March 16, 2025 • 61 mins
Does privacy on the blockchain matter if you have nothing to hide? This provocative question launches our deep dive with Moritz, co-founder of FluidKey, into the world of privacy-preserving technologies in cryptocurrency.
Moritz shares how his journey began while living abroad in Africa, witnessing firsthand how cryptocurrencies could solve real problems in countries where traditional financial systems falter. This experience, combined with his own frustrations managing multiple wallets to protect his privacy, led to the creation of FluidKey – a smart wallet that uses stealth addresses to shield users' financial activities without sacrificing regulatory compliance.
The privacy paradox of public blockchains becomes startlingly clear when we explore real-world scenarios. Your ENS domain or wallet address essentially becomes a transparent window into your entire financial life – revealing every transaction, every payment received, and every financial decision you make. For professionals receiving income on-chain, this creates an unprecedented level of exposure that would be unthinkable in traditional finance. FluidKey's approach tackles this problem by generating new, unlinked addresses for each transaction, preventing the aggregation of financial data that compromises privacy.
We venture into the fascinating technical landscape of privacy-enhancing technologies, exploring how stealth addresses work alongside emerging innovations like privacy pools. Unlike controversial mixers of the past, these new technologies incorporate safeguards to prevent illicit use while still protecting legitimate users. Moritz explains how combining these approaches creates a powerful privacy toolkit that feels as seamless as using a conventional wallet but with significantly enhanced protection.
The conversation culminates with a glimpse into FluidKey's latest innovations, including an auto-yield feature that automatically earns interest the moment funds hit your account – demonstrating how privacy-focused tools can actually deliver superior user experiences compared to their non-private counterparts.
Whether you're a privacy advocate, a crypto professional concerned about financial exposure, or simply curious about the future direction of blockchain technology, this episode offers valuable insights into how we can build a more private yet compliant digital financial ecosystem. Try FluidKey today and experience the peace of mind that comes with controlling your financial privacy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Moritz (00:01):
Free audio post-production by Alphoniccom
Funds that say the Bybit hack.
Now, for example, right Like,say, the hacker tries to put the
money into a railgun or aprivacy pool.
The idea is that before themoney can be taken out again
into a new address, there's abuffer period where, under
(00:24):
certain rules, the money canbasically be kicked out again
and make sure it doesn't taintthat pool, right, and so honest
users can use the pool withoutany issues and basically get
great privacy.
Gramajo (00:37):
But you also make sure that you're not supporting a
North Korean hacker inlaundering their money yo,
(01:20):
welcome back to another episodeof behind the Screen with
Grimajo, the podcast where weunravel the untold stories of
the best on-chain builders andcreators.
I'm your host, grimajo, anaverage crypto enthusiast that's
been in the space since 2012.
Yeah, welcome back to anotherepisode, approaching episode 25,
which I'm super stoked for.
This week, I had the pleasureof sitting down with Moritz from
(01:44):
the FluidKey team.
Fluidkey is a privacy preservingwallet and really it's a tool
that you could use to kind ofpreserve your privacy online.
A lot of the blockchains thatwe use are public, so anyone can
(02:04):
really do some pretty deepanalysis.
That's how ZaxxBT stays inbusiness and chain analysis and
a couple other companies.
So, yeah, it's all publicunless you're using a private
blockchain.
So FluidKey is a tool that kindof helps you just keep a little
bit of privacy and I, uh,people say like, well, why do I
(02:27):
need privacy?
I have nothing to hide.
Um, and yeah, we kind of touchon a little bit of everything on
this episode regarding privacyand I'm a big privacy advocate,
so very excited for this episode.
Yeah, hope you enjoy it.
See you, yeah, who is Moritz,and we can go kind of from there
(02:51):
.
Like you know what is FluidKeyIf that's not familiar with it.
Moritz (02:57):
Yeah, happy to tell you a bit more about myself and kind
of how I got started withFluidKey.
So, yeah, I've been activelyusing crypto already for a
pretty long time, but FluidKeyis actually the first um startup
I'm founded in the space.
I was seeing where I wascreating all these different
addresses to not tie all of myactions on chain to one specific
(03:29):
address, not because I havesomething to hide, necessarily,
but more so because I don't wanteverybody sending me to crypto
or just looking up my ENS to um,everything I'm doing on chain
right.
And so, um, that's how I I kindof started thinking about, uh,
(03:50):
about fluid key, learned aboutstealth addresses, which um
vitalik wrote a post about early2023, I think, um, and and
started just writing down, uh,an idea of combining stealth
addresses with smart accounts tobasically provide better
privacy without as much frictionas you'd get from other privacy
(04:12):
protocols.
So the idea is to use smartaccounts to do gas sponsorship
and a lot of stuff where, in theend, this all feels like a
normal wallet but you get betterprivacy.
So I wrote about this andactually posted about this on
Farcaster and my now co founderactually reached out and we kind
of connected on Farcaster atthe time, and that was around
(04:35):
the time EVE Global was comingup in Paris, and so we decided
to kind of hack on a prototypetogether in Paris and that went
really really well and we alsoreally enjoyed working together,
and so a lot of people wereactually excited about a simple
way to get better privacy onchain, and so that's kind of how
(04:55):
we got started with FluidKey.
Maybe to also tell you a littlebit more about my personal
background before working onFluidKey I was working in
digital media.
I was based in Africa anddifferent countries.
I was based in Kenya, nigeria,ghana and, I think, just living
there, and you know, obviously,seeing also how the currencies
(05:20):
devaluate, how a lot of thingsjust don't work, as well as in
maybe, uh, maybe europe or theus.
Um, I just saw a huge use casefor crypto that was already
helping me in my personal life,but also, um, just seemed like
the the right tech to to tacklethese issues long term, and so
that's how I kind of just gotstarted and got nerd sniped by
(05:41):
crypto as well.
Gramajo (05:44):
I love that.
Yeah, I remember when you weretelling me you were working in
Africa, I was like whoa, that'slike a.
I don't think many people goout there to work.
I know some people go out thereto like yeah, or like explore
it, but not like to go workthere, you know.
Moritz (06:02):
No, for sure.
I mean it kind of also it neverwas like it kind of happened
randomly.
I, I just um got introduced toa company, to the company I then
worked for through a friend,and um started with a like
short-term, kind of three-monthuh gig and from there I got
offered a, an opportunity tojust, you know, join long term.
(06:22):
And I was, you know, I was inmy early 20s and I was like,
yeah, let's just do it, let'ssee what this is like.
And yeah, in the end I spenteight years with the company.
So that was a good time forsure.
Gramajo (06:38):
Yeah, that's quite some time, actually, eight years.
Well, I think like maybe inother countries it's more common
to stay with your company for alot longer, but at least here,
like in the silicon valley orlike in the bay area or the us,
like eight years with thecompany is like yeah, no, for
sure it wasn't.
Moritz (06:57):
it wasn't my intent initially and but I kind of
started right out of my um.
Basically after university Ijust started with the company
and kind of gradually got moreand more responsibility and so
ultimately was leading thecompany as CEO, and so I think
just that kind of momentum andbeing able to also grow within
(07:18):
the company helped me stay thatlong.
I think otherwise I probablywouldn't have stuck around that
long.
But yeah, it was a good timeawesome, um, no, I, I think.
Gramajo (07:30):
Going back to to fluid key, so, uh, you know, I've been
in cryptosis uh, late 2012,early 2013, probably early 2013,
maybe like the the actual startdate, you know um, and as a
long time like bitcoin user likeI.
When I first saw fluid key, Iwas like, oh, this is amazing.
(07:52):
I know exactly like what thisis trying to solve for, and it's
actually like one of like, uh,I'm pretty passionate about when
it comes to privacy.
Um, again, not because there'sanything, like you know, illegal
or mischievous going on.
It's just like, um, I don'tknow like everything's like a
public blockchain right now.
Moritz (08:12):
So I mean, yeah, it's like a step back, even compared
to web 2 solutions.
Gramajo (08:17):
If everything's just visible for everyone, right like
yeah, exactly, you know, like Ialways found it weird, um, I
always found it weird that, likethe government was like opposed
to it.
I'm like dude, this isliterally like, if you're a
surveillance state, like apublic blockchain is literally
like the perfect thing for you.
Like I would march towards thatas fast as I can, because you
(08:38):
can now surveil, likesurveillance people, like even
better than than the currentsystem that you have now with
cash or whatever.
Um, anyways, that's my, mytinfoil thing.
But, uh, you know, um, so Ifeel like privacy is always kind
of thought of like way too late.
So, like you see this happen alot with um, like especially
(09:01):
with, like pumpfun and likesolana so solana is also a
public blockchain.
Like people will launch a,launch a blockchain, uh a coin,
and then you know they have likea couple million or a couple
hundred thousand, whatever valueis, and then you're like, oh
crap, now I need privacy.
Moritz (09:17):
You know, like now everybody knows yeah, and, to be
honest, that was also kind ofmy journey, right, like I think
most people, when they startusing crypto, they, you know
it's not the first thing youcare about and I think it's also
not the first thing you kind ofunderstand exactly how it works
, right, like, if you don'tunderstand the tech yet, you're
like okay, I have this addressand I'm going to receive some
(09:38):
funds.
It's not very clear thateverybody can see this as well,
right?
And so you start learning abouthow this works and you start
also having more significantamounts of of money on chain and
and I think that's when mostpeople start thinking about
privacy, really because, um,yeah, it's, it's definitely not.
(09:59):
Uh, you don't want to exposeyour whole financial history.
If you can Google the ENS andthen see everything you've done,
it's not.
Gramajo (10:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what do you?
Because I feel like, at leaston the Farcaster ecosystem,
there's systems in place wherepeople are building systems of
like reputation and obviously,like the more transaction
(10:29):
history you have, um, yeah, thehigher your reputation score
could be.
So, like, how do you think weshift that mindset of like
making privacy a default?
Moritz (10:41):
um question, while juggling that I would say, you
know, like yeah, I think itreally, you know, I think it
really depends on the use caseand on um, what, uh, what a
certain product is trying toachieve.
And so I'm not like a you knowprivacy maxi in the sense of,
like, um, you know, I think somethings like on farcast only
(11:03):
work because they're not private, right, and there's some public
data and you can kind ofcompose that data and do a lot
of stuff with that.
And I think if it's like socialstuff like who do you follow on
Farcaster and you knowreputation scores and so on, I
think those can also be reallyuseful and unlock really cool
things.
So I'm not, like you know,necessarily opposed to those and
(11:25):
unlock really cool things.
So I'm not, like you know,necessarily opposed to those.
But yeah, I think it is aproblem where then you know you
have a wallet that is connectedto your Farcaster account and
say you now start earningsignificant amounts, you
probably want a way to, you know, keep this private and not have
everything connected to yourFarcaster account as well.
And so I think, ideally, it'sjust more of giving users a
(11:48):
better choice and betterdefaults where they can have
their private funds, where theyreceive and send money, and
that's what we're focused onwith FluidKey.
But then I also have theFarcaster wallet, for example,
and I actually find it prettycool to be able to earn rewards
and kind of participate in thison-chain economy as well.
Um and uh and yeah, I don'tthink both like.
(12:11):
I think there's a future whereboth kind of work together, and
it's not necessarily either orum, but uh, but yeah, it's a.
It's interesting to see howthat evolves.
For sure, agreed.
Gramajo (12:25):
Yeah, and I think we're already seeing a little bit of
it too, where at least a lot ofpeople that I talk to already
use more than one wallet.
So they'll use a system of ahot wallet, a cold wallet and if
you're really geeky, you'll doa warm wallet, like in between.
Moritz (12:46):
Yeah, um I guess the problem with that is like, I
mean, as soon as there'smultiple transactions between
your, say, public wallet andthat wallet, it's kind of over
right from a privacy perspective.
You're you've kind of leaked it.
I think if it's just onetransaction, you never know if
it's your wallet or you justsend funds to somebody else and
(13:07):
so on and so forth.
But yeah, that's kind of whatwe're working on really with
FluidKey is that cold walletpart and the part where you're
maybe receiving bigger amountsand storing funds and so on.
Also just being able to havebetter privacy defaults on that
side.
That's really what we're tryingto focus on.
Gramajo (13:30):
Yeah, no, these are all things.
