Behind The Screen with Gramajo
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Behind The Screen with Gramajo
Why Your Wallet Address Shouldn't Tell Your Whole Story
Does privacy on the blockchain matter if you have nothing to hide? This provocative question launches our deep dive with Moritz, co-founder of FluidKey, into the world of privacy-preserving technologies in cryptocurrency.
Moritz shares how his journey began while living abroad in Africa, witnessing firsthand how cryptocurrencies could solve real problems in countries where traditional financial systems falter. This experience, combined with his own frustrations managing multiple wallets to protect his privacy, led to the creation of FluidKey – a smart wallet that uses stealth addresses to shield users' financial activities without sacrificing regulatory compliance.
The privacy paradox of public blockchains becomes startlingly clear when we explore real-world scenarios. Your ENS domain or wallet address essentially becomes a transparent window into your entire financial life – revealing every transaction, every payment received, and every financial decision you make. For professionals receiving income on-chain, this creates an unprecedented level of exposure that would be unthinkable in traditional finance. FluidKey's approach tackles this problem by generating new, unlinked addresses for each transaction, preventing the aggregation of financial data that compromises privacy.
We venture into the fascinating technical landscape of privacy-enhancing technologies, exploring how stealth addresses work alongside emerging innovations like privacy pools. Unlike controversial mixers of the past, these new technologies incorporate safeguards to prevent illicit use while still protecting legitimate users. Moritz explains how combining these approaches creates a powerful privacy toolkit that feels as seamless as using a conventional wallet but with significantly enhanced protection.
The conversation culminates with a glimpse into FluidKey's latest innovations, including an auto-yield feature that automatically earns interest the moment funds hit your account – demonstrating how privacy-focused tools can actually deliver superior user experiences compared to their non-private counterparts.
Whether you're a privacy advocate, a crypto professional concerned about financial exposure, or simply curious about the future direction of blockchain technology, this episode offers valuable insights into how we can build a more private yet compliant digital financial ecosystem. Try FluidKey today and experience the peace of mind that comes with controlling your financial privacy.
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Free audio post-production by Alphoniccom Funds that say the Bybit hack. Now, for example, right Like, say, the hacker tries to put the money into a railgun or a privacy pool. The idea is that before the money can be taken out again into a new address, there's a buffer period where, under certain rules, the money can basically be kicked out again and make sure it doesn't taint that pool, right, and so honest users can use the pool without any issues and basically get great privacy.
Gramajo:But you also make sure that you're not supporting a North Korean hacker in laundering their money yo, welcome back to another episode of behind the Screen with Grimajo, the podcast where we unravel the untold stories of the best on-chain builders and creators. I'm your host, grimajo, an average crypto enthusiast that's been in the space since 2012. Yeah, welcome back to another episode, approaching episode 25, which I'm super stoked for. This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Moritz from the FluidKey team.
Gramajo:Fluidkey is a privacy preserving wallet and really it's a tool that you could use to kind of preserve your privacy online. A lot of the blockchains that we use are public, so anyone can really do some pretty deep analysis. That's how ZaxxBT stays in business and chain analysis and a couple other companies. So, yeah, it's all public unless you're using a private blockchain. So FluidKey is a tool that kind of helps you just keep a little bit of privacy and I, uh, people say like, well, why do I need privacy? I have nothing to hide. Um, and yeah, we kind of touch on a little bit of everything on this episode regarding privacy and I'm a big privacy advocate, so very excited for this episode. Yeah, hope you enjoy it.
Gramajo:See you, yeah, who is Moritz, and we can go kind of from there. Like you know what is FluidKey If that's not familiar with it.
Moritz:Yeah, happy to tell you a bit more about myself and kind of how I got started with FluidKey. So, yeah, I've been actively using crypto already for a pretty long time, but FluidKey is actually the first um startup I'm founded in the space. I was seeing where I was creating all these different addresses to not tie all of my actions on chain to one specific address, not because I have something to hide, necessarily, but more so because I don't want everybody sending me to crypto or just looking up my ENS to um, everything I'm doing on chain right. And so, um, that's how I I kind of started thinking about, uh, about fluid key, learned about stealth addresses, which um vitalik wrote a post about early 2023, I think, um, and and started just writing down, uh, an idea of combining stealth addresses with smart accounts to basically provide better privacy without as much friction as you'd get from other privacy protocols. So the idea is to use smart accounts to do gas sponsorship and a lot of stuff where, in the end, this all feels like a normal wallet but you get better privacy. So I wrote about this and actually posted about this on Farcaster and my now co founder actually reached out and we kind of connected on Farcaster at the time, and that was around the time EVE Global was coming up in Paris, and so we decided to kind of hack on a prototype together in Paris and that went really really well and we also really enjoyed working together, and so a lot of people were actually excited about a simple way to get better privacy on chain, and so that's kind of how we got started with FluidKey.
Moritz:Maybe to also tell you a little bit more about my personal background before working on FluidKey I was working in digital media. I was based in Africa and different countries. I was based in Kenya, nigeria, ghana and, I think, just living there, and you know, obviously, seeing also how the currencies devaluate, how a lot of things just don't work, as well as in maybe, uh, maybe europe or the us. Um, I just saw a huge use case for crypto that was already helping me in my personal life, but also, um, just seemed like the the right tech to to tackle these issues long term, and so that's how I kind of just got started and got nerd sniped by crypto as well.
Gramajo:I love that. Yeah, I remember when you were telling me you were working in Africa, I was like whoa, that's like a. I don't think many people go out there to work. I know some people go out there to like yeah, or like explore it, but not like to go work there, you know.
