Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Giorgi Corelli from Hynkel. Hynkel is a privacy layer for Web3.
So Giorgi has a rich background in blockchain technology and privacy-focused solutions. This was a very interesting conversation because what they are creating has a core focus within privacy. So privacy in Web3 transactions, enriching the user experience, enhancing it for blockchain adoption and basically moving on that very fine line between balancing privacy and transparency in the DeFi space.
I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Giorgi.
Thank you so much for making out the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? I’m doing good. Thanks for having me.
Awesome. Thank you so much for making the time to speak to me. Now for our listeners, can you share a little about your journey into Web3 blockchain? What inspired you to start Hynkel? Yeah, sounds great.
So I started my career as a professional wrestler. I was twice world champion in samba wrestling and then I joined investment banking. So I spent five years doing investment banking in emerging markets.
After that, I decided to do my MBA and master’s at Stanford. So after I moved to the US and did Stanford degrees, I started building startups. So my first startup was a consumer social idea and then what actually happened in Stanford is that in 2021, all startups became crypto startups.
90% of all Stanford founders became crypto founders because of DeFi Summit. And we also became crypto startups. So we added tokens to our social platform and that’s how my crypto journey has started.
Because of the nature of my previous experience in investment banking, crypto seems very relevant. So I quickly grasped the foundations and my brother, who is my CTO, started learning Solidity and was also super excited about it. And despite the fact that then we had crypto winter, we were in a very right vertical.
So we started building in privacy because we realized that the premise of crypto is actually substitute traditional financial rules and to build a more equitable, just efficient financial system that doesn’t require so many people and intermediaries that we have now in financial rails like banking. And fast forward two and a half years, it was the right bet. So we raised a good amount of money, we have a team of 20 people and we are super excited about what we’re building.
Awesome. I think, yes, your bet definitely paid off choosing privacy as a cornerstone for your venture, especially in this ecosystem. But can you tell me a little more about the privacy layer that you’re building and what were the kind of initial challenges that you faced? Because like you mentioned, there was the crypto winter.
So there must have been times when you must have doubted your path. Yeah. So I think one of the takeaways that I learned at Stanford is that if you believe in something, you have to believe in it consistently, no matter whether it’s winter or summer in the industry.
And because we learned what is the value of crypto, removing intermediaries, 24-7 financial system that efficiently turns up. And I was in banking for so many years, there is no way I couldn’t notice that this is a premise for things to go. So we actually never doubted our choice.
So it was sometimes we were sad, of course, because privacy is a sensitive topic. So after Tornado Cash sanctions, everyone is actually super concerned about privacy, compliance, how you can actually reconcile these two. So we need to make sure that all our users have to prove compliance before they access privacy.
And we mostly thought we started to focus on institutional users, but we didn’t build for just the market that never existed. So we were lucky to have institutional clients early on and they were sharing what they need for privacy and what are the requirements for them to use Hinkle. And that’s what enabled us to stay perseverant and build what we do.
Okay. Yeah, I think that is that I think has to be one of the basic lessons that any entrepreneur needs to learn as well. You know, if you really believe in something, you have to see it through and you have to stand by your vision and keep building until you are able to either get convinced otherwise, or you’re able to convince your user base.
Yeah, absolutely. There are so many founders that I have observed completely pivoted away from crypto or just changed hundreds of ideas in the journey or became AI founders and now pivoted back to crypto. So it’s just so funny to observe that, you know, especially in the Bay Area, when everything is driven by FOMO and hype, so very few people actually stay consistent and persevering to their original belief.
Absolutely. I think that’s very important. I think it is not just true for the Bay Area.
I think wherever there are, you know, a lot of builders, what happens is that there is a lot of FOMO, and especially in the Bay Area, the internet, you don’t see a trend online, and people want to just build in that space for the just for the heck of building in that space. And at times that those reasons can be very wrong. But you have to stay, as you said, you have to stay consistent and like to stand with the values that you started with.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But and I think the problem is that many people cannot really build conviction in something. So they are okay.
So this interesting, like DeFi SDK for, I don’t know, wallet, right. And then like, fast forward, three, six months after they build something that is clunky, they do some bitty and it doesn’t work. No one needs it.
