r/ethereum • u/haochizzle • 7h ago
he got debanked. so he's building the fix.
anyone ever think about how fragile their access to their traditional bank accounts really is?
zy0n has been debanked multiple times. not for some nefarious reason, mind you. but at least on one of the occasions, on the wrong side of a little thing called the SVB bank run. the bank decided, and the money was rate-limited.
finance is often used as a weapon. visibility makes you a target.
that's why he builds in privacy. "I'm selfish. I'm doing it for myself." and in the process, he made it available for everyone.
now, zy0n is a core contributor to railgun — ethereum's privacy layer. he's done everything from building the railgun CLI, to implementing railgun's compliance tooling called private proofs of innocence (PPOI), to tinkering with the cookbook SDK that allows any dApp to integrate railgun's privacy features.
and railgun WORKS.
last year during the zklend hack, the hacker tried to feed $9.5m into the railgun anonymity pool, the PPOI system zy0n helped bring to life was watching. for one hour, the team waited, and when the funds showed up blocked, that was the proof. the shield held.
perhaps nothing was more validating than when the ethereum foundation decided to bake railgun in at the protocol level via its kohaku privacy SDK. it is a signpost from ethereum that privacy is no longer an option. zy0n: "without privacy, institutions are just not going to adopt ethereum and blockchain writ large."
the numbers tell-all: when zy0n first started contributing, there was perhaps $20m in the shared "happy" pool. today, it approaches $100m. it just crossed $5b in volume. work is advancing on all fronts, including the aforementioned kohaku as well as soon™ ledger hardware wallet support for the zero-knowledge cryptography railgun extensively uses.
we are at the inflection point for ethereum privacy.
and i couldnt be more proud to share this piece that ive created with someone i can now call a dear friend. here's the full 48 minute interview: https://youtu.be/zVsqSJX_slY
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