Privacy is always first priority nowadays 😜 @aztecnetwork. @Amin_3X @realRoberto38 @clairekart @Zac_Aztec

@afrazhaowang is the most lyrical technologist I know of. She can truly capture the quintessence of technological moments that the arc of history pivots on.

Day 201 of sharing @aztecnetwork memes until mainnet is live

🧵 If You Build Something They Can’t Control, They Will Call It a Conspiracy Roman Storm is not just on trial for building Tornado Cash. He’s on trial for building something they couldn’t shut down. And now the government wants to ban him from even explaining why he built it.

the most fun you'll ever have is doing really hard things with really hard working people

Day 200 (!!!!) of sharing @aztecnetwork memes until mainnet is live What a journey

Day 1 of the Roman Storm trial is in the books, and perhaps we need to make something clear to the government: Normal 👏people 👏also 👏deserve 👏 financial👏 privacy👏 Privacy is NOT a crime.

People who prefer “pragmatic” privacy over maximal privacy, or argue that decentralisation doesn’t matter in Web3…they don’t need blockchain. People who are creating abundance and increasing the total value in the world need blockchain for products and services that can't exist without one, and that requires decentralisation. That's what Aztec's doing. @aztecnetwork couldn't exist in a centralised ledger. Privacy-preserving systems need to be decentralised because they need to be credibly neutral, similar to the internet. It can't be responsible for the traffic going through the network, or have the capability to restrict it. If a project doesn’t have an incentive to decentralise, that means their unique value proposition doesn't require it, which is fine. But then why use blockchain at all? Why are you here? You're not creating fundamental value for the world. You're just moving wealth around in a very public and unsovereign manner. You're not enabling anything new. There’s no shame in wanting to make money, but don’t build a blockchain project and then say that decentralisation doesn’t matter. The intention with blockchain was to recreate the world's financial infrastructure in a permissionless, self-sovereign manner, where we are custodians of our own funds, free to transact without third-party intermediaries with misaligned incentives. That can’t be accomplished without programmable privacy.

Day 195 of sharing @aztecnetwork memes until mainnet is live

in 2019 when I made a breakthrough that led to PLONK, my Apple Watch thought I was having a heart attack.