Right. So they immediately pivot from the core belief. But the problem is actually that they never had insight.
So many, many times there is no foundational insight. I mean, either from previous experience, from research, or from just, you know, passionate belief that something should change. I completely agree.
So can you tell me a little more about Hinkle and what it does so that our listeners can understand and get an insight into your platform? Yeah, absolutely. So Hinkle is a SDK wallet. So it allows you to participate in any dApp to receive and send payments in a full privacy on Ethereum and EVM chain.
So you can think about MetaMask or Phantom or Rabi or any other wallet, right? When you participate with this wallet, they sit in your browser extension, you go to, let’s say, Uniswap or any other dApp, you do transaction. What appears on chain is your wallet. If you do transaction and send money to your friend, what your friend can see is all your money and all your previous transactions, right? So this leads to very negative outcomes in many jurisdictions, such as, you know, criminal cases, people steal money, people kill people.
And there are just like myriads of these negative outcomes. With us, you will never be able to see the data of the friend that sent you money, right? Or someone who did the trade. So what you see on chain is Hinkle smart contracts for all transactions, while all users maintain full self-custody.
This way, we preserve data privacy for all users on the chains we support. Awesome. I think that is very important.
And that is usually a concern as well for several users. So, you know, absolutely have a use case there. How can a user get started on utilizing Hinkle to aid to their privacy? Yeah, so he just goes to our website, app.hinkle.pro, downloads browser extension.
And then before he actually joins, he has to prove compliance. And in order to simplify, so initially we were actually requiring a pretty cumbersome compliance check. So they needed to pass KYC.
And now what we figured out is that we are just asking users to prove that they did KYC somewhere on the Internet. So we are using centralized exchanges for this. So they can just prove that they have Coinbase, Binance, or any other centralized exchange account.
They generate their knowledge proof of this account without revealing any data. And with this proof, we actually accept this proof and let the user to create private address. That’s it.
Wow, pretty, pretty straightforward. And are there any limitations in terms of the kind of wallets that can be utilized? Any wallet can be utilized. You can go with institutional wallets such as Fireblocks.
You can go with retail wallets such as MetaMask. So there is no limitation. Awesome.
I think this is sounding really good. And what is like your business model? Are you charging your users or are you charging the businesses who are partnering with you? Yeah, so the business model entails charging for swaps. So it’s similar to what MetaMask does for their internal users.
So that’s it. Okay, awesome. So can you tell me how do you ensure scalability while maintaining these robust privacy features? Yeah, so the infrastructure that we have built is quite complicated.
So it’s very hard to replicate. So initially, when we started, we just built Shielded Pool. And we realized that Shielded Pool is not sufficient, that you have to have fast privacy, right? So it means that ZK proof generation should be quick.
Then you have to make sure that users can fast onboarding. That’s why we added decentralized exchanges. And then there are many primitives that we needed to add to just improve efficiency and allow users similar to MetaMask experience, but fully private.
So we have built this, so the switching cost is quite high, right? Because no other protocol or wallet offers what we offer. And second, there is no limitation for scalability, right? So we can have millions of users using this protocol. It’s fully self-service, so there is no need to even ask us.
Okay, that is awesome. So I would imagine that creating these cryptographic frameworks, there must have been several challenges that you guys and your team must have faced. Can you shed a little light on those? Yeah, absolutely.
So it required us to actually talk to a lot of cryptographers and for our CTO to learn a lot of cryptography, especially cutting-edge cryptography that’s happening now in academia. We were lucky to have advisors as well. So we have cryptography advisors from here, Bay Area Universities, also the founders of cutting-edge ZK protocol.
So they were super helpful sharing how we can build. We’re using ZK-SNARK, so mostly Ethereum libraries. And we are using external, like latest Intel SGX-T, Trusted Execution Environment for private inputs and proof generations.
So that’s why I mentioned that the infrastructure is pretty complicated, but yeah, it’s very doable. Okay, this is brilliant. And I do think, like I mentioned earlier, I think there is a huge use case for this because a lot of people talk about how all their transactions are public.
And obviously, when you do it the other way around, then it is not very different than traditional finance. So adding a privacy layer is the right way forward. Yeah.
