The Wallet Privacy Crisis And the Fight to Fix It. Antonio Seveso, CTO & Co-founder of Fluidkey

Hi, I'm Antonio, CTO and co-founder at Fluid K. [Music]

Hi Antonio.

Hi.

Thanks for joining us at Pleasure the Web Price now. uh we will start with just your briefly introduction in like your pathway like how you ended up in your position at just a bit of your background for people who don't know you.

Yeah. like yeah

yeah um I think that my job in privacy didn't start with web three and uh because often people uh met me say oh but you start privacy with web three no I actually start I think it's something that I've always take care about privacy or making sure that private things stay private for myself uh personally um the first thing that I really worked on as a job in privacy was a startup I co-ounded in 2017. At that time I was really kind of following the web three space but I was still working full-time in web two and that was a startup that was focusing on solving a problem that soon was coming in Europe. There was a GDPR uh rule so basically a ruling how um data personal data are shared between end users and uh companies that want to access them. And Yan was the startup. It was a middle layer that was had no access to the data but was guaranteed that if I share that with the company the company can access the data until the law offers it.

If I update that data gets updated until I stopped sharing data with the company and the other way around no was like a trusted layer. uh this I think the first project that put a lot of effort into privacy but then was 2020 when I decided to go fulltime into web three initially was not focused on privacy was like more like experimenting was supporting projects on a developer but tech ground and then in 2023 is the the year that at hackathon I met Moritz my co-founder he had this idea Ron Flurkey and um say that now Fuki is a what three privacy focused uh product.

Uh so it's it's very symbolic that you kind of made your product out of hackathon and we are speaking at hackathon now and that's cool. So actually we can start with that. So like just discuss a bit like your experience like your hackathon experience. uh maybe you can give advices to builders who take part in hackathon like how do you mean hackathon basically or like what is successful hack on like in your opinion

yeah makes sense so it's a great question because I started working doing hackathons soon after I joined web three and web two there were hackathons even that time we were doing a lot I think there's more the uh vibes the culture of hackathons in web three more than what's in web two. Uh that said I made all the possible mistake and you can make at a hackathon uh create a zombie project and go there looking at boundaries before and I think the two threeon did help me realize that and when I realized that there was a change in path for me like okay I go aathon not because I want to win a prize that might come let's

what do you think like can you explain people who don't know what's zombie project uh yeah really briefly

no no you're right you're right because Usually when it comes to hackathon uh there are there is an organizer and there of course sponsor providing um bounties that's called it's money to the project that use their tech use their solution and are ranked number one number two or number three usually that's how it works. Um, of course, you have like in some hackathons you have like really dozens of sponsors. So, you can maybe try to combine them to maximize the amount you can win. And this is what I I call a zombie project because then in the end comes out a project has a lot of stuff but doesn't solve a real problem. The only problem that solves is having winning more money at the acadon but that stays there and I think that this is not ideal for aons.

The time that change really in my mind is when I realize okay I have an idea and I go there because I have two days because usually hackathon last around two days from like Friday afternoon till Sunday morning that's usually the the how anaton works and in this two days you have to put all your efforts into solving the problem you would like to solve problem that ideally you don't come up with at the hackathon you thought before of the because to show around and this is what basically we did for example with flu key and was like also successful one but we are still doing at flu key so if we want to add something and we saw a problem we don't build internally we go to an hackathon because that forces us to go to nail down the problem and try to solve it uh by ourself

