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

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