Zcash and the Fight for Privacy in the Digital Age

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Luke: You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Arjun Kani, who is an author, podcaster and mimetic warlord, helping spread rationally optimistic memes to create a better world. He’s currently working on the Zcash mission, a privacy focused cryptocurrency, which features an encrypted ledger using zero knowledge proofs.

In this episode, we discuss. How memes can be used as a powerful tool for change.The increasing need for independent and critical thinking in the digital world. While we can’t have freedom without privacy, and how Zcash is helping us get closer to that ideal and how shielded transactions can increase your anonymity and what’s at stake if we don’t start to transact more privately.

now for this week’s episode of the Brave Technologist.

Arjun, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing today?

Arjun: Doing great, Luke. Thanks for having me.

Luke: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming. You’re the first mimetic warlord we’ve ever had on the podcast. and I’m super interested [00:01:00] to get your take and, kind of with that in mind, what does that mean?

Like being a mimetic warlord for, less savvy listeners, you know, and and what does that mean in your world? And, kind of how do you see them as a powerful tool for change?

Arjun: Sure. Yeah. It’s like a, it’s a half joking title, right? I hate the word marketing, too corporate for me.

Like I’m not gonna use that. But if you think about it, right, all warfare is mimetic. Monarchs would fight other monarchs for the vision of reality that they want. Right. And that essentially like there’s this primacy of ideas in the world and there’s just different tools and different ways to fight wars, but everybody is fighting for some sort of world that they want.

And there’s like conflict between ideas. So that’s where problems stem from and. You’re just fighting like wars, but fundamentally it’s the ideas that you’re disagreeing about. And a lot of these wars can, can be fought like memetically, just like with talking to people, having conversations like this one, right?

having debates. [00:02:00] That’s what you need, like an open society where debate and criticism are encouraged and you’re not taking anybody’s word for it. And so mimetic warfare is just like, I’m super interested in spreading rationally optimistic memes. And memes are far more broader than.

Just internet pictures, you know, funny internet pictures. ‘Cause that’s a niche conception from Richard Dawkins’s original conception a a term that he, that he coined called a meme. And then people on the internet just made it like funny pictures on the internet. But memes are basically any ideas that are replicated in people’s minds.

And so those different kinds of ideas like, this is all heavily inspired by David Deutsch’s work. In the beginning of Infinity he talks about rational and anti rational memes. Rational memes are those memes that thrive because they survive criticism, so, mm-hmm. You’re not shunning ideas, but you’re like coming up with new ideas and conjuring up new ideas and criticizing those ideas.

the best one wins. So those are like rational memes. But this is like dogmatic societies and religion is a good example, but you know, [00:03:00] there’s various other dogmatic memes that thrive based on shunning people’s criticism. So they will say that you can’t question this, this is like the final truth.

And so are the memes that Deutsche calls anti rational. And so I’m interested in spreading like the rationally optimistic memes in how to. Make a better world, essentially. And so there’s various tools to do that. As you know, like one of the, tools I’m really interested in, Zcash call it the machinery freedom.

So yeah, it’s like,

Luke: that’s awesome. and just kind of curious too, like, how, how did you get here on your journey? to this space, right? cause I mean, it’s obviously, there’s undertones and it, there are pieces of this have been around for a while, but like, this seems to be something where people, it find, kind of finds people right?

versus like people kind of seeking out you know, this type of a path. So I’m just kind of super curious, like, how did you find your way towards, you know, doing what you’re doing now?

Arjun: For sure. So, during COVID I was in I don’t remember middle school or high school, transitioning in between.

And then I was just like super dissatisfied with things, right? Like I had to like, figure out [00:04:00] what to do in my life and like, it was all this pressure to figure out, what I’m gonna do after school. And then I just started reading lots of books that. Swayed me from like, the conventional way of thinking and mm-hmm.

The way of thinking of my peers and whatnot. And I think like one advantage was like, I wasn’t gonna school, so I had this distance between like being indoctrinated every single day and like, I could just mute the site, right? I, I would literally, what I would do is like, I would mute my Google meet or Zoom call daily school, right?

