Sean Bowe and Jack Grigg: Encrypted Money at Planetary Scale

Sean Bowe and Jack Grigg aka str4d are both cryptographic engineers working on the Zcash protocol. Sean’s latest project is Tachyon, intended to bring encrypted money into the hands of 8 billion people. Topics we discuss are well captured by the timestamps below.Watch on YouTube or X. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Follow me on X for updates on future episodes.Timestamps0:00 - Project Tachyon10:20 - Privacy can’t be an afterthought for a protocol15:24 - Encrypted Bitcoin22:11 - Soundness bug in original sprout pool30:15 - Sapling33:00 - A decade of progress39:04 - Zcash’s anonymity set51:29 - Using private money as a passthrough doesn’t work56:04 - The importance of ledger indistinguishability58:30 - The ultimate privacy stack1:05:58 - Tachyon removes all cryptographic bottlenecks of encrypted money1:08:16 - What’s next after Tachyon?1:15:25 - Weightless blockchains?1:18:24 - Ragu1:19:44 - What the next 12 months look like for Jack and Sean1:31:22 - “Everything worth doing is worth doing on ambitious timelines.” — Sean1:32:16 - Sean’s advice for young engineers1:34:18 - What got Sean and Jack into Zcash? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.arjunkhemani.com