frankbraun
Frank Braun

Freedom | Privacy | Investing | Programming

The future is private.

Public Key

npub1vmu8mq9fr96c5e97p5ku3ga9507sek7htl9utpddd6t99cwqjersz5hxee

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxd7rasz53jav2vjlq6twg5wj68lgvm0t4lj79skkka9jju8qfv3cpzpmhxue69uhnzdps9enrw73wd9hszxthwden5te0v9j82mr59ccnsurvw4ejuum0vd5kzmqr63y6e

Publishing to

140.f7z.io

adult.18plus.social

Author Public Key

npub1vmu8mq9fr96c5e97p5ku3ga9507sek7htl9utpddd6t99cwqjersz5hxee

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Last Notes

2025-12-25 10:08:45 UTC

- reply

Sounds like a plan, let’s go!

2025-12-25 10:08:06 UTC

For every important person in your life there will be a day when you will see them for the last time.
Just remember that the next time you'll see them.

2025-11-18 13:55:56 UTC

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Oh the irony.

2025-11-18 13:55:27 UTC

Just use Cloudflare and AWS and you will not have any issues they said.

2025-10-04 07:58:46 UTC

It's hilarious that the concept Homo economicus models humans as consistently rational, when it's actually quite the opposite.

2025-10-01 12:17:26 UTC

What I like about the Zcash community:
Nobody asked me if want to join a Telegram group yet —the standard in most of crypto.
Only Signal groups.
They get it.

2025-10-01 09:49:25 UTC

https://blossom.primal.net/7f3f5ed62effe8fb26397e7556d38bdd9c063f8a3607c2646d2e1e419433e8b7.png

2025-10-01 07:56:03 UTC

Zcash is getting repriced in real time.

2025-09-30 17:20:07 UTC

Being a Zcasher is easy compared to being a gold bug in the 1980s.

2025-09-30 17:08:27 UTC

Was there ever a U.S. government shutdown where the debt ceiling wasn't raised?
"No, we are not going to eat the cookies!"
*dancing around*
"Lets eat the cookies!"

2025-09-30 16:57:41 UTC

Long: BTC, ZEC, XAU
Short: USD, EUR, CHF

2025-09-30 16:36:07 UTC

Time for plan Z.

2025-09-30 16:31:15 UTC

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That’s how ZIP 234 would change Zcash inflation:
https://blossom.primal.net/dc95b88e97ffab5f648868e3c6c0b13d6ef82940adc552298fa799027a17ad8c.png

2025-09-30 16:28:13 UTC

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More details over at Shielded Labs:
https://shieldedlabs.net/nsm/

2025-09-30 16:27:39 UTC

NSM in Zcash
- problem: future security budget (tx fees not enough?)
- constraint: 21M cap
- proposal: Network Sustainability Mechanism
- ZIP 233: establish voluntary burn mechanism
- ZIP 234: smooths the issuance curve (adds burned coins)
- ZIP 235: burn 60% of transaction fees

2025-09-30 15:27:51 UTC

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See forum discussion:
https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/crosslink-early-tokenomics-design/52154

2025-09-30 15:27:06 UTC

Crosslink proposal
- adds assured finality to Zcash by introducing PoS finalizers
- hybrid PoS/PoW ("defence in depth")
- rooster of 100 stake weighted finalizers (they take fee)
- yield for stakers (40% stakers, 40% miners, 20% dev fund)
- staking from Orchard pool
- 21M cap

2025-09-30 12:17:42 UTC

ZSAs (Zcash Shielded Assets)
- Orchard extension enabling the creation, transfer, and burn of custom assets (like ERC-20)
- also allows for NFTs
- assets can be wrapped assets (with bridging)
- same anonymity as shielded ZEC transactions, sharing the pool
- no freeze function

2025-09-29 15:22:22 UTC

Levels of wealth:
- debt
- no debt
- debt

2025-09-29 13:23:57 UTC

My largest holdings in order of size:
BTC
ZEC
XAU

2025-09-29 12:11:45 UTC

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Not really. My guess would be: easier to integrate technically, better relationship management with exchanges, and less “shady” reputation.

2025-09-29 11:27:15 UTC

Zcash must be the only crypto project where being late (joining almost 9 years in) feels being early.
It's like the early days of Bitcoin, buying coins for under $100, exciting to read up on all the tech, etc.
Just this time with privacy and a workable scalability roadmap.

2025-09-28 19:20:04 UTC

𝛂?
- total global assets (TGA): $1,000T
- market cap gold: $22T (2.2% TGA)
- market cap BTC: $2T (~10% gold, 0.2% TGA)
- undeclared offshore wealth: $10T+ (1%+ TGA)
- privacy coins: $8B (<0.1% offshore wealth, 0.4% BTC)
- ZEC: ~$0.97B (12% privacy coins, 0.01% offshore wealth)

2025-09-28 13:10:19 UTC

POV: You are in a country with transfer tax, high VAT, and high taxes in general:
“Cash or card?”
“Cash.”
“Nice!”