So our intention is to enable Web2 users to come to Web3 and have the same experience, right? They have fully public experience of on-chain assets, right? Whoever comes and sees it, you can see, I can see all their transactions. That’s a big red flag. How we can solve it? We can have a privacy on the wallet side.
You don’t need a chain-level privacy because chain-level privacy is actually quite inefficient, right? So you don’t need privacy for many different primitives, right? For oracles, for data creation. So when everything is private, it’s actually a big problem, right? Plus, it leads to a very congested chain that requires a very high throughput and some strong machines for acceleration. So with us, it’s a private wallet that sits on top of the chains that allows users to have the same experience that they have in Web2.
But in Web3, that is 24-7. I think it’s very important to actually bring in a lot of the user experience, basically, I think from Web2 to Web3, if we really want to onboard Web2 users into Web3, because they’re used to doing things a certain way. They’re used to data-looking a certain way when they’re producing it and expecting user behavior to change.
That quickly is difficult. So I think it’s good to imbibe these ethos into Web3 products so that we can make it more friendly for these new set of users joining Web3. Yeah, absolutely.
So I think there’s another question, right? How to target these users? What should be the value proposition? Is it new users or they’re already aware of Web3? But that’s a completely different question that we should tackle. But I think there’s one bulletproof use case, which is payments, right? So everyone wants to pay someone, right? And most of the cases, remittances are international. Some B2B payments are also international.
So it seems we are getting to the point where crypto payments in stablecoins are actually way more efficient than traditional rails. They are cheaper, they are quicker, and they provide all the same guarantees by 24-7. So one of the problems there is privacy, of course, right? On the sender or recipient side.
And that’s what we solve now. Absolutely. So what kind of sets include apart from other privacy-focused decentralized solutions? Yeah, so probably let’s start with unbundling what type of solutions are there in privacy.
So let’s start with L1s. There are a few L1s, such as Alio, Secret Network. And the problem with them is in order to be private there, you need to migrate to their ecosystem.
So you need to have wallets supported there. You need to have dApps that you use on a regular basis supported there. And you need to bridge your assets there.
So that’s a huge lift for privacy. So you need to completely change your environment from, let’s say, Ethereum or BASE to have this privacy guarantee, plus liquidity. So do you have this stablecoin there or no? Do you have this wrapped asset there or no? So there are a lot of problems with this approach.
And actually, I don’t think that’s a scalable way. You need to have privacy wherever you are. And this means that on the chains that have the highest volume, the highest number of dApps, the highest number of users.
And as for now, it’s BASE, it’s Ethereum, and it’s Solana. It’s just three chains, no more. So second, so first is like L1s, right? Second approach is L2s.
And for L2s, there are also a few solutions. You know, probably the most famous is Aztec Network. There is also Fenix.
So it’s based on Aztec ZK, out of Fenix’s FHE. And then they have the same problem, right? Even though they have security of Ethereum because of layer two type of solution, they cannot, they need separate liquidity. They need separate assets on L2.
And then, you know, they have the same problems. They have the same problems of scalability that they have, that L1s, private L1s have. So, you know, ZK on Aztec, I don’t know how fast it can be, but there is some TPS constraint because you need additional computation.
FHE is very far away from reality, right? Current TPS of FHE is three transactions per second, which is impossible to really have any type of, like, innovative dApps, right? Because for DEXs, for, you know, landing protocols, you need higher TPS. That’s why the only optimal solution is actually smart contract-based privacy on current chains that can completely substitute wallet. And here we thought about Gnosis, for example, right? So Gnosis is smart, like, safe.
Safe is smart contract wallet. And how can we build similar type of experience, but in full privacy? And that’s where Hingal comes to play. So there are no competitors that we have, to be completely honest.
There are a couple of solutions that provide smart contract privacy, but more like a shielded pool. So there is a pool where you can deposit money, you rob these assets, you create private address inside smart contract, but then you have very limited functionality. You can just do a couple of transactions and then you withdraw.
So it kind of anonymizes, right? But it’s very limited and it requires extra steps. So the question that we asked for is, how can we embed privacy in everyday life of all the users? And that’s what we do. Okay.
Thank you for sharing those differentiators. Do you guys have any plans to give support to other layers, other layer tools, or any kind of other bigger plans or bigger milestones that you guys might have that you would like to share with us? Yeah. So actually we just started.
