Privacy Now - Privacy, Web3 and AI

The Future of Blockchain Access

Privacy Now - Privacy, Web3 and AI

Show Notes

In this episode of Privacy Now, we dive into Liquefaction—a game-changing approach to private key management in blockchain.

Joining me is James Austgen, PhD researcher at Cornell Tech and co-author of Liquefaction, to explore how Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) enable new ways to share, rent, and pool private keys without compromising security.

But with great power comes great risk. Could this technology disrupt DAOs, token lockups, and Web3 governance? Or will it redefine privacy in blockchain?

Learn more about Liquefaction here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.02634v1 https://github.com/key-encumbrance/liquefaction

More from Privacy Now - Privacy, Web3 and AI

Aug 6, 2026

Your data is being fed into AI models without anyone asking you first. That's what ties this whole episode together. We debate the claim that Web3 is dead and only DeFi and DePIN are left, Musk's petition to kill the FTC privacy order standing between him and training Grok on user posts, the new Siri running on Google Gemini and what that means for the company that built its brand on privacy first, GitHub Copilot's move to token billing and the end of subsidized AI, the first federal moves on AI regulation in the US, and a chaotic month in crypto with $1.8 billion liquidated in a single day. We close with a few conspiracy theories, including the uncomfortable one: what if on-chain privacy was already cracked and nobody told us? Stay safe, stay private.

Jun 15, 2026

The most consequential month in crypto and AI we've covered. This episode breaks down the DeFi mass extinction event — 40+ protocols shut down and $770 million hacked in four months, with April the worst month in crypto history.

May 6, 2026

Episode 3 of Privacy Talks covers the most consequential month at the intersection of crypto security, AI, and privacy in recent memory.

Apr 14, 2026

Who gets to decide what AI can and can't do? In Episode 2, we cover Discord's biometric surveillance rollout, Anthropic's refusal to give the Pentagon unrestricted access to Claude, the 2.5 million user boycott that made Claude the #1 app overnight, China's MiniMax releasing frontier AI at a fraction of the cost of US models, 30,000+ layoffs across Oracle and Block, a critical vulnerability in Claude Code that could silently steal your API keys, and the MacBook Neo, Apple's first $599 AI device. One episode. The whole battlefield.

Feb 18, 2026

Welcome to the first episode of Privacy Talks, a new roundtable sub-series of the Privacy Now podcast. In this episode, I sit down with colleagues Matej and Marko to break down what’s actually happening in AI, crypto, and privacy right now. We discuss: 🔹 Moltbook – the social network where 14M AI agents talk to each other 🔹 Is the “AI social boom” already here? 🔹 Vitalik Buterin’s alternative to the AGI arms race 🔹 The rise of the invisible workforce & agent-to-agent commerce 🔹 DAC8 and the expansion of crypto reporting in Europe 🔹 AI-generated artists & synthetic fame 🔹 Claude Opus 4.6 and the future of AI as a coworker Are we building a parallel digital civilization? And if so… will privacy survive inside it?

See all episodes →