privacy

Consumer

This feels like an underdiscussed “existential” risk of onchain social/perhaps public blockchains in general. The more data and history tied to your onchain identity, the more valuable it is for composability - but also the more public it is, which people just are not used to wrt their finances and also has its own downsides ofc.

ironically many of the "we need to bring the world onchain!"/consumer crypto folks won't say a single word about the Tornado Cash devs on trial even though they solved this exact problem

building /juicebox | product marketing & growth | prev. NounsDAO, RAW DAO | learning to code

FWIW - I don’t think TC solves this exact problem. This problem as I see it is a tension between privacy and the incentives around app/ecosystem design leading towards being public. Even if I could privately transfer funds to a new address via TC, that nullifies the app layer benefits of my funds being public (which is what I’m referring to).

But, yes agree re most are not interested in the TC situation/cypherpunk ethos in general

by “app layer benefits of funds being public” you mean qualifying for airdrops based on protocol and/or chain usage, or other similar reward mechanisms? because arguably that is solved by TC since the source of your funds is no longer tied to your public identity and you can use whatever app with size

or you mean the more fundamental tension of crypto apps that incorporate social elements e.g. app profile is connected to address or similar?

if it’s the latter, definitely agree and hear you. feels like there’s a solution to be found with zk/fhe though:

As @VitalikButerin points out, there are three Egyptian god cards that are about to be played in cryptography over the next several years:

1) ZK: prove computation without revealing data
2) FHE: compute on encrypted data
3) Indistinguishability obfuscation: obfuscate the… https://t.co/zFKOFefEIG

K Kulkarni

by “app layer benefits of funds being public” you mean qualifying for airdrops based on protocol and/or chain usage, or other similar reward mechanisms? because arguably that is solved by TC since the source of your funds is no longer tied to your public identity and you can use whatever app with size

or you mean the more fundamental tension of crypto apps that incorporate social elements e.g. app profile is connected to address or similar?

if it’s the latter, definitely agree and hear you. feels like there’s a solution to be found with zk/fhe though: https://x.com/ks_kulk/status/1851350094492418492