S17 E49: Kris Nuttycombe on Zcash at Ten, Hard Forks, the Dev Fund & Why Ossification Is Death

Kris Nuttycombe of the Zcash Open Development Lab came back to the show two years after his first visit, this time on a hotel sofa at Zcon7 in Cancun, on the last day of the conference and around Zcash's tenth birthday.

We cover the price move and the Binance hack that was unfolding while we spoke, Zcash as what Bitcoin could have been, hard forks as a superpower, the end of Sprout and the inflation bug, Ironwood and formal verification, Crosslink and hybrid proof of work, ZIP 318 and Tachyon, the Dev Fund and Zcash Community Grants, the Equihash ASIC extinction event, and why ossification is death.

Time Stamps:
0:00 Intro & sponsors
2:09 Kris's second appearance
2:51 ZEC from $38 to $1,250
3:57 Zcon vs Bitcoin conferences
6:29 Privacy for refugees
7:42 NU7 & 25-second blocks
9:04 Why Zcash matters to Bitcoiners
12:12 Satoshi & zero-knowledge proofs
13:57 Hard forks as a superpower
19:32 Fungible internet money
21:56 Zcon7 impressions
24:27 ZEC flips Dogecoin
27:37 NEAR Intents & privacy at rest
30:33 Paying Visa merchants with shielded ZEC
33:43 A pluralism of currencies
34:19 Cake Wallet & Zcash Names
36:39 Unified addresses rant
41:35 The ceremony laptop & Zooko's CPU
42:06 Kris's story: Zooko & Tahoe-LAFS
44:22 Is Zooko Satoshi?
48:59 Sprout and the inflation bug
53:38 26,000 unclaimed ZEC
55:38 Q-Day & lost coins
59:21 Ironwood & formal verification with AI
1:03:31 The eCash hard fork
1:04:14 Dandelion++ & positive-sum thinking
1:07:04 Bitcoin dominance at 60%
1:09:10 Stablecoins are wrapped fiat
1:15:45 Are Zcash miners being phased out?
1:16:27 Crosslink: hybrid PoW/PoS
1:20:23 Kris's work at ZODL
1:22:25 ZIP 318 & Tachyon
1:25:26 Why Kris stayed with Zcash
1:29:39 Can Zcash ossify?
1:33:59 The currency of AI
1:40:23 Bitcoin layer 2s
1:42:10 Ossification is death
1:43:36 Saylor, covenants & 2106
1:46:57 Day two: Zebend
1:49:15 Zcash Community Grants & the Dev Fund
1:50:52 The Equihash ASIC "extinction event"
1:54:00 Security is not a market
1:58:12 Hashrate distribution
2:00:33 Proof of work & the labor theory of value
2:04:54 Hashrate as a finality gadget
2:06:25 Friendly forks & testnets
2:09:53 All value is social
2:12:31 Death by a thousand forks?
2:17:12 What if Zcash forked Bitcoin?
2:19:13 Zcash's next 10 years
2:21:44 Seed phrases & BIP39
2:23:14 AI made software cheap