Moritz:No, for sure. I mean it kind of also it never was like it kind of happened randomly. I, I just um got introduced to a company, to the company I then worked for through a friend, and um started with a like short-term, kind of three-month uh gig and from there I got offered a, an opportunity to just, you know, join long term. And I was, you know, I was in my early 20s and I was like, yeah, let's just do it, let's see what this is like. And yeah, in the end I spent eight years with the company. So that was a good time for sure.
Gramajo:Yeah, that's quite some time, actually, eight years. Well, I think like maybe in other countries it's more common to stay with your company for a lot longer, but at least here, like in the silicon valley or like in the bay area or the us, like eight years with the company is like yeah, no, for sure it wasn't.
Moritz:it wasn't my intent initially and but I kind of started right out of my um. Basically after university I just started with the company and kind of gradually got more and more responsibility and so ultimately was leading the company as CEO, and so I think just that kind of momentum and being able to also grow within the company helped me stay that long. I think otherwise I probably wouldn't have stuck around that long. But yeah, it was a good time awesome, um, no, I, I think.
Gramajo:Going back to to fluid key, so, uh, you know, I've been in cryptosis uh, late 2012, early 2013, probably early 2013, maybe like the the actual start date, you know um, and as a long time like bitcoin user like I. When I first saw fluid key, I was like, oh, this is amazing. I know exactly like what this is trying to solve for, and it's actually like one of like, uh, I'm pretty passionate about when it comes to privacy. Um, again, not because there's anything, like you know, illegal or mischievous going on. It's just like, um, I don't know like everything's like a public blockchain right now.
Moritz:So I mean, yeah, it's like a step back, even compared to web 2 solutions.
Gramajo:If everything's just visible for everyone, right like yeah, exactly, you know, like I always found it weird, um, I always found it weird that, like the government was like opposed to it. I'm like dude, this is literally like, if you're a surveillance state, like a public blockchain is literally like the perfect thing for you. Like I would march towards that as fast as I can, because you can now surveil, like surveillance people, like even better than than the current system that you have now with cash or whatever. Um, anyways, that's my, my tinfoil thing. But, uh, you know, um, so I feel like privacy is always kind of thought of like way too late. So, like you see this happen a lot with um, like especially with, like pumpfun and like solana so solana is also a public blockchain. Like people will launch a, launch a blockchain, uh a coin, and then you know they have like a couple million or a couple hundred thousand, whatever value is, and then you're like, oh crap, now I need privacy.
Moritz:You know, like now everybody knows yeah, and, to be honest, that was also kind of my journey, right, like I think most people, when they start using crypto, they, you know it's not the first thing you care about and I think it's also not the first thing you kind of understand exactly how it works, right, like, if you don't understand the tech yet, you're like okay, I have this address and I'm going to receive some funds. It's not very clear that everybody can see this as well, right? And so you start learning about how this works and you start also having more significant amounts of of money on chain and and I think that's when most people start thinking about privacy, really because, um, yeah, it's, it's definitely not. Uh, you don't want to expose your whole financial history. If you can Google the ENS and then see everything you've done, it's not.
Gramajo:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do you? Because I feel like, at least on the Farcaster ecosystem, there's systems in place where people are building systems of like reputation and obviously, like the more transaction history you have, um, yeah, the higher your reputation score could be. So, like, how do you think we shift that mindset of like making privacy a default?
Moritz:um question, while juggling that I would say, you know, like yeah, I think it really, you know, I think it really depends on the use case and on um, what, uh, what a certain product is trying to achieve. And so I'm not like a you know privacy maxi in the sense of, like, um, you know, I think some things like on farcast only work because they're not private, right, and there's some public data and you can kind of compose that data and do a lot of stuff with that. And I think if it's like social stuff like who do you follow on Farcaster and you know reputation scores and so on, I think those can also be really useful and unlock really cool things. So I'm not, like you know, necessarily opposed to those and unlock really cool things. So I'm not, like you know, necessarily opposed to those.
Moritz:But yeah, I think it is a problem where then you know you have a wallet that is connected to your Farcaster account and say you now start earning significant amounts, you probably want a way to, you know, keep this private and not have everything connected to your Farcaster account as well. And so I think, ideally, it's just more of giving users a better choice and better defaults where they can have their private funds, where they receive and send money, and that's what we're focused on with FluidKey. But then I also have the Farcaster wallet, for example, and I actually find it pretty cool to be able to earn rewards and kind of participate in this on-chain economy as well. Um and uh and yeah, I don't think both like. I think there's a future where both kind of work together, and it's not necessarily either or um, but uh, but yeah, it's a. It's interesting to see how that evolves. For sure, agreed.
Gramajo:Yeah, and I think we're already seeing a little bit of it too, where at least a lot of people that I talk to already use more than one wallet. So they'll use a system of a hot wallet, a cold wallet and if you're really geeky, you'll do a warm wallet, like in between.
Moritz:Yeah, um I guess the problem with that is like, I mean, as soon as there's multiple transactions between your, say, public wallet and that wallet, it's kind of over right from a privacy perspective. You're you've kind of leaked it. I think if it's just one transaction, you never know if it's your wallet or you just send funds to somebody else and so on and so forth. But yeah, that's kind of what we're working on really with FluidKey is that cold wallet part and the part where you're maybe receiving bigger amounts and storing funds and so on. Also just being able to have better privacy defaults on that side. That's really what we're trying to focus on.
Gramajo:Yeah, no, these are all things. I feel like if you've been in the BTC space for a hot minute, you're familiar with UTXOs or whatever, and the same concept that you're saying, which is like if you start sending it back and forth, then it's like the probability that you own both of those wallets, is like people can see that very quickly and very easily, versus if you do one time, then it's debatable, I guess.
