ask some let's have the audience ask us let's see we touched a lot of complicated topics I really hope that you enjoy the panel and you follow them so do you guys have any question uh regarding privacy TR off of of this field yes please among the Technologies um you haven't mentioned the use of uh tees so trusted execution environments for instance uh how do you see that playing uh in the Privacy space uh and do you believe it has a space in in this regard or is like Dead on Arrival thank you for your question personally I don't really like te so I I'll try to keep it PG uh so maybe let's have Lawrence answer first didn't really hear the beginning of the question sorry you'll have to extion environment ah okay okay so uh no I don't have strong opinions but uh I know some yeah it it goes against my uh I guess some ideas I have about decentralization and I think there are alternatives as well so yeah okay thank you for your take in general oh sorry in general Hardware based security I don't know it's uh it's even more trust assumptions than normally so yeah and also I mean as you've seen recently Intel sgx like yeah uh root of trust Keys have been leaked so and there are a ton of known attacks on tees if you have physical access to them and so yeah doesn't seem like a good solution to me I'd prefer to have uh the laws of physics by my side and not uh just uh security by obfuscation because at the end of the day tees are kind of like that thanks thanks to answer guys and there is any other question any other curiosity okay I don't think so that all that's all completely crystally clear um so yes let's come to an end of our panel let me thank you a lot for these interesting uh talks I think that's a lot of alpha uh is not really easy to find you know uh those explications so I really hope that you guys enjoyed of course uh if you would like to make any other questions let's follow the guys and their projects they are building such a crazy project so really know like that's a big opportunity if you care about privacy let's stop them let's talk about with them you know you can build together you know we are in the same industry that's open source that's the beauty of it and we really care about privacy and maybe one thing that I would like to add is that if you are here is because of course you care about privacy and maybe it's important that you show to your friends and to your collaborators how much is important this field because I think that people and you know the average don't really care about that so that's why uh we brought those guys here to try to show to you and to let you understand how much is important this field so thank you again thanks guys to to to come here and thanks you to to listen let's give an Applause