2025-09-27 12:28:22 UTC

Optimists buy gold, pessimists buy cans.

2025-09-26 22:33:25 UTC

Using Zcash as a mixer doesn't work — transactions going in and out can be correlated by time and value.
The only way to break this link is to use it as a store of value.
If the market demands more financial privacy and understands this dynamic, value will accrue to Zcash.

2025-09-26 22:11:23 UTC

Money is technology — technology evolves.

2025-09-25 11:41:01 UTC

The future is private.

2025-09-19 17:17:03 UTC

Get worse to get better.

2025-09-02 20:30:57 UTC

The claim that you lost your coins in a boating accident is more credible if those coins cannot be traced.

2025-09-02 16:05:16 UTC

Who would have thought that we weren't shitposting on Reddit 10 years ago but were training superintelligence.

2025-09-01 08:54:40 UTC

You can define an encoding that maps any blob of data to a single number.
To censor certain data, you'd have to censor certain numbers.
But under a different encoding, those numbers would be different.
So: censor all numbers.

2025-08-31 08:27:42 UTC

Just finished "Zero World Problems: New Standards of Living for the Post-Materialist Economy" by Aaron Clarey, great read.
Should be mandatory reading for the crypto twitter crowd that thinks trading meme coins from mom's basement is the best way to financial independence.

2025-08-26 14:39:37 UTC

If it’s OK to filter transactions with “too much” OP_RETURN data, wouldn’t it be also OK by the same logic to filter CoinJoin transactions with too many inputs and outputs?
After all, what useful purpose do they serve?
They are not transferring value.

2025-08-23 22:25:54 UTC

Seems like we have now reached the “but it just feels better” stage of privacy tech.
For many communism also feels better than capitalism.
How did that work out so far?

2025-08-21 13:21:04 UTC

Your threat model should include sophisticated technical attackers.
But don't forget to include the unsophisticated non-technical religious mob.

2025-08-21 12:42:36 UTC

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With multiple assets in the same shielded pool miners can also not censor based on asset type.
And issuers cannot freeze accounts.
And there can be no risk scoring.
Just a free fee market.
Gasp.

2025-08-21 12:30:27 UTC

Having shielded transactions does not only make coins more fungible, it also makes transactions more censorship resistant.
You cannot censor selectively what you cannot differentiate.
Lesson in there.

2025-08-21 12:21:15 UTC

Bitcoiners: The network is censorship resistant.
Somehow also Bitcoiners: Let’s figure out how we can best filter “undesirable transactions”.

2025-08-18 19:04:12 UTC

I think there are usually no big reasons for short term price movements.
The Monero drama had a short term price impact and now that seems to be reverting. But generally it's more people are buying than selling that makes number go up and vice versa.
Both Monero and Zcash are down about 20% in USD term compared to one month ago while Bitcoin is mostly flat in that time frame.
And one month is still a rather short time frame.
The question that interest me much more than the infighting: Why are privacy coins in general underperforming at the moment?
Is it because we are still pretty early in the bull part of the cycle and privacy coins come later in the cycle?
Right now ETH is picking up, but SOL is still not really pumping. So from that perspective it might still be early "alt season".
Does the market simply not value privacy and we just have to accept it?
Or is it a communication problem that can be solved with better education and marketing?
Or is it something else entirely?

2025-08-17 23:29:41 UTC

While Solana celebrated a new record of 92,628 tx/s the dominating "problem" in Bitcoin seems to be how to best filter "spam" transactions while the mempool sits mostly empty.
Sad.

2025-08-16 17:56:12 UTC

"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
— Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975)

2025-08-15 14:09:45 UTC

The free market is a harsh mistress.

2025-08-12 21:20:51 UTC

The threat model for my life is: It's complicated.

2025-08-12 21:00:16 UTC

https://blossom.primal.net/a8500dcc1214933074ad7f2eb614897280d2b5c7e9f50feba06ec7c9acb1023f.jpg

2025-08-12 13:13:12 UTC

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I don’t think so, here is my full argument:
https://frankbraun.org/layer1/

2025-08-12 11:45:31 UTC

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No, I haven’t looked into that.

2025-08-12 11:44:27 UTC

Less ego leads to more success.
It allows you to learn and adapt.
The real cost is not making a mistake, it's defending it.