Moritz:Yeah, and so the other thing is like so say, you have like this forecaster public wallet and you're totally fine with it being public, and then you have your like other wallet, right, and um, if you now send money from the other wallet to this forecaster wallet multiple times, I mean what most people would check is they they check your forecaster wallet on ether scan, they check the last you know address that funded it, and then they will basically see that this address has all of your transaction history basically all combined in one place, right, and if you use, as you said, either UTXOs or stealth addresses, in the case of FluidKey, even if one of your addresses is now doxxed, it would just be one address that has a very limited subset of your entire financial history, versus like disclosing everything in one click. Pretty much right, and so, yeah, I think that's kind of the approach we've had so far. I think it's also going to be interesting to now try to, you know, add additional privacy layers to that, because it's definitely not perfect privacy yet, right?
Gramajo:um, and so that's something we're also trying to explore this year yeah, I feel what the growth of like, the growth and maturity of like zk also helps with some of this stuff like. So, going back to like the reputation thing, you thing you could still be private but also, through ZK, prove whatever it is that you're trying to prove. If you're like, hey, I am a real human, but I want to show you my passport, I can use ZK to do that. Or if you were like, hey, I want to show ownership of this wallet so I can, you know, claim the social credit score without like fully linking it Like that's another way. So I feel like, as like ZK gets more mature, then I think we're going to see a lot more like good use cases.
Moritz:Yeah 100%, no, that's for sure. Good use cases yeah, 100%, no, that's for sure. And I think, especially when it comes to like, yeah, personal data, it makes a lot of sense to use ZK to kind of, you know, prove things without showing more. I think then, obviously, like, the tech might go faster than regulations as well in many cases, right. So, for example, if you want to honor or off-ramp money, in many cases, right. So, for example, um, if you want to honor off-ramp money, in many cases you still need to kyc, and while you could technically kyc with zk and just prove like, okay, I'm an american citizen and I'm over 18 years old, for example, um, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be legally valid today, right yeah, and so that's the other, um think, really hard part, because it takes time usually to shift laws and kind of shift things on that level.
Gramajo:Yeah, I guess going back, going a little bit to the regulatory compliance that you brought up, is like, at least for me, this is kind of what I've been seeing, which is like privacy has been essentially like just gotten hammered, like, except for like recent history, like I'd say, in the last two months, where, like tornado cash, like people, the devs, like they got out, um, we still need to free the samurai does, which is a bitcoin, uh stealth address technology as well, but, um, yeah, for a hot minute, like it was looking bad, like they delisted monero, they were going after zcash, like it looked like privacy was kind of just like in shambles, to be quite honest, yeah, um, yeah, how do you like, uh, do you see a world where we can have privacy and compliance at the same time a little bit, or is that so?
Moritz:I do, definitely. I definitely I know that we can have better privacy and compliance, right like the privacy, because today you have like literally no privacy and I think, um, there is a a middle ground where you can definitely have both compliance and privacy, and we've been kind of trying to find that right middle ground. I also think that ultimately, there's a lot of tech problems that are being solved now that will make it easier to have even better privacy with compliance. So I don't know if you've heard of privacy pools, for example, and also systems like Railgun already today, which have also ZK-based systems in place to make sure that funds that say, the Bybit hack now, for example, right Like, say, the hacker tries to put the money into Railgun or a privacy pool.
Moritz:The idea is that before the money can be taken out again into a new address, there's a buffer period where, under certain rules, the money can basically be kicked out again and make sure it doesn't taint that pool, right, and so honest users can use the pool without any issues and basically get great privacy. But you also make sure that you're not supporting a North Korean hacker in laundering their money. I don't know maxi privacy world, where just everything is private and bad actors have the same privacy as everybody else, but where, with the right tech, we can actually also screen out bad actors but still get really, really strong privacy for everybody else, right? And I think that's kind of the scenario that I'd like to see and, yeah, I'm quite hopeful that, especially in the ethereum ecosystem, this is where we are headed yeah, yeah, exactly, it's almost like.
Gramajo:You know, some privacy is better than no privacy at all. You know, like it because, like it seems like right now, like the, the government, like reaction is because this person could use it like a bad actor, that everyone is like a bad actor and it should be.
Moritz:You know like oh, and I also think, like a lot of people kind of you know, talking about this, and there's also a problem around just like educating um decision makers and educating people that, um, you know, in the end can can decide about laws and and kind of judge over these things, how these things work and and like what is possible, right, because I feel like sometimes it's also, um, yeah, it feels like they're not really understanding how this works and um, understanding really, like you know, once tornado cash is on-chain, you can't do anything about it, right, it's there, right, and so also better understanding that, I think, will happen with time, but it's definitely a process.
Gramajo:Yeah, and I'm seeing glimmers of hope. So, like Ross Albrecht getting out tornado cash, like you know they're, they're making some progress. Um, what else? Uh, coinbase like, which is really big central exchange, at least here in the us. Like they're, you know they supported or listed veil cash, which is cool.
Moritz:Um, they just acquired a privacy centric company, like yesterday yeah, so that's yeah, so it it seems like well I think they're all realizing as well that, like, if, if the goal here is to really replace the kind of old financial system you do need better privacy than you get today right, like there's no way around it, there's no way you can build like a financial system on a public ledger where everybody can see everyone's transactions, I think, yeah, yeah.
