# Price of Privacy - Leona Hioki | Web3Privacy Now - Rome Meetup 2024

- Speakers: [Leona Hioki](https://streameth.org/speakers/leona-hioki)
- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 34:22
- Topics: Education
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-gw5YlrMCZq0
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw5YlrMCZq0

## Description

The Price of Privacy

Today, we don't have a unit of measurement for privacy, like "100 privacy units." As a result, the valuation of privacy remains very ambiguous, and perhaps it should be that way. Let's consider how people are actually paying for privacy and to what extent they are effectively paying for it. Additionally, let's think about what the actual value of privacy might be.

Leona Hioki has been working in security and privacy since his college days. In 2018, he joined the Plasma research community and receiving an Ethereum Foundation Grant, he founded Intmax (https://www.intmax.io/).

ABOUT US

Web3Privacy Now is a think-and-Do-tank of hundreds of people, projects, and organizations committed to protecting and advancing civil liberties, decentralization, and open-source software.

We aim to manifest profound political and social change by advocating #privacy in the #web3 Era. With unified efforts, we carve out a path toward a more equitable, decentralized and freedom-respecting digital commons. 

→ https://web3privacy.info/

## Transcript

[Music] okay hi everybody I'm from in Marx so I've been involving with this privacy scaring stuff or since no yeah many years ago especially since 18 uh 2018 I participated the prma project and the right now still doing plasma and so yeah privacy encryption it's a basically core of the cryptography or cryptocurrency right and today we don't not so many of us not many of the industry or not many of crypto people encrypt their currency right while it's in cryptocurrency industry or cryptocurrency space we most of people do not encrypt their currency or privacy uh let's say or asset it's a bit strange or error people are accepting this situation right now so we need to tell we need to know about the value privacy and how much value it has at the same time how much price it has right so to determine the private value of privacy or price of privacy we need to tell the unit of privacy so does anybody here know their unit of privacy for example krams yeah it's it's a good measure yeah no no especially women need to they they need to hide their know kilograms right so yeah it's a one is a good measure I don't know and so what else so do we what kind of square meter kilograms and no yeah unit of purose is not famous right so I will talk about what the other people think about there today and what their big Tech like Apple and Google are think about that today and how cryptographers Define that today so okay how much privacy do you have 100, right so when we say we need more privacy we have less privacy what does it mean um we pay for privacy sometimes right so maybe yeah no some of you guys are paying for Proto mail and you some of you guys are paying for privacy service or privacy protocol like oh Monero uh Trin Gia whatever we want to use yeah you pay for privacy something this right so what how do you how do you define their cost performance of that privacy right so yeah so we need know the unit of privacy then we can tell their know their cost of performance and also their value of privacy price of privacy how much privacy we need to pay and no this are pictures there no yeah much m opener M but you know it's if we if we say okay what I have a 1 million 100 or million dollar uh what is worth in the Privacy unit right so privacy unit actually yeah we have some measurement and there's a basically two ways to measure privacy first is more academic level of privacy right so if we Define the Privacy with enthropy uh it should be more like a expressive right so for example yeah entropy is like no P log B right and it doesn't have any Dimension but it's a basically defining that the definition uh if I express the definition I will say how surprised you will get when you see their information this is their describing the what is enop what enthropy is right and it's very close to that so basically privacy is reducing the information for Outsider right so if we can Define their information we can Define their no privacy right how many enpy we could know decrease and in in terms of enthropy uh yeah many cases you we Define the information in a kind of mutual enthropy and this is a quite common way to define their know information among the space or among the relationship so this is one of that but if I say you you have a no kind of your enthropy is like know let's say .5 or this kind of stuff no do you satisfy with that actually we cannot have kind of feeling of the no that unit is right right so we can Define another way so practically people using uh privacy unit uh people using person as a privacy unit uh in big tech company and yeah many practical use cases so what is person per person so basically it's saying that if you ask some something um how many candidates do you have to Define you so for example if I join their tornado cash pool and five people come in the tornado cash and withdraw money from TR cash so it's 5 person right it's quite practical and it's quite direct way to define the Privacy right so yeah actually it's practical so when I doer privacy stuff in this space I am always caring about person and apple is using our person per day and he's basically yeah no they they have so many truction so yeah how many uh people are know is a candidate in a day this is their no measurement for them and in more kind of smaller level of user Set uh we can use that no just person not like tornado gash mono so mono basically they have about 100,000 users today so we can say that it's it's like a 100,000 per month but yeah we can say it's 100 person right 100,000 person so it defines how many people or how many people you are in and basically how same as the other you are right so this is a def one one way to do a political uh uh Define uh politically defin privacy so okay so if we base on this