# "Privacy, Art & the Death of Hype: A Decade Inside Web3", - Sam Hart, researcher, Other Internet - Speakers: [Sam Hart](https://streameth.org/speakers/sam-hart) - Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress) - Date: 2025-11-09 - Duration: 19:38 - Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn, Education - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-J3Hs5pKJLqY - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Hs5pKJLqY ## Description Sam Hart (Other Internet, ex-Interchain Foundation; Timewave founder) reflects on 10+ years in crypto: how the culture shifted, why privacy adoption lags, and what it’ll take to build user-first, cross-chain apps that people actually use. We also dive into art × Web3 beyond NFTs, and a future where tech serves relationships, not the other way around. Timecodes 00:00 – Introduction: Who is Sam Hart & what is Other Internet 01:00 – From Cosmos to Timewave: a decade in crypto 02:05 – What Timewave is building: cross-chain ZK execution 03:20 – Choosing where your app runs: multi-chain design 04:15 – 10 years in crypto: from optimism to pragmatism 05:00 – Privacy progress (or lack thereof) and lessons learned 06:00 – How to move privacy adoption forward 07:10 – Why crypto must reconnect with real users 08:00 – Industry + privacy: strange but necessary allies 09:10 – The art background: what tech can learn from art 10:05 – Decentralized creativity: artists as early DAOs 11:00 – Protocols as performance art 12:00 – Beyond NFTs: rethinking art x Web3 13:00 – The missing layer: community & dialogue in crypto art 14:00 – Imagining the future: a private, liberated web 15:00 – What life looks like when privacy wins 16:00 – Closing thoughts: human time, not machine time .. 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 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! ## Transcript Hi, my name is Sam Hart and uh I work in web 3 space. I've been working in crypto for about 10 years. Um I'm here on behalf of other internet which is a uh applied research social research organization. Um and yeah, very happy to be here at the the web 3 privacy event. Hi Sam. Hi. Thanks for coming. Of course. >> Hi people. So uh for people who don't know you, can you tell just a few words like who you are? Like what do you do briefly? >> Yeah. Uh I'm Sart. Uh thank you for the invitation. Um I uh have been working in the uh web 3 crypto space for a better part of 10 years now. Um I've done a whole range of different things. So uh I've done a bunch of consulting. Um uh I worked on like EIP1559. Um I did a lot of kind of product strategy and um kind of mechanism design. Um, right around the the COVID era, I got drafted into uh running the Interchain Foundation, which is the Cosmos Associated Foundation. Did that for about two years. um and I was leading the the kind of product strategy and you know a lot of the the business development there and then um subsequently uh worked at an MEB company called Skip and um did a whole bunch of kind of crosschain infrastructure development uh and yeah very recently uh started my own organization called Timewave uh which also does a a kind of crosschain ZK infrastructure um kind of an N project. >> Can you tell a bit more about timewave? >> Yeah. >> Um like what do you do? What sort of like crosschain case stuff? >> Yeah, so it is a it is kind of a a virtual execution environment um that lives across many chains at the same time. Um and uh yeah, it really kind of uh is attempting to to make it so that you can develop an application and then choose where you want the application to be executed. Um so you kind of tied into one chain or another >> or you could tie it into multiple chains at the same time. >> Um and we use uh ZK proof as the kind of integration point um to to anchor it into one chain or another. And how do you choose a chain or it's automatically like according to the best I don't know positions for that? >> Uh usually you decide beforehand and you kind of compile into the the correctly verification key. So we're using uh ZK pretty extensively and then you write that verification key to a given chain. Um and uh so you're kind of compiling and deploying down into the the chain that you want to interact with. >> Mhm. Okay. Uh but yeah, maybe we will get back to that later. But I wanted to ask you like more in general like you've been here for 10 years. That's a lot especially for crypto space where like every months not even years like everything is changing completely. So but how do you feel like this change that happened for this 10 years and especially from like privacy human rights perspective? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. Um I asking this today I I feel like the um the shift has been from kind of uh optimism and and really a sense of um uh I don't know like futureelooking like uh you know openw world desire to build uh into something that's like very pract practical and material and um and honestly a little bit more pessimistic today. uh the at the same time you're kind of seeing real world adoption uh but also you know co-option uh by uh you know authoritarian regimes and uh crypto is uh you know an important chess piece on a geopolitical game game board in a way that it it hasn't been previously. Um, so that's uh it feels like the stakes are maybe higher um in a in a way that they they weren't before. And I mean from a privacy perspective, honestly, I don't really feel like the needle has moved all that much in terms of absolute numbers. The um I think there's been great advances in technology. Um but you know the absolute adoption of of privacy in cryptocurrency particular is is relatively low and um I think something that really needs uh kind of directed uh efforts like we're doing at this at this conference. >> Well 100%. Uh what do you think like can be done more like to move towards this direction because we are here we are like in a bit of a privileged position. We together here just few bunch of selected people but for people who will watch this video for instance right like are there any like simple steps that can move all this a bit forward? Yeah. >> Um I think the I've asked myself the same question and I don't know that I have the answer. Um really the two directions that seem most impactful are >> um talking to people that you know need privacy and like really understanding your needs like not making assumptions about what it is that they need. on uh delivering a pragmatic solution. Um I I I think this is, you know, something that the crypto industry in general has had a a lot of resistance to is is like going on the ground and talking to people who are users and or potential users and like you know not not really making assumptions about what it is, you know, how their life operates and what they need. Um and then the other for privacy in particular I I think there is um an important uh inter relationship that you need to make with with industry. Um you know this is how crypto was widely adopted on the web originally was um there was a real business case um that was made around uh end to end encryption and uh that allowed corporations to levy governments to then accept crypto as a as a standard because it is uh you know a competitive advantage for them uh in the long term and I think there's lessons to be drawn drawn from that. >> Yeah, regulation is going like really heavy that's that's a big thing. Uh but yeah, going back to this crosschain thing that you're uh you know a lot uh like your short take on like crosschain integrations and the future of that like where are we moving there? Yeah. Um so I I can say where I think we should move um which is uh the you know intuitively like users don't really care or want to have any understanding of like where their data lives. Uh, I think it's just when you're interacting with the web, you don't you're not looking like, okay, this is the server is based in Iceland or something like it's just not really core to your experience. And I think it should be similar when you're interacting with crypto. um you want to get something done and in order to get something done you might need to interact with a whole bunch of different services that live on different chains or you know even off offchain and um there needs to be kind of a you know a fabric that allows you to to make these things interact with one another um and yeah I mean the pieces are coming together slowly uh it it's not really a a technical problem anymore. It's it's more of a, you know, standards and, you know, people putting in the effort to to kind of create transition points between these things. Um, which is an enormous amount of work. Uh, but is is certainly possible. It's still it's still a very long road until we get to the point where you're just interacting with web 3 as a as a kind of cloud entity. No, I certainly agree that it should be something under the hood for the GM user because mostly I don't care. Let's be honest and that's 100% something that should be done like underneath but uh and to jump aside a bit and um so uh am I right? You have a background with art, right? >> Yeah. Um both my parents are artists. Um I grew up in an artist household. I I ran an artist magazine for four years. Um I yeah have a strong connection to to art. Yes, it's for me it's very interesting to explore because like I'm an artist myself and I don't find a lot of people in this space who are related or have artistic background because mostly it's like tech people. So uh I wanted to to uh to ask you like your take on like what do you think like tech world or tech people can learn from art world because it's so different and so distant and like >> never connecting really and how do you connect like yeah it's a lessons. >> Yeah that that could be a whole interview unto itself. um uh what can they learn from? So, first of all, as if you're an artist, you you know, there there's a kind of distinction between the art world and you know, artists at large. The art world is, you know, art with a capital A. It's a kind of institution that uh operates in a very specific way around um you know uh blue chip galleries and um and people with capital and honestly I think in a lot of ways that there are similarities between capa art world and and some things in crypto. Um but uh art uh as a field more broadly uh is yeah highly decentralized. Um anyone can kind of claim to to be an artist which I think