I feel like if you've been inthe BTC space for a hot minute,
you're familiar with UTXOs orwhatever, and the same concept
that you're saying, which islike if you start sending it
back and forth, then it's likethe probability that you own
(13:51):
both of those wallets, is likepeople can see that very quickly
and very easily, versus if youdo one time, then it's debatable
, I guess.
Moritz (14:02):
Yeah, and so the other thing is like so say, you have
like this forecaster publicwallet and you're totally fine
with it being public, and thenyou have your like other wallet,
right, and um, if you now sendmoney from the other wallet to
this forecaster wallet multipletimes, I mean what most people
would check is they they checkyour forecaster wallet on ether
scan, they check the last youknow address that funded it, and
(14:24):
then they will basically seethat this address has all of
your transaction historybasically all combined in one
place, right, and if you use, asyou said, either UTXOs or
stealth addresses, in the caseof FluidKey, even if one of your
addresses is now doxxed, itwould just be one address that
has a very limited subset ofyour entire financial history,
(14:48):
versus like disclosingeverything in one click.
Pretty much right, and so, yeah, I think that's kind of the
approach we've had so far.
I think it's also going to beinteresting to now try to, you
know, add additional privacylayers to that, because it's
definitely not perfect privacyyet, right?
Gramajo (15:07):
um, and so that's something we're also trying to
explore this year yeah, I feelwhat the growth of like, the
growth and maturity of like zkalso helps with some of this
stuff like.
So, going back to like thereputation thing, you thing you
could still be private but also,through ZK, prove whatever it
(15:29):
is that you're trying to prove.
If you're like, hey, I am areal human, but I want to show
you my passport, I can use ZK todo that.
Or if you were like, hey, Iwant to show ownership of this
wallet so I can, you know, claimthe social credit score without
like fully linking it Likethat's another way.
(15:51):
So I feel like, as like ZK getsmore mature, then I think we're
going to see a lot more likegood use cases.
Moritz (16:01):
Yeah 100%, no, that's for sure.
Good use cases yeah, 100%, no,that's for sure.
And I think, especially when itcomes to like, yeah, personal
data, it makes a lot of sense touse ZK to kind of, you know,
prove things without showingmore.
I think then, obviously, like,the tech might go faster than
regulations as well in manycases, right.
(16:22):
So, for example, if you want tohonor or off-ramp money, in
many cases, right.
So, for example, um, if youwant to honor off-ramp money, in
many cases you still need tokyc, and while you could
technically kyc with zk and justprove like, okay, I'm an
american citizen and I'm over 18years old, for example, um, it
wouldn't, it wouldn't be legallyvalid today, right yeah, and so
that's the other, um think,really hard part, because it
(16:44):
takes time usually to shift lawsand kind of shift things on
that level.
Gramajo (16:52):
Yeah, I guess going back, going a little bit to the
regulatory compliance that youbrought up, is like, at least
for me, this is kind of whatI've been seeing, which is like
privacy has been essentiallylike just gotten hammered, like,
except for like recent history,like I'd say, in the last two
(17:12):
months, where, like tornado cash, like people, the devs, like
they got out, um, we still needto free the samurai does, which
is a bitcoin, uh stealth addresstechnology as well, but, um,
yeah, for a hot minute, like itwas looking bad, like they
delisted monero, they were goingafter zcash, like it looked
(17:33):
like privacy was kind of justlike in shambles, to be quite
honest, yeah, um, yeah, how doyou like, uh, do you see a world
where we can have privacy andcompliance at the same time a
little bit, or is that so?
Moritz (17:47):
I do, definitely.
I definitely I know that we canhave better privacy and
compliance, right like theprivacy, because today you have
like literally no privacy and Ithink, um, there is a a middle
ground where you can definitelyhave both compliance and privacy
, and we've been kind of tryingto find that right middle ground
(18:09):
.
I also think that ultimately,there's a lot of tech problems
that are being solved now thatwill make it easier to have even
better privacy with compliance.
So I don't know if you've heardof privacy pools, for example,
and also systems like Railgunalready today, which have also
(18:35):
ZK-based systems in place tomake sure that funds that say,
the Bybit hack now, for example,right Like, say, the hacker
tries to put the money intoRailgun or a privacy pool.
The idea is that before themoney can be taken out again
into a new address, there's abuffer period where, under
(18:59):
certain rules, the money canbasically be kicked out again
and make sure it doesn't taintthat pool, right, and so honest
users can use the pool withoutany issues and basically get
great privacy.
But you also make sure thatyou're not supporting a North
Korean hacker in launderingtheir money.
I don't know maxi privacy world, where just everything is
(19:31):
private and bad actors have thesame privacy as everybody else,
but where, with the right tech,we can actually also screen out
bad actors but still get really,really strong privacy for
everybody else, right?
And I think that's kind of thescenario that I'd like to see
and, yeah, I'm quite hopefulthat, especially in the ethereum
(19:52):
ecosystem, this is where we areheaded yeah, yeah, exactly,
it's almost like.
Gramajo (19:57):
You know, some privacy is better than no privacy at all
.
You know, like it because, likeit seems like right now, like
the, the government, likereaction is because this person
could use it like a bad actor,that everyone is like a bad
actor and it should be.
Moritz (20:13):
You know like oh, and I also think, like a lot of people
kind of you know, talking aboutthis, and there's also a
problem around just likeeducating um decision makers and
educating people that, um, youknow, in the end can can decide
about laws and and kind of judgeover these things, how these
things work and and like what ispossible, right, because I feel
(20:36):
like sometimes it's also, um,yeah, it feels like they're not
really understanding how thisworks and um, understanding
really, like you know, oncetornado cash is on-chain, you
can't do anything about it,right, it's there, right, and so
also better understanding that,I think, will happen with time,
(20:59):
but it's definitely a process.
Gramajo (21:03):
Yeah, and I'm seeing glimmers of hope.
So, like Ross Albrecht gettingout tornado cash, like you know
they're, they're making someprogress.
Um, what else?
Uh, coinbase like, which isreally big central exchange, at
(21:23):
least here in the us.
Like they're, you know theysupported or listed veil cash,
which is cool.
Moritz (21:29):
Um, they just acquired a privacy centric company, like
yesterday yeah, so that's yeah,so it it seems like well I think
they're all realizing as wellthat, like, if, if the goal here
is to really replace the kindof old financial system you do
need better privacy than you gettoday right, like there's no
way around it, there's no wayyou can build like a financial
(21:53):
system on a public ledger whereeverybody can see everyone's
transactions, I think, yeah,yeah.
Gramajo (22:05):
I think we covered a little bit of how the regulatory
frameworks can evolve tosatisfy regulators and privacy,
which is good.
I know you did an interviewwith Freedom Factory which I'll
link down for people as well sothey can go listen to that.
I wanted to go over thisscenario about how not just when
(22:28):
you first come into theecosystem, you're kind of
everything's like new, new.
So you're like, hey, like I'm,you know, I got an ens and I'm
doing everything from one walletand you know, and things kind
of change as like the longeryou're on chain.
Um, but I wanted to touch alittle bit because I was using
(22:48):
fluid key a little bit in thisway, which was like for
conducting business or receivingkind of income on chain.
I wanted to go after thatscenario a little bit like a
casual user versus like someone.
Moritz (23:07):
Once they start earning income on chain and why they
would consider why that's likethe trigger that gets them to be
like, oh, I need more privacy,you know no, I think it's just
because I think, if you're, ifyou're just, you know, on the
kind of fun side of of cryptowhich is like, oh, you're on
(23:27):
forecaster and maybe you'recollecting some nfts and so on,
I think they're like, in a way,it kind of makes sense for these
things to be public and and youkind of get a lot out of it as
well.
Right, you might get, um,rewards and and airdrops and
other things as well throughhaving a public address and and
ultimately, like, everythingyou're doing is kind of
(23:47):
something very social.
So, um, you almost want it tobe public, right, but then I
think, when it comes to you know, just earning income, that's
not something that younecessarily want everybody to
know.
How much you're earning everymonth, who's paying you, what
you're doing and yeah, andbasically connecting.
(24:09):
I think these are basically twovery different use cases, and
what we're seeing with fluid keyis definitely, um, most users
coming for the the latter.
So so, people, um, that areeither getting paid on chain or
users that are basically earningmoney on chain.
Sometimes it's also just aboutokay, I want to, you know, buy a
(24:29):
relatively big amount of acertain token.
I don't want to do this from mypublic address.
Um, if this token now you knowlike really also increases in
value, I don't want this to belike connected to my public
address and basically be alsopossibly targeted by by people,
um and so.
So, yeah, that's where privacy,I think, makes a lot of sense,
(24:51):
and those very practical usecases where we're seeing most of
you, our users, also come to tofluid key and use fluid key for
that, and, and we've beenreally also building in that
direction, right.
So, um, you know, adding thingslike being able to receive and
send bank payments as welldirectly into your fluid key
account, all of that kind ofgoes really into the use case of
(25:14):
earning money, spending moneyand and just kind of growing
your, your assets on chain, andI think that's the.
That's where we're also seeingdemand for privacy, right, like,
I don't think there's as muchdemand on the like more fun side
of things for now.
Um, that might change as well,but, yeah, that's where wouldn't
be that hard of a pattern toeven identify.
Gramajo (25:53):
You have two problems.
You have the problem of peoplecan see now like the company,
like how much like they have inthere.
Um, obviously, companies noware like we're we're reaching a
certain stage for on-chaincompanies, uh of all sizes,
where you know they have like anoperating account, a treasury
account, kind of like multipleaccounts, kind of like in the
(26:14):
regular traditional financialworld.
But if they didn't, they hadall in one account and that was
the same account sending thefunds.
I mean you can hypotheticallysee like how much they have in
their yeah, exactly, I meantheir checking account
essentially exactly.
Moritz (26:27):
or like, say, you're a freelancer and you have multiple
clients, you can see likeeverybody paying, you can see
who else is paying you, how muchthey're paying you, how much
you make every month and so on,and yeah, it's just like I don't
think that's helpful for you.
Gramajo (26:42):
So yeah, yeah.
And then for the user, like youknow, they can also see like,
hey, this person gets you know1500 usdc bi-weekly, exactly.
And then what they do with thatafter I think that's what
people forget is like, it's well, it's the same account.
And um, immediately after thatthey could see like, okay, this
person bought, you know, 40 oftheir funds were used to buy
(27:06):
pumped out fund tokens.
Yep, 30 was used to like Idon't even know, go do something
else.
And then, yeah, like you justsee all that stuff and you can
see it, and all you need is likea zac xbt or a bulb maps kind
of tool to be like oh, I knowexactly what this person is
doing on chain exactly.
Moritz (27:23):
Um, I don't even think in this case you need any zac
xbt or anything you know kind ofat that level.
Most times it's just like twoclicks away on Etherscan right.
It's really really easy to seeeverything someone is doing and
yeah, it's just not great.
Gramajo (27:46):
Kind of a random question then.
So, like I'm used to, at leastin bitcoin, where when I'm using
um, like software to track liketaxes, essentially like I'm
trying to like solve the issueof, like you know, taxes and me
having to, you know, enterthings automatically.
So, um, for those not familiaressentially like um, most
(28:10):
bitcoin software nowadays onlylets you use an address once
like, and then they move on tothe next one for the deviation
or derivation I forget the word,but uh, deviation, uh of your
wallet, um, and so when you wantto actually track your
purchases or how you're spendingBTC, you essentially need like
(28:31):
a root, so like an XPUB key.
For those that are like nerdyenough, is there such of
equivalent with fluid key?
Or how would you use like thoseLike, how would I report like
my taxes, like in a simple way.
Moritz (28:47):
So two things.
So first, even if you don'tknow exactly how this works
technically, it's pretty easy toreport your taxes with fluid
key because you can just exportyour transactions and we're
already putting it into a formatthat works on tools like coin
tracker, for example.
So just press a button, exportall of your transactions in a
twist dsv file and then you canupload that to a contractor, for
(29:10):
example, if that's what you'reusing to make taxes.
But there is also the conceptof basically a public, meta
public key, and that meta publickey is basically a key that
allows you to confirm thatyou're owning all of these
addresses, right, so you canbasically prove relatively
(29:32):
easily to an authority that allof these addresses are related
to you.
You can give them basicallyview access to your account and
then they would be able to knowthese are definitely also your
addresses.
Now I don't know if they'resophisticated enough to actually
you know like, because in theend, like is, um, pretty
(29:53):
advanced, I guess, cryptography,but um, but yeah, like it's,
you can prove it.
