Sean Bowe is a cryptographer and engineer who is best known for revolutionizing Zcash. After cooperating to fix the inflation bug in the first version of the network, he built Halo to remove the trusted setup – basically obliterating the main reason why Bitcoin did not activate the Zerocash soft fork in 2013.

More recently, Sean Bowe announced project Tachyon: an ambitious initiative to scale ZK SNARKs (the technology enabling shielded transactions) to billions of users.

Time stamps:

00:01:19 - Sean Bowe's Work on Zcash and Hidden Inflation Bug Fix

00:01:36 - Introduction to Halo and Halo 2: Eliminating Trusted Setup

00:01:51 - Overview of Project Tachyon for Scaling ZK-SNARKs

00:02:43 - Zcash Price Pump and Dance Celebration

00:04:48 - Using Zcash for Encrypted Messages via Zashi Wallet

00:05:42 - Comparing Zcash Messaging to Signal

00:07:17 - Sean Bowe's Early Involvement in Zcash and Bitcoin

00:10:34 - Sean Bowe's Age and Start in Cryptography at 21

00:11:13 - Discovering Bitcoin in 2011 and Privacy Needs

00:13:42 - Contributing to BIP 39 with Slush and Trezor

00:14:19 - Realizing Bitcoin's Lack of Privacy

00:17:50 - Privacy vs. Deniability in Bitcoin and Banks

00:20:23 - Wasabi Wallet and CoinJoins Limitations

00:21:46 - Optional Privacy in Zcash and Wallet Defaults

00:23:16 - Viewer Question: Source of Sean Bowe's Smartness

00:24:47 - Viewer Question: Ideas from Scaling Bottlenecks

00:27:09 - Viewer Quote from Oscar Wilde on Privacy

00:28:07 - Viewer Question: Zcash Network State Meaning

00:30:00 - Viewer Question: Timeline for Tachyon Success

00:33:15 - Chronological Approach to Interview and Tachyon

00:37:33 - Differences Between Zerocoin (Firo) and Zerocash (Zcash)

00:39:55 - Greg Maxwell's CoinJoin and Zerocoin Views

00:42:57 - Moon Math and Cryptographic Assumptions

00:46:33 - Sponsor: Citrea ZK Rollup with BitVM

00:47:19 - Sponsor: Layer2 Labs ZSide Drive Chain

00:49:01 - Sponsor: Bitcoin.com News

00:50:16 - Zcash Leads Crypto Rally News

00:58:49 - Bitcoin's Constraints and Creativity like BitVM

01:05:00 - Zcash Contributors and Zebra Rust Node

01:14:00 - Friendly Forks in Zcash

01:31:00 - Monero Hater Comments and Zcash Anonymity

02:23:00 - Superhero Backstory Tease

02:26:14 - Bitcoin Talk Username and Early ASIC Mining

02:28:35 - Pessimism on Bitcoin Development Speed

02:50:41 - Shielded Zcash Dust Problem

02:52:11 - Quantum Resistance and Self-Transfers

02:53:00 - Long-Term Storage Pool for Quantum Safety

02:54:56 - Avalanche Pre-Consensus like eCash

02:55:04 - Tachyon and Oblivious Synchronization

02:58:56 - Scaling to Billions: Math and No Bottlenecks

03:02:12 - Solving Privacy-Scaling Trilemma

03:04:51 - Off-Chain Secrets and Payment Protocols

03:06:24 - Tachyon as New Privacy Pool

03:12:56 - Wallet Syncing with Tachyon Servers

03:14:50 - Shielded Aggregation in Tachyon

03:17:00 - Tachyon Team Size and Hiring Rust Engineers

03:18:41 - ETA for Tachyon: Next Year

03:23:15 - Greg Maxwell Paper Citation Story

03:25:11 - Explaining ZK-SNARKs to Polkadot Cryptographers

03:31:01 - Zcash Governance and No Benevolent Dictator

03:35:06 - Memos Bloating Blockchain and Anonymity Boost

03:38:06 - Zcash Compatibility with Bitcoin Privacy

03:39:01 - Following Sean Bowe: X Account and Blog