My conversation with Zooko, Nate Wilcox, and Sean Bowe about the Zcash protocol.

Zooko is a cypherpunk who co-founded Zcash along with his brother, Nate Wilcox, and others. Sean Bowe is a cryptographer and engineer who has played a crucial role in the development of Zcash and has made significant contributions to advancements in zero-knowledge proofs, particularly zk-SNARKs, which underpin Zcash’s privacy features.

Topics we discuss are well captured by the timestamps below.

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Timestamps

0:00 - Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn

0:04 - Writing the first blog post on Bitcoin ever

6:21 - Bitcoin’s fundamental privacy flaw

9:40 - Unstoppable private money

12:19 - Will Zcash compete with Bitcoin as a store of value?

14:24 - How many people are using Zcash?

16:18 - Good security is good usability

20:10 - Social credit systems and ubiquitous surveillance

23:43 - Why Monero’s privacy tech can’t work

35:21 - Integrating ZKPs into other blockchains

39:51 - Privacy comes from money at rest, not from money in flight

47:42 - Why did the price of ZEC fall so drastically in the beginning?

51:49 - Zcash stablecoins?

55:50 - Quantum threats to Zcash

1:02:50 - Encrypted love notes in the blockchain'

1:07:07 - Privacy enabled cultural trends

1:12:43 - Nate Wilcox

1:14:38 - Why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide?

1:16:16 - A brief history of Zcash

1:22:42 - Why does Zcash have opt-in privacy?

1:26:55 - Does Zcash still rely on a trusted setup?

1:30:49 - Upgrading the Zcash protocol to Hybrid PoW/PoS

1:40:50 - A bug that almost killed Zcash

1:52:40 - Zcash’s funding model

2:09:09 - Why can’t privacy be added as an L2?

2:14:35 - Scaling Zcash and making it more interoperable

2:23:16 - Shielded Labs

2:24:39 - Nate’s vision for Zcash

2:27:53 - Sean Bowe

2:32:53 - Censorship resistance is a spectrum

2:35:26 - Will privacy coins be banned?

2:37:49 - Privacy and scalability

2:41:47 - Programmable money

2:43:31 - Summary of Sean’s contributions to the field of cryptography

2:55:17 - Zcash might get privacy against quantum adversaries for free

3:00:14 - Halo

3:05:34 - What Sean’s working on right now

3:11:54 - What has influenced Sean’s thinking in cryptography the most?

3:13:36 - Being a high school dropout working in crypto

3:15:08 - Zcash is just getting started

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Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is