I mean, the wallet will be live in the next two weeks. So currently Hingal functioned as more as a dApp. So it allowed users to have privacy on limited number of dApps, such as Uniswap, Pendle, Curve, Convex, PFIC, basically whatever liquid funds institutions that we are working with asked us.
And now we are scaling this approach. And before also Hingal was slow, right? So we did approved generation in the browser. Now we are using SGX-TE.
So we did a lot of work to enable this, what we do right now. And of course, there are massive plans to launch new chains, to improve user experience also on the, let’s say, payment recipient side, to have just better user experience also in the browser, to have wallet obstruction. So there are many plans, but I think the core is, can Hingal be embedded in the current wallet ecosystem, but also enable other wallets to enable privacy.
And that’s what we do. So with us, any wallet, institutional retail, can enable privacy for their users. Awesome.
Awesome. Moving forward to the wallet launch. You mentioned that it’s going to be in the next eight weeks? No, no.
In the next two weeks. Two weeks. Okay.
I’m sorry. Okay. Awesome.
All the best for that. This is like creating a cohesive ecosystem around the platform, which is absolutely brilliant. Now, you know, just zooming out a little bit, what does success look like for you personally in this space? What would you define your month as? Success for us is actually building a completely new category.
So when we think about Hingal, we realized that no one had built a category of private wallets. And public wallets cannot scale. So public wallets are widely used.
Some of them really became popular among crypto users, but none of them provide a scalable way to go to messes because of lack of privacy. So the success looks like most of the users of crypto became our users of our private wallet. And not only crypto users, but also it enables massive adoption of Web3 by Web2 users, institutions, payment facilitators, banks.
Everyone needs privacy to come to Web3, embedded in their user experience. And that’s what we provide. And what about you personally? Is that your, you know, you’re completely aligned with that or is there something else you want to perhaps accomplish in the ecosystem? You know, for me, it’s about, you know, how excited I am about what I’m solving and how big is the problem.
So, you know, I had the same type of excitement when I was a wrestler, when I was doing investment banking, when I stepped into an entrepreneurship class at Stanford. So it’s about, is it a huge problem that makes me excited that will change a lot of lives and impact the industry? And the answer here is yes, because that’s an absolutely crucial step and crucial infrastructure for adoption. So my success and my personal desire is there.
So how much this can impact the crypto and enable new use cases and new builders come to change. Awesome. You know, this is a bit tricky, like what Hintel does, handling the fine line between providing privacy and enabling anti-money laundering compliance.
So can you shed a little light on that? Because the space is dynamic and the laws of different countries and the compliance required can be a little tricky to handle. How are you guys dealing with that? Yeah. So the short answer is that it costs us a lot of money for expensive lawyers to have all these legal opinions and frameworks to make sure that no users participate.
Of course, there are myriads of disclaimers that we provide to make sure that users understand what they do. But also we have to make sure that, I mean, the most crucial part is, is there a way for governments, for any regulators to understand who is participating? So if there’s a list user or like participated, is there a way to anonymize this user? And the answer is yes. So that’s built it.
For example, if user does verify his compliance check with MXC, right? So there’s a proof that generated on chain from certain wallet and certain log from MXC. So what government does is they go to MXC and ask, who is this user who logged in, in the account at 2 p.m. December 18th. And that’s the answer, right? So there is a way for every user to be de-anonymized at the point of entrance when they verify compliance and that they are not part of any illicit list.
Okay. Yeah. I would imagine that this would come at a real high cost for you guys.
Like you mentioned, it’s about paying a lot of lawyers and making sure that you’re on the right side. But how do you foresee global regulatory trends becoming stricter or more accommodating towards blockchain in the future? Yeah. So we’re actually monitoring tornadic cash situation and what’s happening in the lawsuit.
And now we see some positive movements on that side. So we foresee that this will actually even become more favorable for the founders. So now sanctions were lifted from the protocol because protocol cannot be sanctioned.