yeah that's good but how did you came up to the realization of the problems that you are solving key when when did you face it? When was it like ah yeah I need to do that like this every uh moment. So uh the solution later but the problem I think since I joined the web space because that was like a question okay I have an address there's nothing attached to my so if I look on a public blockchain public I can see okay this address that's like an IBAN or bank number has moved this funds has done this stuff but I don't know who is doing that but the moment that I need to receive a payment from you I need to share it with you and this is the time where you where basically I disclose with you not only how much I have that's really terrible uh but what I did in the past and and this is intrinsic and this is also the beautiful part of blockchain because everything is transparent I can't hide money or fake money or you know that's the the beautiful so these are the rules and the rules must stay like that but around these rules we need to play a little bit different so that every time that we want to receive payment you don't see all my past transaction or how much I have this is also reflects not just for web specifically but more in general for we as human being we are keen on posting where we are on social what we think what we do but none of us ever post how how much he has in the bank or what he did with the credit card over the last month no one will ever do that and when he does it's often a scam or some people trying that robbing you showing showing you they have so much money and it's not true. And so this applies in this space. Until this problem isn't solved, mass adoption of cryptocurrency would be cryptocurrency will just a merge speculation uh where no way of speculation on assets but no one will pay on every day and this is where the problem and then there was a problem was clear in my mind was clear to everyone was not just my myself.

Everyone was speaking about that. It was and the the change arrived when um Mozounder posted on Farcaster social media uh focus on web3 especially time about saying hey why if we use still addresses with smart accounts. Now this big words basically mean that why we cannot create a new address for every transactions and we just keep money spread across these addresses in a way it's like a transition that web to we could even call like original internet did like when internet came out if I want to connect with you I was probably phone calling you and ask your IP address okay now I don't do anymore I just ask your email, your Twitter handle or whatever it is. Under the hood, these IP addresses are managed by infrastructure. People have no clue and change over time.

Like if you're doing a web call that change multiple times, you don't even know about that. Yeah. Same way I think should apply to blockchain to solve this problem. You don't have one address. You have an infinite amount of address.

Then it's the application built on top that make you feel like all the money are in one place. And this way every time I want to receive a payment I automatically the protocol generates a new address money gets to this and stay there. So who pays me see an empty address that never transacted and there the only balance that addresses is what I sent. So I know that you have this money because I sent you to you there's no way I can not knowing that you know and this is the spark that basically had us okay this is a different angle to s problem. Let's try to solve it in this way.

Yeah, that's actually brilliant idea. I love it so much. And it's like simple but still like then another problem like you have this beautiful idea but then in my perspective the thing like two main things first is like where do you find like partners or team the second one how do you really execute it because I mean I cannot can cannot can come up with like any idea right but then like it's it's worth nothing until it's built. And now like what are the challenges

100%

you had to overcome to build that because I I'm sure it was not easy.

No 100%. So because when you had idea at that moment you see everything oh wow everyone will everyone will run because I have this amazing product and then you build and you feel that yeah there's like but you improve yet if it's safe. So there's a lot to do around. So and I go back to two I think two crucial components when building a product especially in web three. Uh one is hackathons and the other one is community and foundations.

The first one is because Agatons is where K you you test for us to come with Fluky where to do two Aatons where the first one was the one I mentioned in Paris where basically we came up with the idea of this many addresses for one person but until that stage it was like a great very nerdy privacy focused solution we want to like have everyone using. So we need something that uh we found out from feedback and community with UX and this also resonate for how I've always seen privacy like for example I use uh on my computer Linux

it's not the best like in the setup I have is not the best privacy ever but it's practical privacy okay so I can use it with no problems and I think this applies to everyone when you pro present a product would be a practical privacy not something that requires your uh a master in IT engineering to be able to handle that to understand what it does and this was a feedback for the community. So the second hackathon I go back to this concept was like okay how do we provide on top of what we have a great and this is what we did in Rome uh in partnership with ENS and uh that allows us to like create like a a unique identifier in essence like a website domain basically that every time resolves to a new address so I don't have to give you my new address I give you once this resolve like my email it is this and every time that resolver will tell the payer where the money needs to go automatically in the wallet without knowledge. And I use the word in partner with because to start was crucial for for us to have support from partners like ENS

uh safe um or even communities like web3 privacy now I have to have to be honest because I help us like speaking well one of the first public maybe the very first public speaking we had oh

yeah I didn't know that

exactly exactly and was like a moment where we start okay getting some feedbacks and people like uh no that's cool uh and then you start saying oh but it's maybe you lack that or you need to do that and these are like our uh holy grail it's the way we understand how to build our product is listening on one side we know what we want because we build the product for ourselves okay we had this pain and we know how to solve that because that's the problem we had but then this problem has so any angles you can see that you might have a different need than me and we didn't think about that and we start collecting table from you and two three people the same way oh that's important this is for example why we integrated recently bank transfer so if you open a flip accounts you get an IBAN or a account in the US

and as soon as you send money money is automatically minted on chain we never thought about that at the beginning in Paris was even not thinkable of that but now it's a reality And that's this process of iteration thanks to communities feedbacks and acadons.

