S16 E51: Sean Bowe on Bitcoin, Zcash & Scaling Privacy with Tachyon

Oct 18, 2025

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Sean Bowe is a cryptographer and engineer who is best known for revolutionizing Zcash. After cooperating to fix the inflation bug in the first version of the network, he built Halo to remove the trusted setup – basically obliterating the main reason why Bitcoin did not activate the Zerocash soft fork in 2013. More recently, Sean Bowe announced project Tachyon: an ambitious initiative to scale ZK SNARKs (the technology enabling shielded transactions) to billions of users. Time stamps: 00:01:19 - Sean Bowe's Work on Zcash and Hidden Inflation Bug Fix 00:01:36 - Introduction to Halo and Halo 2: Eliminating Trusted Setup 00:01:51 - Overview of Project Tachyon for Scaling ZK-SNARKs 00:02:43 - Zcash Price Pump and Dance Celebration 00:04:48 - Using Zcash for Encrypted Messages via Zashi Wallet 00:05:42 - Comparing Zcash Messaging to Signal 00:07:17 - Sean Bowe's Early Involvement in Zcash and Bitcoin 00:10:34 - Sean Bowe's Age and Start in Cryptography at 21 00:11:13 - Discovering Bitcoin in 2011 and Privacy Needs 00:13:42 - Contributing to BIP 39 with Slush and Trezor 00:14:19 - Realizing Bitcoin's Lack of Privacy 00:17:50 - Privacy vs. Deniability in Bitcoin and Banks 00:20:23 - Wasabi Wallet and CoinJoins Limitations 00:21:46 - Optional Privacy in Zcash and Wallet Defaults 00:23:16 - Viewer Question: Source of Sean Bowe's Smartness 00:24:47 - Viewer Question: Ideas from Scaling Bottlenecks 00:27:09 - Viewer Quote from Oscar Wilde on Privacy 00:28:07 - Viewer Question: Zcash Network State Meaning 00:30:00 - Viewer Question: Timeline for Tachyon Success 00:33:15 - Chronological Approach to Interview and Tachyon 00:37:33 - Differences Between Zerocoin (Firo) and Zerocash (Zcash) 00:39:55 - Greg Maxwell's CoinJoin and Zerocoin Views 00:42:57 - Moon Math and Cryptographic Assumptions 00:46:33 - Sponsor: Citrea ZK Rollup with BitVM 00:47:19 - Sponsor: Layer2 Labs ZSide Drive Chain 00:49:01 - Sponsor: Bitcoin.com News 00:50:16 - Zcash Leads Crypto Rally News 00:58:49 - Bitcoin's Constraints and Creativity like BitVM 01:05:00 - Zcash Contributors and Zebra Rust Node 01:14:00 - Friendly Forks in Zcash 01:31:00 - Monero Hater Comments and Zcash Anonymity 02:23:00 - Superhero Backstory Tease 02:26:14 - Bitcoin Talk Username and Early ASIC Mining 02:28:35 - Pessimism on Bitcoin Development Speed 02:50:41 - Shielded Zcash Dust Problem 02:52:11 - Quantum Resistance and Self-Transfers 02:53:00 - Long-Term Storage Pool for Quantum Safety 02:54:56 - Avalanche Pre-Consensus like eCash 02:55:04 - Tachyon and Oblivious Synchronization 02:58:56 - Scaling to Billions: Math and No Bottlenecks 03:02:12 - Solving Privacy-Scaling Trilemma 03:04:51 - Off-Chain Secrets and Payment Protocols 03:06:24 - Tachyon as New Privacy Pool 03:12:56 - Wallet Syncing with Tachyon Servers 03:14:50 - Shielded Aggregation in Tachyon 03:17:00 - Tachyon Team Size and Hiring Rust Engineers 03:18:41 - ETA for Tachyon: Next Year 03:23:15 - Greg Maxwell Paper Citation Story 03:25:11 - Explaining ZK-SNARKs to Polkadot Cryptographers 03:31:01 - Zcash Governance and No Benevolent Dictator 03:35:06 - Memos Bloating Blockchain and Anonymity Boost 03:38:06 - Zcash Compatibility with Bitcoin Privacy 03:39:01 - Following Sean Bowe: X Account and Blog