In this episode of Unshielded: A Blockchain & Data Podcast by Midnight, host Jason Schober is joined by Alex McFarlane, Co-founder and CEO of Keyring Network, to reveal how establishing trust in blockchain tech addresses the real risks keeping institutions out of DeFi.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to reframe privacy as selective disclosure rather than hiding behavior
• Why smart contract and governance risk, not privacy alone, are the primary barriers
• The difference between transparency and trust
• How to build a killer UX that makes privacy adoption inevitable
• Why the lottery paradox reveals crowdsourced wisdom in DeFi protocol design
• How fixed-income primitives will dominate 2026
  
  

Alex McFarlane is the Co-founder and CEO of Keyring Network, a privacy-focused infrastructure company that bridges traditional finance and decentralized finance. With a quant background spanning risk, fixed income structuring and trading strategies at Nomura, Alex brings a unique perspective to blockchain adoption. At Keyring, he addresses the governance and smart contract risks that prevent traditional financial institutions from confidently participating in DeFi, leveraging zero-knowledge technology to enable selective disclosure and rational privacy.

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Episode Resources:

• Alex McFarlane on LinkedIn
• Keyring Network Website
• Jason Schober on LinkedIn
• Midnight Foundation Website

This episode is brought to you by Midnight.


To learn more about the Midnight Network, visit the website at https://midnight.network/
Join the Midnight Discord: https://discord.com/invite/midnightnetwork


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