And we see that there’s also positive dynamics to the founders themselves, right? So once we see that this is really happening, of course, it will be a big green flag, not just for us, but for the whole ecosystem. Because the problem that we faced is whenever we say privacy, they were like, okay, but what about regulation? How do you deal with them? And then a lot of the answers is no, we don’t want to touch private. So how can we deal and solve it is actually whenever this lawsuit is about to end, and if the outcome is positive, we finally see that privacy is a real industry.
It’s fundable, people are excited, and they are not afraid to touch it. So that’s the outcome we are looking for. And we are actively watching the lawsuit.
Okay. Yeah, that is interesting. Now, looking at it from the perspective of Web3 governance, how do you think privacy-focused solutions, what kind of a role will they play in the future in Web3 governance in general? So Web3 governance, actually, that’s a very interesting topic, because one of the big protocols that we are dealing with in optimizing privacy is governance, right? How can we enable private voting? Because a lot of problems with governance is that when someone votes or delegates votes, it’s happening on chain.
So there is a way to see who did this, and they just repeat, right? Or they just criticize, or these people don’t want to vote, and they just delegate because they’ll be criticized. So there are a lot of negative outcomes happening due to lack of privacy. And what we actually enable is a private voting.
So you can delegate or even vote yourself without anyone understanding who are you. So for this, what should happen is a sufficient number of people actually do private voting, so it’s not just one. So this way, we can enable fully private governance, our protocol, and freedom of choice, right? So people can really vote what they think without being afraid that someone can see.
Right. I think what you said here is very important, that it will play a huge role in actually putting freedom of choice in place and kind of highlighting that and making sure that you actually insist that privacy lawyers can do that. So that’s something to chew on.
But how do you feel users, what kind of trends, perhaps, do you see when you interact with users, how they approach privacy in the blockchain ecosystem today? And what was, perhaps, their take a few years earlier? How have you seen that evolve, users’ perception of privacy? Are they more aware now, or do you feel that there is still a long way to go? Yeah, I think that there is still a long way to go, but I’m happy to observe that many users are actually moving on-chain because there are way more primitives on-chain and actual liquidity, right? So when we just started, most of trade that’s happening on centralized exchanges and people were kind of very attached to them and they I mean Centralized exchanges privacy is default and then they were using centralized exchanges to actually obfuscate the link I think that’s still maybe the major way to obfuscate the link between two wallets So when they just have money on you like assets on EOA Then they send this assets to centralized exchange wait a bit and then they send to another EOA and that’s how privacy is achieved in many ways, but What I’m observing now that finally we are unlocking better user experience with privacy where you don’t actually need to send send to centralized exchange to wait time to send it back and we can embed this privacy in the user experience because It was actually also learning for us, right? So we were like rubbing our head and thinking how can we really enable privacy and be just better user? Experience in a centralized exchange and then we just had two tailwinds, right? first tailwind is that people actually onboard on self-custodial wallets and second is that our solution is actually better than this method of obfuscation because you can always stay private during any Transaction and there are also some compliance guarantees that we provide. Interesting. Very interesting So, can you tell me about are there any specific ways that you know Your platform or your team is trying to educate the users about Privacy risks and how to mitigate them.
Is that something that you’re doing? Are you working? For the community as well in that aspect. Yeah. Yeah, we do a lot of work Educational work to let users know the problems with lack of privacy and there are a lot of actually news, right? So every week we probably see the news how the lack of privacy impacts lives of users, right? They are hacked, right? The people steal money, people kill them, right? And there are so many negative outcomes due to lack of privacy and every time we see them we educate the user There are also a couple Websites such as or Twitter handles such as look on chain where you see movements of big wallets and they are all doxxed and triggered Right and Agraham Helps this to happen So we’re also educating users that this is bad and you can prevent this and in order to prevent this it’s super easy You just create private address and store money there.
No one can see your money Hmm, I think it’s very important to educate the user as well at times Like Tom Ford had said I think that you know had I asked the users directly They would have asked for faster horses. So I think at times the user has to be made aware of The issues that there might exist with the existing system so that they you know They are able to actually accept it because at times they don’t consciously understand it. Yeah, and that’s a problem, right? So with level of reading people do now so they just skim couple letters, right or a couple sentences And it’s really hard right to capture the whole idea and educate them in this You know cup in this few seconds that we have so we have to make sure that we are very concise We repeat the same message right and we actually build the warner’s right because they actually the first step here is building a warner’s Before you show the solution and we are working a lot on this right to let people know About the warner’s and of course right with crypto people.
