Zooko 深談 Zcash：隱私、創新與數位貨幣未來

0:00Zcash 的復興與社群信念

0:00Zooko，謝謝你今天來參加。你最近好嗎？我想先說，雖然我自認對於堅持一個理念、經歷高低起伏有點經驗，但和你這些年來在 Zcash 上的堅持相比，真的差很多。謝謝你一直以來的信念，這項技術對推動個人自由很重要，感謝你的努力。Zooko, thank you for being here. How are you doing today? I wanted to say at the outset, you know, I think I have some understanding of what it takes to have conviction in an idea and see it through through various ups and downs, but it's nothing like what you have been through with Zcash over time. And I just wanted to say, you know, thank you for your conviction. It's an important piece of technology, and I think moving us forward in the direction of more individual liberty. So thank you for that work over time.

0:42謝謝你這麼說，Zach。現在可以說 Zcash 正在經歷一波復興。雖然從一開始就是很重要的技術，但現在越來越多人關注 Zcash。你覺得這背後的原因是什麼？我自己有一些想法，但也想聽聽你的看法，為什麼現在大眾和投資人會重新關注 Zcash？Thanks for saying that, Zach. Well, I think it's fair to say that Zcash is having something of a renaissance. You know, it's been an important piece of technology since the beginning, but more and more attention coming to Zcash. What do you think explains this? I may have my own take, but I'd be curious your take. What explains this sort of awakening of the broader public, the broader investor base to Zcash today?

1:09這問題很難，因為成功有很多父母，失敗卻是孤兒。現在 Zcash 這麼有價值，大家都能講出不同的故事，每個都部分正確。像是兩年前推出的 Zashi 錢包，讓 Zcash 變得非常好用，簡單直覺，這很關鍵。但我認為最根本的原因是 Zcash 的開發基金。Zcash 是自我資助的，這十年來即使在默默耕耘，也有資源持續推進，才有後來這些發展。當然，世界這十年也變了，大家現在比十年前更需要這樣的東西。That's a tricky question because success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. So now that Zcash is so valuable, there's a lot of different stories you can tell, each of which is partially true. About different things that helped it. Like there was the Zashi wallet that came out about, oh, two years ago, and that made it very, very usable, right? Like easy, simple, intuitive, and that's huge. But the one thing that I think would lead to all the other things is the Zcash Dev Fund. There's this thing called the Dev Fund. Which is that Zcash is self-funding. So for the 10 years that it's been laboring in obscurity, it had the fuel to keep going the whole time. And that led to all these other developments that then came together. And I guess at the same time, I want to say the world has also changed during those 10 years. So I don't know. There's a lot of different reasons. It all came together, and a big part of it is probably just people need it or realize they need it more now than they realized 10 years ago.

2:26開發基金與 Zcash 的創新文化

2:26我很同意這點。我想聊一下開發基金。以 Grayscale 的觀點來說，新科技會帶來新的金融隱私壓力。像 20 世紀中期的電腦、90 年代的網路和線上銀行，到現在 AI 也帶來新的隱私挑戰，讓大家更關注這議題，也讓 Zcash 再次成為焦點。Zcash 和比特幣有些相似，比如 2100 萬枚的總量限制，是稀缺的數位貨幣，但也有很大不同，其中之一就是開發者資助。你可以跟大家解釋一下這個機制嗎？它怎麼運作？又怎麼讓創新文化持續、不會像其他鏈一樣僵化？I think that's certainly our perspective. Partly, I like to talk about the dev funding a little bit, but for what it's worth, the Grayscale perspective would be that new technologies create new pressures on financial privacy. Computers in the middle of the 20th century, the internet and online banking in the 1990s, and now AI creating new pressures on privacy in general, financial privacy. I think giving people more attention to these topics, I think that's one thing that's brought the lens back to Zcash. I'd like to build on the point about developer funding. You know, Zcash has similarities to Bitcoin, one of which is a 21 million coin cap. It is a scarce digital currency, but it has important differences from Bitcoin as well, one of which is developer funding. Can you explain this mechanism a little bit for people that are not familiar? How does that work in terms of the blockchain functioning? And what does it mean for keeping this culture of innovation going, preventing the system from ossifying, as we've seen in some other places?