‘cause it was COVID. and I, I would just like write from my blog and I would write like one blog post a day. I, I was reading all these books and then I stumbled upon David Deutsche’s work. Because Naval actually recommended it. So I, I just like picked up that book and then that completely changed my my worldview in a lot of ways.

And after Deutsche, I got into Austrian economics. And like after that it was just like the national next step to Bitcoin, right?

Luke: Right.

Arjun: That was the perfect, yeah. So the perfect money. I don’t know why a lot of Austrian are not interested in cryptocurrencies. Like maybe they’re just too old to look into the tech or whatnot, but it just made [00:05:00] sense. But then I realized like, hey, bitcoin’s not really private and there’s this huge flaw of like every single transaction being linked and people, people’s privacy, just not existing on chain. Right. And especially with like all these mandated KYC now and, uh mm-hmm.

Even though a lot of people in. El Salvador, Argentina, using Bitcoin, they’re all still storing their funds, like custodial wallets doing K by C. So it’s all tracked by the government. And that can change, right? So like power right now might be in good hands.

Arjun: some people might say like, you know, now it’s a good time to build in America, with the current administration, especially in crypto.

But that can change. So, you need the right tech. Oh

Luke: yeah.

Arjun: At the base layer.

Luke: and each change, totally on the money with that, right? Like, it’s a good kind of problem set to have to get to the point where, okay, we can say something like there’s a better environment for building, but that brings a whole set of other challenges, and that’s what I think is really interesting about what you’re saying with privacy, right? Because you know, I think people. what often gets missed in this space is any kind of looking at the fine print the [00:06:00] best case. Sometimes you get smart code, you know, review or smart contract reviews and, and things like that.

But if you look at the actual policies like the banking guidance around the Bitcoin adoption and you know, for legal tender and all of that, like, it, it is very bad on privacy. And so, I think what you’re doing. With Zcash and, and you and the community, right?

Like, I mean, it is totally a community thing, but I think it’s really awesome because at Brave we’ve been, supportive of Zcash for very long time. they had really great team on the cryptography side and the privacy research on their end. but seeing what you guys have been able to do with Memeing this out.

Right. and it gives me a lot of excitement because you’ve got a lot of a younger crowd now that, understands the channels and the tools that, and can actually like, really start to drive the needle in the right direction. And, I didn’t have it on my bingo courtesy, privacy trending in the timeline.

I, I didn’t think I would have to be. Saying, Hey, now that DJs are into privacy here’s some other things we can talk about, like, around privacy, right? Like, it’s such a good [00:07:00] problem to have. I don’t know, I just totally like, commend you all for, for doing what you’re doing. It’s awesome to see it. I mean, have you, how has it been, I’m really curious cause you’ve probably gotten more.

Familiar with a lot of the folks on the team or, or, you know, in the Zcash community. How has that been kind of coming in with fresh eyes and, and perspective? has it been welcoming? can you give a little background or, or context on to how that experience has gone?

Arjun: Yeah, it’s really been awesome.

I mean I’ve basically, yeah, gotten to meet the core engineering team behind the project, people who were there from the beginning, right? Like the real beginning. and then they’re all like. Super nice people and they’re like real cipher punks. Zuka Iss a cipher punk. Right?

I would say like one of the last Cipher Punks, he exchanged emails with Sohi and like ju just knowing that is so cool, you know? Yeah. So cool to see. And like, he’s within us, like who? and then Sean B is. An absolute legend. He did halo two, which removed Zcash from the, need for the trusted setup with the orchard pool.

And then now he’s working on Tachyon, which is gonna be the next big thing. [00:08:00] And then,

the engineers are. Just like so dedicated to the project. And it’s funny, they don’t even see the price action, right? I, I was with them, right? And was like, Hey guys, are you seeing this? I was like, oh, I didn’t even notice this until somebody told me this this morning.

And so I was like, okay. Well, I’m checking it like every 10 minutes, but, you know, anyway, it is like, it’s super cool to see like they have like such, they’re building so. deliberately towards a which is super, super cool to see. And then Josh and like his team With Zahi and ECC is phenomenal.

