Alan Scott - Railgun | Web3Privacy Now - Tokyo Meetup 2025

[Music] Uh yeah. Yeah. Are we sound good?

Um I'm Allan. Uh I'm I'm one of the Thanks. I'm one of the core contributors to the Real Privacy Project. I've been working on that stuff for about five years now, which is weird to think about, but uh here we are. Uh just uh before we get started, who's heard of rail gun before?

Mention it.

Yeah. Right. It's kind of weird, right? I'm like standing in the back of the room and he's like, "Who here uses rail gun and why don't they use rail gun?" I'm like, "Oh, that's no."

Uh it was it was pretty cool. Um so for people who don't know, rail gun uh is basically a suite of smart contracts and the the whole goal of it is to create a new address standard for uh EVM for Ethereum, right? So you can have a public address, you can have a private address and from that private address you can do anything that a public address can do, right? So that's sort of the goal of like all the research that's happening around this this protocol. Um and uh you know a lot of people say it has like product market fit and stuff like that and I don't know if I really want to debate them on that.

I'll take the compliment. But uh I think uh one of the things I'm going to try to talk about a little bit is um sort of like uh I guess market fit in general for for privacy uh and sort of like shift the narrative. Uh I've been to a lot of these web three privacy events. Uh I think I've been to all of them but one uh and it's really uh like cipher punky uh sort of like just punk in general. And I'm going to try to like reframe privacy a little bit for you guys and hopefully make it make some sense uh from a different perspective.

Uh, so I think like the first thing we need to talk about is let's see if my slides work. Send it.

Okay.

Oh, sick.

We can do it, guys. Teamwork. Um, yeah. So, shout out to Linux. Um, so product market fit isn't uh an instate, but a mirror, right?

Uh I think a lot of people who uh start up uh some sort of project or you know do something early stage they sort of see like product market fit as like an end state that they get to eventually. Um and I don't think that's really the case. Uh I would argue that it's sort of a reflection of the protocol or the uh project at the time and uh it's pretty obvious but the market is uh ever changing right it's multifarious uh and there's a lot of different people who care about a lot of different things. Um so for example whenever rail gun got started uh five years ago uh DeFi was a totally different space um it was super atomic uh the rudiment of all DeFi interactions was approve tokens for spending send tokens out get change back right and that's totally changed in 2025 right we have things like limit orders iceberg orders intents crosschain swaps and all this weird [ __ ] um and so you know something that fit five years ago doesn't necessarily fit today right um and I think that one of the biggest problems s with uh priv privacy and uh confidentiality uh tech uh is that uh it it really kind of goes immediately to a sort of like tinfoil discussion. Uh even like when Vitalic was on stage, we went pretty tinfoily a couple of times.

Um which I think really uh sort of hurts the um I guess like the fit for it because a lot of people actually don't give a [ __ ] about that stuff. Um so frequently right people will say things like privacy is a human right and you know it's really important for human dignity and and freedom and all these things rest on privacy right uh and so like people give examples of uh human rights activist and you know humanitarianism in general uh and like protection in unal nation states uh and like journalists working in authoritarian regimes and you know all this stuff, but I think like the reality is uh no one gives a [ __ ] right? No one cares about that stuff. Um I don't know any uh journalists working in authoritarian regimes, right? I know it's harsh to say, but like if that's like where we go to talk to people about why privacy matters and like why it should be baked in, like they're just not going to give a [ __ ] Um, and so, uh, I think that these are like really true and like, you know, important use cases for privacy, but, um, the pragmatic truth is is stuff is really unrelatable, right?

Um, and a lot of it is sort of lost on normal people. And so they immediately zone out when you start talking about authoritarian regimes and stuff like that because they say, "Oh, well, I'm not in one of those." Uh, and that's that, right? And so and so yeah, really I would argue that the reason why a lot of people sort of lash out on privacy and say it doesn't have market fit is because it's wholly unrelatable to most people.

Um in other words, it's got a bit of a story crisis. uh at least in my book right now before everybody thinks I'm like some sort of like I don't know terrible person and I don't care about human rights and you know important stuff uh I do want to flag that I run a charity and have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to feed people in New York and things like this. So

I definitely give a [ __ ] I own a 501c3 and have for five years. Um but I want to sort of like shift gears on stuff, right? So um whenever um so I I kind of want to talk about from my experience um being the kind of spokesperson for rail gun I guess right janitor as it were most people know me as um so whenever you're talking to finance bros like you know what what do they actually care about and I think one of the things that's really underappreciated is that if you're a finance bro alpha preservation is actually one of the most important things that you can uh have when it comes to finance. So if you're trading and you developed like a trading strategy, the last thing you want people to do is go to Etherscan and follow your wallet, right? Um, and so like being able to like paint that picture to them and instead of talking about like human rights to people who work for like Goldman Sachs or like the crypto equivalent, uh, you could instead maybe talk about, you know, the like price action for crypto actually is just adversarial um, discovery on chain of people trying to liquidate each other with larger bags than the other.

Um, and that's not real price discovery, right? Uh, and so if we want like real finance to come on chain, right, privacy has to be part of it, right? peer-to-peer blinding has to happen, right? If I have a large iceberg order in like finance and I'm trying to get rid of 10 million shares of fill in the [ __ ] blank stock, like the last thing I want them to know is what I bought it for and like who else I'm OTCing it to, right? So, that's maybe uh one example, right?

