Can Private Protocols Keep North Korea Out? Aztec’s Zac Williamson Thinks So

In this episode of Unchained Premium, Zac Williamson, co-founder of Aztec, joined Laura to talk about Tierra, the V6 upgrade to Aztec’s private, fully decentralized layer 2 on Ethereum.
The conversation covers the 24/7 AI audit harness that found critical vulnerabilities in Aztec’s cryptographic libraries, and why formally verifying those systems gives Zac more confidence in V6. He describes how private value on Aztec works like Bitcoin’s UTXOs, so a dusted note can’t taint the rest of an account, and how a privacy pools-style design lets users prove their funds have no link to flagged deposits from groups like Lazarus without revealing anything else.
He also lays out the Zcash-style turnstile Aztec uses to contain a hidden double-spend, the apps launching on the network, including zk.money, and why he thinks privacy wins only when a product can’t exist without it. Can programmable privacy and compliance live on the same chain? Listen to find out!
 
Show Highlights:

How Aztec Tierra doubled proving speed and brought transaction confirmations down to about 12 seconds
Why Aztec runs a 24/7 AI audit harness, and what formally verifying its cryptographic libraries showed
How Aztec’s Stage 2 rollup has sequencers stake, get slashed, and vote on upgrades with no security council
How “serial numbers” on private notes let users prove their funds don’t overlap with a list tied to North Korea’s Lazarus Group
Why dusting an Aztec account with a tainted note can’t contaminate the rest of its funds
How per-account view keys let a user share their transactions with the IRS, without a global auditor key
Why Aztec follows Zcash’s turnstile approach to contain undetectable double-spend bugs
What’s launching on Aztec, from the zk.money neobank to a private AI inference marketplace and an anonymous social network backed by Ethereum bonds

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