Like, I don’t know if you’ve used Zahi, but it’s such a good experience to use it. Yeah. And yeah, it’s like sort of on the wallet side, single-handedly reviving zc in my opinion. But, um mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Luke: No, it’s fantastic. we had Josh on too, and it’s really cool. I mean. We need a lot of different solutions that are making privacy easier for people.

and, you know, you should celebrate that for sure. And I think that it’s also been interesting seeing, I don’t know, sometimes you know, it’s almost like you got these monks that are working on these things, right? That are kind of you’re saying, they’re not looking at the price action.

But I think with a lot of [00:09:00] this stuff too, it’s so complicated. You know, technically that seeing what’s come out, been MeMed out of this has been really, it has been very cool to see some of the people I’ve seen saying, oh yeah, encrypted Bitcoin, and these things where it’s like, oh shit, why didn’t they think of that sooner?

Like, it’s so catchy. there, the stuff coming out of this is like really, really cool because I feel like. What you guys are doing is, kind of, there was a perception in this space that if you’re around for more than a cycle you’re kind of an old dog or dinosaur or whatever. And in reality, anywhere outside of crypto, given the conditions of like.

Staying alive in this space, right? experience in this space is valuable, right?

Luke: and so it’s I think what I’m seeing you guys do with this is it’s really, optimism. and encouraging for me to see too. Because it is kind of turning the tide a lot on, on some of these things that we’re kind of bunk where like, so much of this is driven by hype and speculation and all of that to where like, whatever they’re nagging you about.

For not doing now ends up being dead in six months. And so it’s really cool. I mean, like, from your point of view, [00:10:00] what makes a meme kind of dangerous or liberating, right? there’s definitely two sides to this sword. So like, I don’t know, maybe we can go into the weeds a little bit on that.

Arjun: Sure. Yeah. I think just on your earlier point, like freedom is objectively worth, it’s fighting for, you know?

Luke: Right.

Arjun: and like, you don’t wanna just throw your hands up in the air and be like, oh, the world’s gonna get over. everybody’s financial transactions are just gonna feed into the panopticon.

and there’s like the AI Doom side of this as well. which is like a different argument as well. They’re like, oh, a GI is gonna just kill all humans like Nick, Nick Basra and stuff. I would say those are like disruptive memes. Like the end of the world is like the most famous meme.

Right? Right. I think like this world in the wall trade, the, it’s the most famous meme and it’s always been, been around like the world’s gonna end. Right. So Four Horsemen,

Luke: right?

Arjun: Yeah, exactly. and then there’s the flip side of oh like, everything’s gonna be fine.

So both sides are basically telling you to do nothing where like, it’s the end of the world and like nothing you do is gonna change it, or like, everything’s gonna be okay and we’re gonna make progress automatically and magically. So you don’t have to do anything like. That, [00:11:00] that sort of naive optimism is also wrong.

You don’t just make progress automatically. And so, just like encouraging men not to act like that is. Fundamentally antithetical to us human beings, right? That’s not how we are. Right? So just like always knowing that hey, you can make objective, moral progress and objective, like scientific progress.

And you can never like be certain about something because then you’re being dogmatic and there’s always things you can improve upon in all fields, right? And so just like applying that. To reality and building things that you believe in, I think is a cool thing to do.

Luke: Yeah. and, you know, kind of continuing down this thread, I think that was a great explanation.

Like, the, the flip side of these memes too is that given the kind of velocity and, and time and attention spent, consuming them, right? with every bit of good that they can do, they could also kind of be used for manipulation, right? what do you think about how we can kind of.

Protect our minds from manipulation, from these things.

Arjun: Yeah, I mean, you need to be an independent thinker, right? This is sort of a [00:12:00] problem with, groupthink for any group to survive, like it needs consensus, mm-hmm. And that sort of just discourages thinking independently or thinking different from the crowd from your group.

And this happens with like, you know, this can happen with Bitcoiners and Z Cashers as well. if you get that’s why you don’t want to. Just, it’s not the group you care about. Right. It’s like truth and only individuals can reach the truth, mm-hmm. Truth seeking is not a group effort.

And you know, obviously like in a way it’s a group effort when nobody’s taking for granted somebody’s ideas and like there’s no like one idea that’s tying the group together, but if there is such an idea, it’s like. the only way to make progress is error correction.

