Here is my conversation with Henri Stern who is building Privy.
Henri was previously a research scientist at Protocol Labs and worked on Filecoin’s consensus protocol. And after many years of thinking through problems related to data privacy and security, he recently co-founded a new company called Privy where they provide a suite of API tools to store and manage user data off chain.
In this conversation, we talked through a set of topics that Henri has a unique point of view on — starting with the question around the seeming trade-off between privacy/security on the one hand and UX/convenience on the other. We talked about principles he has in mind in designing an off-chain data system; how privy does encryption and key management; how they do permissioning; and how they think about data storage.
Timestamps:
0:00 intro
2:30 designing the product/protocol roadmap
10:30 privacy/security vs. convenience
19:27 building an web3 application
23:20 decentralizing Privy
32:09 key management architecture
46:11 verifiability, transparency as a disinfectant
59:02 building a product with private data
1:07:08 cofounder relationship
Into the Bytecode: https://intothebytecode.xyz/
Newsletter for updates: https://bytecode.substack.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sinahab
Mentioned in the show:
Protocol Labs - [https://protocol.ai/]
Filecoin - [https://filecoin.io/]
The DAO Hack - [https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao]
Balajis Srinivasan ‘Quantifying Decentralization’ - [https://news.earn.com/quantifying-decentralization-e39db233c28e]
