# "Privacy Without Terrorists" by Ameen Soleimani // ECC#2 - Buenos Aires 2025

- Speakers: Ameen Soleimani
- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2026-01-09
- Duration: 13:39
- 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, congress, ethereum cypherpunk, buenos aires, argentina, vitalik buterin, privacidad, filecoin, foundation
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-gWXrx7uK4hY
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWXrx7uK4hY

## Description

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress by Web3Privacy Now is the world's largest cypherpunk and human rights event.
4500 people gathering in Buenos Aires to celebrate privacy with internet freedom leaders like Richard Stallman, Vitalik Buterin, Roger Dingledine, and Eva Galperin. 

Join us in building a free internet for all.

Website: https://web3privacy.info/
Congress site: https://congress.web3privacy.info/

## Transcript

[applause] Hi, my name is Emin Solemani. I'm the CTO of Oxbow. Thank you for having me here at the Web3 Privacy Now uh Cipher Punk Congress. It's uh great to be here. Um, this is my uh uh fellow uh teammates in uh Oxbow. Uh show of hands. Who here? Huh? >> What? Go on stage. Oh, okay. Sorry. But then how are they going to see what's behind? Okay. [clears throat] So, [ __ ] Okay. Uh show of hands. Who here has been to Patagonia? All right. Like a couple of you. Who here has heard of Patagonia? All right, everybody. So, we had our team retreat in Patagonia and it was beautiful. We went to Bar Loce and it had the cleanest water and it was the purest water. It was the best water [snorts] and something crazy happened. Uh, I was standing around by the lake and three guys rolled up with a truck and just started dumping trash in the lake. And I walked up to them and I tried to stop them and they looked at me and they said, "Bro, [ __ ] off. This is a permissionless lake." [snorts] So before I could say anything, 10 other guys with trucks rolled up and started dumping trash in the lake. And the the people who were kaying, they were disgusted by all of this. And so they uh started leaving the lake. And me and my friends, we all got together and we decided to take over the lake. and make it so that nobody could put trash in it and protect it so the water would remain pure and uh good for everybody. Uh none none of that happened. Uh but it's a story about tainting uh the well uh so to speak where uh the the actions of a small number of people can abuse what is supposed to be a common good for everybody and ruin it. Uh who here has heard of tornado cache? Everybody. Awesome. So uh tornado cache was what the second deployment of zero knowledge proofs in human history. the first on Ethereum and it was the first privacy protocol for us ETH nerds. We were all big fans of Zcash and we wanted our own privacy system. Uh unfortunately it worked so well that North Korea also after hacking a video game for $500 million uh decided to start putting hundreds of millions of dollars into the protocol. Uh, and that made it so that everybody else who is using the protocol is now also suspect because it's hard to tell who is North Korea or not. Uh, [clears throat] and in addition to that, uh, Alexi and Roman were both arrested and were charged uh, with 5 years in prison. So, I think we should free Roman, free Alexi. Devs should not be held liable for the crimes of their users. Uh the devs had no criminal intent. They did not set out to build a system that North Korea was going to be using. They set out to build a system to protect everyday users and protect their privacy. And even after malicious actors started using it, it's not like they could do anything because the contracts were immutable. And the devs also went out of their way to build a compliance tool that allowed users to show that their uh you know which uh deposit their withdrawal came from. Uh so if you do have the means, please consider supporting them. Uh both are preparing to appeal their court cases and could use your support. Uh free romantorm.org and we want justice doubt. What about all of us? So this is a conversation I was having in 2021 with uh an economist in uh Canada named John Paul Coning and he put forth a hypothetical which is uh say a criminal deposits the proceeds of a crime in a tornado and isn't any noncriminal who is using it uh at risk of providing illegal moneyaundering services to that user? Uh I didn't expect this talk to be very wellreceived at this venue. uh because [cough and clears throat] this is one of the things that I've actually struggled with for a long time. Uh I really don't want this to be true. Uh but I unfortunately cannot see it any other way. Uh if no one else used the system then only like it would be obvious which one North Korea was and so the privacy that they're getting is coming from all of the other users all of us. So with great power comes great responsibility. The tools we have built are incredibly powerful and tornado cache was so powerful that it was actually temporarily declared a terrorist by the US government. And Alexis's judge said there is no legitimate use case for tornado cash. Now that is false because there are tons of legitimate use cases for tornado cash. I was using it for payroll. uh Vitalic used it to send money to Ukraine to protect you know to support them. Um but it is also true that the privacy that we are getting uh is derived from everybody who deposits into the pool regardless of who they are. And so we are now responsible for correcting this narrative and it's on us to show that we can use these tools responsibly. And terrorism is unfortunately real. Uh this is a uh excerpt from Wikipedia about the AMIA bombing. Who here has heard about this? Uh probably Argentinians. Uh it was 1994. And so the theory goes that Argentina decided to stop providing uh nuclear technology to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iran decided to blow up a Jewish community center in an act of terrorism against Argentina which two years ago or last year was uh basically decided that it