Bankless

Episodios disponibles

5 de 1189

The Private World Computer | Aztec Co-Founders Zac Williamson & Joe Andrews
If crypto wins without privacy, did we actually win? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Aztec co-founders Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews to unpack their eight-year quest to build a private world computer for Ethereum, covering the Aztec ignition chain, zero-knowledge-powered “private intents,” and how you can route trades across L1 and L2s without exposing your strategies or balances. They dive into ZK Passport (turning your NFC e-passport into a proof of personhood), the coming breakdown of selfie KYC in an AI world, holistic on-chain identity, Aztec’s one-shot move to a fully decentralized L2. Along the way, Zac and Joe get candid about the regulatory risk of building privacy rails, echoes of the early SSL wars, and what keeps them grinding after nearly a decade of R&D to ship Aztec Alpha --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵 COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙 FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, & EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄 UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞 MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤 EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 6:00 The State of Privacy on Ethereum in 2025 9:47 Identity as the Missing Piece of Privacy 11:52 AI Deepfakes Just Broke Web2 KYC 20:19 How ZK Passport Plugs Into Aztec (and the Token Sale) 23:04 Holistic On-Chain Identity: Bottom-Up, Not Top-Down 30:54 From Private Bitcoin to a Private World Computer 36:36 Private Intents: Using Aztec as Ethereum’s Privacy Router 43:15 Compliant DeFi with ZK Identity in the Loop 48:37 Does This Actually Solve Privacy on Ethereum? 50:38 Ignition Chain Launch: Stage-2 Rollup with Decentralized Sequencers 56:19 One-Shot Decentralization, Alpha/Beta, and Security Model 1:05:37 Scaling a Private Rollup: TPS, Fees, and the Aztec Stack 1:11:40 Noir, No VM for Private State, and New DeFi Primitives 1:17:08 Selective Disclosure and ZK Receipts for Regulators 1:21:29 Privacy vs Nation States: The Second Crypto Privacy War 1:29:45 Why Keep Building Privacy After 8 Years? 1:33:37 Token Sale, Fair Auctions, and Running an Aztec Node 1:37:33 Closing Thoughts: The Most Cypherpunk L2 Since 2016? --- RESOURCES Zac Williamson https://x.com/Zac_Aztec Joe Andrews https://x.com/jaosef Aztec https://x.com/aztecnetwork --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
--------
--------
The Holy Grail of Crypto Privacy: Encrypted Ethereum, FHE & Living Forever | Rand Hindi, Zama Co-Founder
Ethereum is transparent by design, and that’s a problem if you don’t want your entire financial life on display. Rand Hindi, co-founder of Zama, joins us to explain how fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) can turn Ethereum into an encrypted, confidential blockchain where contracts stay composable and UX feels exactly the same. We get into why blockchains were public in the first place, why “anonymous addresses” were never enough, how FHE compares to ZK and MPC, and what a world of private DeFi, encrypted stablecoins, and on-chain “digital immortality” could look like. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, & EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:24 Why Are Blockchains Public? 9:11 Privacy vs Confidentiality 11:13 Zama: Privacy on Ethereum 15:05 Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) 19:34 Multi-Party Computation (MPC) 23:50 FHE vs ZK 37:25 FHE Critiques 40:08 Nation State Attacks 45:58 Combining ZK & FHE 49:20 Privacy Season 51:39 Compliance 1:00:18 Zama 1:04:03 Confidential Tokens 1:08:12 How it Works 1:11:30 Zama Token & Protocol 1:14:09 Privacy Competitors 1:17:36 Fhenix 1:19:46 Rand’s Background 1:23:07 AI Privacy 1:26:42 Longevity 1:33:01 Crypto & Privacy in 2026 1:33:33 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Rand Hindi https://x.com/randhindi Zama https://www.zama.org/ Fhenix https://www.fhenix.io/ Unit Ventures https://github.com/randhindi/unit-vc ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠
--------
--------
ROLLUP: Ethereum’s Big Week | Supercycle Debate | Monad Mainnet | Bitcoin’s Quantum Problem
Happy Thanksgiving! Ethereum is heading into one of its biggest upgrades of the year. In this week’s Weekly Rollup, Ryan and Anthony Sassano break down the Fusaka hard fork, what it ships for L2 scaling and gas limits, and why Justin Drake’s real-time ZK proving demo could reshape Ethereum sooner than expected. They revisit the four-year cycle debate, unpack Tom Lee’s “supercycle” conviction, and catch up on Monad’s mainnet launch, the CFTC clearing Polymarket for U.S. users, and growing concern about Bitcoin’s quantum risk. Anthony Sassano & The Daily Gwei https://x.com/sassal0x https://x.com/thedailygwei ------ 📣REYA | ETHEREUM FOR TRADERS https://bankless.cc/reya ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 2:49 Markets https://x.com/SERdotxyz/status/1992978303817490589 https://x.com/fundstrat/status/1990082437116780901 https://x.com/SAMALTCOIN_ETH/status/1993316804303687813 https://ethval.com/ https://x.com/TaikiMaeda2/status/1991911063034757578 https://x.com/hosseeb/status/1992297969383854575 https://x.com/cryptomanran/status/1991823369453351261 https://app2.msci.com/webapp/index_ann/DocGet https://x.com/matthew_sigel/status/1991616596419191285 