2025-08-12 11:34:03 UTC

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminpirus/2019/09/30/mcafee-explains-rationale-for-why-he-still-sees-1-million-bitcoin-by-2020/

2025-08-12 11:33:52 UTC

“What if a plumber came and fixed your sink and you paid him $40? He went into the bank and he goes, ‘I’d like to cash this check. Mr. McAfee wrote it to me and I’d like my $40, and, while you’re there, would you please tell me what his balance is, and, from now on, forever, would you please inform me every time he has an incoming wire or deposit, and every check that he writes, and to whom?’”
“That’s what bitcoin is,” McAfee said. “Would you be happy if your bank did that?” He added, “Please, you know you wouldn’t. We know, if anybody has any sense, and if you understand human nature, then privacy coins will be the winner.”
Privacy coins, also sometimes referred to as anonymous coins, are cryptocurrencies such as monero (XMR) and zcash (ZEC) that tout capabilities to hide transactions and other activities.
(from a John McAfee interview with Forbes in 2019)

2025-08-11 11:49:45 UTC

https://blossom.primal.net/f554dcfa9a647877277e96adff42e7e5e4ab4a10791b51c7c8ef49dd203f71a8.jpg

2025-08-11 11:31:49 UTC

Buying one Bitcoin today is the equivalent of a boomer buying a house in the 1980s.
You buy it, do nothing, and you'll get rich.
And the world will go to shit and the next generation will hate you.
Or how are we going to separate money and state with a transparent ledger?

2025-08-10 15:05:27 UTC

Some cryptocurrency tribes build bridges and trade with other tribes.
Others go to war and isolate themselves.
Which strategy is more likely to succeed in the long run?

2025-08-10 14:29:09 UTC

Freedom technology invariants
https://frankbraun.org/invariants

2025-08-10 12:54:55 UTC

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Weaponize autism, reclaim the internet ✊

2025-08-10 12:54:33 UTC

I have this theory that a lot of social media is dominated by psychopaths, narcissists, and autists.
Psychopaths don't give a shit if people like them or not. Narcissists feed on any form of attention. And autists are so obsessed with a topic that they can ignore the hate.

2025-08-10 12:44:02 UTC

If you want to have an impact there will be haters, it's just the law of the universe.

2025-08-09 11:27:37 UTC

I just finished my first rewrite in Rust.
Does that complete my initiation?

2025-08-08 11:32:38 UTC

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I don’t think life will ever be fair, but I would like a freer world.

2025-08-08 10:46:07 UTC

So many layers in this picture.
https://blossom.primal.net/dd6e496471197592eba6b215487f39b3940e0085e7b05650366761b7f4cb82e2.jpg

2025-08-08 09:20:58 UTC

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Exactly. At most they will tell you that the inflation rate is 2-3%.

2025-08-08 09:03:07 UTC

Long degeneracy, short common sense.

2025-08-08 09:02:56 UTC

I talked to a banker in rural Bavaria yesterday and he told me how people were taking out 100k EUR in cash when they had negative interest rates and stored it in a barn.
And then put it back in their normal bank account when they were back at 0% interest.
Normies are so cooked.

2025-08-06 11:47:56 UTC

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David Heinemeier Hansson

2025-08-06 07:49:14 UTC

I'm not sure if the Linux community realizes how big of a deal it is that DHH took an interest in the Linux desktop experience.
This is going to cost Apple billions of dollars in revenue. And rightly so.

2025-08-05 21:37:57 UTC

OK, maybe I was wrong on Rust, it's growing on me.

2025-08-05 21:28:19 UTC

Great intro on Zcash and how its privacy compares to Monero from Arjun Khemani:
https://www.scifi.money/

2025-08-04 19:02:30 UTC

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I think cancellations have been cancelled.

2025-08-04 18:42:14 UTC

I just added Litecoin (MWEB) to my donation page.
Not because somebody asked for it, but as a testament to the upgradability of old protocols.

2025-08-04 18:21:43 UTC

Becoming a verb is a sign of the highest level of adoption: to google, to venmo, to tweet (dang!)
When "to zashi" is commonplace ("zashi me the money", "just zashi it", etc.) Zashi app and financial privacy will have won.
Internet, do your thing 😉

2025-08-04 15:18:23 UTC

I just tried to figure out how to best announce updates to my blog and settled on an Atom feed and a Signal group.
https://frankbraun.org/#subscribe
I didn't want to deal with the complexities and privacy issues of an email list or a Substack and keep the website purely static for now.
Signal has a group size limit of 1000, but as the famous Kevin Kelly says, 1000 True Fans is all you really need anyways 😉
https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

2025-08-03 11:16:11 UTC

Pair programming is the new default modus operandi.

2025-08-02 13:22:15 UTC

Never trust a politician you haven't compromised yourself.

2025-08-02 11:30:26 UTC

You cannot be both a Bitcoin Maxi and Monero Maxi at the same time.
If you join a religion, you have to decide.