Yeah, it's about the feedback very important thing. So I wanted to ask you uh about the product development basically uh in customer development like at what stage and how would you recommend to do that because like it's also a common pitfall in my opinion at least that like okay I have this idea wow I want to build it I build it and then like you go to users and they're like what is it I don't need that

so um yeah your your take on this

yeah and I see There are two faces into that. One that is you have to listen. The other when you must be also focused on your conviction. No. And I make two example for that.

The first one was as soon as you build something share. I remember as soon as we did the ethro macathon we went on calls with the ENS community and we were sharing that and we were collecting feedbacks and we were seeing that oh it's great but if you just do this tokens it's useless they want to do any token you know and that's the feedback and it's building what for us was a feedback that we knew was was not meaning we had to change our product was were people saying oh it's enough for you to go through a centralized exchange that uh leaks your privacy uh and is not safe because once money goes in the centralized exchange it's no more your money you lost control over that and if uh for example when money is received uh they require you more identity verification money is locked until they're happy with your identity verification on top of what you probably already have done no so there are a few problems but so the solution for us is not your money needs to go through a centralized exchange to get better privacy for us. The what that feedback meant was we need to build a better user experience than a centralized exchange. So people don't need uh to use a centralized exchange anymore and just stay uh on chain

and that's kind of how the two type of feedbacks fits together.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, actually UX, let's talk about that because it's something often uh like that like especially tech founders say like oh no we just build cool thing and it works like it doesn't matter if it's like oh you can use it easily or not and that how also happens often like and um yeah maybe you can recommend something like on the importance of UX or how to implement it like easily uh No, what what I think is we are lucky at Flui is that the team is not made only of tech people. Yeah,

I mean I'm lucky because Moritz my co-founder he says is not uh with a tech background is great at coding okay but also he has like a very business focused business developer oriented background and this is a great way of when we want to do something I always see from a tech perspective he always sees from a end user perspective and this uh know being able to put our ideas together uh I think this is what has brought to the current user experience having a fluid kino where from a tech perspective works but also from a user perspective works. It requires u no knowledge of how the blockchain worksh and a little very little tech background if you want to use it. And so my suggestion is when you're looking for a co-founder and always do don't uh try not to do a company with one people because another person helps you a lot to confront and u yeah um confront and see things from different angles. Just try to feed out someone that has a different background from what you what you have.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good take. Also I wanted to ask you so you mentioned you're partnering co-ounder a couple of times

and I see that it's a big pillar of success right find the right partner uh to find the right co-ounder uh what was your experience so you mentioned already that it was a hackathon thing that we did together but like yeah like one thing is how to find one how to find out that this is the one and then like after you start doing thing like How to not to kill your caper.

Yeah,

because that's another thing, right?

So, uh basically give a little bit background on that. The team is of three at three and we all work since day zero on

I met Morris when he was in Paris as I as I mentioned before, but the other person that's on the team is Federico. I've been working with him for 10 years.

Uh we co-ounded for example Yan on the GDPR focus application I was mentioning before. and um we went through beautiful and awful times together. And I think that what makes a difference with a with a co-founder is for sure a different ways of seeing things, but also the fact that you should be aligned with your personal goals. So this difference, it's not like one answer. For myself, my personal goal is doing things because you like building things.

I've always been the kind of person that if I told there's something broken, I fix it. And not just coding wise, but also manually. I'm always like this kind of because I enjoy building stuff. And so I didn't know each other since like 10 years even more because I used to play basketball coaching. Um we have been doing that for a lot of years now.

