Show Notes
Zcash and NEAR are both ripping this week, and Illia Polosukhin and Mert Mumtaz say privacy is the reason why. Is this how the “Bitcoin DeFi” vision comes true?
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Zcash just cracked the top 10 on CoinGecko, up 32% in a week and near an all-time high. NEAR is up 69% over the same stretch, and both rallies trace back to the same catalyst: transactions nobody else can see.
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, join Laura Shin to unpack why confidential transactions, not speculation, are driving the rally, and why the two networks now function as one privacy-preserving liquidity layer for real businesses and institutions, not just traders.
They cover NEAR Intents' $260 million in TVL, the multi-party computation and secure enclaves behind NEAR's confidential balances versus Zcash's zero-knowledge shielded pool, the counterfeiting bug that forced Zcash's Ironwood migration, and NEAR's Shield system, which halted transactions mid-hack during a Litecoin exploit. Zcash's next upgrade, Project Tachyon, aims to make the network quantum-proof and scale it 100x, and Mert argues privacy will not stay a competitive edge for long.
Host:
Laura Shin, Host / Unchained
Guest:
Illia Polosukhin - Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol
Mert Mumtaz - Cofounder and CEO of Helius
Timestamps
🚀 01:39 Guest intros, plus why ZEC (+32%) and NEAR (+69%) are ripping this week
🌐 03:13 Illia and Mert on why NEAR and ZEC's price action is turning heads
🟠 08:34 Is Zcash and NEAR the Bitcoin DeFi dream, minus Bitcoin?
🕵️ 11:54 Why coffee-shop-level balance visibility is a real business risk
✈️ 15:06 Mert's travel hack: booking flights and hotels privately via NEAR Intents
🧠 18:12 Why privacy is a retention tool first, not just an onboarding one
📣 25:11 1inch Aqua: back multiple liquidity positions with one wallet balance at http://unchainedcrypto.com/go/1inch-yt
🔐 26:23 Privacy vs confidentiality: ZK proofs versus NEAR's MPC-and-enclave model
🛡️ 29:26 Inside NEAR's secure enclaves, and why store-of-value needs real privacy
🔄 33:59 How a NEAR Intents swap settles across chains, and its $206 million in TVL
🐛 39:09 The Zcash counterfeit bug, the Ironwood migration, and formal verification
🤖 45:49 How NEAR's Shield AI system and MPC guardrails manage solver risk
⚡ 51:33 Zcash's NU7 upgrade: faster blocks, quantum-proofing, and private voting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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