Why Privacy Tools Keep Failing (and How to Fix Them) - Nanak Nihal Khalsa / Co founder human.tech

Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 12:00 AM

Nanak Nihal Khalsa explains how he transitioned from building public identity systems to becoming a privacy advocate and co-founding Human.Tech. He breaks down the major privacy-enhancing technologies: ZK, MPC, FHE, TEEs, and offers practical advice on how to choose the right tool for your use case. He explores challenges around scalability, developer UX, side-channel attacks, and nullifiers in privacy systems. Nanak also makes a case for why companies and users alike may be more ready to adopt privacy-preserving tech than we think. A must-watch for anyone building in privacy or curious about where this tech is headed! Timecodes 00:00 – Intro: Nanak’s story & founding Human.Tech 01:00 – From public identity to privacy tech 02:00 – Choosing your privacy stack: ZK vs MPC vs FHE vs TEEs 04:50 – Threats: Side channel + replay attacks in TEEs 07:00 – Programming paradigm shift: circuits vs traditional code 10:00 – ZK languages: Noir, Circom, Halo2 + circuit design tips 13:00 – Scalability, Merkle trees, nullifiers, and UX trade-offs 17:00 – Why nullifiers matter in ZK identity (and why they're hard) 20:00 – Why companies do care about privacy (sometimes) 22:00 – Users care about privacy but only if UX is right 24:00 – The case for NFC-enabled private ID (and hackathon tips) 27:00 – Learning ZK & crypto math: how to start 28:00 – Why now is the best time to build privacy tech 29:00 – Final message: Keep building & fighting for privacy ... This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews – a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info/p/interviews A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!