It's, uh, it's, in the end it'scryptography and you can prove
that's.
Also addresses are yours,without giving access to spend
from any of these addresses.
Yeah, that's.
Gramajo (30:07):
That's good to hear, because this is like my first
year of using fluid key and thenbeing like, okay, like I'm very
familiar with this from thebitcoin world because I've done
this now, like, yeah, for fivelike plus years.
Whenever they asked us in herein the us to start reporting in
2019, I think, uh, 2018, Iforget, um, but I like I've
never had to do it on theethereum side because literally
(30:28):
I just enter, you know, yeah,garahoeth, and that was it, like
that's the most I've had toworry about.
And then this year I was like,oh, I wonder how it works with
fluid key, like if it's there asimilar concept.
Moritz (30:40):
Yeah, Let me know how it goes.
Obviously, we haven't beenaround this long, so I think, um
, you know, we want to alsosupport like that's the one
thing with fluid key right, likeI think a lot of privacy tools.
You're kind of left on your ownright, like it's very um diy in
many, in many ways and and wewant to really also um innovate
(31:00):
on the user experience side ofthings, right, and so, um, yeah,
super curious to hear how itgoes when you, when you do your
taxes and you also have to add,uh, your fluid key transactions
there.
But hopefully it's all smoothyeah, I'll let you know.
Gramajo (31:15):
Taxes are due on the 15th of April, I believe, here
in the US, so I'll let you knowin the next couple of weeks, I
guess let me know.
Alright, let's take a quickbreak.
I hope you're enjoying theepisode.
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subscribers Seattle Dog McMinalscongrats on round-tripping it
(31:40):
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(32:01):
All right, let's get back to it.
Uh, privacy pools.
You know, like what?
What is actually a privacy pool?
Like I know we talked about ita couple seconds ago.
Um, yeah, what is a privacypool?
And like, how would it, howwould it work alongside?
(32:23):
Um?
yeah fluid key yeah so.
Moritz (32:28):
So maybe before explaining how privacy pool
works, let me just explain verybriefly how fluid key works, for
for context and kind of tocompare it.
So the way fluid key workstoday it's using stealth
addresses, meaning that, um,every time you receive money,
you basically receive it to anew address that isn't linked to
your public profile or thatisn't linked to any of the other
(32:48):
addresses that were generatedbefore, right?
So you have this cloud ofaddresses that aren't linked in
any way, and so you get muchbetter privacy because
somebody's sending you money.
They just send money to anempty address that isn't
connected to any of your othertransactions.
The way privacy pools work ismuch closer to something like
Tornado Cash, for example, butwith some additional safeguards
(33:11):
to basically make sure thatactors don't have such an easy
way to move money in, right?
So you basically add money intothis pool and multiple users
add funds into the same privacypool, and then you can think of
(33:32):
it almost as like a layer thatbreaks traceability, because
then on the other side, when auser moves the money out, they
put it into a new address andnobody can kind of see which
user putting the money in is theone moving the money out, they
put it into a new address andnobody can kind of see which
user putting the money in is theone moving the money out, right
, so you can't break thattraceability.
And so far that's exactly alsohow Tornado Cash works.
The only difference here isthat privacy pools have
(33:55):
safeguards so that if you know,a North Korean hacker now also
moves a billion dollars in,they're not able to basically
just mix their money with yourmoney and then move the money
out again and you have theproblem that on the other side,
obviously authorities wouldn'tknow who is the bad actor, who
(34:16):
is the good actor, and thenyou're basically part of the
problem in a way.
And I think that's what privacypools are really trying to
solve and make sure that onlyfunds that haven't been linked
to any illicit activity canbasically mix with you.
And then there's differentflavors of that.
I would say right.
So there's the more strictertypes of privacy pools where,
(34:42):
for example, veal is a goodexample on base right, where you
can only enter certain pools ifyou basically have a verified
Coinbase account and kind ofCoinbase vouchers for you in a
way, right.
And on the other side you havethe more like softer ones where,
like, maybe railgun falls into,where everybody can move money
(35:07):
in, but then there is a systemthat is, um, keeping your money
on hold for for a few hours andif it turns out, uh, you know
that money was linked to a hack,then that money will basically
be rejected and pushed out ofthe system again, and so you're
not able to mix it as well.
So it's like either kind ofmore of an allow list mode or
(35:29):
like more of a blacklist mode,depending on which type of
privacy pool you're using.
But that's kind of how they work, and in the context of FluidKey
, I think these two technologiesare actually pretty
complementary.
So the idea is okay, say youreceive a million dollars now
with FluidKey to one address,right, if you're just using
FluidKey, then you're still, youknow, spending a million
(35:51):
dollars out of one address andyou're probably going to do a
lot of different things withthat million dollars, and so you
don't get that much privacy.
Now, on the other hand, if youreceive a million dollars to a
FluidKey self-address, pass thatthrough a privacy pool and then
, on the other side, move itinto, say, a hundred different
self-addresses, right, or athousand.
(36:11):
Then you can spend from athousand unlinked self-addresses
on base on any other chain, asyou would from a normal wallet,
but someone looking at the chainwould just see a thousand
unlinked addresses that aren'tin any way connected to you.
And so I think that's kind ofthe ultimate endgame we're going
(36:32):
for with Rookie as well is kindof combining these two
technologies in that way whereyou have this UX that's very
similar to what you'd get from anormal wallet on public EVM
chains, but you also are able tobreak traceability and kind of
get better privacy, becauseunder the hood there's a privacy
pool as well helping you dothat in a very automated way.
Gramajo (36:53):
Yeah, no, that's fantastic.
Love that.
Yeah Need more of this kind ofenergy in the space.
Moritz (37:01):
Yeah, I mean we're trying to really.
So one thing I think that youknow we've tried to do from the
beginning is kind of just shipsomething and like it's not
perfect in terms of many things,but it's better than the status
quo, and kind of improve onthat gradually to something
we're really excited about.
And so, yeah, that's hopefullyby the end of this year.
(37:23):
A lot of what I kind of justillustrated is kind of live and
in production and you can use it.
That's the goal.
Gramajo (37:32):
I'd say it's working.
I mean, from the time that I'vebeen using it, like it's good,
like I like it and I know you'reintroducing like other awesome
features that we'll get into ina couple of seconds Awesome
other uh awesome features thatwe'll get into in a couple
seconds.
Um, what, uh, what else excitesyou in the privacy space?
You know, like I, it's funnybecause, like uh on farcaster, I
(37:53):
posted um like what I wasexcited for, uh in the privacy
space, like the privacy techspace, uh for this year, and it
actually did pretty well like interms of like for me, for my
relative size of like followersand stuff like that.
It did relatively well.
So it seems like people arestarting to care about?
Moritz (38:15):
what did you list?
I'm not sure if I might havemissed it, so uh here, let me
see, yeah, so I did.
Gramajo (38:24):
um, let's see 2025, the year that privacy goes
mainstream.
That's that's kind of how Istarted with.
So veil, uh, and on world aztec.
So I started with the ones thateveryone's like familiar with
and then moved into, like, uh,more niche ones that I think
more people don't know aboutDarkfy that was one Tezos
(38:47):
Sapling, so basically it's theexact same tech that we're
talking about now, but just inTezos.
So I still like Tezos and thatwhole ecosystem, nice and Paynen
, so that's the other one too.
So it's like VPN on steroids.
Basically it's the other onetoo.
So it's like, uh, vpn onsteroids.
Basically it's like the easiestway to describe it uh, and then
fluid key, as well as the otherone nice, um, yeah, so so
(39:11):
definitely agree with uh, withthe picks you you have there.
Moritz (39:15):
Um, I'd say um also quite excited to see how aztec
comes out.
I mean, they they've been at itfor a long time.
I think it's a really hardproblem they're trying to solve
and I actually recently alsospoke with the team and it seems
like they're getting closer andcloser to having something
that's also mainnet ready and soon, and I think that'll be very
(39:38):
interesting to see.
I think, in general, general,outside of that, um, there's
there's multiple teams workingon on privacy pools.
There's railgun I think is alsovery interesting one.
Honestly.
What I love about railgunhonestly is that it's live, it's
working, people can use ittoday and and uh, and yeah, I
(40:03):
would always highlight the alsoproducts that are kind of
already live and helping userstoday, so that's a big one.
I also am quite curious to seehow there's this idea of private
tokens.
(40:23):
So there's Inko, for example,that is working on this, where
you have these confidentialtokens where what you're hiding
is basically the amounts beingsent.
So it's on Ethereum or any EVMchain.
You basically can just depositfunds and then what you can do
is I send you funds in thisconfidential token and someone
(40:47):
looking on chain wouldn't knowhow much I sent you, right.
So it's a different type ofprivacy.
Again, it's not about notshowing that I've sent it to you
, but showing, basically hidingthe amount, right, and so if you
combine that with somethinglike stealth addresses and other
privacy tools, I think you getsomething that's also pretty
excited, exciting, um and so.
So that's maybe another thing.
(41:08):
Just because you didn't list itthere, that would include in
the list, um, but but overall, II think this list is, uh, it's
pretty good, yeah yeah, uh, mostrecently too, uh succinct, uh,
mostly I just like theirbranding, so yeah because I was
gonna ask are they doinganything?
(41:29):
I mean, they're obviously, youknow, very um zk focused, um
I've uh.
Yeah, I was wondering did yousee any like specific use case
that that you're excited about?
No, it's a.
It's a bad.
Gramajo (41:41):
Just just literally the branding got me, so they're
having a.
I know that's the issue.
Like you said, I think it's agood call out where it's like
some of these tools are actuallylive and they definitely
deserve, I think, credit orrecognition for that.
Like you know, this is reallyhard tech.
(42:02):
I would say, um, yeah, andyou're trying to build it like
in a consumer, yeah, like aconsumer, good, essentially.
So it's like okay, it's likedoubly hard, um, so definitely
kudos for the ones that are live, including fluid key.
Um, because you know like,sometimes you'll see these, like
you know, white papers orwhatever you want to call them,
darknet papers, and they soundfancy, they sound great, but
(42:26):
then that's the thing, andobviously some problems are
really hard to solve and ittakes more time to go live right
.
Moritz (42:33):
So I didn't mean it as a kind of this towards protocols
that need a little more time tokind of get to that stage.
But yeah, I agree, I thinkultimately it's exciting to see
also things that just work andare kind of providing value to
users today, and so I alwayslike to also highlight those.
Gramajo (42:56):
I agree with you Because I feel like with Aztec,
I feel like I've been waiting onAztec.
I want to say over a year and ahalf.
Now I feel like I think it'sbeen.
It's definitely been a while uh, yeah, and I feel like I joined
the space and I heard aboutaztec like pretty quickly, um,
because I used to be not be likeheavy in in the ethereum space.
(43:18):
Um, I used to be just like purebitcoin, pure, pure monero.
Moritz (43:23):
Yes, um, would you say you're mostly on ethereum today,
or kind of a mix between thoseI'm mostly on ethereum today.
Gramajo (43:33):
Uh, a little bit of solana, because there's like
some interesting stuff going onover there outside of like just
pumped off on, like there'sactually what excites you about
Solana?
Do you have any specific?
Yeah, I can give you an example.
So, futarki, so it's like doingdecisions based on prediction
markets.
So MetaDAO, which I'm actuallytalking to.
(43:53):
Profit.
Who's the co-founder of MetaDAO, futarki?
He didn't invent the concept,uh, or they didn't invent the
concept of, uh, food turkey, butit's uh.
Robert hansen kind of did um,but it's the live.
Again, going back to what yousaid, you know like I'm
surprised ethereum doesn't haveit like.
(44:14):
I know, uh, I'm gonna be partof the beta for optimism, uh,
with their experiment with foodand Uniswap is looking at this
too, but like it's literallylive and been live with Solana,
metadao for, I think, almost sixplus months at this stage.
You know like I even voted toput Robin Hanson on the MetaDAO
(44:38):
like board.
So that's like a really coolconcept to me, you know.
So I'm like all right, this isreally dope.
So she says like, like bored.
So that's like a really coolconcept to me, you know.
So I'm like all right, this isreally dope, um, especially
since, like, I've been gettinginto dows a lot more heavily in
the last um six months, um.
So, yeah, there's like a couplethings out there where I'm like
okay like no, I think.
Moritz (44:54):
I mean I've personally not been super active on solana
just because, yeah, I'm probablyless aware of what's happening,
but it seems like one ecosystem.