3:34這問題問得很好。我可以解釋財務和區塊鏈機制，但其實這更是一種文化。Zcash 社群一開始就和比特幣不同，比特幣強調僵化來防止腐敗，Zcash 則選擇成長和演化來防止腐敗。Zcash 每發行 100% 新幣，20% 給開發組織，80% 給礦工，這和比特幣 100% 都給礦工很不一樣。這樣的設計讓鏈能持續有資源創新，不會停滯。Right, that's the right question, because I can explain the finance and the blockchain mechanisms, but it's really a cultural thing that the Zcash community diverged from Bitcoin right away in the initial—like launched 10 years ago, whereas Bitcoin has the culture of ossification for, like, purity and prevention of corruption. Their approach to prevent corruption is ossification, and Zcash instead, from the get-go, chose a culture of, like, growth and evolution instead as a way to prevent corruption. And that came with 20% of the newly issued coins going to development orgs and 80% going to the miner. So that's also another huge difference from Bitcoin, where 100% of the new coins go to the miner who mined that block. Does that answer your question? It does, and I think this little bit goes a long way. You know, constantly funding the development of a chain. And creating this culture of innovation.

4:37Zcash 危機處理：AI、漏洞與新隱私池

4:37我們來談談最近一個例子。Zcash 今年經歷了一個很大的轉變。Zcash 一直有隱私保護功能，透過不同的 shielded pool，這次從 Orchard pool 過渡到 Ironwood pool，這是一個很重要的轉折。你可以說說這個過程嗎？當初你們在想什麼？Let's talk about one recent example. So Zcash went through a pretty big transition this year. Zcash has privacy-preserving features, of course, through shielded pools, and there's been a few different pools over time. This year, we went through a particularly important shift from the Orchard pool to the Ironwood pool. Maybe first, can you tell us, you know, how did we get there? What were you looking at? You know, what were you thinking about that motivated, you know, this process in the first place?

5:12從 Orchard pool 轉到 Ironwood pool 其實是一次危機處理。因為我們發現了一個偽造漏洞，如果被攻擊者先發現，可能會讓人偽造 Zcash。大約今年二月，我們意識到 AI 進步太快，快到 AI 可能會開始發現所有軟體的漏洞。我們就緊急找來最強的安全研究員和最好的 AI 工具，搶在壞人（像北韓政府）之前找到漏洞。最後我們真的比壞人快一步，還趕在美國政府禁止最強 AI 公開使用前取得資源，成功找到這個重大漏洞，避免了數十億美元的損失，並緊急修復。Okay, the shift from the Orchard privacy pool to the Ironwood privacy pool was a crisis intervention moment because we had discovered a counterfeiting vulnerability, which would allow an attacker, which would have allowed an attacker to generate counterfeit Zcash if they had found it first. So that was, okay, so rewinding in about, I think, February or so of this year. We realized that AI was getting so good that AI was about to start finding all the bugs in all the software on the internet. And so we launched this kind of like emergency crash course of getting the best security researchers and giving them the best AI so they could find the bugs before, like, the government of North Korea did. And we succeeded at that. We outraced the bad guys. We got access to, like, the best AIs just before the American government banned the best AIs from public use and stuff like that. And the effect was we found this critical bug that would have destroyed basically everyone's savings and, like—20, 30 billion dollars worth of savings, found it first, and did this emergency process to fix it before any bad guys could take advantage of it.

6:40這也導致我們推出新的 shielded pool。更進一步，我們還發明了一種方法，可以證明這個漏洞沒有被利用過。這在加密貨幣界很罕見，因為有隱私保護，外界無法追蹤資金來源，大家難免會懷疑 Zcash 會不會被偽造、供給是不是假的。今年夏天我們做出科學突破，創建新 pool 並用數學證明這個 pool 沒有這類漏洞。這種證明沒有漏洞的能力是今年才有的新科學工具，Zcash 是第一批應用的專案。And then that resulted in a new shielded pool. To answer your question, so then we, well, then it gets more complicated, but we invented a way to prove to people that the bug had not been exploited, which is like—a little bit mind-boggling because we've seen this kind of thing happen in crypto many times, right? There's often been exploits and, like, drains and hacks of all kinds. And with Zcash, because there's this strong privacy, you can't trace anyone's coins, so you can't trace back and see where they came from. Therefore, you can always have skepticism or suspicion. That Zcash has been counterfeited and that the monetary supply of Zcash is actually fake. And so we came up this summer, we came up with a scientific advance by which we created a new pool of Zcash coins and made a formal mathematical proof that this pool cannot have any bugs of that kind in it. This ability to prove the absence of bugs is new. AI is new this year, and this scientific tool of proving that there aren't any bugs is also new this year. And Zcash is one of the first things to use this. To prove that that previous bug that we found and fixed cannot recur in the new version of Zcash, and to prove that nobody else found it and exploited it in the past.