And when I meant more, it's like kind of found the same vibes behind know because especially with three sometimes it seems people like just want to for money and it's okay but it doesn't resonate with how I see things. There are founders that just do that and it's totally fine. I mean it's not like a bad way of think. So personally I was able to find someone that was aligned from a human perspective in terms of goals no matter the idea that's that's behind. Then it was also lucky it was like had a different angle on seeing problems that were like less technical so it was like a good match

so basically it's like could be aligned on values right like

100%.

Yeah and that's the key thing of any information probably

100%. Yeah for example even when uh personally in the past I never adventures I had to hire people. No,

I never I tend yeah to do like a job interview. I mean just quickly just let me know what you do just know if I'm looking for a tech guy not hiring a marketing guy that's it then I think that the person you really understand that if you go outside in a public environment go out like go out for lunch something like that in that environment a person can never fix himself and this is why hackathons are great because uh you can fake yourself in a one-hour meeting or when I'm on a specific meeting but the moment you are in a completely different environment. There's no way. And there you see the true person on the other side and you understand if it's the right person for you or not.

Yeah. Oh, it's a really good advice. I never considered a hackathon like that because you know it's like going to I don't know few days hike in the mountains, right? It's also absurd.

Exactly. That's it. No, you find a person that's more uh that tends to look more to the others. the person that you know always see the problems before the person that takes more is more like um a person that likes to stay by himself and they're all person that fits in a team. You just need to make sure that you don't put the person that loves to stay by himself head of a big team that would make a mess.

Okay. Know and that's like what you have to make sure you do.

Yeah. 100%. Um let's talk about another super important thing. Even though like you mentioned that like money is not something that you are aiming for which I totally like resonate with but still you can't do business not being sustainable. You need to pay salaries, you need to pay bills, you you need money anyway.

So like how what's your experience of like being sustainable fundraising or whatever you get my uh private space because I know it's not very easy actually

100%. Um first of all there were always this big debate that privacy uh is something and then no making money should not go together. No, they must coex exist if you want project that are sustainable over time. Um, if you just focus on privacy for example, I think that it's key for a privacy product to build on a stack on a system that itself intrinsically enforce that your data is protected. So even if the company sold the product is taken by someone else, this stays.

But that's at a later stage. We looking at the beginning when the product start grants it's super important like when a normal when a person is not a builder ask me what what can I do to support you I always say share feedback but most of all vote for us if you believe in us when there is like an a grand distribution so grand distribution often happens that you got a website you can register yourself you can get a social score the more to avoid bots inside so that's knowing that your vote vote comes from a real person and then you can vote for someone and who got most votes get many more money uh from the grants and it was like crucial for us to start then of course you need VCs and you have to make in mind if you see put money in is because they want more make more money out of you it's the game roots there's nothing bad on that no so if they put money into privacy they must know that they're going to make money out of that and you have to prove that and I think that in general this must be accepted and this why privacy fee is in the protocol and and all this stuff and me as a user I don't see as a way of oh they're stealing my money because the other option our company stealing my entire personality and I think it's it's not it's a trade-off and in the end cost you more that way than paying a few cents today for protecting your privacy so where to start I would say hackathon grants and don't be shy and go for venture capital money. That's definitely something that uh you need to go always making clear that you're working in privacy and your goal is to make money but in a sustainable way for the product itself.

Good. Perfect. Uh okay. And like going back to like history of your maybe not just flute key but whatever your let's say like entrepreneurship builder background like what maybe like top two three uh common challenges that we had to overcome or maybe that you see on the market like now especially in web free space.

Okay. So for me like number one is to bring the genius solution you find to a problem to the real life

cuz sometimes you get this problem you thought oh that's amazing but then no one is using that and this I I would rank number one because that's a mistake and I still doing in a lot of ideas that sometimes I have outside of fluki um and and that's it. The second one is uh keep being yourself. I did a mistake once. So I for example I'm a person that keep thinking about uh new ideas even if I'm in another project at the beginning I was like trying to hide the department said no I have this project I just need to focus on that 100% of my time that's not I I personally work and for example every time I have an idea if I cannot build that I wrote it on on the social media someone I'm sure will probably pick up and if it makes sense we start to build that fitting ideas and just like a what I'm working on now uh was not 100% my idea. No one has 100% his own idea.

