Zcash next to Kusama; nature always finds a way 
Seriously though, where is that Zcash sponsorship coming from?? @joshs @aquietinvestor what are you guys cooking?? Anyone here going to report on the talks?
Reminder for the community that there is substantial dough to be made to connect both ecosystems (Polkadot / Kusama w/ Zcash):
Zcash Community Grants is sponsoring the event. @frankbraun will be presenting on Zcash and also be on a panel about L1 privacy. Members from the Zashi team, ZCG, ZecHub, and the Zcash Foundation will be in attendance. We got a booth as part of the sponsorship, and the Zashi team will be handing out swag and helping people onboard.
Thatās awesome, thanks for those exciting details!
Are you personally familiar with Kusama? Any thought on this ecosystem? Iām particularly curious to know your thoughts on its value alignment to Zcash (from the Shielded Labs perspective), and maybe how both ecosystems could eventually mutually benefit each others.
The way I see it, as things are currently developing, Zcash is steering for proper, private electronic cash, which is mainly a technology offering. Kusama on the other hand, through the proof of humanity attempts and research, and the upcoming JAM, is steering for connecting privacy minded individuals and enabling them to collaborate online in a way that is privacy preserving. That is to say that both ecosystems are not competing and I can easily see multiple approaches to mutually beneficial projects.
Looking forward to what will come out of this conferenceā¦
I was thinking of giving a talk on Zcash at Dark Prague and got in touch with @aquietinvestor regarding a potential sponsorship. Iām glad that materialized and so many people from the Zcash ecosystem are also attending now. Hopefully people will be able to install Zashi at the event and make their coffee payments at the venue with shielded Zcash during the event.
Iāll agree that the conference organizers record and publish my talk and I will be publishing my slides afterwards. Here is the abstract that I submitted:
Zcash 2.0 - misconceptions about unstoppable private money
On January 3, 2009, the first Bitcoin block was mined and while it made a large impact as digital gold its promise as a truly peer-to-peer electronic cash system remains unfulfilled to this day.
In 2016 Zcash embarked on the mission āto make the first open financial technology with zero-knowledge privacy, for every person in the world to useā.
Their team was the first one that brought zk-SNARKs to production in order to create a privacy-preserving variant of Bitcoin. However, the first release was hardly usable on desktops, required a trusted setup, and most people used transparent transactions.
A lot has happened since the early years, but a lot of misconceptions remain. This talk will take you on a journey through the past, present, and future of Zcash and show you why it remains highly relevant for the general goal of unstoppable private money today.
Breaking news: Weāve been invited to host a Zero-knowledge Audiovisual Club Recording Station at Dark Prague next month 
More details soon.
Dark Prague email blast with the schedule just went out and look whatās inside! 
the awesome image (modifications from Dark Prague website header) is by @robmarn ofc
The slides for my talk can be found here: https://frankbraun.org/zcash-2.0.pdf
How did you find the event @frankbraun ? Is there a way to watch your talk somewhere by any chance?
I liked it a lot. Itās been running every year since 2014, before under the name Hackers Congress Paralelni Polis (HCPP) and I have been to each single one. So I might be biased 
But I think it was very good that was Zcash represented there by quite a few people. Also it was very valuable to connect in person with other Zcashers.
The guys from ZK AV Club recorded talks there, AFAIK they are working on the editing and release.
Thatās right! The production company they hired to record stages flaked completely. Luckily, Zk Av Club was in the house. At the end of the first day, as soon as I heard about the lack of coverage, our little team stepped up to help record as much as we could, as well as we could.
Big THANK YOU to @zerodartz @squirrel and @j32804 for their passion and hard work that saved the presentations for the sake of history!!
Awesome! I want to watch the talk of @frankbraun & Gavin Wood, I donāt need crazy edits. I can tip in 2 ZEC if release of those two can be guaranteed. Lmk thank you.
edit: Iāll add that as content that is beneficial to Zcash & privacy space as a whole, it shouldnāt have to be funded by individuals. Sorry for being blissfully unaware but have you already applied to get funding through the dev fund?
To be clear: The stage recordings belong to Dark Prague and will be released to and by them first.
Weāre crowdfunding the Recording Station project and post-production of content that comes out of it. When weāre at an event and the organizers need something else, we try to help. Recording of staged talks and panels at Dark Prague, or any other event, is not being funded by this crowdfund effort.
Yes. Unrelated to the Zk Av Club Recording Station or other event production, in January 2025, I received a 1-year grant for the production of Zk Av Club Foundry.
Thank you for this supportive sentiment! Doing my best 
Do you want to know more?
Read this Ā» Zk Audiovisual Club - #284 by ryan.taylor Ā«
Want to support the Zk Av Club Recording Station?
Donate some ZEC right here!
u1dexkdd40ulkhthmuxv4tlnrzyxfd7zt2gh27myamg09tzjgurf9mqvgtlfe8vxg7ghjrsucu4ghm5kqc4ngwqd6k35tkf7j84a59m5u6tlyc73x07ckwtdqv475t9q3w58073d9xt55ppw4945jnudghuqjmyf4rh263srrmmvy2kwpy
What your support powers: content post-production, release and open archiving (source masters on Internet Archive, CC BY-SA), travel for volunteers, production equipment and maintenance.
zkav.club ā donāt just watch.
What was the general vibe from participants who are not usually zcash friendly? Iāve been to HCPP twice and both times zcash wasnāt viewed as favorable due to optional privacy, relationship with regulators, and governance structure.
Wondering if thatās changed.
I was also curious if/how the anti-zcash vibes would be different at Dark Prague versus HCPP and was pleasantly surprised to find that it is becoming better. There are several good clips from the Zk Av Club Recording Station about Zcash and I heard a few previous skeptics respond to the Zcash 2.0 presentation by @frankbraun in a very positive way.
@squirrel spent some time in the Zcash booth area and may have a good story or two to share ā¦
Much better from my experience, except for some comments around regulatory conspiracies. One person genuinely asked if miners still refuse to mine shielded txs, which I donāt even know where that could come from.
Many positive interactions with the people at the event. Good amount of people were curious about Zcash, had good questions, tested Zashi & took a Privacy is Normal shirt.
Met one of the venue organisers I sent 1 ZEC back in July - Heās still Zodling!
Had a 2 hour long debate at the Zcash booth with an ardent Monero user. His main concern was the fact Zcash is known to speak with government agencies. I had to explain that nobody else is making an effort to educate them on why privacy is a necessity for the security and wellbeing of their citizens. Without any outreach a worst case scenario would be guaranteed.
It ended with us following each other on X and recognising we quibbled online in the past and laughed about it.
A cryptographer walked into the Zcash booth and spent some time trying to explain for me how zk circuits and Binius works. (Sorry, still donāt get it). He mentioned he is paid in USDC. I showed why thatās a bad idea and took him through Zashi & Zcash. He was gifted a free Keystone!
Also got a chance to sit down with Harry Halpin and cover How Nym works in detail, the Zcash Nym Integration and a few other random bits.
Hands down most interesting person in the world, Josh Datko! Got an interview with him - look out for the ZKAV Club release, its very cool.
Collosal effort put in by Ryan + Zero, they were going non-stop from basement to third floor to make sure all presentations were recorded.
Big shouts to @andrea and @Lukas and @Milan and Jay and @frankbraun and @Marek Great to spend some time with you all
A lot more happened but canāt say everything.