So, mm-hmm. What, what people do is like, you’re coming up with ideas and then it is just open to debate. So people are having conversations and so debating ideas and in that sense, creating knowledge together. But really it’s like everybody’s coming up with ideas themselves and then doing conjecture and criticism.

That’s like the only way to create knowledge. And so. Yeah, I think I forgot your question, but I was just like rambling

Luke: about. Yeah, yeah, no, just kind you know, avoiding, well, there’s another part to this too, I think, you know, where [00:13:00] it’s like people see memes get hijacked too, right? Like, or manipulated too.

So there’s kind of like the one side of it, which I think you covered well around like Kind of using critical thinking to kind of protect your mind from getting manipulated on these things. But then what’s your take on like, because we’ve seen these happen in good and bad ways too, right?

there’s like community takeovers for things, right? Where like a meme can kind of, look at like Doge, But like also look at Doge, right? Like Doge started as a dog meme and then all of a sudden Elon’s kind of like the face of it, or in one way or another, right? which is is good.

It could be good or bad. It’s subjective. but I think you know, is it like a, a strength of community thing? Or like, how do you see it as how these things can kind of get manipulated? the meme itself, right.

Arjun: Yeah. I mean, there’s a reason that all states have like mandated education and like, they start young, right?

So like, they know that, hey, if you get to them young, it’s like they have lesser time to develop their critical faculties and to like come up with ideas that threaten you or dissident to like the norm. And so, I mean, you know, it doesn’t have to be the [00:14:00] state. It doesn’t have to be someone in power, like people can.

Have like bad ideas, but like the only way to correct them is with better ideas, right? Mm-hmm. So never accepting anything on faith I think is a big thing, and like not accepting it because Satoshi said it or Zuko said it, or some like authority said it, right? that doesn’t matter. always judge ideas based on their explanations, not their sources. So I think the most dangerous thing is when just that. Process of like error correction is disabled, right? Essentially in a way that it’s made so that you’re gonna get ostracized if you if you’re against whatever the group is saying.

Mm-hmm. And I hope that doesn’t happen. With Zc or, you know, with all these important fights that we were fighting for freedom because you can always improve, right? Like Zcash is currently improving with Akon, like it’s gonna scale to billions. And so there’s like always improvements that can be made to the protocol and to the community and like the sort of ideas.

So, so yeah, I mean, never. Accepting that you’re finished and like [00:15:00] there’s always more progress to be made.

Luke: Yeah. No, I think that’s a great point. And I think, you know, you see it with, folks that are in different kinds of leadership roles too with these projects too. How they take you know, criticism or or bug reports or incident response or these things.

And it makes a huge impact on people’s faith and the project. Having good source material to work with, right? Like, and you know, if you’re cooking with good ingredients, you’re gonna end up, you can make a whole bunch of different meals or whatever. but yeah, like, and, and, you mentioned something earlier too, and I’d love to get your take on it.

Like, one of the things you really like to do is spread rational optimism, right? Like, and, and you think about how much of the timeline is driven by either fear or outrage or hype, right? how is it. From your point of view with spreading rational optimism, is it something that.

Do you get surprised in doing that? Like do people take is a take rate on it? Good. I’m super curious cause it’s, you don’t see a lot of Maybe I’m just not looking at everything either, but I feel like I don’t see a lot of that and I liked that. I see what you guys are doing or what you’re doing with this, but I’m just kind of curious like, how is it response wise from people?

When [00:16:00] is it good? Are there things that surprise you? You know, just kinda curious for your take.

Arjun: Yeah, I’m fortunate enough to at least like have a group of people around me who like share these sorts of ideas. But you know, whenever I go online and like look at AI doom debates and deros and like environmentalists and all that sort of stuff, I’m like, wow, there’s like this entire group of.

People that think that you know, like the world’s gonna end, then there’s nothing we can do about it. Unless, like we go to this entirely primitive state where we’re not producing anything. And basically like the woke mind virus in a sense, right? is just like a suicide cult in my opinion.

you don’t want people, it’s like, you are the carbon they wanna reduce, right? Like essentially you’re made of carbon and they wanna reduce carbon sum it, it, it’s deeply anti-human and like, it doesn’t grasp the importance of human knowledge and what it can do to the universe and how really, like we as humans can save.