Also, just from our user base,there's quite a few users asking
when is FluidKey going to be onSolana, and so on.
So, yeah, there's definitelyoverlap and I think there's some
cool stuff happening on thatside as well.
So I need to spend more time,yeah.
Gramajo (45:16):
I mean, I've heard that it's like, at least from the
sentiment I get from Farcasterbuilders, that it can be a
little hard to develop in Solana.
Yeah, just like getting up tospeed or like the documentation,
you know like, you know it,just it's a little bit different
, maybe not as mature on thatsense, but you know there's
(45:39):
people that say that it'samazing to build on solana.
So I wouldn't know, becauseI've never done either, so I let
you guys be the judge of thatone.
But, um, yeah, I think there islike some pretty interesting
stuff going on over there whereI think, you know, people are
getting bored of the pumped upfunds, of the coins and moving
into, you know, other tech.
(46:01):
Like they seem very heavilyfocused on consumer crypto or
just like, literally theonboarding of masses, um, which
is interesting, um, because weneed the users.
Um, so, yeah, that that one is,um, yeah, that's an exciting
one.
Food turkey I like that becauseI'm noticing already like, uh,
(46:23):
you know just, people likewhales, you know like, even like
with optimism and Uniswap youknow, it's not like an NFT, but
it's like you know they have abajillion tokens and they make
the decision they themselvesessentially.
So cool stuff going on.
Yeah, I don't know if there'sanything on the privacy side
there.
Moritz (46:47):
It's a good question.
Gramajo (46:47):
I'm I'm not aware of yeah, not that I can think of
yeah, but yeah, I'm mostlyheavily on the ethereum side.
Still, most of my funds arestill in bitcoin, though, to be
honest, um, just because ofdollar cost average since back
then, like, it's hard it's hardnot to.
(47:08):
Yeah, um, I'm still prettyheavily involved in the monero
space, so like I still follow itvery heavily, still talk with a
lot of people.
Moritz (47:19):
Um some are you seeing, I guess, like one thing, looking
from the outside again I'm notsuper well like deeply looking
at it, I guess is that like itit doesn't feel like a lot is
happening, but I think maybeit's just because I'm not as um
obviously involved there,following it as closely, like
(47:40):
how you think, like how do yousee that just in terms of, um,
yeah, like kind of innovationand kind of also growth of that
that space?
Gramajo (47:49):
yeah, yeah, I would say , like, there's a ton of, there
was a ton of active developersand I think there is still a
decent amount of activedevelopers, at least on the
monero side.
Um, it definitely got hindereda little bit from the fact that,
like, uh, it started gettinglike delisted from a bunch of
exchanges.
Yeah, um, that definitely hurtit.
(48:11):
Surprisingly, it didn't hurt itfrom like, a price perspective,
uh, which is great for me, um,because that would have been
painful.
But, um, yeah, I'll tell youlike something really cool
that's going on in the Monerospace.
I don't know if you care or not, but, um, I've been really into
this whole P to I've.
I've been into P to P marketsfor a hot minute now.
(48:32):
Um, and the big one in theMonero space actually got shut
down.
Uh, or they didn't get shutdown, they kind of chose to shut
down, cause, like, it's just ahard space to build in.
Um, but a new one came up callred toe swap, um, okay, which is
like a multi six day decks forP2P transactions, and so, like I
(48:55):
can, it reminds me of the oldBitcoin P2P marketplaces where,
like, I give you cash and thenyou give me a digital coin, so
that one's like, it's like newand it's going and it's got a
lot of.
They just hit like their alltime high and um monthly
transactions, uh, between Monero, um, which is good, like good
(49:17):
volume there, um price is stable, so yeah, I suspect like it's
still going there.
They're still doing someinnovation, so like different
ring sizes to see how thatimpacts transaction speeds and
stuff like that.
Yeah, very cool, awesome, yeah,awesome.
(49:40):
Let's see Going to get close towrapping up here.
Moritz (49:44):
But, um, so I know you guys have a standalone app, um,
with kind of the launch of V2honestly, I think you know the
(50:04):
cool thing right now withFluidKey is you can either just
connect your wallet and you haveyour own self-custodial wallet
that owns the FluidKey account,or you can connect with Privy
and Farcaster basically, and soyou know it's, I think in terms
of just ease of use side ofthings, a lot of users pick also
(50:26):
that part, and the cool thingthere is that technically, I
think you could build a framepretty easily that allows you to
just open FluidKey inside ofFirecaster and connect to
FluidKey automatically, right,and I think that could be really
cool.
So we want to, we want to buildthat.
It's just been many things onthe roadmap basically at the
(50:49):
same time, so we haven't reallyhad the time to to work on that
yet.
But yeah, that's that's theplan to to also launch that in
the coming weeks.
Gramajo (51:00):
Yeah, no, no, worries, man, it was just like a thought
I had.
I was like I wonder.
I'm sure it crossed your mind.
I had a feeling it crossed yourmind so I was kind of curious.
But that's not to say you guysaren't delivering new features.
So I know you guys recentlydropped like Urn with Morpho,
which is really cool, right.
(51:20):
Yes, like earn with morpho,which is really cool, right, yes
, so it's in early access rightnow.
Moritz (51:25):
So, um, feel free to dm me if anybody uh listening as
well is interested to to test itout.
It's.
It's really exciting because Ithink most, um even the like
easier ways to earn yields todaythey will at least require you
to kind of move money into likekind of a vault, right, even if
it's in the app.
And with this feature, the wayit works is, as soon as you
(51:47):
receive USDC, if you have thisfeature enabled for your account
, you start earning yield,because, under the hood, every
Fluid Keys Stealth address is asmart account and you basically
can give us permissions to movemoney into this vault, and only
that vault and only on behalf ofyou.
So it's obviously an auditedmodule that uh, we've been
working on and kind of building.
(52:09):
But, uh, but I think that's thepower of programmable money in
the end is that you can likebuild these things that that
feel even better than what you'dget from, uh, from a neobank
account or any kind of web 2 ummodel where, yeah, you just
receive money and as soon as ithits your account, you start
earning 5 plus percent yield onit, and that's pretty cool and
(52:30):
exciting.
So, yeah, it's something we'regoing to launch officially in
the next few weeks, but alreadylive and being tested heavily by
some of our power users.
So if anybody here wants access, just DM and I'm happy to give
access.
Gramajo (52:49):
Yeah, and I know, even before this one, you guys had a
Rocketball one, right?
Moritz (52:54):
Yes, so that's also still there.
That's the one-click thing,well, like two-click thing.
So it's a bit different, right?
You still have to click thebutton and say, okay, I want to
deposit x amount of eth, andthen it shows you, okay, you,
you're, you're likely to earn xamount over the year, and so on
and so forth.
So it's still like a prettynice experience to just
understand what you're, whatyou're um, yeah, what you can
(53:17):
get out of rocket pool, um, and,and so that's still there, um.
But this is kind of almost likea v2, where a lot of that is
just happening automaticallyunder the hood.
You set it once and then,anytime you receive money, it
just automatically startsearning yield for you and, and
so I feel like, um, yeah, it'sstill more exciting because,
because every anything that evenrequires you to take one click,
(53:39):
um, you're likely not to do itall the time, because it's just
like additional friction and andso on, and you wouldn't do it.
You know you're not going todeposit um five hundred dollars
into a morpho vault to earn a um, you know, a few dollars a year
, um, and and with this it justhappens automatically and I
think that kind of compoundsover time and and is pretty cool
(53:59):
yeah, yeah, I interviewed uhinterviewed Jack from Icebreaker
and he was talking about how,like, every click is like an act
of God, you know.
Gramajo (54:09):
So if you go four clicks in, you're like you're
asking a lot from people at thatstage.
Moritz (54:15):
For sure, no for sure, and so, yeah, that's kind of
that's been our motto also withother features we've built is
kind of just reducing the amountof clicks you have to do is, I
think, a pretty good way tothink about user experience in
general.
Gramajo (54:29):
Yeah, another kind of random question, and shout out
to Papa Jams, who also talkedabout Futarki and Optimism yeah,
so I know they're also going tobe involved in that beta, which
is exciting, to bring Futarkito Ethereum.
Another kind of random questionbefore we wrap up, since, since
(54:57):
we were talking about how, oncepeople start earning money, um,
this pain point of like knowinghow much you earn or whatever
like, for me, like as asmall-time content creator, I
don't really care if someoneknows that I have like 100 bucks
that I earned from, you know,nouns or whatever, um, like it
(55:19):
doesn't mean it's not the end ofthe world for me because it's
like part-time or whatever, butlike, obviously, if I was making
like my salary, it'd be adifferent situation, especially
with, like, the proliferation ofstable coins and all that.
Have you guys thought aboutlike either partnering up with
splits or moving in thatdirection?
You know, like, because itsounds, like you said, virtual
(55:41):
accounts already exist, so, likeI can direct deposit into fluid
key, yes, and get the benefitsof all that.
Moritz (55:49):
But it seems, like, even like technically you could get.
You could, yeah, just shareyour account.
It's a virtual account so youcould share it with your
employer.
Your employer just pays you tothis bank account, right, and?
And you just receive moneythat's earning yield for you
from the first minute directlyin FluidKey.
Gramajo (56:06):
Yeah, have there been any discussions on teaming up
with them, because I feel likethey have a decent amount of
people that are runningbusinesses through there and all
that yeah yeah, I really likethe splits team.
Moritz (56:23):
Um, I also think their team's product is is really cool
.
I don't know if you've seen thatthey've been working on, um,
yeah, a product that's, uh,basically a business account on
chain, um, and uh, and yeah, so,uh, we actually also also users
of that with FluidKey, so Ireally like what they're doing,
(56:43):
I think, with splits.
Honestly, we haven't discussedthis in detail, but as far as I
know, splits basically are setat the smart contract level, and
so you have to set a specificaddress for every stream of a
split, basically, and so I guessthe downside of that is, if
(57:08):
you're a creator that is earningmoney from multiple splits,
then stealth addresses inFluidKey might make sense,
because you can create a newaddress for every split, pretty
much, and so users can alreadydo that today with with fluid
key, but then for one specifickind of split flow, um, the
money would always land in thesame stealth address, and so you
wouldn't necessarily get betterprivacy with fluid key as it is
(57:31):
today, right, um, and sosomething we want to also kind
of work on with the what I'vetold you about before around you
know, shielded pools and addingadditional layers of privacy,
but but yeah.
So so something we're we'rethinking about, but nothing,
nothing that's kind ofconcretely in the works right
now.
Awesome Cool.
Gramajo (57:52):
No, no worries, All right.
So wrapping up quick context onthis, so one.
Wrapping up quick context onthis, so one.
I've asked this question ofevery guest, so before you're
like, wait, why is this guyasking me about what I eat?
And it starts with kind of likehow the podcast used to be
called, like snacks or bites ofsnacks, peaches.
(58:15):
If you've ever been to Spain,the north of Spain, they have
tapas there called pinchos andanyways.
So, with that said, what isyour favorite?
Moritz (58:25):
snack.
So that's a good question.
I think it depends on theseason.
I would say, if in the summer Ireally like ice cream, like
just, I think that's probably mygo-to snack and I don't, I
don't think I snack a lototherwise, but I would say, in
other than that I really likechocolate as well, just like
(58:48):
hazelnut chocolate, darkchocolate, that that would be my
, my second go-to there you go.
Gramajo (58:54):
You gave a good one.
I spoke to someone and theywere like oh, I eat hummus and
carrots.
And I was like no, I know, I'mlike that.
I, I know we're all supposed tobe healthy, but like, that's
not the answer I'm looking for.
Moritz (59:07):
No, I'm trying to get.
It's not something I'm eatingevery day, but definitely that's
kind of the more um guiltysnacks I'm I'm going for yeah
yeah, well, the swiss do havegood chocolate, so I don't blame
you.
Gramajo (59:22):
Awesome, well, uh, thanks again for doing this.
I appreciate your time.
All right, if you're hearingthis message, you've made it
through the entire episode.
Thank you for that.
Before we head out, I wanted todo a cast-off question.
(59:45):
For those not familiar withcast-off, it's where I want to
hear from you, the audience.
Yeah, hit me up on Telegram orFarcaster or wherever is easiest
for you.
But this week's cast-offquestion is what do you think
about fluid key and stealthaddresses?