is like really beautiful and um you know takes a multitude of different forms for writing or or uh installation art, land art, uh painting, whatever. Um, and yeah, what honestly I I think that the most important thing that the crypto industry could take from the art discipline is um uh art is a field that is interested in other fields. it is about other fields like it is taking an interest in other people and other things and like really trying to like elevate those and and bring out their stories and I think that's just an incredible uh skill to cultivate and something that um yeah crypto should be trying to achieve as well. Like can you help tell other people's stories and like raise them up? um can get really involved and and you know become a kind of support structure for for them. Um that that's yeah I think one of the the most valuable things that you could you could take away. >> Yeah 100%. Do you see do you see any upcoming possible intersections between like art and like web three world uh like beyond NFTTS like is there anything that might be maybe next generation of like this road map or some other forms of collaboration is there like a place for art in web 3? Yeah. Uh I definitely um so a lot of the art art meets web 3 things that I've done have been more kind of protocols as art. They're almost like performance art. Um I think that there's a really interesting intellectual direction to take to take there. Um it's a maybe a bit esoteric for for some but um there's a number of intersections like the most practical of which is just financing for artists like um there's a structural problem in which uh you know only a a small percentage of artists get paid for their work. Um it's mostly a kind of hobby. So just providing support and distribution infrastructure I think is super important and um there's a there's so many like high lever things that that you could do um that would make a huge impact on on artists. Um in terms of like art that could be made in the context of web 3. Um I think that uh in order to to do that effectively, you need to think about um what the web 3 audience is and um how you build a web 3 audience. Um this is something that I I feel like is a little bit lacking. Um when you think about like where where do people in web 3 live? Like where where do you spend your time? Um, maybe it's like on Twitter or Telegram or or it you use it just as a, you know, a financial application and there there really isn't much of a social component going on at all. Um, so for artists to be interested in web 3 as a um, you know, as a space to to create things, you kind of need to to have an audience or you need to allow them to bring in their own audience. Um, so uh, that that's where I think there's a lot of room to grow. um where right now crypto has some degree of resources and um you know they they are kind of creating platforms of sorts but they don't necessarily have a um a kind of cultivated viewership or or like a a space in which like artists can can come in and and create something um and even if if you look at NFTTS there there are a few kind of discord communities maybe that that are interested in in you know a certain artist or collection or or gallery. uh but uh the the kind of social experiences I mean the dialogue that's created I think is still a little bit lacking and one of the reasons that that the NFT boom kind of uh you know dissipated a bit is there wasn't that that kind of community retention in you providing a productive space to speak with others about the artwork Okay. Um, yeah, there are I believe there can be much more intersections than NFTTS. Um, they still exist but in a weird way but whatever. Um, but yeah, talking about future um, imagine we are there. We achieved what we were fighting for like we have this private Europe liberated web like in 10 years or whatever and how would you imagine the world when like we want we have everything we are fighting for now. Uh how will the world look like and how will life look like? Wow. Um, yeah. I I there's so many ways to answer that question. I I guess the thing that comes to mind immediately is um I would like people to spend more time on the things that that you know are are really kind of personally enriching to them and their community. Um, I think there's a a kind of decoupling between people's like work selves and like how they sustain themselves and like how they sustain their like social relationships and um being able to yeah invest more time in in like the things that are personally nourishing for you. Um I think that that's something that uh the privacy community is like particularly gives particular attention to like they are very focused on the the people that you interact with most closely and the the things that are most personal to you like those are that's a very important kind of construct for them. And um if you know the privacy community is successful then hopefully those relationships would be uh you know g given more attention and you know more dedicated space to uh take flourish. Well we wish it will happen soon but we need to round up because we are out of time. So thanks for joining us for the talk. >> Thank you. This is thanks for watching. Oh.