our know practical unit uh what we can yeah think about that so okay you took your money from the kyc cas CX uh yeah no whatever you come up with no okay let's say coinbase and you use uni swap a compound 100 times and you you did many jobs with that and and you hop one uh no to no you you take a one hop to another address okay how many person do you have uh for this address know your activity so yes how many people do you have okay it's 100 times you did and CX address one do the 100 times using the DBS and after that you you hop to another address so how many person how many person I I want to say people but no because it's strange right how many PE person but yeah we need to use that to no unit so how many person do you have uh for this activity no it's obvious it's one person right so easily detect to him no because it's KY address right uh from their coinbase so people can tell that and you know yeah some people uh 100% tell that this is your address um this is why uh no and you withdraw the all money to their know address too right right uh before that so basically it's a one person uh different to one person right so you use a privacy protocol when there people not using how many person do you have for your privacy how many person do you have for your privacy right here three yeah no basically no people using that or privacy app yeah yeah exactly of course it's one person so yeah actually in this space it's quite hard to have privacy right so privacy itself is like a no Bitcoin no it's really hard to obtain and no easy to lose uh and it's very very difficult to hle right no that's a privacy so I would say privacy is the most underrated value and underrated digital asset itself so privacy is a digital asset right now so not so many people have more than one person privacy right 99% 90 let's say 99.9% of crypto user don't won have privacy more than one person right now so this is the reality of this no cryptocurrency space and that's the reason why we Gathering here right to make greater anonymity set to make a greater privacy together and change this situation to make true let's say yeah let's somehow true our cryptocurrency industry or cryptocurrency space so next step so if we can Define the unit of the person uh the unit of the Privacy uh yeah next step is no maker equion of the one unit to one some dollars right so how much does it cost for for one privacy one person privacy right so okay one approach is our using Monero for example so Monero has 100K monthly user all almost the center the recipient amounts are no almost kind of no uh completely private right the center is somehow mixed and the recipient and amount is completely private so monello has a strong privacy right so it's let it's it's a let's say it's kind of 100K uh person privacy in Monero right now and it has three billi market and no the that by any exchanges and not this kind of stuff and so let's say it's purely privacy is like U 51% DCT are no resistance prevention and privacy right and if we can just divide with the number of the users no let's say it's like a yeah 30k uh per person 30k dollar per person to have the property so it's not the cost so I'm talking about the not the price actually uh where I'm talking about the value and if we divide that with the number of users let's say the person no privacy unit one person is like 30k or dollar right so of course it's not there for one person entire I'm measuring the entire value of their entire network uh as no useing by using their unit unit privacy so we cannot tell their for one person but know for entire system it's like a 30k dollar per person right so another way it's like okay so let's talk about more traditional one it's it has a more longer history right so it's not cryptographic privacy but yeah it's quite something solid and Swiss bank how how much how how much does it cost so basically Swiss bank is costing like 20K in the minimum and the in the greater number obset know they they need to pay more but at least are 20K right and yeah it's it's not the we cannot apply the one person a private uh one person or no privacy unit for this because it changes or no depends on the amount of the money so it's not the dollar per person it's a dollar per dollar right so it's a bit strange but we can tell that it's like 20K its costs and so we can presume that right now in the market value if we see the Monero Dash uh there a privacy coin and also the traditional one we can presume that uh Financial privacy basically its value is 20K dollar per person to 30k per person so this is a kind of let's kind like it's like a phumi uh kind of yes uh conject con conjecture uh no to measor the no value of privacy for example and so yeah it's my project and know doing their know another way to majure the uh privacy uh unit on the cost of the privacy and we are doing the Privacy mining on the it has a equilibrium like a market mechanism right so Market has a equium between buy kind of buyers and sellers right so like the way we can find the know equilibrum between tracers and the Privacy holders right then we can tell that how how much price people actually paying for the anonymous Set uh this is what we are doing right now and I don't uh know I don't push that to you guys but no it's another approach to to measure the Privacy uh cost of the Privacy right so at the last why we need to push down the cost of privacy and why need to have why we need to have kind of reasonable price of privacy at the same time of course privacy is quite underrated and it's precious digital asset that's the reason why we are gathering here I guess but no if it's more reasonable costy or less costy unlike 20K or 30k dollar uh now we can accommodate their all kind of people on this Earth to have privacy right so why is that desirable so it's all about the meta privacy So Meta priv concept of meta privacy is quite simple so we need to have another functionality besides privacy so for example lightning Network and lighning network has a strong scalability and privacy at the same time somehow and so we cannot tell that lightning Network users is privacy users or not or like payment users not right so