Are you excited about privacy?
Yeah, just let me know what youthink about privacy.
Hopefully this helped you kindof see where we need to address
(01:00:09):
some issues in the privacy space, specifically in crypto.
Yeah, so if you're listening tothis episode in another
platform other than pods, makesure to go collect this episode.
If you are on pods, make sureto subscribe from your favorite
app so you're notified when Idrop an episode, or add the Area
51 mini app on Farcaster, whichwill also do the same thing.
(01:00:29):
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Please leave us a review onApple Podcasts or Spotify.
Please share this episode withsomeone who might be interested
in this topic.
Feel free to let me know ifyou'd like to hear specific
people for me to interview.
You can get in touch with mevia the text in the show notes
or on social media.
I've added links below and aswe approach episode 25, I'll be
(01:00:52):
doing a really cool POAP, sojust make sure to stick around
for that.
All right, until next time, seeyou stick around for that.
Moritz (01:01:27):
Um all, right until next time.
See you free audio postproduction.
Free audio post-production by Alphoniccom
Funds that say the Bybit hack.
Now, for example, right Like,say, the hacker tries to put the
money into a railgun or aprivacy pool.
The idea is that before themoney can be taken out again
into a new address, there's abuffer period where, under
(00:24):
certain rules, the money canbasically be kicked out again
and make sure it doesn't taintthat pool, right, and so honest
users can use the pool withoutany issues and basically get
great privacy.
Gramajo (00:37):
But you also make sure that you're not supporting a
North Korean hacker inlaundering their money yo,
(01:20):
welcome back to another episodeof behind the Screen with
Grimajo, the podcast where weunravel the untold stories of
the best on-chain builders andcreators.
I'm your host, grimajo, anaverage crypto enthusiast that's
been in the space since 2012.
Yeah, welcome back to anotherepisode, approaching episode 25,
which I'm super stoked for.
This week, I had the pleasureof sitting down with Moritz from
(01:44):
the FluidKey team.
Fluidkey is a privacy preservingwallet and really it's a tool
that you could use to kind ofpreserve your privacy online.
A lot of the blockchains thatwe use are public, so anyone can
(02:04):
really do some pretty deepanalysis.
That's how ZaxxBT stays inbusiness and chain analysis and
a couple other companies.
So, yeah, it's all publicunless you're using a private
blockchain.
So FluidKey is a tool that kindof helps you just keep a little
bit of privacy and I, uh,people say like, well, why do I
(02:27):
need privacy?
I have nothing to hide.
Um, and yeah, we kind of touchon a little bit of everything on
this episode regarding privacyand I'm a big privacy advocate,
so very excited for this episode.
Yeah, hope you enjoy it.
See you, yeah, who is Moritz,and we can go kind of from there
(02:51):
.
Like you know what is FluidKeyIf that's not familiar with it.
Moritz (02:57):
Yeah, happy to tell you a bit more about myself and kind
of how I got started withFluidKey.
So, yeah, I've been activelyusing crypto already for a
pretty long time, but FluidKeyis actually the first um startup
I'm founded in the space.
I was seeing where I wascreating all these different
addresses to not tie all of myactions on chain to one specific
(03:29):
address, not because I havesomething to hide, necessarily,
but more so because I don't wanteverybody sending me to crypto
or just looking up my ENS to um,everything I'm doing on chain
right.
And so, um, that's how I I kindof started thinking about, uh,
(03:50):
about fluid key, learned aboutstealth addresses, which um
vitalik wrote a post about early2023, I think, um, and and
started just writing down, uh,an idea of combining stealth
addresses with smart accounts tobasically provide better
privacy without as much frictionas you'd get from other privacy
(04:12):
protocols.
So the idea is to use smartaccounts to do gas sponsorship
and a lot of stuff where, in theend, this all feels like a
normal wallet but you get betterprivacy.
So I wrote about this andactually posted about this on
Farcaster and my now co founderactually reached out and we kind
of connected on Farcaster atthe time, and that was around
(04:35):
the time EVE Global was comingup in Paris, and so we decided
to kind of hack on a prototypetogether in Paris and that went
really really well and we alsoreally enjoyed working together,
and so a lot of people wereactually excited about a simple
way to get better privacy onchain, and so that's kind of how
(04:55):
we got started with FluidKey.
Maybe to also tell you a littlebit more about my personal
background before working onFluidKey I was working in
digital media.
I was based in Africa anddifferent countries.
I was based in Kenya, nigeria,ghana and, I think, just living
there, and you know, obviously,seeing also how the currencies
(05:20):
devaluate, how a lot of thingsjust don't work, as well as in
maybe, uh, maybe europe or theus.
Um, I just saw a huge use casefor crypto that was already
helping me in my personal life,but also, um, just seemed like
the the right tech to to tacklethese issues long term, and so
that's how I kind of just gotstarted and got nerd sniped by
(05:41):
crypto as well.
Gramajo (05:44):
I love that.
Yeah, I remember when you weretelling me you were working in
Africa, I was like whoa, that'slike a.
I don't think many people goout there to work.
I know some people go out thereto like yeah, or like explore
it, but not like to go workthere, you know.
Moritz (06:02):
No, for sure.
I mean it kind of also it neverwas like it kind of happened
randomly.
I, I just um got introduced toa company, to the company I then
worked for through a friend,and um started with a like
short-term, kind of three-monthuh gig and from there I got
offered a, an opportunity tojust, you know, join long term.
(06:22):
And I was, you know, I was inmy early 20s and I was like,
yeah, let's just do it, let'ssee what this is like.
And yeah, in the end I spenteight years with the company.
So that was a good time forsure.
Gramajo (06:38):
Yeah, that's quite some time, actually, eight years.
Well, I think like maybe inother countries it's more common
to stay with your company for alot longer, but at least here,
like in the silicon valley orlike in the bay area or the us,
like eight years with thecompany is like yeah, no, for
sure it wasn't.
Moritz (06:57):
it wasn't my intent initially and but I kind of
started right out of my um.
Basically after university Ijust started with the company
and kind of gradually got moreand more responsibility and so
ultimately was leading thecompany as CEO, and so I think
just that kind of momentum andbeing able to also grow within
(07:18):
the company helped me stay thatlong.
I think otherwise I probablywouldn't have stuck around that
long.
But yeah, it was a good timeawesome, um, no, I, I think.
Gramajo (07:30):
Going back to to fluid key, so, uh, you know, I've been
in cryptosis uh, late 2012,early 2013, probably early 2013,
maybe like the the actual startdate, you know um, and as a
long time like bitcoin user likeI.
When I first saw fluid key, Iwas like, oh, this is amazing.
(07:52):
I know exactly like what thisis trying to solve for, and it's
actually like one of like, uh,I'm pretty passionate about when
it comes to privacy.
Um, again, not because there'sanything, like you know, illegal
or mischievous going on.
It's just like, um, I don'tknow like everything's like a
public blockchain right now.
Moritz (08:12):
So I mean, yeah, it's like a step back, even compared
to web 2 solutions.
Gramajo (08:17):
If everything's just visible for everyone, right like
yeah, exactly, you know, like Ialways found it weird, um, I
always found it weird that, likethe government was like opposed
to it.
I'm like dude, this isliterally like, if you're a
surveillance state, like apublic blockchain is literally
like the perfect thing for you.
Like I would march towards thatas fast as I can, because you
(08:38):
can now surveil, likesurveillance people, like even
better than than the currentsystem that you have now with
cash or whatever.
Um, anyways, that's my, mytinfoil thing.
But, uh, you know, um, so Ifeel like privacy is always kind
of thought of like way too late.
So, like you see this happen alot with um, like especially
(09:01):
with, like pumpfun and likesolana so solana is also a
public blockchain.
Like people will launch a,launch a blockchain, uh a coin,
and then you know they have likea couple million or a couple
hundred thousand, whatever valueis, and then you're like, oh
crap, now I need privacy.
Moritz (09:17):
You know, like now everybody knows yeah, and, to be
honest, that was also kind ofmy journey, right, like I think
most people, when they startusing crypto, they, you know
it's not the first thing youcare about and I think it's also
not the first thing you kind ofunderstand exactly how it works
, right, like, if you don'tunderstand the tech yet, you're
like okay, I have this addressand I'm going to receive some
(09:38):
funds.
It's not very clear thateverybody can see this as well,
right?
And so you start learning abouthow this works and you start
also having more significantamounts of of money on chain and
and I think that's when mostpeople start thinking about
privacy, really because, um,yeah, it's, it's definitely not.
(09:59):
Uh, you don't want to exposeyour whole financial history.
If you can Google the ENS andthen see everything you've done,
it's not.
Gramajo (10:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what do you?
Because I feel like, at leaston the Farcaster ecosystem,
there's systems in place wherepeople are building systems of
like reputation and obviously,like the more transaction
(10:29):
history you have, um, yeah, thehigher your reputation score
could be.
So, like, how do you think weshift that mindset of like
making privacy a default?
Moritz (10:41):
um question, while juggling that I would say, you
know, like yeah, I think itreally, you know, I think it
really depends on the use caseand on um, what, uh, what a
certain product is trying toachieve.
And so I'm not like a you knowprivacy maxi in the sense of,
like, um, you know, I think somethings like on farcast only
(11:03):
work because they're not private, right, and there's some public
data and you can kind ofcompose that data and do a lot
of stuff with that.
And I think if it's like socialstuff like who do you follow on
Farcaster and you knowreputation scores and so on, I
think those can also be reallyuseful and unlock really cool
things.
So I'm not, like you know,necessarily opposed to those and
(11:25):
unlock really cool things.
So I'm not, like you know,necessarily opposed to those.
But yeah, I think it is aproblem where then you know you
have a wallet that is connectedto your Farcaster account and
say you now start earningsignificant amounts, you
probably want a way to, you know, keep this private and not have
everything connected to yourFarcaster account as well.
And so I think, ideally, it'sjust more of giving users a
(11:48):
better choice and betterdefaults where they can have
their private funds, where theyreceive and send money, and
that's what we're focused onwith FluidKey.
But then I also have theFarcaster wallet, for example,
and I actually find it prettycool to be able to earn rewards
and kind of participate in thison-chain economy as well.
Um and uh and yeah, I don'tthink both like.
(12:11):
I think there's a future whereboth kind of work together, and
it's not necessarily either orum, but uh, but yeah, it's a.
It's interesting to see howthat evolves.
For sure, agreed.
Gramajo (12:25):
Yeah, and I think we're already seeing a little bit of
it too, where at least a lot ofpeople that I talk to already
use more than one wallet.
So they'll use a system of ahot wallet, a cold wallet and if
you're really geeky, you'll doa warm wallet, like in between.
Moritz (12:46):
Yeah, um I guess the problem with that is like, I
mean, as soon as there'smultiple transactions between
your, say, public wallet andthat wallet, it's kind of over
right from a privacy perspective.
You're you've kind of leaked it.
I think if it's just onetransaction, you never know if
it's your wallet or you justsend funds to somebody else and
(13:07):
so on and so forth.
But yeah, that's kind of whatwe're working on really with
FluidKey is that cold walletpart and the part where you're
maybe receiving bigger amountsand storing funds and so on.
Also just being able to havebetter privacy defaults on that
side.
That's really what we're tryingto focus on.
Gramajo (13:30):
Yeah, no, these are all things.
I feel like if you've been inthe BTC space for a hot minute,
you're familiar with UTXOs orwhatever, and the same concept
that you're saying, which islike if you start sending it
back and forth, then it's likethe probability that you own
(13:51):
both of those wallets, is likepeople can see that very quickly
and very easily, versus if youdo one time, then it's debatable
, I guess.
Moritz (14:02):
Yeah, and so the other thing is like so say, you have
like this forecaster publicwallet and you're totally fine
with it being public, and thenyou have your like other wallet,
right, and um, if you now sendmoney from the other wallet to
this forecaster wallet multipletimes, I mean what most people
would check is they they checkyour forecaster wallet on ether
scan, they check the last youknow address that funded it, and
(14:24):
then they will basically seethat this address has all of
your transaction historybasically all combined in one
place, right, and if you use, asyou said, either UTXOs or
stealth addresses, in the caseof FluidKey, even if one of your
addresses is now doxxed, itwould just be one address that
has a very limited subset ofyour entire financial history,
(14:48):
versus like disclosingeverything in one click.
Pretty much right, and so, yeah, I think that's kind of the
approach we've had so far.
