# Sandi Fatic - CEO of Calimero Network | Privacy Academy Interviews

- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2025-10-09
- Duration: 27:28
- Topics: blockchain, privacy, data, calimero network, w3pn, web3privacy now, decentralization, tech, amsterdam, meetup, interview, surveillance capitalism, cypherpunk, Education
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-OzjUyM8zHlE
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzjUyM8zHlE

## Description

This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews  (https://academy.web3privacy.info/)  our peer-to-peer knowledge project where we explore the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Inspired by the Socratic method, we share deep conversations to learn from each other and grow together.

In this episode, we speak with Sandi Fatić, CEO of Calimero Network  privacy infrastructure project born from the cypherpunk spirit.

Highlights from this interview:

* Why the dream of the open web needs privacy at its core
* How Web3 drifted away from its cypherpunk roots and how to bring it back
* What it means to be a modern-day cypherpunk (hint: it's not just code)
* The problem of privacy paradox: everyone says they care, but no one acts
* Why privacy tech builders are criminalized and what that says about our system
* What developers can do today to start building sovereign, user-owned apps
* How to protect your own data from being trained on by AI models
* Practical tools, techs, and mindsets for the next generation of builders

Timecodes
00:00 - Intro & Background  
00:50 - Joining Google & Facebook  
01:50 - First Web3 Experience & Disillusionment  
03:00 - Returning to Web3 with NEAR Protocol  
04:00 - Founding Calimero & Importance of Privacy  
05:00 - Cypherpunk vs Web3 Values  
07:00 - Open Web: Uniting Cypherpunk & Web3  
08:00 - What It Means to Be a Cypherpunk  
09:00 - Learn Privacy: Books, Docs, Conferences  
10:30 - Privacy Paradox & User Inaction  
12:00 - Black Swan Events & Awareness Shift  
13:30 - Criminalization of Builders & Regulation  
15:00 - Peer-to-Peer Use Cases & Tools  
16:30 - Tips for Privacy Builders  
18:00 - Developer & User Experience Challenges  
20:00 - Sovereign Data Vision  
22:00 - Critique of Surveillance Capitalism  
25:00 - Community Building & How to Start

Useful links
http://web3privacy.info
http://academy.web3privacy.info

Camera & sound: https://x.com/BabyBitProd
Interviewer: https://x.com/0xfarbey

Let privacy be with you!