Other species as well, right? we are the only species that would like only species that we know of, at least there might be aliens in the universe are smarter than us, who [00:17:00] knows? But that really care about other species despite it is like actually benefiting us in sort of like a bias way, right?

So we can save these other species as well. Like, we know that after 5 billion years, like the sun’s gonna turn into a red giant and just like, the solar system is gonna get over, right? Like it is gonna be done. Mm-hmm. Unless there’s something we do about it. Like mm-hmm. We know what it would essentially take to make that process not happen, like to be safe from that.

Like maybe we’re just not in the solar system. Right. Maybe we’re in some like. Other star system or galaxy. I, I think like that’s such an optimistic take that like really nobody thinks about, and like all physics textbooks tell you that, hey, after 5 billion years it’s over.

But what I got from reading Deutsche and even Carl Popper’s work is like, Hey, humans can create knowledge. That knowledge is like the one thing that affects the physical world in a way that’s stronger than like gravity and other physical forces in nature, right? Mm-hmm. And so. Unfortunately, I don’t see like.

That sort of thinking as mainstream. Maybe people think like it’s [00:18:00] too naive again, but all evils are due to a lack of knowledge. Like everything is a knowledge problem, right? And really you just need the knowledge to solve all these problems. And so, I’m optimistic as long as like, hey, we continue to solve solve these problems.

Keep the method of error correction open. so that these problems are actually getting solved.

Luke: I can tell you one thing. I think that it’s working. I’ve been at Brave for nine years now. And we’ve been, you know, beating a drum privacy and when we started people were challenging us stuff from like, even in the abstract of like whether people care or not.

And I think that. What you guys are doing with Zcash right now is showing a bunch of things one that you can meme privacy like that. it’s important to people that younger people care about this shit like that in a way that’s super, it’s obvious, but also important. because people like to.

The people that want to take it away use this as an excuse for things, right? oh, the social media generation, like, whatever. And but I also think too, [00:19:00] kind of to your point even about the, Bitcoin came out of the worst global financial crisis in history, right? that’s kind of what Bitcoin was born from.

And I think what’s really interesting about what we’re seeing with Zcash right now is that like. Now that Bitcoin’s kind of getting mass, you know, attention at least. The next step is like, look like this can go one or two ways, this can either get very dystopian and, turn your money becomes a faucet that someone else can turn on or off.

Or like, we can try to. Something with similar to like, you know, analogous cash where I can, you know, have fungible money that we can, you know, don’t have to be identified to use. Right. Like, I mean, kind of from your point, and I’d love to get your point of view on this, ‘cause you mentioned freedom too earlier and kind of like why is privacy like really important at this moment in time and, that we’re in right now?

Arjun: Yeah. I don’t think you have. Freedom of their privacy,

Luke: right? Mm-hmm.

Arjun: if somebody’s always watching you, you’re not gonna be your authentic self and you’re just not gonna be free to be you. Right? And money is such a [00:20:00] fundamental way in which humans and people express themselves in that, you know, that is being surveilled at all times. you’re just not living in a free, free market system, I would say. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, the Austrian talk about privatizing everything. I think like start with privatizing the money, right? actually privatizing it. But like Bitcoin sort of did in like, it moved it through private sector, but it’s not money yet.

I mean, it is in a way it is, but is not reached that mass scale yet, nor on Z cash, obviously. But you know, it’s transparent. So privatize the money in two different ways like actually make it private.

Luke: A great point in there about like not having, you know, you don’t have freedom without privacy.

Right. and I think you know, just like you said, we’re seeing Bitcoin hit this kind of. Bigger mess. Right? Like, and now regulators are starting to look at this stuff and they’re not as well versed in what’s possible. Right. Whereas it’s like, okay they tend to kind of solve things with the hammer.

Right. and Zcash has this ability, right? Like with where you can do things transparently or, with shielded pools. What, what’s your take on how that works? Because I think that’s [00:21:00] something that a lot of people might not understand very well.

Arjun: Yeah, I think I mean you want privacy by default from the individual, right?

