The Weird Nature of Cryptography Products | CC Liang, Independent | ETHTaipei 2026

[music] Hi, thank you so much and very happy to be here. Um, in this talk I want to spell out something like very I hope like they are very obvious to you and I try to give some like mediocre answer to things and and I just want to like spell out like the things that feels very obvious to you and and I hope that uh will help us uh reflect something. So, uh let me try next slide. Oh, uh sorry. Oh, okay.

Yes, the uh next page. Um so um I saw this post uh for my uh friend Mashbin and he he used to be in the model the ministry of uh digital uh affair and he helped uh to uh develop the the uh Taiwan uh Taiwan digital wallet and but he he kind of he didn't got a chance to do the full vision of the digital wallet. He wants to uh you know like have a zero knowledge proof features and um like lot of lot of lot of features he want to do. So uh so he he ended up like he he tried to uh vibe coded his own version of digital wallet and have like uh all the feature he wanted to do and he wrote a post for this and I I read a post and I like it really much and I I text to my agent and I asked like oh uh uh I I want whatever like mesh bin is have uh uh uh his iOS because he only developed the iOS implementation and my my phone is Android. So I uh I asked my agent to do a Android one and okay so let's talk about the 711 uh the pickup flow.

So if you go online shopping and you order a package and you can ask them to deliver to a convenience store and usually like like in the old or current weight you have to bring your national ID and then like you say uh I want to pick up my package and you have to say your what's your name and then your last uh five digit three digits of your phone number and you present your ID to the uh staff and and they um they pick out the package for you. But if you're a very like privacy sensitive person, then you you realize there are lots of fields there are different lots of fields on your national ID and it feels very like a lot of exposure to to send out your ID. So uh one of the use case of the digital wallet is you you can uh apply the a mo um a credential creation for your uh mobile provider and then the mobile provider will test uh a fact that uh you are the person with this name and your uh last three digit of phone number and five digits of phone number and you can do uh selective disclosure with this wallet and then you present this QR code to your uh to the convenience store staff and then they will uh pick up the uh pick out a package for you and this is my like AI slap. So you see like uh I I have a QR code too and there are lots of like debugging message popping up the uh the the UI and the the staff in a convenience store that look very suspicious like to like like to me but but he still like scam my um scan my QR code like the last step of uh the bike coded uh digital wallet is to test it in a real place. So, we actually went to a convenience store and then uh present my AI slap and then uh the the staff actually scan the QR code and there's a uh my package is showing up in the in the machines of the uh convenience stores.

So, it kind of worked, [clears throat] but it also like feel like unimpressive like it's just scanning a QR code like like that's that's what you do with like every other apps and like uh you it seems like everything is so boring so then like like like I cannot show my excitement in like this this whole flow like if you remember your first like LLM experience like when when you find out like computer can write you a like human like humanlike language like the computer can talk you like that when you see a computer can draw a beautiful pictures to you you feel like oh this this is impressive this is something different this is like some progress in humanity but like for cryptography like Most of time it doesn't like like everything like sending the transactions like um if you remove all the frictions like all the you know network as tokens and like if you rem remove all the frictions it feels it should feels like just a a bank app and then like when you browse a website in the internet on the internet like you you you go to a URL with the HTTPS and then like what does the S really give you like you you don't appreciate the uh the security and like you don't know the detail you don't know how it works behind the scene you just the UI just show you uh probably a shield or a lock like they're showing you okay this this website is uh safe it's secure and then you you just you