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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
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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?
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RESOURCES
Zac Williamson
https://x.com/Zac_Aztec
Joe Andrews
https://x.com/jaosef
Aztec
https://x.com/aztecnetwork
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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
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