8:17AI 驅動的創新與形式驗證

8:17我很喜歡這個故事。很多人聽到開源軟體有漏洞會擔心，但我認為這正是 Zcash 創新文化的最佳體現：用先進 AI 工具主動找問題、修復、公開，並規劃轉移方案。在新的 shielded pool 也用形式驗證來證明這些問題不會再發生。這是很棒的成功案例。形式驗證這個新科學技術，能證明一個程式碼庫沒有漏洞，這真的很驚人。過去 50 年電腦科學一直和漏洞奮戰，通常漏洞都佔上風，直到今年我們終於能證明大型程式碼沒有漏洞，這真的很瘋狂。Look, I love this story, I think. People hear the word bug with open source software and it, you know, creates concerns or something. But to me, this is exactly the type of thing that you want to see and is such a strong endorsement for the Zcash culture of innovation, using advanced AI tools to search for a problem before a problem occurs, fixing it, disclosing it, to clearly coming up with a transition plan. And that in that new shielded pool, again using advanced AI to use formal verification to prove that these can't happen again. I mean, to me, it's a great example of a success. Formal verification is that new scientific technique to prove that a codebase does not have any bugs, which is just mind-blowing. Like, for the first 50 years of computer science, it was a constant battle. Against bugs, and the bugs were usually winning. Until this year, for the first time ever, we can prove the absence of bugs in substantial codebases. It's crazy.

9:17Zcash 的量子抗性與 Project Epoch

9:17我們來談談 Zcash 的另一個前瞻性特色：量子抗性。Ironwood pool 也有量子可恢復地址，還有最近宣布的 Project Epoch。你可以簡單介紹一下你們怎麼看待這個議題，Zcash 如何為可能的後量子時代做準備嗎？Let's talk about something else, I think, that is forward-leaning with Zcash, which is quantum readiness. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's an element of the Ironwood Pool story here with quantum recoverable addresses, Project Epoch. That you announced recently. Can you give the audience a sketch of how you're thinking about this topic, how Zcash is leaning in for a potentially post-quantum future?

9:43支持 Zcash 的組織很多，我工作的這間特別重視安全。我們就是今年夏天發現漏洞的團隊。現在我們很關注量子電腦的風險，更擔心 AI 越來越聰明，學會破解密碼學。這是未來幾年最大的兩個未知數。所以我們啟動了 Project Epoch，要做出未來也能防禦量子電腦和 AI 的密碼學。這又是一個很有野心的科學研究計畫，我們有信心能做到，但老實說這也是第一次有人這樣嘗試。Right. There are a bunch of different organizations that support Zcash, and the one I work for, we're pretty obsessive about security. We were the ones who found that bug. This summer and so forth. And so now we're obsessed about the risks of quantum computers, but worse than that, also the risks of AIs getting smarter and smarter and learning how to break cryptography. That's the two unknowns of the coming years. So. We have launched this project called Project Epoch to make future-proof cryptography, cryptography that we have solid reason to believe neither quantum computers in the future nor the AIs of the future would be able to break this cryptography. And it's another kind of like ambitious scientific research. Attempt. Like, I think we'll do it, but frankly, it's probably one of the first times something like this has been attempted.

11:08Zcash 幣持有者匿名投票機制

11:08我想談談 Zcash 另一個很酷的功能，就是幣持有者投票。這和其他生態系很不一樣。你可以解釋一下這個機制嗎？shielded Zcash 在這裡扮演什麼角色？這怎麼影響網路升級？I'd like to talk about another feature of Zcash that I think is particularly cool, which is coin holder voting. It's, again, something quite different than what we see in other ecosystems. Can you explain how coin holder voting works, the role of shielded Zcash, and how it informs network changes?

