Seth For Privacy

Privacy is a human right and necessary for freedom.

- VP of Operations at Cake Wallet
- Privacy advocate
- Host of optoutpod.com, a privacy-focused podcast

Public Key

npub1tr4dstaptd2sp98h7hlysp8qle6mw7wmauhfkgz3rmxdd8ndprusnw2y5g

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs936kc97s4k4gqjnmltljgqns0uadh08d77t5mypg3anxkneks37gpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezumtfd3hh2tnvdakqz9nhwden5te00pkhytn4wdjkummnw3ezummjvuq32amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3w0pkhytnjda3kkucprdmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuur0wf6x2mt0dejhymewvdhk6qg7waehxw309ahx7um5wgh8xet5dpnx7unswf5hvctr0yhxxmmdqyd8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtn0wfskuem9wp5kcmpwv3jhvpa4aex

Publishing to

nostr.milou.lol

xmr.usenostr.org

nostr.xmr.rocks

nostr.portemonero.com

nostr.sethforprivacy.com

relay.orangepill.dev

Author Public Key

npub1tr4dstaptd2sp98h7hlysp8qle6mw7wmauhfkgz3rmxdd8ndprusnw2y5g

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Last Notes

2024-08-11 23:06:35 CEST

# I'm leaving Foundation and joining Cake Wallet
It's time for a new chapter in my journey building freedom tech, and I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be jumping in to help Vik run Cake as VP of Operations starting in September.
## Why Cake?
I've known Vik for many years in the space, and have been watching from the sidelines as he's worked hard to bring together an amazing team to build out a wallet that prioritizes ease-of-use and powerful privacy no matter what cryptocurrency people prefer. That all started with being the first Monero wallet on iOS, and has rapidly grown to being a cross-platform, multi-cryptocurrency wallet used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
The best part? Cake Wallet has been paving the way in the privacy space for many years, including the latest push to be the first mobile wallet to include Silent Payments for Bitcoin and MWEB for Litecoin. My vision for Cake is to carry this privacy-first vision even further, continuing to push the envelope and let users access powerful privacy features with an intuitive, beautiful user experience that makes privacy easy.
The first three objectives I have will be improving and expanding Silent Payments support (especially improving the sync experience!), building out an amazing (and privacy-preserving) Lightning experience, and fine-tuning and improving the existing Cake Wallet that you all know and love across the board.
I can't wait to step into this larger role, especially with friends that I've already gotten the chance to meet and get to know over the years. I'm also thrilled to be able to dedicate a bit more time to expanding access and ease-of-use for Monero, especially in the wake of the takedown of Samourai Wallet and the broad attacks against Bitcoin privacy.
Monero is a more important tool than ever, and Cake has been a key part of making Monero more useful over the years.
## Grateful for Foundation
I have nothing but amazing things to say about Foundation and the incredible people I've gotten to work with so closely over the past two years. We've gotten the chance to build the best Bitcoin hardware wallet out there in Passport, and turn Envoy from a simple companion app for Passport to a powerful standalone mobile wallet with the best coin control in the space.
I especially wanted to shout out Zach Herbert and @qna, as they have been close friends and allies, giving me the chance to get started in the space and grow into what became a much larger role than originally planned with Foundation. Zach has gone above and beyond to empower me over the past two years, and his tireless efforts to drive Foundation forward and ensure we ship the best possible products has been inspiring.
@qna is the reason I'm even in Bitcoin in the first place, and was the key voice of reason that helped me understand the how and why of privacy in Bitcoin, as well as the power (and necessity) of going no-KYC-only. We've built a great friendship over the past two years and I'm honored to be able to have learned so much from him.
This has to be the most bittersweet move of my life, but I'm thrilled with the new prospects at Cake and know that those taking over in my place at Foundation are going to bring a unique approach to help them take the next step forward as well.
Now let's get back to building 🫡
P.S. - Keep an eye out, Cake and Foundation will be working closely together in the near future 👀

2024-05-30 22:41:04 CEST

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Does that increase or decrease your chances of getting rugged lol

2024-05-30 22:29:34 CEST

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Thanks, I wish they weren't true and that ecash was a silver bullet but it's just not...

