“Ethereum was never designed with privacy in mind”

A recap of the Nym core team contributions at ETHDenver

Author: Nym

April 4, 20237 mins read

A recap of the Nym core team contributions at ETHDenver

Following The Merge in September 2022, the Ethereum network became more vulnerable to validator privacy issues. Two months later, a hefty community push back occurred following revelations that user data including wallet addresses was being collected by Consensys through Infura and Metamask.

The issue of privacy in Web3 became more pressing than ever before.

Web3 conferences this year to date have had more privacy-focused sessions than in previous years. This year’s ETHDenver continued this trend which is a massive signal that the web3 community is concerned about privacy.

The Nym team was proud to have the opportunity to be front and centre of this privacy discussion drive, alongside other Universal Privacy Alliance (UPA) members. Here’s a quick summary of what went on:

UPA Mini Privacy Summit

Watch the full summit here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FK_zjOLNWQ&t=288s)

ETHDenver week kicked off with the UPA mini privacy summit, organised in collaboration with other UPA members — Electric Coin Co., Manta Network, Orchid Protocol, Oasis Network, Aztec Protocol, Secret Network and MobileCoin.

The opening keynote was done by Juan Benet, Founder of Protocol Labs and creator of IPFS on “Modern Orwellian states & How to prevent them”.

Watch the keynote here: (https://youtu.be/6FK_zjOLNWQ?t=29)

How to beat surveillance capitalism and reclaim your privacy

Watch the full panel here: (https://youtu.be/6FK_zjOLNWQ?t=4403)

Nym General Counsel Ahmed Ghappour joined this panel discussion with Electric Coin Co. SVP Growth, Product Strategy and Regulatory Affairs Josh Swihart, Secret Labs CEO Guy Zyskind and Orchid Protocol Head of Product Travis Cannell.

The discussion was moderated by Nym Head of PR & Communications Candice Teo.

Inspiring and open insights on the following questions were provided:

How are enterprises getting away with surveillance capitalism? Are we rationalising the situation with resigned cynicism or are we swayed by the propaganda that this is technological inevitability?
Are governments truly motivated to implement preventive measures against surveillance capitalism given the overlapping objectives?
Has surveillance capitalism reached saturation point or will the advent of web3 companies “innovate” it further, causing even more danger to us as a society?
Can tokenisation offer alternative ownership and business models to surveillance capitalism?
What is the fastest route for us to reclaim our privacy? Is it regulation or can we build our way out of it especially with the unprecedented innovation we have seen in our web3 space?
What should we stop doing and what should we start doing?

How can developers protect themselves and adhere to regulations?

Ahmed also later presented a keynote on “Criminal cases in the ecosystem — how can developers protect themselves and adhere to regulations?”. He broke down past cases for everyone and details of regulatory impact including:

Same statues used in civil and criminal arenas
Parallel investigations done across agencies — OFAC, DOJ, SEC
Sufficient-ness of projects compliance program
Tornado Cash — redesignation done and the agency exercising powers against an algorithm
AML programs
How all of us, both developers and government alike, have to do better about understanding the distinction between speech (and the content of speech) and conduct.

Enabling the Nym mixnet with Metamask

Watch the full session here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrDVRhrfYT8)

Watch the demo video here: (https://youtu.be/GQ836n2j0pU)

At the ETHDenver main conference, Nym CEO Harry Halpin presented on “How to stop your wallet from collecting your personal data: Enabling the Nym mixnet with Metamask”, recapping the privacy issues in Ethereum, Nym tools and what developers can do to ensure privacy for and as users:

No existing solution can defend against mass surveillance
Integration components to run app traffic through the Nym mixnet
Nym mixnet clients
Running a Nym proxy to access RPCs like Infura (privately)
Setting up a proxy yourself
Running your own private RPC node
Demo on a Nym integration with Metamask + roadmap
Validator privacy issues in Ethereum
Development of a new libp2p module to enhance validator privacy with Chainsafe

Cosmos on Tap

With Nym being chain-agnostic, it is the best way to bring privacy as default to a global level. This means that we need to tool developers in all ecosystems to integrate privacy by design whether they are building apps, wallets or other services.

Built using Cosmos SDK, Nym is on a mission to drive interchain privacy. We co-organised Cosmos on Tap: A Cosmos pub talk with other Cosmos projects: Evmos, Akash Network, Secret Network, Injective and Althea Network to enable Ethereum developers to find out more about the ecosystem.

Nym CTO Dave Hrycyszyn spoke on the first panel, “Enhancing Cosmos for Developers” alongside Evmos Co-founder Nic Z. and Secret Foundation Tor Bair. The panel was moderated by Althea Network CEO Deborah Simpier.

The second panel of the evening was “Cosmos: Infrastructure that Scales” with Akash Network CTO Adam Bozanich and Injective Labs CEO Eric Chen, again moderated by Althea Network CEO Deborah Simpier.

Privacy is normal at ETHDenver

In a conference first, ETHDenver hosted a privacy special on the main stage on the last day, with a stellar line-up for privacy advocates and experts. Nym CEO Harry Halpin and Nym GC Ahmed Ghappour joined the following sessions:

Plausible Deniability

Watch full fireside chat here: (https://youtu.be/i3zgrqijLSI)

This fireside focused on practical considerations for builders in privacy who want to protect their own privacy, maintain a low profile and/or operate pseudonymously. Nym GC Ahmed Ghappour joined Tor Founder Roger Dingledine to discuss tools that such builders should use and best practices to follow.

One key takeaway from Ahmed is for builders to educate themselves. There is a need to educate the regulator and government generally, but builders should also educate themselves to really understand the difference between content of code versus conduct.

On the Front Lines

Watch full panel discussion here: (https://youtu.be/y-2XP-sDRqQ)

In one of the most fascinating panel discussions, Nym CEO Harry Halpin joined Aleo CEO Alex Pruden, Polygon zkEVM Technical Lead Jordi Baylina, Filecoin Foundation Associate GC Kurt Ophsahl and two other activists Abdo Al Rayyis and Jarrel James, to share their experiences fighting against authoritarian regimes. This panel of freedom fighters provided practical insights on the actual tools they rely on and how they use them, where those tools could be better and which tools are still lacking.

Other privacy sessions

Watch the other insightful, practical and inspiring sessions here:

Keynote by Sherri Davidoff: (https://youtu.be/kTZ0hPPkevo)
Keynote by Roger Dingledine: (https://youtu.be/D8rdUK1s9tg)
Fireside chat with Frances Haugen and Leslie Katz (https://youtu.be/HCIvNEZtjKg)
Panel discussion, “Take a stand”: (https://youtu.be/tv8Fq3FJmwo)
Panel discussion, “Privacy by design”: (https://youtu.be/JTHP2hfhf_c)
Panel discussion, “We almost didn’t get encryption”: (https://youtu.be/iZX40TFq8Ts)
Panel discussion, “Privacy vs security”: (https://youtu.be/Eba0Xj2vEKU)

Privacy should be normal in Ethereum

It was incredible to see the recognition and interest of the importance of privacy at ETHDenver this year. With packed-out audiences and post-session discussions from builders, we are confident that this momentum will continue beyond Denver. The Ethereum ecosystem has a way to go in becoming privacy-preserving and secure but the mission to change that has already started.

Major thanks to the ETHDenver team for the opportunities to privacy-enhance ETHDenver and we look forward to seeing the subsequent impact on building privacy by default.

Useful links

Universal Privacy Alliance (UPA)