11:27Zcash 和比特幣、以太坊一樣，是完全去中心化、開源、點對點的網路，全球各地的人都在運行。和以太坊一樣，我們每年左右會集體同意升級軟體，加入新功能或安全修補。這幾年我們讓使用者體驗越來越好。如果你持有 Zcash，可以匿名在鏈上投票，決定哪些改進要推進。這不是強制性的，大家不一定會照你的投票結果行動，但很酷的是，Zcash 持有者可以完全匿名、安全地表達他們最重視哪些改進。So Zcash is like Bitcoin and like Ethereum. It's a fully decentralized, open-source, peer-to-peer network that's running on all these computers around the world by all these different people. And like Ethereum, but unlike Bitcoin, we collectively agree every year or so to everyone upgrade their software to add new improvements to Zcash, or new security fixes and stuff like that. And over the last several years, we've deployed better and better user experience. So if you own Zcash coins, you can anonymously on-chain vote for which improvements we should all deploy together on the network. And it's not a binding vote. We're not necessarily—all the other users are not necessarily going to do what you say, even if you vote in favor of a thing. It's really up to them what software they run. But it's really cool that Zcash holders can, with complete security and anonymity, signal which improvements to Zcash they value the most.

12:34我很喜歡這種投票機制，雖然有點像現實政治體制的投票，你不確定最後結果會怎樣，但至少你的聲音被聽見、你的票被算進去。身為這個社群的一員，我很感謝有這個機會表達自己的意見。希望其他生態系也能有這樣的機會。I quite like coin holder voting, but partly it's kind of like voting in our normal political system. You're not exactly sure how it's going to all add up to everything in the end, but you want your voice to be heard or you want your vote to be counted. And I appreciate that. If you're engaged in this community, at least my vote is counted. I wish I could do this in a few other ecosystems as well, at least to have the opportunity to express. My view on some of these key changes.

13:01Zcash 的永續性設計與經濟機制

13:01我想談最後一個 Zcash 的創新和差異，就是永續性。比特幣有 2100 萬枚的上限，Zcash 也是。但比特幣總有人在問，當 2100 萬枚挖完後怎麼辦？雖然那還很久，但這確實是個問題：系統怎麼永續？Zcash 一樣很早就思考這些挑戰，無論是 AI、資安、量子抗性，還有永續性。你可以說說 Zcash 怎麼設計永續機制嗎？I want to touch on one last element of sort of innovation and differentiation of Zcash, which is around sustainability. So in the Bitcoin blockchain, we have this 21 million coin cap. We have a 21 million coin cap in Zcash's case as well. But in Bitcoin, there is always this question of what happens when we get to 21 million. And it's far away, and so we don't worry about that too much today. But it is this open question: how do we make that system sustainable? But Zcash, again, is sort of looking ahead to these challenges, you know, thinking about long-run sustainability now, whether it comes to AI, cybersecurity risks, quantum readiness, but also sustainability. So can you talk a little bit about how that mechanism works in the case of Zcash? How the network has built in the sustainability mechanism that is different.

13:52這是我們公司（Shielded Labs）開發的另一個產品，叫做網路永續機制。它結合了比特幣和以太坊的兩個好點子。比特幣的好點子是 2100 萬枚的上限，大家都知道規則很簡單。以太坊則有 EIP-1559，每次交易都會燒掉一部分手續費，這是長期永續的關鍵，因為你需要有激勵讓礦工或驗證者繼續運作。比特幣和 Zcash 都有這個問題：當最後一枚被挖完，不能再發新幣，但系統又需要激勵。Zcash 的設計是，所有手續費都會被燒掉，但只要不超過 2100 萬枚，未來還可以發新幣。這樣既有簡單規則，也能永續運作，不像以太坊那麼複雜。Zcash 有理由相信可以無限持續下去。Yeah, this is another product from my company. My company is called Shielded Labs, by the way, makers of fine Zcash technology. This invention is called the network sustainability mechanism, and it's a—combination of these two really good ideas from Bitcoin and from Ethereum. So Bitcoin has this really great idea, which is there's a 21 million cap. So everyone knows that there's a limit to how many Bitcoins there can be. This is a very, very simple rule. Everyone knows the rule. That it's a fantastic idea. Now Ethereum has a different good idea, which is it's called EIP-1559 in Ethereum. Protocol, but it's that whenever you make an Ethereum transaction, some of the transaction fee that you paid gets burned. And burning of fees is the long-term sustainability of the network because you need to issue more coins. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin and Zcash are all like coin-operated machines where you get more service out of it and people can use it because the miners and the validators are getting paid to run it, right? And there's a, like Zach says, there's an open question of what happens when, like, you've spent the last coin in Bitcoin. You can't issue more because that would break the 21 million promise, but the thing doesn't—make forward progress unless you issue more. So in Zcash, we have this combination of the two where fees of whatever kind get burned, and then you can always issue more Zcash in the future as long as it doesn't exceed the 21 million cap. So it has that nice simplicity, unlike Ethereum, where I can't even understand what the actual number of Ethereum will be in the future in different cases. It's very sophisticated mathematical argument for what the supply of Ethereum will be. But in Bitcoin and Zcash, it's very simple: 21 million ever. And in Zcash, we have a few reasons to claim that we'll be able to keep it going indefinitely.