Gramajo:I think we covered a little bit of how the regulatory frameworks can evolve to satisfy regulators and privacy, which is good. I know you did an interview with Freedom Factory which I'll link down for people as well so they can go listen to that. I wanted to go over this scenario about how not just when you first come into the ecosystem, you're kind of everything's like new, new. So you're like, hey, like I'm, you know, I got an ens and I'm doing everything from one wallet and you know, and things kind of change as like the longer you're on chain. Um, but I wanted to touch a little bit because I was using fluid key a little bit in this way, which was like for conducting business or receiving kind of income on chain. I wanted to go after that scenario a little bit like a casual user versus like someone.
Moritz:Once they start earning income on chain and why they would consider why that's like the trigger that gets them to be like, oh, I need more privacy, you know no, I think it's just because I think, if you're, if you're just, you know, on the kind of fun side of of crypto which is like, oh, you're on forecaster and maybe you're collecting some nfts and so on, I think they're like, in a way, it kind of makes sense for these things to be public and and you kind of get a lot out of it as well. Right, you might get, um, rewards and and airdrops and other things as well through having a public address and and ultimately, like, everything you're doing is kind of something very social. So, um, you almost want it to be public, right, but then I think, when it comes to you know, just earning income, that's not something that you necessarily want everybody to know. How much you're earning every month, who's paying you, what you're doing and yeah, and basically connecting. I think these are basically two very different use cases, and what we're seeing with fluid key is definitely, um, most users coming for the the latter. So so, people, um, that are either getting paid on chain or users that are basically earning money on chain.
Moritz:Sometimes it's also just about okay, I want to, you know, buy a relatively big amount of a certain token.
Moritz:I don't want to do this from my public address. Um, if this token now you know like really also increases in value, I don't want this to be like connected to my public address and basically be also possibly targeted by by people, um and so. So, yeah, that's where privacy, I think, makes a lot of sense, and those very practical use cases where we're seeing most of you, our users, also come to to fluid key and use fluid key for that, and, and we've been really also building in that direction, right. So, um, you know, adding things like being able to receive and send bank payments as well directly into your fluid key account, all of that kind of goes really into the use case of earning money, spending money and and just kind of growing your, your assets on chain, and I think that's the. That's where we're also seeing demand for privacy, right, like, I don't think there's as much demand on the like more fun side of things for now. Um, that might change as well, but, yeah, that's where wouldn't be that hard of a pattern to even identify.
Gramajo:You have two problems. You have the problem of people can see now like the company, like how much like they have in there. Um, obviously, companies now are like we're we're reaching a certain stage for on-chain companies, uh of all sizes, where you know they have like an operating account, a treasury account, kind of like multiple accounts, kind of like in the regular traditional financial world. But if they didn't, they had all in one account and that was the same account sending the funds. I mean you can hypothetically see like how much they have in their yeah, exactly, I mean their checking account essentially exactly.
Moritz:or like, say, you're a freelancer and you have multiple clients, you can see like everybody paying, you can see who else is paying you, how much they're paying you, how much you make every month and so on, and yeah, it's just like I don't think that's helpful for you.
Gramajo:So yeah, yeah. And then for the user, like you know, they can also see like, hey, this person gets you know 1500 usdc bi-weekly, exactly. And then what they do with that after I think that's what people forget is like, it's well, it's the same account. And um, immediately after that they could see like, okay, this person bought, you know, 40 of their funds were used to buy pumped out fund tokens. Yep, 30 was used to like I don't even know, go do something else. And then, yeah, like you just see all that stuff and you can see it, and all you need is like a zac xbt or a bulb maps kind of tool to be like oh, I know exactly what this person is doing on chain exactly.
Moritz:Um, I don't even think in this case you need any zac xbt or anything you know kind of at that level. Most times it's just like two clicks away on Etherscan right. It's really really easy to see everything someone is doing and yeah, it's just not great.
Gramajo:Kind of a random question then. So, like I'm used to, at least in bitcoin, where when I'm using um, like software to track like taxes, essentially like I'm trying to like solve the issue of, like you know, taxes and me having to, you know, enter things automatically. So, um, for those not familiar essentially like um, most bitcoin software nowadays only lets you use an address once like, and then they move on to the next one for the deviation or derivation I forget the word, but uh, deviation, uh of your wallet, um, and so when you want to actually track your purchases or how you're spending BTC, you essentially need like a root, so like an XPUB key. For those that are like nerdy enough, is there such of equivalent with fluid key? Or how would you use like those Like, how would I report like my taxes, like in a simple way.
Moritz:So two things. So first, even if you don't know exactly how this works technically, it's pretty easy to report your taxes with fluid key because you can just export your transactions and we're already putting it into a format that works on tools like coin tracker, for example. So just press a button, export all of your transactions in a twist dsv file and then you can upload that to a contractor, for example, if that's what you're using to make taxes. But there is also the concept of basically a public, meta public key, and that meta public key is basically a key that allows you to confirm that you're owning all of these addresses, right, so you can basically prove relatively easily to an authority that all of these addresses are related to you. You can give them basically view access to your account and then they would be able to know these are definitely also your addresses.
Moritz:Now I don't know if they're sophisticated enough to actually you know like, because in the end, like is, um, pretty advanced, I guess, cryptography, but um, but yeah, like it's, you can prove it. It's, uh, it's, in the end it's cryptography and you can prove that's. Also addresses are yours, without giving access to spend from any of these addresses. Yeah, that's.
Gramajo:That's good to hear, because this is like my first year of using fluid key and then being like, okay, like I'm very familiar with this from the bitcoin world because I've done this now, like, yeah, for five like plus years. Whenever they asked us in here in the us to start reporting in 2019, I think, uh, 2018, I forget, um, but I like I've never had to do it on the ethereum side because literally I just enter, you know, yeah, garahoeth, and that was it, like that's the most I've had to worry about. And then this year I was like, oh, I wonder how it works with fluid key, like if it's there a similar concept.