Uh and it's good about that honestly. And the same way I think that if you have an idea, you need to ship to someone else because someone else is going probably to to buy on that. And uh probably the third uh mistake I did in the past and not do anymore is thinking that if you have your own idea you can work indefinely for free on that. I think money as a as a value. Each of us needs to give value to this money.

But if you see oh we'll take one year two years to build this product try to shorten it up but also sure make sure that you will start somehow making money in that period because we don't live a thin air and uh that's a reality and that must be keep in mind because otherwise in the end uh it's there's a risk it becomes something that go against you if things doesn't play as expected.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 1% is really really common things.

I have to say it and they're quite important when you do your stuff. And going back a bit to like privacy itself. So imagine there is a person who is just like starting like their way into privacy like understanding what is it why it's important like 101. uh maybe some habits that people can easily integrate in their life and be private like like that like without going super deep because I mean you can still get a lot of knowledge of on privacy but then like how do you implement how do you use it in your daily life because it's very different of like I know how like data is transferred and like how it is used against me but then like what can I do to kind prevented like my easy daily habits on privacy.

Yes. So before on the concept of privacy but just a very a very small parenthesis around that because I think privacy is very subjective. Yeah. So for example what is private for a person that I don't know lives in North Korea

no

is completely different than what is private for a person who lives in Switzerland probably for a person there like speaking on the phone without being listening is privacy. If you say to a Swiss person like oh that's of course like privacy is address it's a more advanced concept no so that's resonate on on the environment and and what you want uh to to achieve on that then uh in like in in practice what it what it comes down is like uh of course we live in a I think for the first time ever in human history in a way that's close to impossible it's very hard to be really by yourself no because even in the is that's like 50 years ago. So nothing in the human history if you there were no substance. So you can go really outside and be really private by yourself. No one was able to spy you and see where you are and so on.

Today almost impossible unless you're really cut off from society but completely and even though there there are cameras around that say you knows where you are and so on and so forth. No. So when it comes to privacy, I think it's first it's like okay find one aspect that you want to improve for yourself in your life and and it matters can be either um you know like using a u in a certain way device that tracks you the other way is like going a certain amount of time in in an area where you know the privacy is more serical example okay I accept live in such a society but I know that for how I am few weeks a year I need to go in the mountains uh like leaving phone home and hiking that's a way of of doing that like get getting a list another way more practical for example I am um Linux user on my computer so I learn how to use this operating system that are not as hard as in the past like even a a regular user can now install and use it most of the stuff are happening now on browser there's less requirement of specific application being inst install this makes the ability of using a Linux distro more uh open to anyone. So this is another thing that I kind of suggest to someone that's not technical to to do. And finally make always ask yourself uh why is this free?

Cuz if you start question making asking yourself why something is free, you always figure it out. They're probably stealing you something and then you want to do something differently and that's the other question just just to give you my and you as a product.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. And uh okay speaking a bit about about future. So I imagine we are I mean nowadays it's pretty but like we do everything that we can just to kind of make it beautiful in the future. So imagine it's like 30 years from here and we won. We have the internet that we imagine private secure whatever you imagine it.

So uh what it would look would like what it would look like uh for you and like how the life would be like in this like perfect uh conditions of like having been everywhere.

Yeah. I think we are living in a in a in a a huge change in terms of tech that's that's AI is bringing you know and I think that if you can correctly handle like manage this AI this change will disrupt all the bad attitudes where in the past because in 20 or 30 years I I envision an AI where if I want a software I don't buy I have a high making tailored on what I need okay just in not recently in the long term maybe there's a skeleton but then all the feature around are tail for what I'm thinking about not just tech people like um

the swipe holding like that you know just exactly I need this and let's be there that

exactly exactly it's already we already almost there so

exactly tailored to my need no

and this means that uh code that today takes years of work and a lot of investment in people will take a very small amount of time and money to be built. So can be built with the privacy you want in mind. Now the problem is will AI allow that or will AI inject inside. This is why I think that if we handle correctly transition to this type of open source AI and why I'm a I'm a I understand a technical need of having this specific AI tools running in very big data centers but on the other side we had the proof with for example DeepS from China not speaking about the product but the fact that even with smaller hardware if you put your head into you can have like very complex model running on very small hardware in the end is also what for example the Ethereum foundation is trying to do with their RPC clients completely change ideas like don't rely on big data center just put everything on your raspberry work smart and make it working in that way so this is the future I would like to see uh in 30 years for the next generation the time will be probably already old enough but uh being able to say oh I want something and I have built tailored on myself with the privacy that each human deserves by default.