15:56Zcash 與比特幣的根本差異

15:56我想強調一點：Zcash 和比特幣有幾個關鍵不同。第一就是隱私保護功能，這也是 Zcash 近期受到關注的主因。但其實還有很多差異，像是創新文化、前瞻思維，無論是資安、量子、永續，Zcash 都很早就主動面對，還有像開發基金這樣的經濟機制，讓創新能持續。這些差異未來可能會越來越重要，我們拭目以待。I love it. What I wanted to get across with these questions was kind of a simple point that Zcash is different than Bitcoin, of course, in some key ways. Number one is with privacy-preserving features. Oh yeah, and there's that. I think I hesitated to lead with that. I think people know that. You know, these are—two different digital currencies, but Zcash brings privacy-preserving features. That's a key reason why it's getting so much more attention. But what I wanted to kind of bring to light in this conversation was there's lots of other ways in which Zcash is differentiated from Bitcoin. And when I look at it, to me, it's really centered on this culture of innovation, kind of thinking about the future. How do we prepare? Whether it's cybersecurity vulnerabilities or quantum or sustainability, kind of leaning into these challenges early and with economic mechanisms like developer funding to keep those things going. To me, this is a key differentiation and maybe something that's going to become increasingly important. We will see over time.

16:56隱私的未來與人類自由

16:56我想問最後一個問題，這次不談 Zcash，而是更廣泛地談隱私。你長期投入隱私領域，也思考個人自由的問題。你對未來有什麼期望？你認為要怎樣才能保有個人自主和隱私？I want to ask you one other question while I have you here. Which is maybe putting Zcash aside for a second, but talking about privacy more broadly. You know, you've been working on this privacy project for a long time and thinking about questions of individual liberty. You know, when you think about the future, you know, what do you want to see? You know, what does success look like in terms of preserving some of our personal autonomy and privacy in the future?

17:24我覺得這有兩個層面。第一是個人尊嚴，你不會被監控或操控，有隱私、能自主決定什麼時候曝光，這是很基本的人性。第二，我認為隱私對經濟運作也很重要。過去 20 年全球隱私被大幅侵蝕，這讓經濟更容易被有權力的人操控、操縱他人。從我的人生經驗和閱讀來看，隱私不只是基本人權，也是多元經濟、政治變革和人類文明正常運作的基礎。Yeah, when I think about that, it's both things in my mind. There's just like personal human dignity, like you're not being scrutinized or manipulated. You have privacy. You get to consent to when you're exposed and when you're not. That's just really important fundamental human nature. And at the same time, I really think that privacy is necessary for a functioning economy. As privacy is being eroded very dramatically throughout the world in the last, like, 20 years or so, and in my opinion, that makes your economy more and more vulnerable to being exploited by whoever has the power or the ability to start sort of pushing their way around and manipulating everyone else. So, based on whatever I've read and... My perspective on life: you really need privacy not just for natural human rights and to feel normal, like have a normal human existence, but you also need it to have a flourishing, diverse economy where there's the possibility of growth and change, political change, and just the normal way that human civilization has always worked.

18:49隱私是傳統金融體系的基石，我相信未來去中心化區塊鏈金融體系也一樣需要隱私。Zooko，謝謝你把 Zcash 帶到世界，帶來這麼重要的技術，也謝謝你今天的分享。It seems like a pretty foundational element of our traditional financial system. It seems to me it'll be a pretty foundational element of our new decentralized blockchain-based financial system. Zooko, thanks so much for bringing Zcash to the world and bringing us this important technology and for sharing your views today. Thanks, Zach.