Privacy Now - Privacy, Web3 and AI

The most consequential month in crypto and AI we've covered. This episode breaks down the DeFi mass extinction event — 40+ protocols shut down and $770 million hacked in four months, with April the worst month in crypto history. We cover the AI layoff wave hitting Coinbase and Meta, including the leaked recording of Meta training its models on employees before firing them. We recap Google I/O...

Episode 3 of Privacy Talks covers the most consequential month at the intersection of crypto security, AI, and privacy in recent memory. We break down the $292M Kelp DAO exploit, how a single compromised verifier and a 1-of-1 configuration allowed North Korea's Lazarus Group to drain one of DeFi's biggest bridges, triggering $10B in Aave withdrawals and a very public blame war between Laye...

Who gets to decide what AI can and can't do? In Episode 2, we cover Discord's biometric surveillance rollout, Anthropic's refusal to give the Pentagon unrestricted access to Claude, the 2.5 million user boycott that made Claude the #1 app overnight, China's MiniMax releasing frontier AI at a fraction of the cost of US models, 30,000+ layoffs across Oracle and Block, a critical vuln...

Welcome to the first episode of Privacy Talks, a new roundtable sub-series of the Privacy Now podcast. In this episode, I sit down with colleagues Matej and Marko to break down what’s actually happening in AI, crypto, and privacy right now. We discuss: 🔹 Moltbook – the social network where 14M AI agents talk to each other 🔹 Is the “AI social boom” already here? 🔹 Vitalik Buterin’s alternative t...

What if privacy on the blockchain didn’t mean going dark, but going compliant ? In this episode of Privacy Now, Mihnea Stefanescu sits down with Dr. Adam Gągol, co-founder of Aleph Zero, CEO of Cardinal Cryptography, and the architect behind Blanksquare , a new middleware layer bringing Privacy-as-a-Service to the EVM ecosystem. Together, they explore how the Blanksquare SDK enables private transa...

What if the most secure blockchain wasn’t on Earth at all… but in space? In this episode of Privacy Now, Mihnea sits down with Filip Rezabek, co-founder of SpaceComputer and PhD candidate at TUM, to explore the bold idea of a tamper-proof orbital computer that could redefine trust in Web3. We cover: The vision of an Orbital Root of Trust Threshold cryptography, TEEs, and reproducibility in distrib...

What does real privacy in Web3 look like? In this episode of Privacy Now, I sit down with Ameen Soleimani, the founder of PrivacyPools.com and 0xbow and Matej Janez, Head of BD at Oasis, to explore what comes after Tornado Cash, and why privacy is a public good worth fighting for. We dive into: The evolution from Tornado Cash to Privacy Pools The injustice facing Roman Storm & Alexey Pertsev W...

What if unvested tokens didn’t have to sit idle? In this episode of Privacy Now , I sit down with Rico van der Veen , Co-founder & CEO of SemiLiquid and Robert Brienza, BD Specialist at Oasis to explore a bold new frontier: using unvested tokens as collateralized liquidity instruments (CLIs) , without breaking vesting contracts. Rico and his team are building SemiLiquid on Oasis , leveraging L...

In this episode of Privacy Now, we sit down with Yannick Myson , founder of Swarm Network , to explore one of the most exciting trends in AI and Web3: decentralized agent swarms. Yannick unpacks how autonomous AI agents can collaborate to verify truth, preserve privacy, and reshape the future of intelligence, all without centralized gatekeepers. We dive into: – What AI agent swarms are and how the...

What does it really take to build a thriving Web3 community—beyond memes, airdrops, and Discord hype? In this episode of Privacy Now , Mihnea sits down with four seasoned community builders from across the Web3 ecosystem to unpack what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next for decentralized communities. Guests: 💡 Ruben Amar – Head of Community, Fuel Network 💬 Alexandru Stoicescu – Community &...

In this episode of Privacy Now, we dive into Liquefaction—a game-changing approach to private key management in blockchain. Joining me is James Austgen, PhD researcher at Cornell Tech and co-author of Liquefaction, to explore how Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) enable new ways to share, rent, and pool private keys without compromising security. But with great power comes great risk. Could th...

Women in Web3, a topic that's not discussed enough in today's landscape. Nelly Cornejo, Alina Latinina and Ann Brody join for a riveting discussion and share pro tips and career moves for everyone listening. They're all part of a really cool movement, Women in Web3 Privacy. Check out their website at https://womeninweb3privacy.com where you can find all their socials. Also suggest giving Alina's l...

Join us for a talk about one of most fundamental human rights, privacy. We discuss the current landscape, regulatory environments and how web3 is helping users take ownership over their data. We're joined by Harry Roberts(Technical Product Manager for OPL and Sapphire) and Anthony Simonet-Boulogne(Head of Research & Innovation at iExec)

"Cognitive AI is marketing BS.” Join us with Trent McConaghy (Founder of Ocean Protocol) to discuss the changing landscape of AI, the limits and possibilities of cognitive AI, and his journey to founding Ocean Protocol. Ocean Protocol's dApp Predictoor has seen huge success with blockchain users, enabling prediction-based trading with AI. Featuring Mihnea Stefanescu (Community Lead at Oas...