I think it's also going to beinteresting to now try to, you
know, add additional privacylayers to that, because it's
definitely not perfect privacyyet, right?
Gramajo (15:07):
um, and so that's something we're also trying to
explore this year yeah, I feelwhat the growth of like, the
growth and maturity of like zkalso helps with some of this
stuff like.
So, going back to like thereputation thing, you thing you
could still be private but also,through ZK, prove whatever it
(15:29):
is that you're trying to prove.
If you're like, hey, I am areal human, but I want to show
you my passport, I can use ZK todo that.
Or if you were like, hey, Iwant to show ownership of this
wallet so I can, you know, claimthe social credit score without
like fully linking it Likethat's another way.
(15:51):
So I feel like, as like ZK getsmore mature, then I think we're
going to see a lot more likegood use cases.
Moritz (16:01):
Yeah 100%, no, that's for sure.
Good use cases yeah, 100%, no,that's for sure.
And I think, especially when itcomes to like, yeah, personal
data, it makes a lot of sense touse ZK to kind of, you know,
prove things without showingmore.
I think then, obviously, like,the tech might go faster than
regulations as well in manycases, right.
(16:22):
So, for example, if you want tohonor or off-ramp money, in
many cases, right.
So, for example, um, if youwant to honor off-ramp money, in
many cases you still need tokyc, and while you could
technically kyc with zk and justprove like, okay, I'm an
american citizen and I'm over 18years old, for example, um, it
wouldn't, it wouldn't be legallyvalid today, right yeah, and so
that's the other, um think,really hard part, because it
(16:44):
takes time usually to shift lawsand kind of shift things on
that level.
Gramajo (16:52):
Yeah, I guess going back, going a little bit to the
regulatory compliance that youbrought up, is like, at least
for me, this is kind of whatI've been seeing, which is like
privacy has been essentiallylike just gotten hammered, like,
except for like recent history,like I'd say, in the last two
(17:12):
months, where, like tornado cash, like people, the devs, like
they got out, um, we still needto free the samurai does, which
is a bitcoin, uh stealth addresstechnology as well, but, um,
yeah, for a hot minute, like itwas looking bad, like they
delisted monero, they were goingafter zcash, like it looked
(17:33):
like privacy was kind of justlike in shambles, to be quite
honest, yeah, um, yeah, how doyou like, uh, do you see a world
where we can have privacy andcompliance at the same time a
little bit, or is that so?
Moritz (17:47):
I do, definitely.
I definitely I know that we canhave better privacy and
compliance, right like theprivacy, because today you have
like literally no privacy and Ithink, um, there is a a middle
ground where you can definitelyhave both compliance and privacy
, and we've been kind of tryingto find that right middle ground
(18:09):
.
I also think that ultimately,there's a lot of tech problems
that are being solved now thatwill make it easier to have even
better privacy with compliance.
So I don't know if you've heardof privacy pools, for example,
and also systems like Railgunalready today, which have also
(18:35):
ZK-based systems in place tomake sure that funds that say,
the Bybit hack now, for example,right Like, say, the hacker
tries to put the money intoRailgun or a privacy pool.
The idea is that before themoney can be taken out again
into a new address, there's abuffer period where, under
(18:59):
certain rules, the money canbasically be kicked out again
and make sure it doesn't taintthat pool, right, and so honest
users can use the pool withoutany issues and basically get
great privacy.
But you also make sure thatyou're not supporting a North
Korean hacker in launderingtheir money.
I don't know maxi privacy world, where just everything is
(19:31):
private and bad actors have thesame privacy as everybody else,
but where, with the right tech,we can actually also screen out
bad actors but still get really,really strong privacy for
everybody else, right?
And I think that's kind of thescenario that I'd like to see
and, yeah, I'm quite hopefulthat, especially in the ethereum
(19:52):
ecosystem, this is where we areheaded yeah, yeah, exactly,
it's almost like.
Gramajo (19:57):
You know, some privacy is better than no privacy at all
.
You know, like it because, likeit seems like right now, like
the, the government, likereaction is because this person
could use it like a bad actor,that everyone is like a bad
actor and it should be.
Moritz (20:13):
You know like oh, and I also think, like a lot of people
kind of you know, talking aboutthis, and there's also a
problem around just likeeducating um decision makers and
educating people that, um, youknow, in the end can can decide
about laws and and kind of judgeover these things, how these
things work and and like what ispossible, right, because I feel
(20:36):
like sometimes it's also, um,yeah, it feels like they're not
really understanding how thisworks and um, understanding
really, like you know, oncetornado cash is on-chain, you
can't do anything about it,right, it's there, right, and so
also better understanding that,I think, will happen with time,
(20:59):
but it's definitely a process.
Gramajo (21:03):
Yeah, and I'm seeing glimmers of hope.
So, like Ross Albrecht gettingout tornado cash, like you know
they're, they're making someprogress.
Um, what else?
Uh, coinbase like, which isreally big central exchange, at
(21:23):
least here in the us.
Like they're, you know theysupported or listed veil cash,
which is cool.
Moritz (21:29):
Um, they just acquired a privacy centric company, like
yesterday yeah, so that's yeah,so it it seems like well I think
they're all realizing as wellthat, like, if, if the goal here
is to really replace the kindof old financial system you do
need better privacy than you gettoday right, like there's no
way around it, there's no wayyou can build like a financial
(21:53):
system on a public ledger whereeverybody can see everyone's
transactions, I think, yeah,yeah.
Gramajo (22:05):
I think we covered a little bit of how the regulatory
frameworks can evolve tosatisfy regulators and privacy,
which is good.
I know you did an interviewwith Freedom Factory which I'll
link down for people as well sothey can go listen to that.
I wanted to go over thisscenario about how not just when
(22:28):
you first come into theecosystem, you're kind of
everything's like new, new.
So you're like, hey, like I'm,you know, I got an ens and I'm
doing everything from one walletand you know, and things kind
of change as like the longeryou're on chain.
Um, but I wanted to touch alittle bit because I was using
(22:48):
fluid key a little bit in thisway, which was like for
conducting business or receivingkind of income on chain.
I wanted to go after thatscenario a little bit like a
casual user versus like someone.
Moritz (23:07):
Once they start earning income on chain and why they
would consider why that's likethe trigger that gets them to be
like, oh, I need more privacy,you know no, I think it's just
because I think, if you're, ifyou're just, you know, on the
kind of fun side of of cryptowhich is like, oh, you're on
(23:27):
forecaster and maybe you'recollecting some nfts and so on,
I think they're like, in a way,it kind of makes sense for these
things to be public and and youkind of get a lot out of it as
well.
Right, you might get, um,rewards and and airdrops and
other things as well throughhaving a public address and and
ultimately, like, everythingyou're doing is kind of
(23:47):
something very social.
So, um, you almost want it tobe public, right, but then I
think, when it comes to you know, just earning income, that's
not something that younecessarily want everybody to
know.
How much you're earning everymonth, who's paying you, what
you're doing and yeah, andbasically connecting.
(24:09):
I think these are basically twovery different use cases, and
what we're seeing with fluid keyis definitely, um, most users
coming for the the latter.
So so, people, um, that areeither getting paid on chain or
users that are basically earningmoney on chain.
Sometimes it's also just aboutokay, I want to, you know, buy a
(24:29):
relatively big amount of acertain token.
I don't want to do this from mypublic address.
Um, if this token now you knowlike really also increases in
value, I don't want this to belike connected to my public
address and basically be alsopossibly targeted by by people,
um and so.
So, yeah, that's where privacy,I think, makes a lot of sense,
(24:51):
and those very practical usecases where we're seeing most of
you, our users, also come to tofluid key and use fluid key for
that, and, and we've beenreally also building in that
direction, right.
So, um, you know, adding thingslike being able to receive and
send bank payments as welldirectly into your fluid key
account, all of that kind ofgoes really into the use case of
(25:14):
earning money, spending moneyand and just kind of growing
your, your assets on chain, andI think that's the.
That's where we're also seeingdemand for privacy, right, like,
I don't think there's as muchdemand on the like more fun side
of things for now.
Um, that might change as well,but, yeah, that's where wouldn't
be that hard of a pattern toeven identify.
Gramajo (25:53):
You have two problems.
You have the problem of peoplecan see now like the company,
like how much like they have inthere.
Um, obviously, companies noware like we're we're reaching a
certain stage for on-chaincompanies, uh of all sizes,
where you know they have like anoperating account, a treasury
account, kind of like multipleaccounts, kind of like in the
(26:14):
regular traditional financialworld.
But if they didn't, they hadall in one account and that was
the same account sending thefunds.
I mean you can hypotheticallysee like how much they have in
their yeah, exactly, I meantheir checking account
essentially exactly.
Moritz (26:27):
or like, say, you're a freelancer and you have multiple
clients, you can see likeeverybody paying, you can see
who else is paying you, how muchthey're paying you, how much
you make every month and so on,and yeah, it's just like I don't
think that's helpful for you.
Gramajo (26:42):
So yeah, yeah.
And then for the user, like youknow, they can also see like,
hey, this person gets you know1500 usdc bi-weekly, exactly.
And then what they do with thatafter I think that's what
people forget is like, it's well, it's the same account.
And um, immediately after thatthey could see like, okay, this
person bought, you know, 40 oftheir funds were used to buy
(27:06):
pumped out fund tokens.
Yep, 30 was used to like Idon't even know, go do something
else.
And then, yeah, like you justsee all that stuff and you can
see it, and all you need is likea zac xbt or a bulb maps kind
of tool to be like oh, I knowexactly what this person is
doing on chain exactly.
Moritz (27:23):
Um, I don't even think in this case you need any zac
xbt or anything you know kind ofat that level.
Most times it's just like twoclicks away on Etherscan right.
It's really really easy to seeeverything someone is doing and
yeah, it's just not great.
Gramajo (27:46):
Kind of a random question then.
So, like I'm used to, at leastin bitcoin, where when I'm using
um, like software to track liketaxes, essentially like I'm
trying to like solve the issueof, like you know, taxes and me
having to, you know, enterthings automatically.
So, um, for those not familiaressentially like um, most
(28:10):
bitcoin software nowadays onlylets you use an address once
like, and then they move on tothe next one for the deviation
or derivation I forget the word,but uh, deviation, uh of your
wallet, um, and so when you wantto actually track your
purchases or how you're spendingBTC, you essentially need like
(28:31):
a root, so like an XPUB key.
For those that are like nerdyenough, is there such of
equivalent with fluid key?
Or how would you use like thoseLike, how would I report like
my taxes, like in a simple way.
Moritz (28:47):
So two things.
So first, even if you don'tknow exactly how this works
technically, it's pretty easy toreport your taxes with fluid
key because you can just exportyour transactions and we're
already putting it into a formatthat works on tools like coin
tracker, for example.
So just press a button, exportall of your transactions in a
twist dsv file and then you canupload that to a contractor, for
(29:10):
example, if that's what you'reusing to make taxes.
But there is also the conceptof basically a public, meta
public key, and that meta publickey is basically a key that
allows you to confirm thatyou're owning all of these
addresses, right, so you canbasically prove relatively
(29:32):
easily to an authority that allof these addresses are related
to you.
You can give them basicallyview access to your account and
then they would be able to knowthese are definitely also your
addresses.
Now I don't know if they'resophisticated enough to actually
you know like, because in theend, like is, um, pretty
(29:53):
advanced, I guess, cryptography,but um, but yeah, like it's,
you can prove it.
It's, uh, it's, in the end it'scryptography and you can prove
that's.
Also addresses are yours,without giving access to spend
from any of these addresses.
Yeah, that's.
Gramajo (30:07):
That's good to hear, because this is like my first
year of using fluid key and thenbeing like, okay, like I'm very
familiar with this from thebitcoin world because I've done
this now, like, yeah, for fivelike plus years.
Whenever they asked us in herein the us to start reporting in
2019, I think, uh, 2018, Iforget, um, but I like I've
never had to do it on theethereum side because literally
(30:28):
I just enter, you know, yeah,garahoeth, and that was it, like
that's the most I've had toworry about.
And then this year I was like,oh, I wonder how it works with
fluid key, like if it's there asimilar concept.
Moritz (30:40):
Yeah, Let me know how it goes.
Obviously, we haven't beenaround this long, so I think, um
, you know, we want to alsosupport like that's the one
thing with fluid key right, likeI think a lot of privacy tools.
