welcome Andrew!
im now expecting Shielded Labs to show others how to deliver Hybrid PoS without delays maybe? 
no pressure. just seems like new team with great minds.
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Congratulations Andrew!
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Welcome Andrew
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another great addition, welcome andrew
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you are really bringing together great minds and great talents to shielded labs. keep it up
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Shielded Labs is seeking a fifth board member to join its Board of Directors.
Last year, one of our founding board members, Daniel Larsson, stepped down due to time constraints and personal matters that prevented him from fully committing to the role. His departure was amicable, and we appreciate his contributions.
We are now looking for a new board member based outside the U.S. to help guide Shielded Labs’ strategic direction. The ideal candidate has experience in fundraising—preferably in crypto—or a strong industry network to support these efforts. Candidates with a background in or familiarity with non-U.S. regulatory policy are also encouraged to apply. All candidates should be aligned with Zcash’s core values of human freedom and individual autonomy.
We welcome applications from qualified candidates as well as nominations of individuals who may be a good fit for the role. If multiple qualified candidates apply, we may poll coinholders to help inform our decision.
Please see the full announcement below.
Shielded Labs, a donation-funded Zcash support organization, is seeking a board member to help shape its strategic direction and oversee its leadership team. This position provides the opportunity to contribute to Shielded Labs’ mission of supporting the Zcash network and building unstoppable private money.
Based in Switzerland, Shielded Labs is the first organization in the Zcash ecosystem that is funded solely by donations and has never received direct or indirect funding from the Development Fund or block rewards. Our core value is that financial privacy is essential for human freedom because it allows individuals to transact and make financial decisions without fear of censorship, discrimination, or surveillance. Shielded Labs focuses on improving Zcash’s resilience by developing technologies that enhance the network’s sustainability, security, and scalability.
Members of the Board of Directors share a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of Shielded Labs, ensuring the organization remains aligned with its mission and operates responsibly. Board members play an important role in guiding Shielded Labs, with primary responsibilities including overseeing the Executive Director, providing advice and guidance, and collaborating with leadership to develop strategic objectives and priorities for the organization. By leveraging their expertise and insights, board members help guide Shielded Labs’ long-term direction and ensure it continues advancing its mission effectively.
Qualified candidates must be based outside the United States and demonstrate a strong understanding or interest in privacy-preserving technologies. Experience in organizational leadership, strategic planning, and corporate oversight is highly valued. The ideal candidate has fundraising experience—preferably in crypto—or a well-established network and strong industry relationships to help advance Shielded Labs’ fundraising efforts. A background in or familiarity with non-U.S. regulatory policy issues is a plus but not required. Most importantly, candidates should be deeply aligned with Zcash’s core values of human freedom and individual autonomy.
The expected time commitment includes one 90-minute virtual meeting per quarter, along with regular asynchronous communication via Signal. While this is an unpaid position, board members have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact on Shielded Labs and the future of Zcash.
If you’re interested in this opportunity or would like to nominate a candidate, please email contact@shieldedlabs.net or reach out via DM on X @shieldedlabs.
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It seems to me that Tucker Carlson shows a strong interest in privacy-preserving technologies, but he likely resides in the United States.
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welcome Andrew
Thank you Whitebox.
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Shielded Labs is launching a new video series this week called Shielded Dialogues. The first episode features a conversation between Nate and me about why we believe the NSM should be included in the next major network upgrade. New episodes will be released on a regular basis. The next one, coming out on April 7th, will feature a conversation with Zooko about coinholder voting.
You may remember a previous video series called Shielded Dialogues that was funded by ZOMG in 2020. That series is no longer active, and since we liked the name, we decided to use it for this one.
Let me know if you have any feedback!
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I really liked it, thank you for taking the time to do this @aquietinvestor & @nathan-at-least.
@aquietinvestor your suggested approach of getting more ZEC stakeholders to shield their funds is wrong imho (taxing them). You sort of put in the same bucked people using transparent addresses with people on older shielded pools, that’s a really bad idea as they couldn’t be more different.
To put this simply:
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People on older shielded pools should indeed be taxed for they have no good reasons to impose this burden on the majority of ZEC holders that still have to fund the costly maintenance of those pools.
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People using transparent addresses should absolutely not be taxed, at least not until their legitimate demands are met. And let’s go over that.
Here are at least two major ones, there are probably more:
- Support of viewing keys by majority of regulated CEXs because “potentially renewed KYC/AML once they shield their tokens even for a short time.” – Transparent ZEC voting mechanism
- “Personally, I won’t be changing wallet (Trezor, currently) until there are at least two decent hardware wallet options supporting shielded transactions, with one having at least three years of pristine history.” – Trying to move ZEC from Ledger Live - #208 by outgoing.doze
Suggestion: get Trezor back on board instead of wasting time with shady exchanges. Trezor is awesome.
Finally, @nathan-at-least I love your idea of upvoting / downvoting posts with tokens but before that I would personally prefer something else: having a forum that’s r/o for unproven token holders and r/w for proven token holders. I don’t think the amount of ZEC matters so much as for how long they have had their holding. As mentioned previously somewhere, people holding ZEC for at least one year should certainly not end up in the same bucket as those holding it for the past 24 hours. I think it would be rather simple to implement for transparent addresses, but I don’t know so much about shielded addresses, would it be possible?
Oh, and please also publish this as a podcast going forward so I can easily add you to my Pocket Casts app and get notifications as soon as an episode is up. You guys have pretty faces but I’m mostly interested in what you folks think and say. 
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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Trezor vs Ledger vs Keystone discussion
We’re pleased to announce that Judah Caruso (@judah) is joining Shielded Labs as a Developer Relations Engineer. Judah is a strong generalist programmer with experience spanning full-stack development, custom game engines, compilers, enterprise infrastructure, and bare-metal systems. He enjoys solving complex problems across domains and has a particular interest in developer tools and systems programming.
In a post last month, I described how Shielded Labs can help improve the network upgrade process and add value by focusing on the needs of exchanges, mining pools, and other key partners. By engaging directly with them, understanding their workflows, and tailoring support to their requirements, we can help reduce bottlenecks and improve the predictability of network upgrades. Judah’s work will center on applying that approach by combining technical understanding with clear communication and collaboration across teams.
Most recently, Judah worked as a Senior Software Engineer where he collaborated across teams to design and maintain distributed C#/Go APIs, containerized applications, third-party integrations, and automated infrastructure pipelines. Prior to that, Judah worked with @azmr on WhiteBox, a temporal debugger that’s designed to give developers real-time insights into how their code behaves as they write it. He contributed features such as arbitrary executable debugging and built a new systems programming language designed around live programming.
Judah is motivated to work on Zcash because he believes in the mission to build a private, decentralized financial system that protects individual freedom and autonomy. In his own words: “To me, Zcash is one of the most important pieces of technology out there. And being able to contribute to it alongside everyone at Shielded Labs is incredibly exciting!”
Shielded Labs is building an exceptional team with a clear focus and a strong sense of urgency. Judah’s background and experience will add to that momentum, complementing the team’s strengths and helping expand our capacity to deliver meaningful improvements to users. We’re looking forward to working with him in this new role and to the contributions he will make in strengthening the network upgrade process.
Welcome to Shielded Labs, Judah!
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Welcome @judah !
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WELCOME @JUDAH glad you’re here
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Welcome @judah ! 
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Thank you all for the warm welcome. Happy to be here!
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Welcome aboard! Zcash is an experience of another galaxy.
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