many people using lightning Network for payment system other payment system and for scalability right so basically it makes her mixture type of information right so mixture user type of information so people don't have to expose their user type information like I'm a privacy user I'm a strong privacy believer and yeah like that so I'm a big fan of Monero for example but know if I use Monero I it's almost proven that I'm a strong privacy believer and strong privacy user right but in some cases if we cost down their no privacy and let uh not pay uh let not people people pay for lot of money for privacy know we can mix their user type type information uh privacy users and yeah a hunters and know these kind of people right no non privacy users and it is quite desirable for even privacy user so if you use a privacy application if you don't have to expose your user type information you can feel free and feel safe right and the no people will will never ask why you are using this app no you can just you can just say no everybody use that right so privacy should be normal and the Privacy should be kind of uh let's say affordable for everybody to be normal right so this is what we call Meta privacy uh mixture of the user type information making privacy less let's say PR less privileged or special right so this is another reason why we are quite obsessed with uh cost of the Privacy costing down the Privacy so thank you so much and that's all about uh my presentation about the pr price and the value of privacy thanks so much question hi thanks uh thanks for that presentation I I was just wondering um so I mean you you you rightfully make the point of like you know how how we say like anonymity likes company right and we want as many people in it especially we want people that would are not like the sketchy people like not the people that just care about privacy we want everybody ideally so I wonder how risky it is what I I gather that you're are trying to do is basically putting a price tag on privacy and even if this price tag is something that maybe you're trying to push down it's still some price versus maybe it being a property that all systems should just have by default and that people should not have to pay for it no matter how low the price is and how much that sort of creates this situation where people are you know thinking that it's like an extra that you need to somehow pay for no matter what and how that is really detrimental to the overall privacy effort like I don't know if this is something that you had considered so basically the the reason why privacy is costy right now is a technical reason one first and second is that kind of no regulation reason to make a special treatment for some people and this is their reason why privacy is somehow costy and so if we make a privacy for everybody without cost or yeah all people will have privacy but yeah it's all about the market mechanism uh of the demand side on the supply side right so so right now not so many people are know offering privacy right so Bitcoin does not offer privacy so much and ethereum does not offer privacy and Solana doesn't over privacy so in that uh situation uh privacy protocol raise their know kind of fee for them and no it's a almost a uh no kind of Market mechanism you you can think about this kind of graph right so if the Privacy cost zero for example course zero the levenue of the Privacy protocol is zero right and if you make this privacy cost like a 100 million nobody use that so it's at the same time privac leue Zer I would distinguish a little bit better between what is objectively measurable about privacy and what is and what cannot be objectively uh measured about privacy because for example anony sets can be measured or the cost of a Swiss bank account can be measured and so on and so forth but the value that we attach to privacy is not something that can be actually measured with uh a number for example I can value privacy for a reason you can value privacy for another reason maybe we I value privacy in a certain domain you value you value privacy in a different domain so I mean there is something that can be measured with uh an objective uh unit of account or or whatever it is and there is something that uh is more subjective which is the value of privacy for each and every single person I think but uh if you have any comment on this but yeah so H what is objective on the what this objective maybe yeah I can somehow presume uh here so what is objective so when I talk about the unit of privacy like uh no yeah one person right people person um this measurement it's somehow objective but it's not general for example okay if I send money from my account to you uh there's a transaction right and the transaction has a this unit no how how many person do we have no yeah I would say how many person instead of how many people um how many person do you have uh for this transaction how many kind of candidates do we have or know to Su suspect or for this transaction is coming from you or me or or the other people uh it's quite specific right so each if we use this unit it's it's all about for each transaction for each activity and for each account right it's quite specific and we cannot measure like a I have no 3,000 person privacy or like no you have no 27 privacy or she has seven Baron privacy or something like that it's it's not possible right so it's all about for each activity and for each entity uh we can have so it's quite subjective uh know when we uh measure this logically but it's quite so specific to measure the know measure something what we want right so it's too specific and that's the reason why we can feel bugue when we talk about the value of privacy like this right so yeah so actually we want kind of more General and the totalized Privacy uh we want to measure that and we want to pay for that like I pay no for this service my privacy entire privacy will go up to 1 million for example no I feel good but it's quite difficult if you pay for the proton M server you are paying for the no maybe thousand person for for your email account not entire for yourself right so this is a know kind of struggling