Will Web3 Change Privacy As We Know It? | European Blockchain Convention

foreign [Music] hello everyone okay that one works wow that's a big stage um I actually opened the first ECB many many years ago so it's amazing to see how it grew we were I think it was just this room on the first one uh but today I have a pleasure to to host a fireside chat with nanak who is a co-founder of holonym foundation and we'll be talking about privacy which is a great passion of mine I actually started off my career in computer science and security and privacy so I was very excited when Victoria asked if I could do this so nanak could you please introduce yourself and tell us what you do hi yeah I'm nanak I'm a co-founder of uh Holland foundation so I I build a lot of privacy Tech to bring privacy on chain uh because yeah we feel that web3 is at a Crux of privacy where in some ways it can help privacy in some ways it can really hurt privacy so I'm just trying to make sure that um people can have privacy when interacting with web3 and bring the benefits of new cryptography yeah so for privacy right but why like why why do we even need privacy I mean every possible study says that people don't care they are happy to sell their data best if they you can get paid for your data so why why did you even start it and why do you think it's worth doing yeah I actually used to be one of those people who thought I have nothing to hide um there's no need for privacy but it was only when I started developing apps that handled user data like I was developing identity protocol for um yeah for web3 and was originally docks and users in many ways and and just the design choices as a developer realizing how they could impact users is really what got me into privacy seeing how we will gladly give away all sorts of data without seeing the risks always like I think it can be um you know we are all incentivized and myself too I still hit the button saying give away your cookies um yeah it's a very tough incentive problem but preventing surveillance is super important I think making sure that nobody has too much power there should be checks and balances against that to make sure Society doesn't go in a downward spiral and to also protect data from breaches because I mean with for example Equifax reach in in the US 100 million people have their social security numbers leaked and you know destroyed people's lives so uh I think yeah it's an important societal problem is there a way to make privacy usable because what you mentioned about cookies I mean I click it all the time and every now and again I'm on a mission of exploring the settings and setting them slightly differently to make sure that it's only the essential ones 90 of the time you just you just get want to get on with it so is there a way to do it better yeah um I don't know it's a tough question right like I think it's really convenient to not have privacy sometimes there are steps we can take you know there are you know tool is like tour tools like you know uh Nim Hopper you know all sorts of um you know mixed Nets and tools to protect privacy that we can use uh vpns right as well but yeah I mean it is a little bit of extra work and well the title of this fireside chat is web3 will change privacy As We Know It uh what's the web 3 component how does it change anything yeah I think web3 introduces a lot of interesting Primitives that get rid of trust and uh so it's funny because web3 is often thought of as this very privacy preserving space where you can make private transactions but in reality they are pseudonymous transactions rather than Anonymous transactions uh so in some ways they provide privacy but otherwise if you know somebody's pseudonym their address you can know everything about them so you know I think there's a lot of interesting technology in the ZK space uh which is associated with web3 um even though it's not necessarily like you know purely web3 I feel like zero knowledge technology that powers blockchains like Monero or sorry the powers blockchains like zcash and uh you know man to network and uh you know in even yeah even even other blockchains that are trusted execution environment based you know I feel like there's some very interesting privacy Primitives being introduced that can allow for um probably we haven't seen before and um even in Regulatory Compliance like making sure that Financial transactions can be done privately but still complying with regulations I feel that's a very interesting way that web3 can finally change privacy for the better yeah it's very interesting uh just out of curiosity uh how many of you here know about ZK snarks or zero knowledge proofs in general okay that's amazing that means that we're getting somewhere basically everybody does uh if you don't come talk to nanak he'll explain it to you afterwards um so you mentioned regulation it is interesting because on one hand I let's say I want my privacy forget the usability I want my privacy I don't want anything to be leaked but on the other hand I want support of the government and I want you know I'm a good citizen and I want to have my social benefits depending on where you live uh I want to be protected by law and all that stuff that doesn't go together yeah it's a super tough uh Challenge and uh you know if I may share a little bit that is something that we are tackling right now at Holland and and I think it's yeah it's very important to have this Crossroads because on one hand I can see why Regulators want this lack of privacy because you have to make sure right you can have a financial system that preserves privacy for normal people but you want to make sure when somebody misuses it that they are caught um and having that Enterprise or privacy preserving way is very tough and it's yeah something that we're trying to solve and how are you solving it yeah we're using zero knowledge proofs and uh all sorts of like new uh Primitives like threshold encryption well I guess that's not you know totally new but all sorts of fancy crypto Primitives like threshold encryptions your knowledge proofs um and is the idea to adopt Holland identity system kind of web 3-wide or worldwide are you working with any governments to get it like into the regulatory space that's something we yeah we're working on a little bit so we're working with Lobby three Dao which is a lobbying diagram by uh run by US president uh U.S presidential candidate sorry Andrew Yang so that's one exciting way that we're exploring um confluences with uh government and Regulation and lobbying um yeah you mentioned lobbying um how is there a push that you know of like is there a industry body that fights for better regulation around privacy and web 3 some joint venture or is it all very decentralized there I say yeah um I think a bit of Bullhead I think it's it's largely decentralized I mean eff comes to mind and they they have you know fought for privacy in in many cases um uh you might know better than I do probably well actually that it is a good question because all I hear about is individual companies having you know issuing responses to to different acts and so on I didn't don't really hear much about really organized movement towards better adoption of web 3 standards especially around privacy so if anybody else knows something I would love to hear about that um oh what what do you know Charles it's mostly dominated by we have two people but the Privacy work and in particular the identifier work is actually looking very carefully yeah stuff that's web free either web free native or designed by people who build it on top of web 3 is the way they think the value of that conversation is that it involves both the the traditional web players it involves regulators and governments w3c is well known so people pay attention and you know it involves therefore a lot of arguing and a lot of fighting to make progress but the good thing is when you do make progress you've made progress in the big ocean not in your tiny fishbowl that's amazing so in case you didn't hear I'll just quickly repeat w3c has a big initiative around privacy and bringing both web 2 and web3 initiatives to get our worlds together to solve that and also it takes a lot of time but hopefully you have a greater impact there um our time is up unfortunately that's what the big screen tells me uh nanak any actions for everyone here like what do we do about privacy and web three yeah I mean uh be careful about where you're logged in with your wallet uh pretty crazy that if you have metamask or whatever wallet logged in to any website that they can find your wall address they can see every transaction you've ever done on the blockchain so um and Link it with your name or number whatever other details you go to the site so I'd say that's probably one of the the biggest things we accidentally missed the Privacy so yeah if you're looking to preserve more more privacy uh then okay so just don't talk to strangers as usual thank you so much it was a pleasure thank you