## Transcript

[Music] Okay. Hi, my name is Sandi Fatic. Uh I'm the CEO of Calimero Network. I started coding at like a very early age like around 8 years old and I always loved coding. Coming from Croatia and Croatia is now I was born during the war. uh after the war uh you know had a hard time your parents were like be a lawyer uh be you know an engine like be a doctor don't be an engineer like that was like not something you should do you know but I really loved engineering uh and like generally like I wanted to work at a big company uh so like at early age of like 21 I joined for like my first internship uh at Google later on I worked at Facebook and had like mixed feelings about web 3 when I initially started. I think like many people have has skepticism when when they start. Uh but generally like why I joined web 3 first like I joined in 2017 because I really like resonated with the idea of like the open web. Uh not so much about like we going to have um uh you know like just money sell sovereign money like bitcoin like bitcoin I really didn't understand but like I understood this concept like later on I did understand it. It took me a while. I think like most people like you know they need some time to like process what's going on. Um but I really love this like idea of open web that like you don't have to trust a centralized uh party. So like I joined in 2017 worked on ICO project. I kind of got disappointed with the industry because like it really seemed like there was a lot of tech but like not really adoption. Uh so I went back to Facebook spent two years at Facebook uh working on infrastructure. So like majority of my work I did like security and infrastructure. Um and then like spending after a while at Facebook I actually had an interesting technical job and had like a really good salary there. Like everything was nice but just like something was bothering me that I really love this idea of open web and I really want to come back. Uh and like generally I did not resonate with like the Facebook culture general like I didn't feel like the values represent me. I didn't feel like what we're doing as a company really does a better like good job for for the world and I always felt like there's better system. So like I can 2020 I left Facebook joined near protocol. Uh near protocol is like one of the you know biggest um layer ones out there spent two years at near and generally I liked near as well because like they had a similar idea. There was a bunch of people coming from Google and Facebook uh who had the same feeling like we want to build the open web like we want to build something which like you know resonates with you know the masses we can build better system we can build a better Facebook we can build a better Google we can build you know better discord slack we can build better financial systems um so I spent two years there and after a while like I really wanted to build something in privacy because like I realized that you know we cannot get to the open web or web 3 or cipher punk or whatever uh without actually having you know privacy as like a first class citizen like in my view um every application in the world should be decentralized should be distributed users should own the data that's like one of the promise web three kind of gave we going to have self-s sovereign data we never got it like now every transaction you make on Bitcoin every transaction you make on Ethereum every transaction you make on every chain except the privacy protocols uh are fully you know public right like you don't want to give your um you know transactional history to everybody um and that's why I started Calimero and like Calyro is like generally a framework for developers to allow them to build uh like self-s sovereign applications where the data is hosted on user device and then the user decides to like selectively share uh data with peers. It's like not so blockchainy. It's more like a web two kind of infrastructure project which kind of uses web 3 for like certain things. So like initially like when I joined web 3 u I I think like in you know the first builders in web 3 were like mostly very aligned with the cipher punk movement you know like privacy decentralization self-run data self-sign money and I really feel felt to me like the it was the same movement if you look at like if you read all the like old cypher punk you know manifestos and articles you will see a lot of early people like David Trump who you almost 1981 started uh talking about better encryption, better systems. um like 40 years now later like we are kind of getting there right and like all of these people who you know participated in the list like many of them maybe are like you know Satoshi they worked on similar concepts they contributed um and I think like as you know like something happened then we got this new term called web 3 and I don't know like why we like I understand why we called it like we had read write on um and we called it like web three and I kind of like think that the values kind of are very align like similar but not very aligned and I think like the more we go with this web three narrative like we're splitting apart from the cippher punk movement and I think that's that's actually really sad um because like you know web three now you have on one side the gents who you know trading uh memecoins and doing like all this stuff which you know kind of benefits maybe industry to some kind like you know we can test stuff but like the value for the like end user is not really there. Um and like in my in my view is like you know having uh free money having USDC integrated in every store uh and having it in a private way that I can you know pay in a private manner on on a store with like revealing how much money I have you know who are sending the money buy online I think the value there is much higher than you know the many things we kind of you know pro promote as an industry um and I I feel you know we have to come back to the old ideals uh we had like you read a bit of the manifestos these guys were writing. Why why were they building this? Um and also I think like we see capital general also like didn't help u because like a lot of investments were made in things which do not really benefit society and it's just for somebody to get rich. Um and ideally you know we should do both. Uh like I'm you know I'm not uh I'm a capitalist. I believe like if you uh you know provide value to to society you should get rewarded. Uh but also I really strongly believe that if you provide the service it should be for the better good. Um you know so like that's kind of like how I see it and I don't why the rifts happened. I do not really know. I mean it's money. It's like dirty capitalism in web three world. Uh unfortunately I mean I think it's the biggest problem it's