And I would say like Zahi is a great tool for that. You can just use Zahi and essentially works like shield it by default. You need mm-hmm. If you receive funds on your transparent address, you need to shield it before you spend it. So it’s like kind of enforcing privacy over there. And then the transparent layer really helps with like this broader integration into crypto, like with Dex and also centralized exchanges.

And with withi, it’s just seamless to use. So I, I don’t understand when people say like, Hey, users are gonna fumble if there’s like this optional transparency. But really that’s a like wallet and UI problem, which is solved withi. Mm-hmm. So, I think it’s like totally fine to have that transparent layer.

So like, you have this like, deeper integration into crypto and you you want to like. You know, Dexus and like, companies to store their wallet transparently so that you, you can see if you’re like receiving funds and like sending funds to them. Right? So it just enables those integrations.

Well, I think.

Luke: [00:22:00] Yeah. And, and it’s. Kind of like, I, I had kind of agree with that too. I think, you know, people have Venmo and, and you can make your, make your transfers public or private there, right? Like, I mean, you know, little p private. But I think, you know, yeah. And that’s super interesting.

do you see Zcash as something that, in your, best prediction people are using cash now?

Or is it something where people are kind of like shielding funds and using them in other ways? where do you see this going in the future?

Arjun: Sure. I think it can work in both ways, right? Like a store of value and a medium exchange. Mm-hmm. What I don’t think like a lot of people understand is like your anonymity grows the more time you spend in the shielded pool.

And with each shielded transaction as well, like each shielded transaction note, like it increases your anonymity like with, with, with everybody else. So. it’s better than a decoy system where like you just have like mm-hmm. The same anonymity every transaction you’re making. let’s say you have like four decoys and like the real transaction, right?

So anonymity set is just like five for every transaction, but with Zcash it increases monotonically with every single transaction, which is super cool. So, [00:23:00] and you know, obviously the longer you’re storing it, it’s also better for privacy and like the more people start using it as well. So I think really like You don’t want people knowing like, Hey, where are you buying your coffee from Daily? I would say, right, plus historically, all wealth has been like all the major wealth and like even rich people today store their wealth privately, right? Mm-hmm. You don’t want to literally have a bounty on your head every time you’re walking outside, right?

Right. It’s unfortunately, like some people are famous that they can’t really escape for them from that. That’s why they have security and everything, but even them, like, they don’t like just broadcast a network to everybody. Right? and just instinctively like humans, want, crave privacy.

Like women won’t, well wear jewelry if they’re walking outside. Like they’ll just mm-hmm. Wear jewelry from one safe space to another safe space in the car. Right. If they’re going to a party in like, a good place. So, people do crave privacy because like, in a way it’s very it’s deeply connected to like being authentic and just like being able to express yourself.

But you can only express yourself in that way. It with like certain conditions. Right? So like, privacy is just like. In a way it’s privacy is like the [00:24:00] substrate of freedom, the conditions for freedom. Zcash ideally is used both as store value and a medium of exchange.

Luke: you’ve been super gracious with your time today. It’s been like super awesome conversation and, you know, I think our audience is gonna dig it too. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you want our audience to know?

Arjun: No, I think that was great. I, I really appreciate brave for relentlessly supporting privacy and, you know, being an ally to Zcash and you know, having a great wallet a great desktop wallet.

So, yeah, I appreciate what you guys are doing and thanks for having me on.

Luke: Well, it go likewise. It goes both ways. And yeah, I, I can’t say it enough. The, it’s been an amazing surprise and, a delightful one to see how much privacy is just kind of getting MeMed out there right now.

It’s an amazing thing. And and I totally commend you and the community for doing that. also You’ve got a great blog, right? I’ve, I’ve gone through that. can you let our audience know where they can find you online?

Arjun: Sure Twitter is the best place. Feel free to DM me at a Kimani. My website or blog is, or a kimani.com.

Luke: [00:25:00] Awesome, man. Well, Arjun, I, I really appreciate the time. Love to have you back too, like to check back in on things and yeah, thanks for stopping by, man. Really, really enjoyed the discussion.

Arjun: Yeah, that was super fun.

Thanks.

Luke: Alright, awesome. Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave Browser, you can download it for free today@brave.com. And start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately.

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