Fresh off the launch of the Ignition Chain and a successful community-led $61M token sale, Aztec Network co-founder Zac Williamson joins Friederike Ernst to unpack the "existential" journey of building programmable privacy. Zac opens up about the "sacrificial altar" moment where the team decided to kill their live product, Aztec Connect which had 60k users because they realized true decentralized privacy required rebuilding from scratch rather than iterative upgrades.
They dive deep into the architecture of the new network, which utilizes a hybrid state model (encrypted UTXOs for privacy, public accounts for transparency) to enable composable applications. Zac challenges the cryptographic dogma of "don't roll your own crypto," arguing that for pioneers, relying on "battle-tested" libraries is impossible. He explains why decentralized sequencers are not just a moral choice but a security necessity to prevent government-mandated backdoors.
Finally, Zac contrasts the chaotic but decentralized resistance to surveillance in the US with the increasing top-down control in the UK and Europe, framing Aztec as essential "defense in depth" for the digital age.
Topics
- 00:00 Intro
- 03:45 The "Sacrificial Altar": Killing Aztec Connect
- 10:15 Hybrid Architecture: UTXOs vs. Accounts
- 16:30 Why You Must "Roll Your Own Crypto"
- 22:00 Decentralization as a Defense Against Backdoors
- 28:15 Performance: Throughput & Latency Trade-offs
- 34:40 Private Smart Contracts: Gaming & Identity
- 41:00 The Macro View: US vs. EU Surveillance
Links
- Gnosis: https://gnosis.io/
- Zac Williamson on X: https://twitter.com/Zac_Aztec
- Aztec Network: https://aztec.network
- Noir Language: https://noir-lang.org
Sponsors: Gnosis: Gnosis has been building core decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem since 2015. With the launch of Gnosis Pay last year, we introduced the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Start leveraging its power today at http://gnosis.io