blurred. Uh like all of these things are blurred. I I I honestly would love to like bring these two terms under like a new umbrella, combine web 3 with cippher punk and call it just open web like like let's build open web and like combine these two things because there's you know values in web 3 which makes sense maybe which cy punk did not promote per se like we just you know got advanced from from from that side but also the other way there's like a lot of web three things which we do not do uh which we should do as cipher so I just like combine these two things into one term. Uh and like what does it mean to be a cipher punk? Um I think like there's you know different ways of thinking about it. Like I think one side is uh you know like they said cipher punks write code. Uh so like the general idea is like let's build open source software let's build software which improves the society in general like by providing privacy by providing self-s sovereign data by providing better you know money uh better systems in general. Like I think that's like one of the part like let's build the systems and have programmers who do it. But like on the other side it's also activism in a way. Uh it's like you know you have some values and you have to promote you have to evangelize that you know your friends start using your family starts using it. So for example like my mother used to be on WhatsApp and I force them like install signal right like it's a small step but it's it's good for you right like you maybe don't realize now but you know um you go to your friends who are maybe also not in this you know general things you educate them uh so I think it's like an umbrella term for like an ideology it's like similar to web 3 people ask me like why did you like you know why do you join web three like make me give me a rational and you always try to give people rational like this is why you should do it blah blah. Um but I I think is there as a religion like you have to believe it like you have to go into it deep understand why figure it out for yourself and then like it just becomes a part of you like it becomes an ideology it becomes a religion and like you grow it in a way um that you know more people start believing and more people start believing and then we end up in a great society which like you know is good for everybody right uh I mean I think like there is like one thing I always recommend to all the people who I know and like want to learn a baby about cypher punk movement and privacy is like I mean just look at the articles um you know David Chro Charm wrote like the cipher punk manifesto uh read some books there's like really good books on like neurommancer like sci-fi if you want to like you know get into this sci-fi uh stuff um and like there's also good documentary so like there's a cipher punk documentary I don't know what was the name but like if you just go like look up YouTube there's like a bunch of documentaries which like talk about the early days of the movement and like the funny thing is like just I didn't mention that before like internet was cipher punk when it started and then it went not to being start now we're trying to get back so I think like generally it's like documentaries there's a lot of materials on the internet like all the mailing lists are you know public all the the articles the publications like it's like just Google it's it's quite easy to Right. Uh the other thing is like I mean going to these conferences really helps like just going in web three conferences in general um to like meet people who like maybe have same ideas or want to learn like even if you're not in you know like web three or just curious like the best way to meet people is you go to conference you meet them you learn new ideas. Uh obviously YouTube is really great material you guys are building the you know academy so hopefully this academy kind of brings all the stuff under one umbrella. like I don't think there's a one place right now on the internet where you can just go and find it. So like I mean great job to you guys. Uh but generally like it's you know digging it's digging you know Google or like you know websites like it's easy to find like it's you know it's been around for for a long time just read but like cypher manifesto is like one of the probably the the problem of building a like a privacy framework for developers um generally is like unfortunately not many people care about privacy as you would ect uh and we call it a privacy paradox. So like a privacy paradox is the idea if you go on the street and you interview thousand people 93% of them tell you yes I care about privacy I don't want me to be spied on but then in reality if you go to them and you tell them like do these steps um many of them just don't do it um and the question is like how do we you know like that's the biggest I think question we have to ask as an industry like is the same it was the same still it's the same with like web 3 or blockchain technology right like you have to convince people that using USDC or using Ethereum or using Neolana whatever like ch like chain or or payment gateway you want to use is better for you because you own your money have your private key you have access to like you know finance and and and on your like fingertip you don't need you know there's like no steps to to go through like it's quite easy like once you get into it and I think like we have to do the same for privacy like you know evangelization getting developers to build more stuff experiment more and it's it's quite hard you just you know like it's quite hard like I even talked to some foundations in web 3 where I really had like I was surprised I would like go them and like well there was many of them would say like privacy is not a priority right and I was like I mean what do you mean privacy is not our priority um and that's just weird right like it's just weird and I think with time it's just going to happen uh eventually right like maybe we have a black swan event you know GPT leaks it already leaked and like many companies already leaked your data uh like a man tell company they leaked your data or like they resold the data it's like quite common it's not like something you know imaginary but like I think maybe we just see a black swan event which really gets people's mind thinking more about it because currently it was like small thing here small thing there you know you heard about bitcoin you heard about ethereum you heard about privacy uh but like then something happens and usually I really believe that like there is this you know moment where people just start like we cross the chasm right like people care about privacy uh and I mean we in many books we've wrote about the you know side effects if we do not have privacy you know like we know what happens you know