we have so it's too complex so it's kind of subjective and it depends on the situation and it's I presume that it's simply because it's too complex on the each entity on each prot privacy it's quite specific and the if we measure that logically yeah we can measure that correctly I guess so that's my opinion on that thank you very much any other question one over there hi so I I just wondering something more specific about your protocol or your new implementation of this uh privacy layer to no it's something like only for coin and not smart contract as I heard so I was curious about for example is for you in the beginning a thread the set because for example some privacy kind have this problem no even if they are privacy but then if less people use then it's easy to Cluster them no and the other question is about are you using using ritual to start the cryptography about ZK and how you manage if you use ritual so what you will be your choice to avoid the trust that you need to put in the ritual to start theomorphic cryptography so if I explain my uh no explain our layer do stateless layer do in nutshell yeah it's stateless and stateless means that every everything happen on client side so data preservation theb computation is on client side so basically uh in typical or rollups or uh yeah kind of yeah rollups basically most of the rollups uh they preserve data on J and if if they have kind of privacy uh they poster data on chain and this is their kind of tradeoff right so if you post a lot of data on chain of course it would be more costy and if you preserve that on client side it's less costy of course you can know avoid the pain their gas cost to to store the data onine right so it's all about the trade of functionality and more scalability right so many layer to uh even if they have privacy they are they have more functionality and less scalability right and inmax is like no stateless so it's quite less uh no costy it's almost yeah we can keep their constant very low gas cost at the same time we have a complete privacy like mono and so it's their all about their no yeah their tradeoff let's say and so what we can do with that is like no conditional payments so we have our Ching complete uh smart contract for to do the conditional payments and it's like no we cannot lock money on Smart contract we cannot have kind of contract address but everything else is kind of true incomplete so it's all about tradeoff no we need to have uh functionality with Rich statefulness or stateless or extreme scalability uh when we have enough or privacy for Boss uh yeah that's their comparison and so your question so I could not uh hear the first question actually uh can you repeat that or rephrase that thank you thank you Leona oh I H oh sorry sorry sorry oh yeah I I could not understand the first question yeah what was your first question no it's okay they say that we are running out of time so I will tell you after because basically you didn't reply even for the first question so I will try to clarify better my question because I didn't have any reply from you now thanks yeah so let's we running out of time so we need to make space for the other no so the the first question was about do you think that for you it will be a tread the Anon set especially in the beginning because let's say even if you are very good in privacy but if few people use your system that is easy to track them oh I see so if we have less functionality and we have less users why why you we we can say that or we are we have enough privacy is that your question yeah I mean is this a tread that you are considering and if it is what you are think to do about it so first of all yeah we have our privacy mining uh as I uh not touch a bit here uh privacy mining is basically uh incentivize people to to become a member of anonymity set it's quite simple just depositing is and wira is makeer no make a reward so it's basically uh making volumes instead of dbll and if you join their anonymity Set uh you will get lward it it's quite simple um this is the first one um second one is like yeah the value of the payment or let's say so yeah so when we see the Twitter uh yeah we we call that X today yeah so yeah when we see the X and know conferences like token uh 20 uh no I forgot the name but no the many conferences right so if you go there you will see the set of the people who excited with the new functionality new things on the like know new trend new narrative right but if we go to the no actual uh use cases like uh payment onl Fring it's a huge actually so yeah in anen diner for example no I when I arrived there and the first conversation I had was about crypto sending money to her Ben no Taxi Driver suddenly talk about crypto why I did not say anything about crypto I I I didn't say I'm a crypto guy and he suddenly now she suddenly talk about crypto no about their actual use cases like know sending money uh for know for for his to his uh to her parents uh not living in Venezuela and such a case like no I could see that in Turkey as well and I I could we can see that in Southeast Asia as well and also exp rid R funny one is Nigeria today and this kind of uh real use cases of crypto it's yeah actually it has huge and we cannot see that on X and on the conferences like yeah there no usual crypto conferences so that kind of know uh people and users are quite or obsessed with which is the best payment system and if we can provide extreme low gas fee payments with privacy yeah it should be fine for them so they need actually privacy because no in the danger places no I I don't say atina is dangerous but no in many press are dangerous and using crypto and they they need privacy to hide yourselves and it's actual use cases so let's say we don't think ourselves are quite familiar with no fancy stuff are no like new kind of privacy or no what uh what is there a meme coin for example yeah I I I I'm we are not good about that I guess but in the actual use cases regarding privacy I think the extremely constant cheap gas cost with privacy make a lot of sense uh inviting a lot of users in my opinion and that's my take yep thank you thanks a lot [Applause] [Music]