You're kind of left on your ownright, like it's very um diy in
many, in many ways and and wewant to really also um innovate
(31:00):
on the user experience side ofthings, right, and so, um, yeah,
super curious to hear how itgoes when you, when you do your
taxes and you also have to add,uh, your fluid key transactions
there.
But hopefully it's all smoothyeah, I'll let you know.
Gramajo (31:15):
Taxes are due on the 15th of April, I believe, here
in the US, so I'll let you knowin the next couple of weeks, I
guess let me know.
Alright, let's take a quickbreak.
I hope you're enjoying theepisode.
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subscribers Seattle Dog McMinalscongrats on round-tripping it
(31:40):
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(32:01):
All right, let's get back to it.
Uh, privacy pools.
You know, like what?
What is actually a privacy pool?
Like I know we talked about ita couple seconds ago.
Um, yeah, what is a privacypool?
And like, how would it, howwould it work alongside?
(32:23):
Um?
yeah fluid key yeah so.
Moritz (32:28):
So maybe before explaining how privacy pool
works, let me just explain verybriefly how fluid key works, for
for context and kind of tocompare it.
So the way fluid key workstoday it's using stealth
addresses, meaning that, um,every time you receive money,
you basically receive it to anew address that isn't linked to
your public profile or thatisn't linked to any of the other
(32:48):
addresses that were generatedbefore, right?
So you have this cloud ofaddresses that aren't linked in
any way, and so you get muchbetter privacy because
somebody's sending you money.
They just send money to anempty address that isn't
connected to any of your othertransactions.
The way privacy pools work ismuch closer to something like
Tornado Cash, for example, butwith some additional safeguards
(33:11):
to basically make sure thatactors don't have such an easy
way to move money in, right?
So you basically add money intothis pool and multiple users
add funds into the same privacypool, and then you can think of
(33:32):
it almost as like a layer thatbreaks traceability, because
then on the other side, when auser moves the money out, they
put it into a new address andnobody can kind of see which
user putting the money in is theone moving the money out, they
put it into a new address andnobody can kind of see which
user putting the money in is theone moving the money out, right
, so you can't break thattraceability.
And so far that's exactly alsohow Tornado Cash works.
The only difference here isthat privacy pools have
(33:55):
safeguards so that if you know,a North Korean hacker now also
moves a billion dollars in,they're not able to basically
just mix their money with yourmoney and then move the money
out again and you have theproblem that on the other side,
obviously authorities wouldn'tknow who is the bad actor, who
(34:16):
is the good actor, and thenyou're basically part of the
problem in a way.
And I think that's what privacypools are really trying to
solve and make sure that onlyfunds that haven't been linked
to any illicit activity canbasically mix with you.
And then there's differentflavors of that.
I would say right.
So there's the more strictertypes of privacy pools where,
(34:42):
for example, veal is a goodexample on base right, where you
can only enter certain pools ifyou basically have a verified
Coinbase account and kind ofCoinbase vouchers for you in a
way, right.
And on the other side you havethe more like softer ones where,
like, maybe railgun falls into,where everybody can move money
(35:07):
in, but then there is a systemthat is, um, keeping your money
on hold for for a few hours andif it turns out, uh, you know
that money was linked to a hack,then that money will basically
be rejected and pushed out ofthe system again, and so you're
not able to mix it as well.
So it's like either kind ofmore of an allow list mode or
(35:29):
like more of a blacklist mode,depending on which type of
privacy pool you're using.
But that's kind of how they work, and in the context of FluidKey
, I think these two technologiesare actually pretty
complementary.
So the idea is okay, say youreceive a million dollars now
with FluidKey to one address,right, if you're just using
FluidKey, then you're still, youknow, spending a million
(35:51):
dollars out of one address andyou're probably going to do a
lot of different things withthat million dollars, and so you
don't get that much privacy.
Now, on the other hand, if youreceive a million dollars to a
FluidKey self-address, pass thatthrough a privacy pool and then
, on the other side, move itinto, say, a hundred different
self-addresses, right, or athousand.
(36:11):
Then you can spend from athousand unlinked self-addresses
on base on any other chain, asyou would from a normal wallet,
but someone looking at the chainwould just see a thousand
unlinked addresses that aren'tin any way connected to you.
And so I think that's kind ofthe ultimate endgame we're going
(36:32):
for with Rookie as well is kindof combining these two
technologies in that way whereyou have this UX that's very
similar to what you'd get from anormal wallet on public EVM
chains, but you also are able tobreak traceability and kind of
get better privacy, becauseunder the hood there's a privacy
pool as well helping you dothat in a very automated way.
Gramajo (36:53):
Yeah, no, that's fantastic.
Love that.
Yeah Need more of this kind ofenergy in the space.
Moritz (37:01):
Yeah, I mean we're trying to really.
So one thing I think that youknow we've tried to do from the
beginning is kind of just shipsomething and like it's not
perfect in terms of many things,but it's better than the status
quo, and kind of improve onthat gradually to something
we're really excited about.
And so, yeah, that's hopefullyby the end of this year.
(37:23):
A lot of what I kind of justillustrated is kind of live and
in production and you can use it.
That's the goal.
Gramajo (37:32):
I'd say it's working.
I mean, from the time that I'vebeen using it, like it's good,
like I like it and I know you'reintroducing like other awesome
features that we'll get into ina couple of seconds Awesome
other uh awesome features thatwe'll get into in a couple
seconds.
Um, what, uh, what else excitesyou in the privacy space?
You know, like I, it's funnybecause, like uh on farcaster, I
(37:53):
posted um like what I wasexcited for, uh in the privacy
space, like the privacy techspace, uh for this year, and it
actually did pretty well like interms of like for me, for my
relative size of like followersand stuff like that.
It did relatively well.
So it seems like people arestarting to care about?
Moritz (38:15):
what did you list?
I'm not sure if I might havemissed it, so uh here, let me
see, yeah, so I did.
Gramajo (38:24):
um, let's see 2025, the year that privacy goes
mainstream.
That's that's kind of how Istarted with.
So veil, uh, and on world aztec.
So I started with the ones thateveryone's like familiar with
and then moved into, like, uh,more niche ones that I think
more people don't know aboutDarkfy that was one Tezos
(38:47):
Sapling, so basically it's theexact same tech that we're
talking about now, but just inTezos.
So I still like Tezos and thatwhole ecosystem, nice and Paynen
, so that's the other one too.
So it's like VPN on steroids.
Basically it's the other onetoo.
So it's like, uh, vpn onsteroids.
Basically it's like the easiestway to describe it uh, and then
fluid key, as well as the otherone nice, um, yeah, so so
(39:11):
definitely agree with uh, withthe picks you you have there.
Moritz (39:15):
Um, I'd say um also quite excited to see how aztec
comes out.
I mean, they they've been at itfor a long time.
I think it's a really hardproblem they're trying to solve
and I actually recently alsospoke with the team and it seems
like they're getting closer andcloser to having something
that's also mainnet ready and soon, and I think that'll be very
(39:38):
interesting to see.
I think, in general, general,outside of that, um, there's
there's multiple teams workingon on privacy pools.
There's railgun I think is alsovery interesting one.
Honestly.
What I love about railgunhonestly is that it's live, it's
working, people can use ittoday and and uh, and yeah, I
(40:03):
would always highlight the alsoproducts that are kind of
already live and helping userstoday, so that's a big one.
I also am quite curious to seehow there's this idea of private
tokens.
(40:23):
So there's Inko, for example,that is working on this, where
you have these confidentialtokens where what you're hiding
is basically the amounts beingsent.
So it's on Ethereum or any EVMchain.
You basically can just depositfunds and then what you can do
is I send you funds in thisconfidential token and someone
(40:47):
looking on chain wouldn't knowhow much I sent you, right.
So it's a different type ofprivacy.
Again, it's not about notshowing that I've sent it to you
, but showing, basically hidingthe amount, right, and so if you
combine that with somethinglike stealth addresses and other
privacy tools, I think you getsomething that's also pretty
excited, exciting, um and so.
So that's maybe another thing.
(41:08):
Just because you didn't list itthere, that would include in
the list, um, but but overall, II think this list is, uh, it's
pretty good, yeah yeah, uh, mostrecently too, uh succinct, uh,
mostly I just like theirbranding, so yeah because I was
gonna ask are they doinganything?
(41:29):
I mean, they're obviously, youknow, very um zk focused, um
I've uh.
Yeah, I was wondering did yousee any like specific use case
that that you're excited about?
No, it's a.
It's a bad.
Gramajo (41:41):
Just just literally the branding got me, so they're
having a.
I know that's the issue.
Like you said, I think it's agood call out where it's like
some of these tools are actuallylive and they definitely
deserve, I think, credit orrecognition for that.
Like you know, this is reallyhard tech.
(42:02):
I would say, um, yeah, andyou're trying to build it like
in a consumer, yeah, like aconsumer, good, essentially.
So it's like okay, it's likedoubly hard, um, so definitely
kudos for the ones that are live, including fluid key.
Um, because you know like,sometimes you'll see these, like
you know, white papers orwhatever you want to call them,
darknet papers, and they soundfancy, they sound great, but
(42:26):
then that's the thing, andobviously some problems are
really hard to solve and ittakes more time to go live right
.
Moritz (42:33):
So I didn't mean it as a kind of this towards protocols
that need a little more time tokind of get to that stage.
But yeah, I agree, I thinkultimately it's exciting to see
also things that just work andare kind of providing value to
users today, and so I alwayslike to also highlight those.
Gramajo (42:56):
I agree with you Because I feel like with Aztec,
I feel like I've been waiting onAztec.
I want to say over a year and ahalf.
Now I feel like I think it'sbeen.
It's definitely been a while uh, yeah, and I feel like I joined
the space and I heard aboutaztec like pretty quickly, um,
because I used to be not be likeheavy in in the ethereum space.
(43:18):
Um, I used to be just like purebitcoin, pure, pure monero.
Moritz (43:23):
Yes, um, would you say you're mostly on ethereum today,
or kind of a mix between thoseI'm mostly on ethereum today.
Gramajo (43:33):
Uh, a little bit of solana, because there's like
some interesting stuff going onover there outside of like just
pumped off on, like there'sactually what excites you about
Solana?
Do you have any specific?
Yeah, I can give you an example.
So, futarki, so it's like doingdecisions based on prediction
markets.
So MetaDAO, which I'm actuallytalking to.
(43:53):
Profit.
Who's the co-founder of MetaDAO, futarki?
He didn't invent the concept,uh, or they didn't invent the
concept of, uh, food turkey, butit's uh.
Robert hansen kind of did um,but it's the live.
Again, going back to what yousaid, you know like I'm
surprised ethereum doesn't haveit like.
(44:14):
I know, uh, I'm gonna be partof the beta for optimism, uh,
with their experiment with foodand Uniswap is looking at this
too, but like it's literallylive and been live with Solana,
metadao for, I think, almost sixplus months at this stage.
You know like I even voted toput Robin Hanson on the MetaDAO
(44:38):
like board.
So that's like a really coolconcept to me, you know.
So I'm like all right, this isreally dope.
So she says like, like bored.
So that's like a really coolconcept to me, you know.
So I'm like all right, this isreally dope, um, especially
since, like, I've been gettinginto dows a lot more heavily in
the last um six months, um.
So, yeah, there's like a couplethings out there where I'm like
okay like no, I think.
Moritz (44:54):
I mean I've personally not been super active on solana
just because, yeah, I'm probablyless aware of what's happening,
but it seems like one ecosystem.
Also, just from our user base,there's quite a few users asking
when is FluidKey going to be onSolana, and so on.
So, yeah, there's definitelyoverlap and I think there's some
cool stuff happening on thatside as well.
So I need to spend more time,yeah.
Gramajo (45:16):
I mean, I've heard that it's like, at least from the
sentiment I get from Farcasterbuilders, that it can be a
little hard to develop in Solana.
Yeah, just like getting up tospeed or like the documentation,
you know like, you know it,just it's a little bit different
, maybe not as mature on thatsense, but you know there's
(45:39):
people that say that it'samazing to build on solana.
So I wouldn't know, becauseI've never done either, so I let
you guys be the judge of thatone.
But, um, yeah, I think there islike some pretty interesting
stuff going on over there whereI think, you know, people are
getting bored of the pumped upfunds, of the coins and moving
into, you know, other tech.