2024-05-30 21:40:28 CEST

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Full context (cross posted from X):
#nevent1q…p3fy

2024-05-30 21:39:59 CEST

Summarizing my thoughts on ecash
For some reason this ecash trend seems to be gaining steam instead of going away, so I'll try my best to detail my thoughts on ecash into one post.
1. The incentives are broken
Ecash finds itself between a rock and a hard place. For users to trust the mint, they need to know that the people behind the mint are trustworthy. If the people running the mint reveal their identities (or even just nyms), they're a trivial target for regulators and law enforcement as it's clear a mint is an MSB.
If the people behind a mint don't reveal their identities or nyms, users of that mint are subject to trivial rug pulls with no recourse. Which do you prefer as a user? Mint operator rug pulls or government rug pulls?
If a mint had been targeted like Samourai Wallet was, instead of just a potential privacy loss, all users would have lost all of their Bitcoin.
2. Ecash is not "self-custodial"
For some reason this concept of ecash being "self-custodial" is a thing, merely because the tokens themselves are self-custodied (and require proper backups of seed phrases etc.) While the lines get a bit weird, it's important to separate two things:
1. The asset people want is Bitcoin, not ecash tokens.
2. The asset people give up custody on is Bitcoin.
The ecash tokens themselves are completely worthless IOUs without the Bitcoin behind them, so even if I can take custody of my ecash tokens, I have 100% given up custody of my sats to a third-party.
Because of this, talking about ecash as self-custodial is disingenuous -- no one wants empty IOUs, they want Bitcoin. When they use ecash they do not have custody of their Bitcoin.
3. Ecash still requires all of the hurdles of Bitcoin self-custody
The hardest hurdle for many people to adopting Bitcoin is the simple first step -- writing down 12 words and making sure not to lose them. With ecash you still have this single greatest barrier of entry as you must backup a seed phrase or secret in order to restore your ecash tokens.
4. There is no incentive for custodians to implement ecash
While a custodian could switch to ecash out of the goodness of their heart, the incentives are broken for custodians. Not only does ecash harm the UX their users are used to (not having to store a secret seed phrase), it also introduces additional infrastructure complexity. Instead of just running a database, now they have to run additional mint software to provide their users with tokens, and handle support cases where users lose their tokens.
In theory a custodian could just also store the seed phrase for their users, but then have we actually improved on custodians at all? They even have custody of the ecash tokens in that case.
5. Custody is a line that cannot be crossed
The core of what makes Bitcoin unique is that we can actually take custody of it ourselves, gaining immense freedom and self-sovereignty through a bit of personal responsibility. Even though I am a massive proponent of building better privacy tools, sacrificing custody to get better privacy is a non-option for me.
Surely we can do better and build privacy tools on top of Bitcoin (or directly into Bitcoin's consensus layer) that allow us to have both privacy and self-sovereignty via self-custody.
I will not give up custody of my Bitcoin, no matter what, and you shouldn't either. "Better custodians" are just custodians with extra steps, and still strip us of self-sovereignty and thus freedom.
6. Time is a more scarce resource than even Bitcoin
Even though I have been very outspoken on what I view as a pointless venture, I am not here to stop anyone from building what they enjoy in the space. Devs working on ecash are free to do so as of course I have no control over them, though I fear that time spent on improving custodians is time that we will not get back. It's clear that the US gov and many in the EU are seeking to ramp up their attacks on Bitcoin privacy and self-custody, and our time to build tools to route around them is growing shorter and shorter.
P.S. - None of what I write is a direct attack on any ecash dev, and I have immense respect and personal relationships with most of the people working on this stuff. Respect for an individual doesn't have to mean I agree with them on every avenue they pursue.
https://i.nostr.build/oM0YW.jpg

2024-05-23 17:54:59 CEST

If the only solution for Bitcoiners to have private payments is custodians (be it e-cash, Fedimints, etc. as is all the rage) then Bitcoin will simply be dead for me. Feels like the ultimate cop-out.
Custody is the line in the sand that cannot be crossed. Custody not only opens up immense risk for loss of funds, it also makes these tools far less resilient to adversarial environments.
Can "they" stop every Bitcoiner from keeping 12 words safe? No.
Can "they" stop a few popular mints from operating? Absolutely.