It’s super simple. So they only already use wallets They understand that it’s all happening on chain and many of them have problems with this without with the outcomes of Of this behavior, right, but if we imagine completely new users coming on chain and studying What’s happening there? That’s a completely different list, right? So this will take years to educate them that they are fully public Especially this, you know new generations of users who don’t want to read don’t want to study and they just want to use immediately That’s true. But even keeping that in mind Are there any steps that you’re taking to make it more accessible to non-technical user? Is that something that you guys are looking or are you looking at more? You know folks who are perhaps already Utilizing crypto in one way or another because that is that is a bit easier.
I think yeah, that’s definitely easier to sell All right. So if people don’t understand privacy, then it’s harder to sell the solution to them But I don’t think it’s about technicality, right and them understanding what the technical side of it It’s about them understanding like if they’re private or not, right for example, and then it directly relates to use case, right? So if I am a new user and I am coming on chain to do payments, right? and I want to send money from let’s say US to Nicaragua, so it’s a simple solution. Okay, so I’m learning crypto.
I have a wallet now and you know After the interaction with one of the wallets is quite easy to spot that I’m now public and someone can see my wallet and all previous transactions. So I think that’s a next step Okay, they use regular wallet. They understood the problem now They need privacy and we are here to help and same but but it’s a different use case Let’s say for institution that wants to do like tokenization of the fund, right? So then they they have to really research because tokenization of the fund can lead to a lot of negative consequences You know, for example when Franklin Tipton tokenized its first fund They immediately receive a lot of shit tokens to this fund to the wallet and it was a negative experience that they had So for this type of more sophisticated Institutions that never touched privacy and never touched crypto before of course, they would prefer to have privacy first, right? Are there any plans to incorporate additional tools or features to further enhance the user control over their data? Is that something that you’re looking at actively? Yeah, yeah so one of the solution that we had we will be integrating as one of the next step is of course is Multi-party NPC or multi-sig so that’s what a lot of institutions or bigger Enterprises care and that’s obviously something that we need to have to import larger value users and of course, right? This as I mentioned before security is number one right for a lot of users So I would say that if if if institution can or even consumer, right? So The things about okay Which wallet to use and then they have metamask that over the past many years didn’t have any flaws and any hacks And let’s say Hinkle that is two years in the market also super clean If they don’t critically need privacy, they might choose metamask, right? And then once they need privacy, they can move port it over and really see our audit Security guarantees and other to Hinkle, right? So that’s one of the problems right that every new protocol or wallet face, right? How to convince users that it’s a secure protocol or secure wallet and we are on this road Right to make sure that they are convinced.
So we did five audits every couple months. We do another audit You know, we bring new security experts blah blah so all these details Needs time unfortunately, right? Okay. And what are there any specific blockchain networks or platforms you’re actively looking to partner with at the moment? Yeah, currently we are supporting base optimism arbitrum polygon avalanche pnb chain um, and And we had one yeah and and blast so that’s changed with support Okay, and are there any others that you are, uh actively looking to partner with maybe uh via this podcast we can make it in it Yeah, you know So I think we don’t want to partner with Anyone else on the chain side so far because that’s you know We should be there where we see liquidity and usage and so far like within the seven chains that I mentioned That’s where all transactions are happening on evm, right? Of course, there is a separate ecosystem in solana But solana is built on completely different stock and needs different research, right? We plan to expand there, but it’s not for now Okay.
All right. Wonderful. Um, can you tell us a little about the community and developer contributions? um in in uh, you know and the kind of role that they play in So, you know, I think community is super important for one reason actually and this one reason is not just them You know farming the protocol and using it for the numbers that you can show for the next race or You know token launch or something like a monetary that you can obtain but more like a testing So they share the feedback that no one else shares and more you have them, you know higher is the level of feedback So you can really improve the product based on this iteration and this community, you know rewards you with this outcome Okay, good.