Yeah, that's awesome. And then okay, we have to go to a hot take on AI obviously just because uh it's organic and then it's like a hot topic so I can't not test. So AI is here and AI is big everyone is talking about it lots of money puts there but then there is a huge misalignment between like AI movement and privacy. So do you think is is it like is there a chance to like make AI private? Can you use actually a charger BT or whatever like privately besides DC and like a private node

and maybe some general rules that you follow uh just not oversharing or sharing some specific data. So how to handle AI and stay private?

Yeah. So first of all today still very technical no but very today there you can download models on your machine and have it running on your machine for bas basic stuff not complex of course but very basic stack and it's 100 times better than what any other code used to be like even last year okay but on top of that I think that uh something that I've heard a little bit but I know there's research around is executing AI inside trusted execution environment so te so what does this environment basically are computers that runs a software and returns a response. So I ask a question to AI and I get the response but I touch that response there is um signature so a mathematical proof basically a huge number see like this way that prove that the code has been executed as it should be. What does it mean that there was no console.log of my data.

So basically not none of my data was stored inside the data center. So what I can do is like I can prepare the qu the question like uh how do I know I prepare Android riotto I'm Italian I have to speak about food I encrypt that I send to the secure environment the security card decrypts see the request run the AI prepare the response encrypts and send back to me. Now if this secure enclave secure environments execute without any console log no that is leaked because it's encrypted and then goes out to encrypt it again. So anyone in the middle can see that.

Yeah. And this I think might be like a great also short-term way of saying go we provide AI but we provide with a privacy focused uh uh solution in mind and uh yeah I would uh if I had more time than when I'm going out of that's something I would like personally that's an idea that I had like playing around and and using that

actually it's a very beautiful idea and it's very elegant and like te is a big thing now

and That totally makes sense actually and then it's so easy. You just have this interface which like is intermediate like makes it accessible to any of the model. So uh I wish someone will do that fast and that will solve a lot of problems actually and it's very elegant way. Um so maybe there is something you feel that you can you have you can or you want to share like according this like flow of our dialogue.

Yeah. But in general is around um connecting all the dots be touched uh is if you anyone uh after seeing know maybe this video or whatever has in mind that oh yeah actually I have this problem actually I feel uncomfortable when I have to do this share.

Mhm. This is the spark that then will trigger the creation the solution to the problem because who has the problem often doesn't have the solution some will but not everyone because of technical background so so share and I'm sure that some will try to find a solution and in the end your life would be better thanks to the fact that you share the problem

I understand

sharing is caring uh share your ideas share your problems share everything is the faster you get risk response from outside from the community the better you are just don't stay in your bubble which we all tend to do sometimes.

Exactly.

Yeah. So final word from you maybe a recommendation. So we still like academy right? So there are people who are eager to study and they like to like read whatever. Uh but some one piece of culture that you recommend everyone read, watch, listen, whatever you think that can kind of enrich someone's perspective on things in general.

Okay. I have like um old um I know it's it's not like a modern answer. I've been I grew up reading books of Kevin Mitnik. Okay. Kevin Mitnik is one of the most famous hackers around the world.

It's interesting to see story on one side it's sometimes it's it's reading a story so it's not technical there's no technical background but on the other side tells you what can be done if people have access to and how easy it is sometimes to be have access to your personal data and how often the weak point is not the system but is the person social engineering so reading those books shows you like, oh, you don't need to be like a matrix nerd or whatever. It just social skills and this tells you how to protect yourself from this type of attacks.

Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It was a pleasure being here.

Thank you. Chowo chiao bacho. [Music]