When Vitalik Buterin buys a memecoin to try your consumer zk social app, you know you’re onto something.

Kartik Patel (aka @slokh) joins ZEROPOD to talk about Anoncast— the ZK-powered app that lets you post anonymously and trustlessly to Farcaster and Twitter/X from a web interface at anoncast.org.

From hacking RuneScape mods as a kid to pulling endless hours at OpenSea during peak NFT chaos, Kartik shares his journey, the lore behind $ANON, and why he thinks ZK privacy is the future. Along the way: why Farcaster is the Silicon Valley of crypto, how he learned ZK programming from scratch in three weeks, and how "lore-first, product-second" might just be the future of bootstrapping.

Join us to learn all about the cracked dev who made it possible to speak your mind on the internet, without a trace.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - When Vitalik tries your app

01:09 - ZEROPOD Intro

01:26 - Anon, A-non, Tomato, tomahto.03:13 - Young Kartik

04:00 - Hacking game mods

05:00 - Happy in his space (software developing)

07:13 - From defi protocols to NFTs

07:33 - Joined Opensea

08:13 - Working at Opens during peak NFT bull

09:33 - Working at Manifold and then striking out on his own

10:28 - Solo hacking

11:25 - Why was he attracted to building on Farcaster

12:13 - Better Farcaster branding

13:40 - Similar problems to Ethereum

15:13 - Building Nook farcaster client

18:23 - A Kartik Primer on the ANON Lore

21:51 - Kartik wasn’t even involved in ANON until after the CTO

23:00 - How the anoncast idea came to be

24:49 - New paradigm of products coming downstream of communities

27:13 - Why he wanted to build anoncast

28:16 - Vitalik buying $ANON and trying anoncast

29:40 - How does ZK privacy work?

31:18 - Why is ZK privacy important?

32:55 - How does anoncast work?

36:00 - The future of what curation could look like on anoncast… ZK-anon reddit?

38:00 - Favourite feature shipped on anoncast so far

41:00 - Learning ZK on the go

42:00 - Best use cases for anoncast? (Alpha?)

43:30 - How can people contribute to the project?

44:00 - Best place to learn how to use anoncast?

44:44 - What is he most excited about?

47:00 - Just build, have fun and differentiate

47:30 - What is the sloth backstory

48:00 - Outro

Podcast recorded by Toady Hawk, edited by Toady Hawk and Santhosh. Hosted by Toady Hawk. Music by Toady Hawk, SuperTightWoody & Suno AI.

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