That’s interesting. Um, what are the more exciting advancements? That you know that that are happening right now in blockchain privacy that you are keeping an eye on and uh, Obviously now we are zooming out from people and we’re talking about the ecosystem as a whole But are there any uh trends in the space that that you know, you you are keen on and you feel That they understand the best design. Yeah, so, you know, I was looking at the ecosystem mostly so there’s privacy on cosmos There’s privacy on you know Different like on savanna and what I see that now most of the focus is tailored to confidential compute So basically how to make sure that when you compute data, right? So this data is detached from the persona that needs this data, right? And that’s there are a couple protocols that enable this they call it blind compute very futuristic, right? So it’s basically making sure that people now are really worried, right? or will be worried at some point about the data that ais really have about them and Decentralizing this data and making sure that they don’t have this input.
I think it’s important It will be needed 100 percent. Uh, the question is if it’s needed right now and the answer that i’m giving is no It’s not right and uh same applies to previous Epoch of privacy, right? So when in in 20 Like probably they had three three years ago three four years ago first privacy solutions were mostly used Or they had a lot of usage right for just um kind of illicit users, right? And then they became more sophisticated. They found how to filter out illicit users And now we have this compliance guarantees and compliant privacy, right? So it’s like every industry and goes from um, you know basic primitives and kind of not super sophisticated users to Sophisticated more institutional users where we actually see more capital influx.
So same for confidential compute, right? So who needs confidential compute right now is probably someone who is really worried to give him like giving the data To ei because there is some illicit some bad data that I don’t want to share with anyone, right? So and I think same same vertical will grow and reach sophistication. So I think it’s pretty good. Um, Vertical to pick in privacy, but we are just not not not there It is something that will potentially grow in the future.
But uh at the moment perhaps a little too early Yeah Yeah, absolutely And as you observe right narrative is something that people really follow in crypto and they pivot Immediately when they see that there is some narrative Adjustment that they can make based on their protocol and that’s what I observed with ei right in crypto. So Actually a few crypto privacy protocols when they saw that ei became super relevant They immediately became confidential compute protocols and even so the decent numbers Um from venture capital firms because they had some previous experience with privacy as well So i’m not you know, what what I don’t like is that it’s still very futuristic, right? So it’s not built for current time And what I like and what we’re building is that we can actually have users right now and the use case is growing, right? So you actually see the feedback you are see the outcome and you grow with your user standard option of crypto And there is nothing more rewarding like this versus just waiting that there is a future industry That might appear at some point but solutions are not there. So yeah, I completely agree You know, you need to build for the now good to be future-facing and have a vision But you need to be like timing is everything and that can be make or break for any project Yeah, yeah, but there is actually also counterexample, right if you think about Company, right? So when we when they were doing gaming chips that no one needed So jensen actually locked himself for five years and said, okay, we are doing the most productive and it will be needed in the future So he had this huge conviction that what he is creating will be needed and it will be impossible to catch Up, right his pace and he was right All right So there’s actually there’s actually the opposite side of it, right that you know people can pick the right industry and just be so much futuristic that Uh, finally they have a product and there is a time where when it’s needed and there is no one else who sold it Yeah, that is that is true.
I think arguments can be made from both the sides. Um, I’ve just uh, You know, this has been a very insightful conversation and but we have we are sadly a little running out of time I would ask you perhaps two more questions before we wrap this up. Uh, one thing is um What has been perhaps the toughest decision, uh that you had to make while building and good and what did you learn from it? Uh looking back.