So, another thing that uh has really gotten hot lately in crypto is payroll providers, right? Um, you know who here actually gets, just out of curiosity, does anybody here get paid in crypto?

Sick. Some people, right? How cool would it be if everybody knew how much money you make and exactly when you make it?

Right. Yeah. Not great, right? So, if you think about it from like a payroll provider's perspective, right, salary confidentiality, right, is super mission critical for these people, right? It creates a lot of really awkward conversations whenever, you know, one developer gets paid more than the other and they go, "Oh, why is Edward getting paid more than me and it's like, well, he's more [ __ ] valuable than you, so like, sorry, not sorry."

Um, you know, and you can also run into things like poaching offers, right? Awkward discussions with employees like we talked about, or uh even other things. Um, if you zoom out of the United States, where I'm originally from, right? Regulatory exposure in some regimes uh is actually really bad if you dox people's salaries. It's considered non-public information in a lot of places in Europe, right?

So broadcasting that on a, you know, immutable public ledger, uh, is not great, right? Sick. I like that I got to scroll through my slides. This is rad. So, uh, yeah, you know what?

If you're talking to like a a DeFi native, right? Who here has done like peer-to-peer transfers? Who sent money to somebody before? Maybe you haven't been paid, you sent some money to somebody, right? Um, so what's the first thing that you do, right?

You probably go to Ether Scan and then you proceed to maybe confirm that you actually got the tokens that you wanted, right? That's probably the first step. But then you proceed to judge them, you know, based on their wallet that they sent it from, right? You try to see how old the wallet is and whether or not you're more OG than them or like all the embarrassing [ __ ] NFTts that they bought in 2021. Like, oh man, you bought a penguin.

I bought a penguin. CryptoKitties, [ __ ] yeah, I was in that dumb [ __ ] too. Right. Uh, and like that's really cool, right? you try to see like what centralized exchanges that they use and you go, "Oh man, you use OKX?

I'm a buy bit kind of guy, but you know, they did get you for X, so I'm a little concerned. What do you think of them?" Right? And like this kind of thing happens and we call it like cute. We laugh about it, but the reality is is that [ __ ] doesn't fly in regular payments, right?

So like if I go online and I buy something, right? If I use a credit card at a store, right? If I use those really sick, you know, um, till machines at ramen shops, right? Whenever I put my money in that little uh machine, it doesn't know how much more I have in my pocket, nor do I know how much is in in the till, right? Peer-to-peer blinding is actually just a normal part of finance that exists.

Uh and people don't actually consider it, right? Uh and the reality is is adoption doesn't happen of crypto uh without that, right? There's a lot of security implications that happen in real world, right? If I go and I pay for a coffee at Starbucks with crypto, someone's monitoring the blockchain waiting to beat my ass when I do it with a big wallet, right? Um that's probably not great, right?

Uh another thing I think that's really interesting, right? Um you guys are familiar with like Constitution Dow. You guys remember this?

Yeah.

Right. So like fundamental economics don't work on chain without privacy, right? Um so for people who don't remember like Constitution Dow um well you take a step back, right? The US Constitution there there actually wasn't just one, they had a couple, right? Uh and one of them was still in private hands.

Uh and it went up for auction at the at Sabes, right? And these dudes got this really sick idea. They're like, "Dude, we're going to raise money to buy the Constitution for the people, by the people. We're raising money in crypto and we're going to do it, right?" And in like the most it was like the craziest story because in like 24 hours they raised like $47 million.

It was a ton of money. Uh but that was the problem, right? Is we knew exactly how much money they raised, right? So fast forward to the day of the auction. They hired some, you know, reasonably attractive white girl to do the bid for them.

and she's on the phone like uh and magically where do you guys think the the bid teleported to?

A dollar over.

Yeah. [ __ ] dollar over. It was price is right all over again. Right. So like these fundamental auction mechanics don't you know work without peer-to-peer privacy, right?

Without wallet privacy. This sort of thing that you know rail gun contributors work really aggressively to build, right? So you have like your private address and you can participate in auctions and people don't know how much money you have in the war chest to go uh bid with, right? And so I guess like the point that I'm really trying to drive home here is like um

there's so many examples of just like completely normal boring structures that completely fail without privacy, right? And it doesn't have to be talking about cons like constantly about like some journalists in a war torn state. My heart goes out to those people, don't get me wrong. like and it's a valid use case, but immediately when we talk about that kind of thing, like people glaze over. And I know I'm in like a cipher punk room and so a lot of people give a [ __ ] about that stuff.

Zoom out. Zoom out a little bit. That's my uh my my biggest thing, right? So I think that like to sort of like sum it up. Sick out of slides.

The product market is your product market fit is a story, right? It's sta It's sales, right? And people's like favorite subject when it comes to sales is does anybody know this one? Anybody in sales? Is themselves, right?

Themselves. They give a [ __ ] about themselves, right? And so making a story that's relatable to them, that provides value to them is like the most important part of it. And so whenever we do conversations about privacy, it needs to be tailored to the person we're talking to, right? Right?

So, if you show up to a normal crypto nerd who's like buying crypto dickbutts, they probably don't care about authoritarian regimes, but maybe they do care about like privatizing the fact that they bought something really dumb. Um, and so yeah, thanks for coming to my [ __ ] TED talk. [Music]