was actually the Islamic Republic. So, would you as an Argentinian want to be providing privacy for the people who blew up this these buildings and did terrorism against your people or would you prefer not to? So, we're building privacy pools.com. It's privacy without terrorists. Uh, I wrote this paper with Vitalik. He's the first author. I'm in there at the end. U, I [clears throat] made some diagrams, came up with some terminology. It's my first academic effort. Uh but the idea is that we can use privacy protocols without uh necessarily associating ourselves with the criminal users of those privacy protocols. [snorts] Uh so we built privacy pools.com and we have advanced the compliance tools that tornado team pioneered. uh instead of just being able to prove uh that which specific deposit your withdrawal came from, I can prove which I could only do in in private because if I send, you know, show that to the world, it basically defeats the whole purpose of using it. Uh I can publicly dissociate with the potentially illicit deposits into the protocol and this aligns with the regulatoratory objectives which are isolating the illicit funds and still providing privacy to the legitimate users. There is about 1,900 ETH deposited, 700 ETH TVL. There's only about a 2% rejection rate. Um, the way this works is the user deposits and then must wait for approval and the Oxbow does KYT, which is know your transaction. So, we look up where all the money is coming from and if it comes from a source that we find uh unsavory, we reject it. uh other privacy protocols that aren't up to our standards, known hacks, um no KYC, cross-chain, you know, uh exchanges. Um but uh and then uh only the approved uh funds can be withdrawn privately. And so when you withdraw money from privacy pools, you prove that your funds are uh one of the funds that have been one of the deposits that have been approved, but you don't reveal which one. And we don't take custody. Uh rejected funds can still be rage quit. Uh that just means you can take your ball and go home. Uh you just prove that you have the money and it goes back to the original deposit address. Partial withdrawals are supported. So there's a u uh UX benefit over Tornado. In Tornado, you could only deposit, you know, one 10 or 100 ETH. I don't always want to pay somebody one 10 or 100 ETH. Uh so I in this one, you can deposit as much as you want. And then you can basically use it as a payment wallet where you pay as you go in any amount. Uh and the rest of the funds get redeposited. And Oxbow, our company, can still later on reject a deposit. And from that point forward, the nice thing is that all of the other funds in the pool by default immediately prove when they withdraw that they are not the funds that we've rejected. So this is what it looks like. You can use a MetaMask or you know any Ethereum wallet to deposit into the system and you pay a small vetting fee to us to make sure that you are legit and we take that even if we decide you are not legit as a disincentive for keeping continuing to try. Um and once you have deposited there is an approval period and you can see that in this example the deposit is pending and the user can only call exit. Exit is uh code for rage quit. When I when I actually originally called the function in Mollikraquit, Joe Luben asked me to call it graceful exit and I said no. [clears throat] Maybe like three people got that joke. Uh then you can go to withdrawal and once your funds are approved you generate a proof you generate two proofs. Um one of the proofs is that uh your funds are uh valid and unspent and the other is that they are actually on the uh association set of approved deposits that oxbow has approved and we have made some decisions about what kind of uh privileges we have in the system. And so for example, there's things we can do and there's things we can't do. Uh one of the things we can't do can do is we could nuke the entire association set tomorrow. We could say uh we are done and we are publishing a association set of no deposits and we are rugging everybody's privacy. Uh but what we couldn't do is deanonymize withdrawals that have already happened. So any money that has already been spent can rest assured that your privacy is safe for that transaction. What else can we do? We can prevent future pool deposits. We have a one one-time kill switch we can call and that makes it so that uh no more deposits are accepted into the pool. Uh but uh what we cannot do is freeze or move user funds. Uh that helps uh making us non-custodial. Uh the only thing we can do is kick people out of the privacy set and then they have to rage quit back to where they came from. What can we do? We have two different contracts. We have an entry point contract which handles uh vetting fees, relaying transactions, and we can update that add you know fees and features but that doesn't hold any of the money. Uh the contract that holds all the money is called the privacy pool contract and that one we can never change. That's immutable. And so altogether this makes this a non-custodial permissioned privacy system. Uh I don't know need to know I don't know who needs to hear this but rail gun is also a permissioned privacy system and that's a good thing. Um and now we are building privacy pools v2 which is also a shielded pool that will have internal peer-to-pe peer-to-peer payments swaps no setup required. So I could send uh a private transaction to somebody's uh e Ethereum address uh even if they have not yet set up their privacy wallet on privacy pools. Uh and you still get the same withdrawal association proofs. So we can reject you know deposits and then you can prove that your money is legit. We have multiix support. You can earn yield in the pool. I think if we you're earning yield and you're paying people and they're earning yield basically nobody has any reason to leave. And uh as was announced earlier today, uh we are also working on integrating with Kohaku. We're hiring. Please join us. Please build with us uh and help build privacy for the good guys. [applause]