Moritz:Yeah, Let me know how it goes. Obviously, we haven't been around this long, so I think, um, you know, we want to also support like that's the one thing with fluid key right, like I think a lot of privacy tools. You're kind of left on your own right, like it's very um diy in many, in many ways and and we want to really also um innovate on the user experience side of things, right, and so, um, yeah, super curious to hear how it goes when you, when you do your taxes and you also have to add, uh, your fluid key transactions there. But hopefully it's all smooth yeah, I'll let you know.
Gramajo:Taxes are due on the 15th of April, I believe, here in the US, so I'll let you know in the next couple of weeks, I guess let me know. Alright, let's take a quick break. I hope you're enjoying the episode. This episode was made possible with the support of my premium subscribers Seattle Dog McMinals congrats on round-tripping it and making it to two years the Bluffer, nonlinear, brennan M Branson, young Weekend and Humpty. Thanks again for your support, and if you're anyone out there that's minting my episodes, really do appreciate your support too as well. If you'd like to receive exclusive drops, access to token gated content, make sure to subscribe on my hyper sub. All of this is possible thanks to you. All right, let's get back to it. Uh, privacy pools. You know, like what? What is actually a privacy pool? Like I know we talked about it a couple seconds ago. Um, yeah, what is a privacy pool? And like, how would it, how would it work alongside? Um?
Gramajo:yeah fluid key yeah so.
Moritz:So maybe before explaining how privacy pool works, let me just explain very briefly how fluid key works, for for context and kind of to compare it. So the way fluid key works today it's using stealth addresses, meaning that, um, every time you receive money, you basically receive it to a new address that isn't linked to your public profile or that isn't linked to any of the other addresses that were generated before, right? So you have this cloud of addresses that aren't linked in any way, and so you get much better privacy because somebody's sending you money. They just send money to an empty address that isn't connected to any of your other transactions. The way privacy pools work is much closer to something like Tornado Cash, for example, but with some additional safeguards to basically make sure that actors don't have such an easy way to move money in, right? So you basically add money into this pool and multiple users add funds into the same privacy pool, and then you can think of it almost as like a layer that breaks traceability, because then on the other side, when a user moves the money out, they put it into a new address and nobody can kind of see which user putting the money in is the one moving the money out, they put it into a new address and nobody can kind of see which user putting the money in is the one moving the money out, right, so you can't break that traceability. And so far that's exactly also how Tornado Cash works. The only difference here is that privacy pools have safeguards so that if you know, a North Korean hacker now also moves a billion dollars in, they're not able to basically just mix their money with your money and then move the money out again and you have the problem that on the other side, obviously authorities wouldn't know who is the bad actor, who is the good actor, and then you're basically part of the problem in a way. And I think that's what privacy pools are really trying to solve and make sure that only funds that haven't been linked to any illicit activity can basically mix with you.
Moritz:And then there's different flavors of that. I would say right. So there's the more stricter types of privacy pools where, for example, veal is a good example on base right, where you can only enter certain pools if you basically have a verified Coinbase account and kind of Coinbase vouchers for you in a way, right. And on the other side you have the more like softer ones where, like, maybe railgun falls into, where everybody can move money in, but then there is a system that is, um, keeping your money on hold for for a few hours and if it turns out, uh, you know that money was linked to a hack, then that money will basically be rejected and pushed out of the system again, and so you're not able to mix it as well. So it's like either kind of more of an allow list mode or like more of a blacklist mode, depending on which type of privacy pool you're using.
Moritz:But that's kind of how they work, and in the context of FluidKey, I think these two technologies are actually pretty complementary.
Moritz:So the idea is okay, say you receive a million dollars now with FluidKey to one address, right, if you're just using FluidKey, then you're still, you know, spending a million dollars out of one address and you're probably going to do a lot of different things with that million dollars, and so you don't get that much privacy.
Moritz:Now, on the other hand, if you receive a million dollars to a FluidKey self-address, pass that through a privacy pool and then, on the other side, move it into, say, a hundred different self-addresses, right, or a thousand. Then you can spend from a thousand unlinked self-addresses on base on any other chain, as you would from a normal wallet, but someone looking at the chain would just see a thousand unlinked addresses that aren't in any way connected to you. And so I think that's kind of the ultimate endgame we're going for with Rookie as well is kind of combining these two technologies in that way where you have this UX that's very similar to what you'd get from a normal wallet on public EVM chains, but you also are able to break traceability and kind of get better privacy, because under the hood there's a privacy pool as well helping you do that in a very automated way.
Gramajo:Yeah, no, that's fantastic. Love that. Yeah Need more of this kind of energy in the space.
Moritz:Yeah, I mean we're trying to really. So one thing I think that you know we've tried to do from the beginning is kind of just ship something and like it's not perfect in terms of many things, but it's better than the status quo, and kind of improve on that gradually to something we're really excited about. And so, yeah, that's hopefully by the end of this year. A lot of what I kind of just illustrated is kind of live and in production and you can use it. That's the goal.
Gramajo:I'd say it's working. I mean, from the time that I've been using it, like it's good, like I like it and I know you're introducing like other awesome features that we'll get into in a couple of seconds Awesome other uh awesome features that we'll get into in a couple seconds. Um, what, uh, what else excites you in the privacy space? You know, like I, it's funny because, like uh on farcaster, I posted um like what I was excited for, uh in the privacy space, like the privacy tech space, uh for this year, and it actually did pretty well like in terms of like for me, for my relative size of like followers and stuff like that. It did relatively well. So it seems like people are starting to care about?