(46:01):
Like they seem very heavilyfocused on consumer crypto or
just like, literally theonboarding of masses, um, which
is interesting, um, because weneed the users.
Um, so, yeah, that that one is,um, yeah, that's an exciting
one.
Food turkey I like that becauseI'm noticing already like, uh,
(46:23):
you know just, people likewhales, you know like, even like
with optimism and Uniswap youknow, it's not like an NFT, but
it's like you know they have abajillion tokens and they make
the decision they themselvesessentially.
So cool stuff going on.
Yeah, I don't know if there'sanything on the privacy side
there.
Moritz (46:47):
It's a good question.
Gramajo (46:47):
I'm I'm not aware of yeah, not that I can think of
yeah, but yeah, I'm mostlyheavily on the ethereum side.
Still, most of my funds arestill in bitcoin, though, to be
honest, um, just because ofdollar cost average since back
then, like, it's hard it's hardnot to.
(47:08):
Yeah, um, I'm still prettyheavily involved in the monero
space, so like I still follow itvery heavily, still talk with a
lot of people.
Moritz (47:19):
Um some are you seeing, I guess, like one thing, looking
from the outside again I'm notsuper well like deeply looking
at it, I guess is that like itit doesn't feel like a lot is
happening, but I think maybeit's just because I'm not as um
obviously involved there,following it as closely, like
(47:40):
how you think, like how do yousee that just in terms of, um,
yeah, like kind of innovationand kind of also growth of that
that space?
Gramajo (47:49):
yeah, yeah, I would say , like, there's a ton of, there
was a ton of active developersand I think there is still a
decent amount of activedevelopers, at least on the
monero side.
Um, it definitely got hindereda little bit from the fact that,
like, uh, it started gettinglike delisted from a bunch of
exchanges.
Yeah, um, that definitely hurtit.
(48:11):
Surprisingly, it didn't hurt itfrom like, a price perspective,
uh, which is great for me, um,because that would have been
painful.
But, um, yeah, I'll tell youlike something really cool
that's going on in the Monerospace.
I don't know if you care or not, but, um, I've been really into
this whole P to I've.
I've been into P to P marketsfor a hot minute now.
(48:32):
Um, and the big one in theMonero space actually got shut
down.
Uh, or they didn't get shutdown, they kind of chose to shut
down, cause, like, it's just ahard space to build in.
Um, but a new one came up callred toe swap, um, okay, which is
like a multi six day decks forP2P transactions, and so, like I
(48:55):
can, it reminds me of the oldBitcoin P2P marketplaces where,
like, I give you cash and thenyou give me a digital coin, so
that one's like, it's like newand it's going and it's got a
lot of.
They just hit like their alltime high and um monthly
transactions, uh, between Monero, um, which is good, like good
(49:17):
volume there, um price is stable, so yeah, I suspect like it's
still going there.
They're still doing someinnovation, so like different
ring sizes to see how thatimpacts transaction speeds and
stuff like that.
Yeah, very cool, awesome, yeah,awesome.
(49:40):
Let's see Going to get close towrapping up here.
Moritz (49:44):
But, um, so I know you guys have a standalone app, um,
with kind of the launch of V2honestly, I think you know the
(50:04):
cool thing right now withFluidKey is you can either just
connect your wallet and you haveyour own self-custodial wallet
that owns the FluidKey account,or you can connect with Privy
and Farcaster basically, and soyou know it's, I think in terms
of just ease of use side ofthings, a lot of users pick also
(50:26):
that part, and the cool thingthere is that technically, I
think you could build a framepretty easily that allows you to
just open FluidKey inside ofFirecaster and connect to
FluidKey automatically, right,and I think that could be really
cool.
So we want to, we want to buildthat.
It's just been many things onthe roadmap basically at the
(50:49):
same time, so we haven't reallyhad the time to to work on that
yet.
But yeah, that's that's theplan to to also launch that in
the coming weeks.
Gramajo (51:00):
Yeah, no, no, worries, man, it was just like a thought
I had.
I was like I wonder.
I'm sure it crossed your mind.
I had a feeling it crossed yourmind so I was kind of curious.
But that's not to say you guysaren't delivering new features.
So I know you guys recentlydropped like Urn with Morpho,
which is really cool, right.
(51:20):
Yes, like earn with morpho,which is really cool, right, yes
, so it's in early access rightnow.
Moritz (51:25):
So, um, feel free to dm me if anybody uh listening as
well is interested to to test itout.
It's.
It's really exciting because Ithink most, um even the like
easier ways to earn yields todaythey will at least require you
to kind of move money into likekind of a vault, right, even if
it's in the app.
And with this feature, the wayit works is, as soon as you
(51:47):
receive USDC, if you have thisfeature enabled for your account
, you start earning yield,because, under the hood, every
Fluid Keys Stealth address is asmart account and you basically
can give us permissions to movemoney into this vault, and only
that vault and only on behalf ofyou.
So it's obviously an auditedmodule that uh, we've been
working on and kind of building.
(52:09):
But, uh, but I think that's thepower of programmable money in
the end is that you can likebuild these things that that
feel even better than what you'dget from, uh, from a neobank
account or any kind of web 2 ummodel where, yeah, you just
receive money and as soon as ithits your account, you start
earning 5 plus percent yield onit, and that's pretty cool and
(52:30):
exciting.
So, yeah, it's something we'regoing to launch officially in
the next few weeks, but alreadylive and being tested heavily by
some of our power users.
So if anybody here wants access, just DM and I'm happy to give
access.
Gramajo (52:49):
Yeah, and I know, even before this one, you guys had a
Rocketball one, right?
Moritz (52:54):
Yes, so that's also still there.
That's the one-click thing,well, like two-click thing.
So it's a bit different, right?
You still have to click thebutton and say, okay, I want to
deposit x amount of eth, andthen it shows you, okay, you,
you're, you're likely to earn xamount over the year, and so on
and so forth.
So it's still like a prettynice experience to just
understand what you're, whatyou're um, yeah, what you can
(53:17):
get out of rocket pool, um, and,and so that's still there, um.
But this is kind of almost likea v2, where a lot of that is
just happening automaticallyunder the hood.
You set it once and then,anytime you receive money, it
just automatically startsearning yield for you and, and
so I feel like, um, yeah, it'sstill more exciting because,
because every anything that evenrequires you to take one click,
(53:39):
um, you're likely not to do itall the time, because it's just
like additional friction and andso on, and you wouldn't do it.
You know you're not going todeposit um five hundred dollars
into a morpho vault to earn a um, you know, a few dollars a year
, um, and and with this it justhappens automatically and I
think that kind of compoundsover time and and is pretty cool
(53:59):
yeah, yeah, I interviewed uhinterviewed Jack from Icebreaker
and he was talking about how,like, every click is like an act
of God, you know.
Gramajo (54:09):
So if you go four clicks in, you're like you're
asking a lot from people at thatstage.
Moritz (54:15):
For sure, no for sure, and so, yeah, that's kind of
that's been our motto also withother features we've built is
kind of just reducing the amountof clicks you have to do is, I
think, a pretty good way tothink about user experience in
general.
Gramajo (54:29):
Yeah, another kind of random question, and shout out
to Papa Jams, who also talkedabout Futarki and Optimism yeah,
so I know they're also going tobe involved in that beta, which
is exciting, to bring Futarkito Ethereum.
Another kind of random questionbefore we wrap up, since, since
(54:57):
we were talking about how, oncepeople start earning money, um,
this pain point of like knowinghow much you earn or whatever
like, for me, like as asmall-time content creator, I
don't really care if someoneknows that I have like 100 bucks
that I earned from, you know,nouns or whatever, um, like it
(55:19):
doesn't mean it's not the end ofthe world for me because it's
like part-time or whatever, butlike, obviously, if I was making
like my salary, it'd be adifferent situation, especially
with, like, the proliferation ofstable coins and all that.
Have you guys thought aboutlike either partnering up with
splits or moving in thatdirection?
You know, like, because itsounds, like you said, virtual
(55:41):
accounts already exist, so, likeI can direct deposit into fluid
key, yes, and get the benefitsof all that.
Moritz (55:49):
But it seems, like, even like technically you could get.
You could, yeah, just shareyour account.
It's a virtual account so youcould share it with your
employer.
Your employer just pays you tothis bank account, right, and?
And you just receive moneythat's earning yield for you
from the first minute directlyin FluidKey.
Gramajo (56:06):
Yeah, have there been any discussions on teaming up
with them, because I feel likethey have a decent amount of
people that are runningbusinesses through there and all
that yeah yeah, I really likethe splits team.
Moritz (56:23):
Um, I also think their team's product is is really cool
.
I don't know if you've seen thatthey've been working on, um,
yeah, a product that's, uh,basically a business account on
chain, um, and uh, and yeah, so,uh, we actually also also users
of that with FluidKey, so Ireally like what they're doing,
(56:43):
I think, with splits.
Honestly, we haven't discussedthis in detail, but as far as I
know, splits basically are setat the smart contract level, and
so you have to set a specificaddress for every stream of a
split, basically, and so I guessthe downside of that is, if
(57:08):
you're a creator that is earningmoney from multiple splits,
then stealth addresses inFluidKey might make sense,
because you can create a newaddress for every split, pretty
much, and so users can alreadydo that today with with fluid
key, but then for one specifickind of split flow, um, the
money would always land in thesame stealth address, and so you
wouldn't necessarily get betterprivacy with fluid key as it is
(57:31):
today, right, um, and sosomething we want to also kind
of work on with the what I'vetold you about before around you
know, shielded pools and addingadditional layers of privacy,
but but yeah.
So so something we're we'rethinking about, but nothing,
nothing that's kind ofconcretely in the works right
now.
Awesome Cool.
Gramajo (57:52):
No, no worries, All right.
So wrapping up quick context onthis, so one.
Wrapping up quick context onthis, so one.
I've asked this question ofevery guest, so before you're
like, wait, why is this guyasking me about what I eat?
And it starts with kind of likehow the podcast used to be
called, like snacks or bites ofsnacks, peaches.
(58:15):
If you've ever been to Spain,the north of Spain, they have
tapas there called pinchos andanyways.
So, with that said, what isyour favorite?
Moritz (58:25):
snack.
So that's a good question.
I think it depends on theseason.
I would say, if in the summer Ireally like ice cream, like
just, I think that's probably mygo-to snack and I don't, I
don't think I snack a lototherwise, but I would say, in
other than that I really likechocolate as well, just like
(58:48):
hazelnut chocolate, darkchocolate, that that would be my
, my second go-to there you go.
Gramajo (58:54):
You gave a good one.
I spoke to someone and theywere like oh, I eat hummus and
carrots.
And I was like no, I know, I'mlike that.
I, I know we're all supposed tobe healthy, but like, that's
not the answer I'm looking for.
Moritz (59:07):
No, I'm trying to get.
It's not something I'm eatingevery day, but definitely that's
kind of the more um guiltysnacks I'm I'm going for yeah
yeah, well, the swiss do havegood chocolate, so I don't blame
you.
Gramajo (59:22):
Awesome, well, uh, thanks again for doing this.
I appreciate your time.
All right, if you're hearingthis message, you've made it
through the entire episode.
Thank you for that.
Before we head out, I wanted todo a cast-off question.
(59:45):
For those not familiar withcast-off, it's where I want to
hear from you, the audience.
Yeah, hit me up on Telegram orFarcaster or wherever is easiest
for you.
But this week's cast-offquestion is what do you think
about fluid key and stealthaddresses?
Are you excited about privacy?
Yeah, just let me know what youthink about privacy.
Hopefully this helped you kindof see where we need to address
(01:00:09):
some issues in the privacy space, specifically in crypto.
Yeah, so if you're listening tothis episode in another
platform other than pods, makesure to go collect this episode.
If you are on pods, make sureto subscribe from your favorite
app so you're notified when Idrop an episode, or add the Area
51 mini app on Farcaster, whichwill also do the same thing.
(01:00:29):
Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Please leave us a review onApple Podcasts or Spotify.
Please share this episode withsomeone who might be interested
in this topic.
Feel free to let me know ifyou'd like to hear specific
people for me to interview.
You can get in touch with mevia the text in the show notes
or on social media.
I've added links below and aswe approach episode 25, I'll be
(01:00:52):
doing a really cool POAP, sojust make sure to stick around
for that.
All right, until next time, seeyou stick around for that.
Moritz (01:01:27):
Um all, right until next time.
See you free audio postproduction.
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