Orwell uh 1984 like many other books talk about like you know what is the potential outcome um and I think like we need as a collective to just say like a privacy on. Um, and one thing also which I think is like really sad to see here like people often say like if you're building a privacy like you you're a criminal or you want to do criminal. really sad to see, you know, guys getting arrested for it and especially getting arrested for like 5 years ago, nobody really thought about it. Like, you know, like you're a young guy building something cool and like many of the things you could not even predict, right? Like you it's cool to build this and you deploy it and like many of these things you cannot even predict, right? And like where do we cross the line like is Vitalik then responsible for building Ethereum or do we hold Satoshi responsible for building Bitcoin or we take you know David Ch for uh writing the first ECH paper or we you know go to Steve Jobs for building you know the computer or the telecom provider right is then wrong like oh the the wires the internet is going through is like the telecom provider right like it's it's really bizarre like where do you cross this line right um and I think now that we seen that this could happen. I think like even governments and should get involved more like talking about this like guys like we care that you know we we pass GDPR like governments then care about privacy let's assume that right so like let's get the government people talking about like how to make better systems right like now after post tornado cash we have KYC solutions where like you know now you can use privacy pool with KYC okay if that's needed let's do that uh let's find then a better way to do KYC we have zk you know proofs for like you proving that you are a citizen of a country. So like without actually revealing any data to to counterparty. So like technology is really progressing so fast like that we do not know what could happen like it's like you know regulating AI that's like one of the discussion how you going to regulate it. We don't know is it one year horizon, 5 year horizon, what happens in 7 years. Is the same with privacy like you know we don't know how will you know progress. We don't know how MPC networks will progress. We don't know like how the internet will be fast. Maybe like some of the peer-to-peer networks we couldn't do before now is possible. Um so it's like really really hard like I think you know we like we as privacy people should build tools for developers to keep in mind that they building something uh you know which should benefit the society uh but also keep in mind like you know like you don't intentionally build something bad like should you know you should like you cannot prevent it but like you should you know have do the best things you can the same on the government right like they just not imprison the people but like actually look at the facts right like you know if you want to build like in our example like we're building peer-to-peer networks and like I would love just people to like build social on top of Calimero which is like you know we have a community of 20 people we want to have our own thing for you know discussing things like you know why not like just build whatever um like private walls I would really love to see like you know private walls which people build like we you know we cannot everything ourselves. We want to be the provider of like the technology um itself and like who knows what people will like I don't think even D5 was you know people thought that's going to be so big like it was very hard to predict like in my view I've been in web three and it's just hard so like some practical tips for builders I mean obviously I said before like you know materials find some materials on YouTube there's a bunch of materials on the internet to find about privacy. Usually like the topics which I think in privacy right now are hot and you know will grow are obvious like you know ZK proofs like if you want to build try you know building something with different ZK uh proof protocols I mean play with MPC right so there's like many NPC networks uh play with that uh uh like is probably one of the things which are going to you know be another thing TE's like research TE's like these are also like the easiest way probably to privacy right now um like there is you know trust assumptions on every single one of them. Um and last thing like which I always say is like I mean try to do the best like you know self-host your data. So like that's kind of like what we are doing um on on our side to really like build tools for like self-hosting data and think like what would be the tools which could be easily replaced um because like you know now with AI it's going to be really easy uh probably to build apps like play around with the different things um self host your data always self host your AI if you use AI um um but yeah use just like Google it I don't know like yeah so hard like for for for for like very specific things I don't know like what to like it's very hard for me to like give like tips I mean just Google research go conference it's like the same thing if you want to learn about web privacy right if you just want to learn like I mean best places like go internet forums talk to people uh watch a bunch of conferences like there's I mean there's like a lot of materials on conferences like I watched your like web3 privacy conference from Argentina really good material like if you go to Defcon there's endless conferences there. Um and yeah forums forums are good like there's a bunch of forums. Um and just start coding like that's you know cyber punks write code. If you're a building just write code maybe it doesn't make sense maybe it does make sense. Just start building. Like that's maybe the best advice and try to build something practical. If it doesn't work out iterate figure out you know what went wrong. uh like that's usually the best uh just do it just do it right so the biggest challenge in privacy uh right now um usually like I I when I think about it I separated into like two categories one category category is uh developer experience and developer um developer experience like it's quite hard today to build privacy solutions right so like anybody who's building in you know the space should really think about like okay how do I make the easiest experience for the end developer to build something quickly on me um because like if we solve this problem then we get more products uh and we get if we get more products then we get more users right uh and then the user part is the second part of the problem is like how do we make privacy simple for the end user as well right so if you ask the user like install this 10 scripts probably not going to work if the you know you go to a