Moritz:what did you list? I'm not sure if I might have missed it, so uh here, let me see, yeah, so I did.
Gramajo:um, let's see 2025, the year that privacy goes mainstream. That's that's kind of how I started with. So veil, uh, and on world aztec. So I started with the ones that everyone's like familiar with and then moved into, like, uh, more niche ones that I think more people don't know about Darkfy that was one Tezos Sapling, so basically it's the exact same tech that we're talking about now, but just in Tezos. So I still like Tezos and that whole ecosystem, nice and Paynen, so that's the other one too. So it's like VPN on steroids. Basically it's the other one too. So it's like, uh, vpn on steroids. Basically it's like the easiest way to describe it uh, and then fluid key, as well as the other one nice, um, yeah, so so definitely agree with uh, with the picks you you have there.
Moritz:Um, I'd say um also quite excited to see how aztec comes out. I mean, they they've been at it for a long time. I think it's a really hard problem they're trying to solve and I actually recently also spoke with the team and it seems like they're getting closer and closer to having something that's also mainnet ready and so on, and I think that'll be very interesting to see. I think, in general, general, outside of that, um, there's there's multiple teams working on on privacy pools. There's railgun I think is also very interesting one. Honestly. What I love about railgun honestly is that it's live, it's working, people can use it today and and uh, and yeah, I would always highlight the also products that are kind of already live and helping users today, so that's a big one.
Moritz:I also am quite curious to see how there's this idea of private tokens. So there's Inko, for example, that is working on this, where you have these confidential tokens where what you're hiding is basically the amounts being sent. So it's on Ethereum or any EVM chain. You basically can just deposit funds and then what you can do is I send you funds in this confidential token and someone looking on chain wouldn't know how much I sent you, right. So it's a different type of privacy. Again, it's not about not showing that I've sent it to you, but showing, basically hiding the amount, right, and so if you combine that with something like stealth addresses and other privacy tools, I think you get something that's also pretty excited, exciting, um and so. So that's maybe another thing. Just because you didn't list it there, that would include in the list, um, but but overall, I I think this list is, uh, it's pretty good, yeah yeah, uh, most recently too, uh succinct, uh, mostly I just like their branding, so yeah because I was gonna ask are they doing anything?
Moritz:I mean, they're obviously, you know, very um zk focused, um I've uh. Yeah, I was wondering did you see any like specific use case that that you're excited about? No, it's a. It's a bad.
Gramajo:Just just literally the branding got me, so they're having a. I know that's the issue. Like you said, I think it's a good call out where it's like some of these tools are actually live and they definitely deserve, I think, credit or recognition for that. Like you know, this is really hard tech. I would say, um, yeah, and you're trying to build it like in a consumer, yeah, like a consumer, good, essentially. So it's like okay, it's like doubly hard, um, so definitely kudos for the ones that are live, including fluid key. Um, because you know like, sometimes you'll see these, like you know, white papers or whatever you want to call them, darknet papers, and they sound fancy, they sound great, but then that's the thing, and obviously some problems are really hard to solve and it takes more time to go live right.
Moritz:So I didn't mean it as a kind of this towards protocols that need a little more time to kind of get to that stage. But yeah, I agree, I think ultimately it's exciting to see also things that just work and are kind of providing value to users today, and so I always like to also highlight those.
Gramajo:I agree with you Because I feel like with Aztec, I feel like I've been waiting on Aztec. I want to say over a year and a half. Now I feel like I think it's been. It's definitely been a while uh, yeah, and I feel like I joined the space and I heard about aztec like pretty quickly, um, because I used to be not be like heavy in in the ethereum space. Um, I used to be just like pure bitcoin, pure, pure monero.
Moritz:Yes, um, would you say you're mostly on ethereum today, or kind of a mix between those I'm mostly on ethereum today.
Gramajo:Uh, a little bit of solana, because there's like some interesting stuff going on over there outside of like just pumped off on, like there's actually what excites you about Solana? Do you have any specific? Yeah, I can give you an example. So, futarki, so it's like doing decisions based on prediction markets. So MetaDAO, which I'm actually talking to. Profit. Who's the co-founder of MetaDAO, futarki? He didn't invent the concept, uh, or they didn't invent the concept of, uh, food turkey, but it's uh. Robert hansen kind of did um, but it's the live.
Gramajo:Again, going back to what you said, you know like I'm surprised ethereum doesn't have it like. I know, uh, I'm gonna be part of the beta for optimism, uh, with their experiment with food and Uniswap is looking at this too, but like it's literally live and been live with Solana, metadao for, I think, almost six plus months at this stage. You know like I even voted to put Robin Hanson on the MetaDAO like board. So that's like a really cool concept to me, you know. So I'm like all right, this is really dope. So she says like, like bored. So that's like a really cool concept to me, you know. So I'm like all right, this is really dope, um, especially since, like, I've been getting into dows a lot more heavily in the last um six months, um. So, yeah, there's like a couple things out there where I'm like okay like no, I think.
Moritz:I mean I've personally not been super active on solana just because, yeah, I'm probably less aware of what's happening, but it seems like one ecosystem. Also, just from our user base, there's quite a few users asking when is FluidKey going to be on Solana, and so on. So, yeah, there's definitely overlap and I think there's some cool stuff happening on that side as well. So I need to spend more time, yeah.
