Hi Zeeps,
Tomorrow, the jury will resume its deliberations on whether or not Roman Storm is guilty of writing code to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business to facilitate money laundering.
This previous week, the developers of the Samouri wallet pleaded guilty to a similar charge. It is likely because they have been watching the Storm case and knew that if they lost, the penalty would be much steeper than the hundreds of thousands and up to four years they face now.
Much of the case against Roman has been covered elsewhere, including on the Chopping Block podcast this week. I encourage you to listen.
I’m guessing I don’t need to preach to you about the importance of this case or the risks to both Roman, how the erosion of privacy can and will be used against people, and our ability to write code that protects privacy, by law or by intimidation.
I found it interesting that the SDNY prosecutors have distanced themselves from the perception that they are attacking privacy. They know that directly attacking personal privacy is a loser. But let’s not be fooled by the rhetoric that this is not about maintaining control through surveillance. A developer of privacy-preserving open source software is under attack. And so, we are all under attack.
The current season of crypto is not the revolution many of us came here for. As Udi has highlighted, many of the Bitcoin OGs have taken their corn off the table and set sail on their fancy new boats. Many others recognize that the new entrants don’t share the same values.But number go up, right?
The crypto industry has been quick to embrace regulatory clarity marred with pitfalls. Suddenly, we’re no longer the ignorable weird kids. The president of the United States knows who we are, and we get a seat at his table!
And we’re being gaslit.
Big Brother is telling us that “we” don’t want Big Brother spying on us. They are also vilifying privacy in the courts and proposed regulations.
A former state department official once told me that they suspected Tencent of using games for behavioral tracking, and they would use that information to understand how a generation of people would respond in real-life situations. What works for China works for other governments, who use the same tactics under the guise of protection.
The crypto casino is a big boy game. And while we think we are simply playing the game for our financial benefit, we are being tracked, either through centralized entities or transparent onchain transactions. We’ve been given some hope with promises to protect self-custody and access to defi, but these are meaningless without protections to privacy.
Today, governments are still prosecuting and vilifying people who provide or use privacy tools.
The government says, “self-custody is ok, if we can see it. Defi is ok, if we can trace everything. We aren’t against privacy; we just want to keep everyone safe from the criminals.” And many applaud, happy to be lobotomized.
In Zamyatin’s book titled “We,” the Great Operation is the State’s solution to dissent, zapping the person’s “centre for fancy” in their frontal lobe. Do this, and “the road to hundred percent happiness is open!” Let’s refuse the Great Operation.
But doing that requires that more of us do more. To build more privacy software and embed privacy into everything, in public. To use more privacy-protecting tools in our normal everyday lives. To onboard more people, openly.
Because if we build and use privacy-preserving decentralized software en masse, we will be impossible to stop.
Privacy doesn’t work when only one person uses it.
Privacy works when many people are using it, when you can’t tell one person from another. The more people, the greater its strength.
When we are all Roman, he can’t be singled out.
When we are all Roman, privacy is normal.
Here’s what we contributed this week:
Zashi
What we did:
- Optimized and released a Tor-enabled Zashi version to alpha testers
- We signed an agreement with @DoritoDEX to use dKit for Maya swaps in Zashi.
What’s up next:
- Release Zashi with Tor support (in Beta)
- NEAR Intents integration and testing for ZEC swaps and payments
No analytics update this week due to a bug in my software. 
We’ll have updates for you again next week.
Zcash Core
What we did:
- Released zcashd 6.3.0 with testnet support for NU6.1.
- Continuing work on zcash_script for P2SH and multisig support.
- Reviewed halo2 PR for ZSAs.
What’s up next:
- Final review of specs and implementation changes for NU6.1.
- Continued work on Zallet.
- Supporting the next Zashi release.
Other:
A couple of other posts on privacy this week from Tom (https://x.com/tomlefevre/status/1951294860499017834) and Juan (https://x.com/juanaxyz00/status/1949121479943016873), and one on zk from Ethan (https://x.com/buchmanster/status/1952019802471735431)
Alex, Jason, and I met to discuss the current timeline for NU 6.1 and the voting process.
I met with DCG to provide an update on Zcash happenings and explore additional areas of support.
That’s all for this week.
We are all Roman,
Onward.