People who prefer “pragmatic” privacy over maximal privacy, or argue that decentralisation doesn’t matter in Web3…they don’t need blockchain. People who are creating abundance and increasing the total value in the world need blockchain for products and services that can't exist without one, and that requires decentralisation. That's what Aztec's doing. @aztecnetwork couldn't exist in a centralised ledger. Privacy-preserving systems need to be decentralised because they need to be credibly neutral, similar to the internet. It can't be responsible for the traffic going through the network, or have the capability to restrict it. If a project doesn’t have an incentive to decentralise, that means their unique value proposition doesn't require it, which is fine. But then why use blockchain at all? Why are you here? You're not creating fundamental value for the world. You're just moving wealth around in a very public and unsovereign manner. You're not enabling anything new. There’s no shame in wanting to make money, but don’t build a blockchain project and then say that decentralisation doesn’t matter. The intention with blockchain was to recreate the world's financial infrastructure in a permissionless, self-sovereign manner, where we are custodians of our own funds, free to transact without third-party intermediaries with misaligned incentives. That can’t be accomplished without programmable privacy.

Yesterday, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) published a blog announcing intent to go all-in on integrating zero-knowledge (zk) into the Ethereum L1: This could be a major upgrade, with massive implications for scalability and privacy. 🧵: