- Daniel Finley
- February 23, 2023
- 5:26 am
- 0 comments
Welcome to the Proof of Privacy Podcast
With Sam Harrison
Welcome to the proof of privacy podcast with Discreet Labs CEO, Sam Harrison! Join Sam as he takes a close look at our relationship with privacy by talking to industry leaders in Web3 and beyond.
You’ll be able to listen on your usual podcast platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Pandora, and soon Findora’s YouTube. Follow Findora on Twitter to hear the latest and get notable clips.
Not every episode will be Findora-related, and there are many projects working on privacy. Sam’s goal isn’t only to promote the work Findora is doing but also to change our mindsets so that, in the future, many more people will simply #ExpectPrivacy.
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What’s the Big Deal About Privacy?
Privacy is complicated. It means different things to different people and calls to mind many different applications and connotations.
Those reactions are precisely what Sam is exploring.
Without meaning to be alarmist, privacy nowadays is in crisis. As a concept, it has been so maligned that it is almost a point against you to even WANT privacy.
Privacy is essential to establishing who we are and our forming relationships.
But privacy is essential to establishing who we are and our forming relationships. It gives us personal autonomy. It lets us shape our connections with the people and businesses around us. It gives us choice.
Why should we be ashamed of valuing it?
The answer to this crisis in privacy isn’t to turn to dommerism or quiet acquiescence. It’s to turn to SciFi
Optimism And Grit are Better Than Doom and Gloom
A lot of SciFi is dystopian. But a lot of sci-fi, even when set in an apocalyptic world, casts a hopeful message for the future. It shows how the human spirit, through ingenuity, through persistence, through teamwork, and mutual assistance, can overcome impossible odds. We invent. We find a way.
That’s the spirit Sam seeks to capture in the Proof of Privacy podcast.
Thanks to Web3, Privacy is possible.
Sam’s mission is to talk to even just one person and convince him or her that privacy matters. To convince them that they need to expect privacy in their products and services, and to show that, thanks to Web3, privacy is possible.
Being a futurist means understanding the past because you can only control where you’re headed if you know where you’ve come from. Let’s look at the patterns that got us to this point.
Where We’ve Come From, Where We’re Going
In the early days of digital existence – what many refer to as “Web1” – our experience was defined by our ability to gather information faster. The “Information Superhighway” it was called. This was the “read” era of the web.
The next phase of digital existence has been referred to as Web2.
We became “Creators” as much as consumers. We contribute our social connections, we rank news articles, we publish our personal preferences. Facebook and Reddit used this data to become some of the most powerful organizations in the world, organizations capable of changing the course of elections, hiding atrocities, and becoming the effective arbiters of what opinions are acceptable in public and which aren’t.
The meta-pattern or new technology is pretty consistent: it allows new powers to be concentrated in the hands of the few who first understand that technology. In Web2 we became serfs; we worked on others’ platforms and owned nothing of what we produced.
Web1 – Read
Web2 – Write
Web3 – Own
But humans have a remarkable capacity to break the ironclad patterns of history. Web3 gives us the chance to break this pattern in digital tech.
Web3 helps us take ownership of our data and our creations. In the Web3 era, we can start “owning” our internet without third-party permission or verification thanks to blockchain technology.
The Link Between Autonomy And Relationships
Privacy links two concepts that many people think are contradictory: individual autonomy and relationships. Privacy links these two by letting you own your data and choose how much of yourself to share. What do does that look like?
Privacy let’s you choose how much of yourself to share.
The person you are when you are with your significant other is not the same person you are with your parents, or at the office, or at the pub. You choose what information to share and – more importantly – what information to hold back.
There are degrees of intimacy. Every person and every entity deserves a different amount of YOU, a different side. You get to decide where those boundaries lie.
It is this authority to dictate what relationships you have that makes you an autonomous person. And it is the ability to determine those boundaries which allows you to establish relationships. Privacy, the idea of controlling what you reveal or choose not to reveal, is what makes both autonomy and relationships possible.
That is why having an organization hoover up your personal details that you have not shared and selling them to the highest bidder is so offensive. It creates a relationship that we don’t know about and probably don’t want.
A SciFi Deus Ex Machina
But how does blockchain offer us more privacy? How does it allow us to own and control our data and relationships? After all, blockchain is built to be transparent from the bottom up – how can it protect our privacy?
The answer is through Zero-knowledge proofs.
It really is hard to overstate how miraculous zero-knowledge technology is. It enables us to verify the accuracy of a block of data without ever SEEING the data itself. It’s like having a superpower that lets you prove to the bouncer you are 21 without showing your ID – and proving it in such a way that he was 100% convinced without needing to trust you.
Zero-knowledge Proofs are the Deus Ex Machina that saves the day in a SciFi film.
It’s the Deus Ex Machina that saves the day in a SciFi film.
But just because it exists doesn’t mean it will be used. And that is why Sam started this podcast. It’s not just so he can talk to interesting people – it’s so that he can help us all come to #ExpectPrivacy.
Building Proof Of Privacy Into Our Lives
Projects like Findora are important because they are intentionally building privacy into our lives using innovation. Just like CEXes need proof or reserves, and chains need Proof of Stake or Proof of Work, our online existence needs to have Proof of Privacy.
How can innovation change our relationship to data to be more healthy and constructive? We are entering an era of new possibilities, and it’s important to be excited about what we can build by working together. Be sure to follow the podcast below to stay up-to-date!
About Findora
Findora builds privacy through advanced zero-knowledge proof cryptography. An innovative layer-1, it combines a native UTXO ledger optimized for privacy with an EVM extension for programmability and interoperability. Developers can leverage either model as they build dApps with auditable privacy.
We appreciate our developers and would love to onboard you to the Findora ecosystem. Please reach out, and join our social channels for more.
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