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.

Timestamps

0:00 - Project Tachyon

10:20 - Privacy can’t be an afterthought for a protocol

15:24 - Encrypted Bitcoin

22:11 - Soundness bug in original sprout pool

30:15 - Sapling

33:00 - A decade of progress

39:04 - Zcash’s anonymity set

51:29 - Using private money as a passthrough doesn’t work