Gramajo:I mean, I've heard that it's like, at least from the sentiment I get from Farcaster builders, that it can be a little hard to develop in Solana. Yeah, just like getting up to speed or like the documentation, you know like, you know it, just it's a little bit different, maybe not as mature on that sense, but you know there's people that say that it's amazing to build on solana. So I wouldn't know, because I've never done either, so I let you guys be the judge of that one. But, um, yeah, I think there is like some pretty interesting stuff going on over there where I think, you know, people are getting bored of the pumped up funds, of the coins and moving into, you know, other tech. Like they seem very heavily focused on consumer crypto or just like, literally the onboarding of masses, um, which is interesting, um, because we need the users. Um, so, yeah, that that one is, um, yeah, that's an exciting one.
Gramajo:Food turkey I like that because I'm noticing already like, uh, you know just, people like whales, you know like, even like with optimism and Uniswap you know, it's not like an NFT, but it's like you know they have a bajillion tokens and they make the decision they themselves essentially. So cool stuff going on. Yeah, I don't know if there's anything on the privacy side there.
Moritz:It's a good question.
Gramajo:I'm I'm not aware of yeah, not that I can think of yeah, but yeah, I'm mostly heavily on the ethereum side. Still, most of my funds are still in bitcoin, though, to be honest, um, just because of dollar cost average since back then, like, it's hard it's hard not to. Yeah, um, I'm still pretty heavily involved in the monero space, so like I still follow it very heavily, still talk with a lot of people.
Moritz:Um some are you seeing, I guess, like one thing, looking from the outside again I'm not super well like deeply looking at it, I guess is that like it it doesn't feel like a lot is happening, but I think maybe it's just because I'm not as um obviously involved there, following it as closely, like how you think, like how do you see that just in terms of, um, yeah, like kind of innovation and kind of also growth of that that space?
Gramajo:yeah, yeah, I would say, like, there's a ton of, there was a ton of active developers and I think there is still a decent amount of active developers, at least on the monero side. Um, it definitely got hindered a little bit from the fact that, like, uh, it started getting like delisted from a bunch of exchanges. Yeah, um, that definitely hurt it. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt it from like, a price perspective, uh, which is great for me, um, because that would have been painful. But, um, yeah, I'll tell you like something really cool that's going on in the Monero space. I don't know if you care or not, but, um, I've been really into this whole P to I've. I've been into P to P markets for a hot minute now.
Gramajo:Um, and the big one in the Monero space actually got shut down. Uh, or they didn't get shut down, they kind of chose to shut down, cause, like, it's just a hard space to build in. Um, but a new one came up call red toe swap, um, okay, which is like a multi six day decks for P2P transactions, and so, like I can, it reminds me of the old Bitcoin P2P marketplaces where, like, I give you cash and then you give me a digital coin, so that one's like, it's like new and it's going and it's got a lot of. They just hit like their all time high and um monthly transactions, uh, between Monero, um, which is good, like good volume there, um price is stable, so yeah, I suspect like it's still going there. They're still doing some innovation, so like different ring sizes to see how that impacts transaction speeds and stuff like that. Yeah, very cool, awesome, yeah, awesome. Let's see Going to get close to wrapping up here.
Moritz:But, um, so I know you guys have a standalone app, um, with kind of the launch of V2 honestly, I think you know the cool thing right now with FluidKey is you can either just connect your wallet and you have your own self-custodial wallet that owns the FluidKey account, or you can connect with Privy and Farcaster basically, and so you know it's, I think in terms of just ease of use side of things, a lot of users pick also that part, and the cool thing there is that technically, I think you could build a frame pretty easily that allows you to just open FluidKey inside of Firecaster and connect to FluidKey automatically, right, and I think that could be really cool. So we want to, we want to build that. It's just been many things on the roadmap basically at the same time, so we haven't really had the time to to work on that yet. But yeah, that's that's the plan to to also launch that in the coming weeks.
Gramajo:Yeah, no, no, worries, man, it was just like a thought I had. I was like I wonder. I'm sure it crossed your mind. I had a feeling it crossed your mind so I was kind of curious. But that's not to say you guys aren't delivering new features. So I know you guys recently dropped like Urn with Morpho, which is really cool, right. Yes, like earn with morpho, which is really cool, right, yes, so it's in early access right now.
Moritz:So, um, feel free to dm me if anybody uh listening as well is interested to to test it out. It's. It's really exciting because I think most, um even the like easier ways to earn yields today they will at least require you to kind of move money into like kind of a vault, right, even if it's in the app. And with this feature, the way it works is, as soon as you receive USDC, if you have this feature enabled for your account, you start earning yield, because, under the hood, every Fluid Keys Stealth address is a smart account and you basically can give us permissions to move money into this vault, and only that vault and only on behalf of you.
Moritz:So it's obviously an audited module that uh, we've been working on and kind of building. But, uh, but I think that's the power of programmable money in the end is that you can like build these things that that feel even better than what you'd get from, uh, from a neobank account or any kind of web 2 um model where, yeah, you just receive money and as soon as it hits your account, you start earning 5 plus percent yield on it, and that's pretty cool and exciting. So, yeah, it's something we're going to launch officially in the next few weeks, but already live and being tested heavily by some of our power users. So if anybody here wants access, just DM and I'm happy to give access.
Gramajo:Yeah, and I know, even before this one, you guys had a Rocketball one, right?
Moritz:Yes, so that's also still there. That's the one-click thing, well, like two-click thing. So it's a bit different, right? You still have to click the button and say, okay, I want to deposit x amount of eth, and then it shows you, okay, you, you're, you're likely to earn x amount over the year, and so on and so forth. So it's still like a pretty nice experience to just understand what you're, what you're um, yeah, what you can get out of rocket pool, um, and, and so that's still there, um.