chat app and it's uh slow and it's like did my message go through? Did my message not go through? Terrible user experience is like will we sacrifice you know isability of use for our privacy. Majority of people won't like that is reality and that's like ties into the privacy paradox as well because it's it's hard quite like signal installing easy but like for the rest of the stuff we do it's it's quite hard. Um so I would just like say you know like let's build the best developer experience for developers to build best products and then let these developers to really think about like what they need to do to make the end user experience uh the best. And then last part is like evangelism right like we need to evangelize like why would somebody use uh signal versus WhatsApp right like why would you use like some other privacy solutions so like not marketeer anybody versus um you know a standard web two solution um that's like the key and it's ties the same problem in web three right best dev experience best dev um best dev uh best user and user experience So we have to work on it and once we get there I think it's going to be quite easier when I said uh it's like privacy solutions right like one side of the open web or self efficient or like web three whatever you want to call it is the money part right defy transactions whatever the part I really cared about is like the the other part uh which I call like you know just sovereign data and like in my view like what's sovereign data is is data I hold as a you know person um and I hold it for myself like similar on one side you have your key you have your money right so if you only own your key you you're good like nobody can steal your uh your money and I wanted to achieve like the same thing for the data like how do I achieve um how do we build a system where like I can be the owner of my data like I don't have to trust any company in the world that if I give them my data they're not going to sell it or GDPR is going to protect me or you know like whatever third thing. Um I really wanted to like you know just you know use a calendar app where like my calendar will not leak or use a social app where like my you know likes or things are not going to be trained on AI or like use a notes application which you know is not going to train uh you know AI on top of my my main notes and then like leak it or somebody like you know uh steal the ideas I have or like for financial stuff even like you know trust that somebody will do the best to you know build a budgeting app or like whatever like from like simple things like this in life to you know very complicated things like you know chatting with my wife or chatting with my family or chatting with my friends like you know I really believe that these things like all of these data points are like my basic human rights right right like why would I give it to somebody else like currently we gave it out of convenience right was easier to use so we just gave it out it's a free service we gave it out right um and I wanted to build like a tool for developers to just build regular apps Uh like you can still like do calimera stuff on on on like you can build you know um finance stuff on calimero but like use a blockchain for the blockchain stuff and then use the calimero for like the rest of the data things. Uh but also like just build you know normal stuff. I really want to see the internet. Um there's a good quote. Um I think it's like David Char. I really like his quotes. Um it's like one third party um to be trusted is like too too much. Like I don't know exactly what's the quote but like if you have to trust one third party that's already you know too much like what why can we just build an inter you don't have to trust anybody? Like if I trust you I give you my data. If I don't trust you I don't give you my data. um and like build that for like everything right um and that's like open web is for me like one side money the other side is like I just want to use you know an Instagram replacement which is data friendly where I can have private groups with friends and it's good discord right like Slack drive whatever right like I would just wanted even them to adopt like why they don't just say like yeah guys we going to built this privacy tech into our products because we really believe that we care about your privacy instead of like I trust you should trust us because of GDPR like I mean you want to pay a fine and extract millions and billions out of it like like the fines are just not high and if you get caught or like it's just you know like we have technology to solve the problem it's we should use technology to solve problems and not only privacy in everything right like we use AI to detect cancer. We use, you know, fraud detections to detect fraud. We use let's use privacy tech to give people privacy. They just use tech, right? Like, you know, it's like we should not use penis. We should like any tech we can use to improve people's life, just just just do it, right? Simple. Yeah. Yeah, I would really love to have like more that we have like more events and places or like forums or whatever um which are like broadly known so that like new people are welcome to join and they should just come and I think generally like you should surround yourself with people who think the same uh to like you know spin ideas maybe you know test things out um and like you know that's kind of like the general thing like and if you're like new in in in building in privacy I mean you can reach out to me. I think we should also make a welcoming community that you could essentially reach out to to anybody else building a privacy and like maybe make just more events like this where people can talk and like discuss uh you know opinions and disc like learn from each other like obviously you know like my kind of skill set is this and I see evolved in in a very limited uh way and like I always love hearing from other people who you know like experienced different things and like they learned uh from from different perspectives. So I really think like this kind of knowledge sharing for for builders who are already trying to build something in privacy but also for builders who are like you know just coming and trying to build something new uh is really important and yeah I mean if you really don't know where to start I just like I mean find somebody find all the people uh who you think are building something cool and just ping them all. one person will respond, introduce you to three others and then uh you know these three others introduce you to three others and then you have a solid network to start off. Um and like if nobody responds then we going to have 1984 and we are a shitty community and like the future's not bright. Ifund people no respond and then like we're Sorry. Yeah. [Music]