2024-05-21 20:20:13 CEST

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https://silentpayments.xyz/docs/comparing-proposals/bip47/

2024-05-21 20:16:58 CEST

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No addressing scheme can prevent those. Has to be handled client-side to ignore dust and allow strong coin control.

2024-05-16 21:42:10 CEST

Say hello to https://silentpayments.xyz/
Wanting to learn more about Silent Payments, see which wallets support them, or find out how to integrate them into your wallet?
I've built out a website with all of that info and more to do what I can to speed up Silent Payments adoption. https://i.nostr.build/EnGDG.jpg

2024-04-25 21:24:47 CEST

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There are no Whirlpool coordinators anymore.
Whirlpool is dead.

2024-04-25 17:49:02 CEST

If you were a Samourai Wallet user and confused about how to restore your funds elsewhere, we've got you covered:
https://freedom.tech/samourai-to-sparrow/
https://v.nostr.build/4oMGr.mp4

2024-04-05 18:49:54 CEST

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Migrated my zap URL there as well already 👀

2024-03-11 16:12:38 CET

Big week ahead, kicking off with a brand new domain and website for all of our freedom tech at https://foundation.xyz 🥳
Check it out and let me know what you love/hate/would change on the new site!
Good suggestions might just get some sats/piconeros sent their way (zaps make things damn easy) 😉
#note1j2m…zgwk

2024-03-11 16:11:06 CET

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MULTI-ACCOUNT SUPPORT I LOVE YOU MILJAN 🧡

2024-02-28 12:55:57 CET

Who do I need to follow here? My “Latest” feed is a bit dead a lot of the time.
Help me fix it 🫂

2024-02-06 17:56:40 CET

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Full text on Nostr here:
https://primal.net/e/note13fc7k00y2ra7hleprkhrh5y82zh5l8qmuq2xr62j5lf8whlnzjystk7hd3

2024-02-04 20:14:11 CET

Bringing back #Bitcoin #SkepticismSundays 😎
One of the things that showed me the intellectual honesty of the Monero community and helped to force the community to stay grounded in reality and always laser focused on their core ethos was their weekly "Skepticism Sunday" Reddit threads. These threads allowed the community to come together, ask hard and skeptical questions about the design of Monero, the privacy provided, the economic approach, and much more.
In my time in Bitcoin I've never seen anything similar, but the nuanced and high-signal crowd on Nostr seems like a perfect fit to fire things up and see how it goes.
The goal of this thread (which I'll post weekly on Sunday's) is for discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Bitcoin. Things like what makes it difficult for you to use Bitcoin, what pain-points you have, etc.
NOT the positive aspects of it.
Discussing things with a critical thinking approach and level-headed discussion helps us learn where Bitcoin and its community can improve and go from there.
P.S. -- I try to take a break from social media on Sundays so I will follow up and reply whwre I can tomorrow!

2024-01-31 03:42:36 CET

NGL, loving the overall @npub12vk…pugg experience so far!
Favorite client I've used to date.

2024-01-31 03:28:08 CET

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I don't doom-scroll, I use it as a platform for education.

2024-01-31 02:37:16 CET

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I didnt give ID, real number, or real email to X.
No one has to. Not sure why this lie persists on Nostr when it's demonstrably false.

2024-01-31 01:44:05 CET

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If there was a tool to cross-post from X to Nostr I would.
But I just simply don't have time for both and think the audience on X needs pro-privacy, pro-freedom tech, pro-freedom money content more right now.