https://x.com/saylor/status/1991875241107222701 21:40 Ethereum's Fusaka is coming next week! https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1992755722980032889 https://x.com/ripeth/status/1993405655076778302 https://forkcast.org/upgrade/fusaka https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1993415381978169577 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1993517759528157580 https://forkcast.org/upgrade/glamsterdam https://x.com/nero_eth/status/1991947238042431859 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1993097491844415657 https://x.com/drakefjustin/status/1991836045076263380 https://x.com/no89thkey/status/1992561927298359752 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1993058178096152881 https://x.com/jchaskin22/status/1993355808285831474 https://x.com/ripeth/status/1990793070842163669 https://x.com/Aayush_gupta_ji/status/1991128951347896337 https://x.com/donnoh_eth/status/1991471292655235148 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1993418143977373974 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1991167063784849550 https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1992335400271257768 51:54 Monad mainnet is live! https://x.com/monad/status/1992956417263935947 https://youtu.be/op2-a-sO6Y0 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1991896909955604816 https://x.com/coinbase/status/1992544829515898937 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/monad 57:00 Polymarkets can now be integrated into brokerages! (First crypto app?) https://x.com/shayne_coplan/status/1993405727785075151 1:00:01 Nic Carter - Quantum and Bitcoin…as early as 2030. https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1993727697852432684 https://murmurationstwo.substack.com/p/bitcoin-and-the-quantum-problem-part-47f https://x.com/nic_carter/status/1993754323252031644 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DRDjeMmOPw 1:08:08 Daily Gwei comes back in regular cadence https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1993418606714266072 1:09:23 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
--------
--------
Do We Need Another L1? - Inside Monad’s Parallel EVM with Co-Founder Keone Hon
Monad just launched Mainnet! That’s why Ryan sits down with Monad co-founder Keone Hon today. We ask the blunt question: do we really need another general-purpose L1? Why not just build this as an Ethereum L2 instead? Keone explains how Monad’s parallel, pipelined EVM works under tight consumer-hardware constraints (32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 100 Mbps), delivering ~500M gas/sec, 400ms blocks, and fast finality while preserving decentralization. Enjoy the episode! ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, & EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Another L1? 1:36 Why L1 vs L2? 2:46 Decentralization 10:19 Run at Home vs Datacenter Chains 12:09 The Purpose of a Blockchain 14:06 The Purpose of Monad 16:00 Why EVM? 28:33 Solana for the EVM? 29:47 Monad vs Ethereum 34:23 Monad Scaling 36:40 Ethereum Roadmap 39:43 How Monad Benefits Ethereum 42:51 Keone’s Background 50:49 How Fast is Too Fast? 59:12 MEV 1:04:07 Monad Layer2s? 1:05:14 Monad Launch Decentralization 1:06:00 Launch Ecosystem 1:08:22 Monad Token 1:16:55 L1 Token Valuations 1:19:18 Monad vs MegaETH 1:23:59 Monad’s Success Case 1:25:57 Mainnet 1:27:11 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Keone Hon https://x.com/keoneHD Monad https://x.com/monad Monad Website https://www.monad.xyz/ Monad Links https://linktr.ee/monad_xyz ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠
--------
--------
The Real Crypto Cycle: What Happens When Global Liquidity Peaks | Michael Howell
Global liquidity veteran Michael Howell joins to map out the “master variable” driving asset prices: a 65-month global liquidity and debt refinancing cycle that underpins booms, busts, and the recent “everything bubble.” He breaks down the coming debt maturity wall, rising repo stress, the shift from Fed QE to “Treasury QE,” and a new capital war between a US dollar stablecoin system and China’s gold-backed strategy. Plus, what all of this means for Bitcoin, gold, equities, and how to position as the current cycle rolls over. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🔵COINBASE | ETH & BTC BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/coinbase-borrow 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, & EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep 💠BIT DIGITAL ($BTBT) | ETH TREASURY https://bankless.cc/bit-digital We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ BTBT) for this segment promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at https://bit-digital.com/investors ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:45 Global Liquidity: Theory of Everything? 14:49 Will it Go Up Forever? 24:50 Where Are We in The Cycle? 34:23 Asset Allocation 47:14 Can The Monetary Regime Break? 58:55 China Gold vs US Tech 1:04:29 Crypto & Gold 1:08:03 4-Year Cycles 1:12:40 AI Bubble 1:15:14 Global Liquidity Limitations 1:18:39 Next 3-6 Months 1:20:24 Assets to Hold 1:21:25 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES CrossBorder Capital https://x.com/crossbordercap CrossBorder Capital Website https://crossbordercapital.com Capital Wars Substack https://capitalwars.substack.com/ ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠
--------
--------