Is there anything that you you know, you would have perhaps chosen to do that, you know do differently Uh in the product journey Yeah, so the toughest decision was actually changing the mindset that I learned at Stanford because you know I was at gsb and what you learned there is that you have to be you know, you have to be too nice Um, and you know always hire people never fire make sure that everyone is happy in the team empower them and When we actually started working on Hinkle, we realized that it’s not true for early stage startups Especially if you are you don’t have unlimited funding, right? Because what you observe in Bay Area that you have let’s say open AI that pays to top talent half million Right from the get-go and then it’s impossible to compete with this type of companies So you have to pay less and people should be excited, right? But of course, it’s very hard for people to be excited for let’s say 150k Um salary versus you know, 500 that is offered by open AI So what we ended up having is hiring a lot of people Realizing that they are not top-notch talent and they are not super intense And firing them and then the biggest change was how to make sure that I feel comfortable In this environment of firing people almost every month, right and that actually happened pretty quickly So now we we don’t feel any regrets firing people and it’s super easy to do I think that is a lesson that every entrepreneur Learns, uh, you know, especially with an early stage startup like you mentioned, you know when you don’t have unlimited resources uh, it is hard to be the nice guy and also do justice to the vision that you’re building on and A lot of builders I think get stuck in in that loop where they feel terrible But they’re trying to you know, you have to be honest and do right Uh by the platform rather than you know playing a mr or miss nice in in that equation. Yeah Yeah, absolutely that that was the crucial realization for me and also realization the personality that And yeah personality that the company has right? Yeah, absolutely So now, you know one more question, how do you uh, View the competition among privacy solutions in web3. Is it more collaborative or is it highly competitive? Uh, I think this would help fellow builders in the space, uh to gain some insight because you have extensive experience Yeah, what I like in crypto that it’s very like super highly collaborative space, right? So we talk to a lot of researchers privacy protocols and they are super willing to share what they’re working on You share with them what you’re working on and you kind of grow together when the pie is growing and the pie is growing Right, which means that now crypto is like whatever, you know, it’s like few like few hundred billion Uh in each asset, right? So but you know, the premise is that it will have trillion So that’s that’s basically the framework that we have but we also notice that some protocols don’t want to share And they don’t they never want to talk to talk.
So there was you know, actually a couple protocols they’re no longer alive and You know, we we even try to talk to them like collaborate and they never never wanted and then they close the startup So yeah, so I think you will you will see a lot of different people. There is a lot of egos, of course, right? And um, yeah, it’s very hard to fight ego Especially when you are early in the career because you know, it hits your head But i’m glad that we’re on a bit on the older side. So we learned a lot on that Yeah, I think I completely agree with you crypto as a whole is highly collaborative and folks who don’t perhaps Um, they learn it the hard way, uh, because this is a very dynamic space there is something to learn from everybody in the space because everybody has had their journey and When when you share and collaborate there is more scope to grow.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely So, uh, this has been very very insightful. Uh, thank you so much for uh, Telling me about hinkle and sharing your learnings from this wonderful journey that you’ve crafted so far Uh, I I would love to ask you the last question that this is something that I ask everything who comes on the show Uh, you’re somebody, you know who who started their career from uh, wrestling and you know You went ahead and you were in investment banking and traditional finance.
You made that leap into web three What would be your advice uh for somebody perhaps on similar trajectory where they are? Web two or they are not really looking They’re still looking at web three with a little bit of skepticism for them to start really living on blockchain What would be your suggestion? Yeah, so my suggestion is that there is no better industry than blockchain from capital from liquidity standpoint, right? So what I see over the past three years that i’m in blockchain that people just you know Build amazing outcomes very early on and they keep building they kept it’s a very collaborative industry You fly you build together you grow together. So this you know, it’s such a phenomenal industry. I’m, you know, i’m always Criticizing people who are concerned because they see no use case or they have other concerns because they never really spent time studying the vertical and they Disappointed early and they were not strong enough to Rethink and think about different perspectives why you know crypto is so popular So yeah, so that that would be my suggestion, right? just be flexible in what you think right and try to think like why really so many smart people are here and If you really enjoy talking to them So just diversify the set of people talk to them and join because when you know initially we were in web two building something in consumer And when we joined webs three we realized that if you’re part of something that grows and the pie is growing It’s completely different mindset and more opportunities versus just refurbishing current industries in b2b sauce or consumer where everything It’s more or less trying right? So there’s like way more space for ideation if you are now in crypto or ai or the last one is sustainability, right? But sustainability cycles are a bit longer or it’s quite boring to be in.
Okay. Yeah, I think you’re right I think these are uh the industries that I have to say If you’re going to be betting on those and if you’re going to be building in these You are in the long term game. So that that is wonderful to hear Thank you so much once again for making the time to speak to me today This has been a very insightful conversation any last thoughts before we wrap it up? Yeah.
Thank you so much taros I actually enjoyed conversation and I was surprised how you were able to ask so many questions in such a short time So I appreciate your time. Absolutely. I love doing this and uh, thank you for sharing all the answers.
Thank you Thank you. Have a great day