Moritz:But this is kind of almost like a v2, where a lot of that is just happening automatically under the hood. You set it once and then, anytime you receive money, it just automatically starts earning yield for you and, and so I feel like, um, yeah, it's still more exciting because, because every anything that even requires you to take one click, um, you're likely not to do it all the time, because it's just like additional friction and and so on, and you wouldn't do it. You know you're not going to deposit um five hundred dollars into a morpho vault to earn a um, you know, a few dollars a year, um, and and with this it just happens automatically and I think that kind of compounds over time and and is pretty cool yeah, yeah, I interviewed uh interviewed Jack from Icebreaker and he was talking about how, like, every click is like an act of God, you know.
Gramajo:So if you go four clicks in, you're like you're asking a lot from people at that stage.
Moritz:For sure, no for sure, and so, yeah, that's kind of that's been our motto also with other features we've built is kind of just reducing the amount of clicks you have to do is, I think, a pretty good way to think about user experience in general.
Gramajo:Yeah, another kind of random question, and shout out to Papa Jams, who also talked about Futarki and Optimism yeah, so I know they're also going to be involved in that beta, which is exciting, to bring Futarki to Ethereum. Another kind of random question before we wrap up, since, since we were talking about how, once people start earning money, um, this pain point of like knowing how much you earn or whatever like, for me, like as a small-time content creator, I don't really care if someone knows that I have like 100 bucks that I earned from, you know, nouns or whatever, um, like it doesn't mean it's not the end of the world for me because it's like part-time or whatever, but like, obviously, if I was making like my salary, it'd be a different situation, especially with, like, the proliferation of stable coins and all that. Have you guys thought about like either partnering up with splits or moving in that direction? You know, like, because it sounds, like you said, virtual accounts already exist, so, like I can direct deposit into fluid key, yes, and get the benefits of all that.
Moritz:But it seems, like, even like technically you could get. You could, yeah, just share your account. It's a virtual account so you could share it with your employer. Your employer just pays you to this bank account, right, and? And you just receive money that's earning yield for you from the first minute directly in FluidKey.
Gramajo:Yeah, have there been any discussions on teaming up with them, because I feel like they have a decent amount of people that are running businesses through there and all that yeah yeah, I really like the splits team.
Moritz:Um, I also think their team's product is is really cool.
Moritz:I don't know if you've seen that they've been working on, um, yeah, a product that's, uh, basically a business account on chain, um, and uh, and yeah, so, uh, we actually also also users of that with FluidKey, so I really like what they're doing, I think, with splits.
Moritz:Honestly, we haven't discussed this in detail, but as far as I know, splits basically are set at the smart contract level, and so you have to set a specific address for every stream of a split, basically, and so I guess the downside of that is, if you're a creator that is earning money from multiple splits, then stealth addresses in FluidKey might make sense, because you can create a new address for every split, pretty much, and so users can already do that today with with fluid key, but then for one specific kind of split flow, um, the money would always land in the same stealth address, and so you wouldn't necessarily get better privacy with fluid key as it is today, right, um, and so something we want to also kind of work on with the what I've told you about before around you know, shielded pools and adding additional layers of privacy, but but yeah. So so something we're we're thinking about, but nothing, nothing that's kind of concretely in the works right now. Awesome Cool.
Gramajo:No, no worries, All right. So wrapping up quick context on this, so one. Wrapping up quick context on this, so one. I've asked this question of every guest, so before you're like, wait, why is this guy asking me about what I eat? And it starts with kind of like how the podcast used to be called, like snacks or bites of snacks, peaches. If you've ever been to Spain, the north of Spain, they have tapas there called pinchos and anyways. So, with that said, what is your favorite?
Moritz:snack. So that's a good question. I think it depends on the season. I would say, if in the summer I really like ice cream, like just, I think that's probably my go-to snack and I don't, I don't think I snack a lot otherwise, but I would say, in other than that I really like chocolate as well, just like hazelnut chocolate, dark chocolate, that that would be my, my second go-to there you go.
Gramajo:You gave a good one. I spoke to someone and they were like oh, I eat hummus and carrots. And I was like no, I know, I'm like that. I, I know we're all supposed to be healthy, but like, that's not the answer I'm looking for.
Moritz:No, I'm trying to get. It's not something I'm eating every day, but definitely that's kind of the more um guilty snacks I'm I'm going for yeah yeah, well, the swiss do have good chocolate, so I don't blame you.
Gramajo:Awesome, well, uh, thanks again for doing this. I appreciate your time. All right, if you're hearing this message, you've made it through the entire episode. Thank you for that.
Gramajo:Before we head out, I wanted to do a cast-off question. For those not familiar with cast-off, it's where I want to hear from you, the audience. Yeah, hit me up on Telegram or Farcaster or wherever is easiest for you. But this week's cast-off question is what do you think about fluid key and stealth addresses? Are you excited about privacy? Yeah, just let me know what you think about privacy. Hopefully this helped you kind of see where we need to address some issues in the privacy space, specifically in crypto. Yeah, so if you're listening to this episode in another platform other than pods, make sure to go collect this episode. If you are on pods, make sure to subscribe from your favorite app so you're notified when I drop an episode, or add the Area 51 mini app on Farcaster, which will also do the same thing.
Gramajo:Hope you enjoyed this episode. Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Please share this episode with someone who might be interested in this topic. Feel free to let me know if you'd like to hear specific people for me to interview. You can get in touch with me via the text in the show notes or on social media. I've added links below and as we approach episode 25, I'll be doing a really cool POAP, so just make sure to stick around for that. All right, until next time, see you stick around for that.
Moritz:Um all, right until next time. See you free audio post production.