2025-08-02 10:30:36 UTC

Running Zebrad, fully synced 🦓

2025-08-02 09:41:18 UTC

You cannot be a successful solopreneur without being a successful shitposter.
Shitposting is as important as coding.

2025-08-01 10:52:34 UTC

Is the Bitcoin country going off the rails?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/1/el-salvador-approves-indefinite-presidential-re-election

2025-08-01 09:12:03 UTC

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Yes, it's a scary realization that there are people out there who genuinely don't care about other people or, maybe even worse, actually lack the ability to care.
And for some reason we still have this inhibition to expose them, even if we have proof.

2025-07-31 15:40:07 UTC

After over two decades of C and over one of Go it's about time to really learn Rust. I attempted it before and wrote some code in it, but never to the level that it really stuck in my brain. Digesting "the book" right now.

2025-07-31 09:42:56 UTC

That feeling when you only have two administrative tasks to do and then you can code all day, but you have a hard time getting yourself to do them.

2025-07-31 00:47:49 UTC

Privacy is a human right.
But it's not granted, it has to be taken.

2025-07-30 23:40:16 UTC

We now have billionaire tech founders themselves code decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operate over bluetooth mesh networks.
I'm not sure the censorship bureaucracy knows what they are up against.

2025-07-30 21:53:02 UTC

Mandatory age verification which requires attested applications attacks the very base layer of freedom technology — secure devices.
Think about that for a second.

2025-07-30 21:52:01 UTC

Everybody is shopping, but not everybody wants to be free.

2025-07-30 19:34:18 UTC

What if programming is art?
https://frankbraun.org/art

2025-07-30 09:06:05 UTC

This privacy stuff is getting out of control, I cannot tell if my patrons are famous OGs or random plebs.

2025-07-28 19:48:21 UTC

Privacy needs to be baked into L1
https://frankbraun.org/layer1/

2025-07-27 10:18:35 UTC

I find it interesting how my entire mindset shifted around fiat.
Normie friends tell me they need fiat in a "savings account" to feel safe.
I cannot sleep well if I have a lot of fiat sitting somewhere.
How can you sleep if you are sitting on a melting ice cube?
I only feel safe if I'm short fiat.

2025-07-26 17:10:53 UTC

Saving is not only necessary for capital accumulation, it's also a necessity for monetary privacy.

2025-07-26 17:06:59 UTC

With the rapid improvements of AI technology it's best to assume that any information that can be derived, will be derived.

2025-07-26 15:34:18 UTC

I just installed a tool which I wrote in Go almost 10 years ago.
No sudden compiler errors. No standard library incompatibilites. And no fricking incompatible source-level changes (👋 Python, Ruby, Perl, Swift, PHP, and Scala).
It just worked.
That way I can focus on the actual problem, not the tooling.
There is enough complexity in the problem domains, we don't need more complexity in the programming languages.
Boring is good, boring is productive.
All hail the Go compatibility guarantee from the 1.0 release:
https://go.dev/doc/go1compat
And they are still not planning to break it:
https://go.dev/blog/compat
Respect 🫡

2025-07-26 11:35:54 UTC

I added an Atom feed to my blog.
https://frankbraun.org

2025-07-25 18:51:12 UTC

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What am I missing?

2025-07-23 23:26:14 UTC

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The miners don’t have additional information compared to the data in the blockchain. The only information a miner could possibly gain is where a transaction originated, but that can be obfuscated with Tor or a mixnet like Nym.

2025-07-23 21:55:18 UTC

Keystone hardware wallet test with shielded Zcash
https://frankbraun.org/keystone
#Zcash

2025-07-23 17:37:47 UTC

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I’m usually only concerned with user privacy and not miner privacy. For user privacy the infrastructure requirements don’t matter.
Monero’s PoW algorithm is deliberately hard to accelerate on ASIC/FPGA. Zcash’s PoW algorithm was designed to be GPU-friendly, but is now mainly mined on ASICs.
So currently for miner anonymity Monero has the lead.
However, Zcash is planning to move to a hybrid PoW/PoS algorithm and that might change the situation.
Are you concerned with miner privacy?

2025-07-22 20:43:24 UTC

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There are currently three different shielded pools (basically three iterations of the zero-knowledge proof tech) and only the first one had a possible inflation bug.
You cannot audit the inside of a shielded pool, that’s not compatible with the privacy guarantees.
However, each pool has a so called turnstile mechanism which ensures that there are never more coins leaving the pool than coins that have entered it.
The bug in the first pool was fixed in 2018 and given how long ago that was and how little coins still remain in the pool it is very unlikely that the bug has ever been exploited. There is additional evidence that it hasn’t, which I’m sure you can easily find.
The latest iteration (the Orchard pool) also doesn’t have a trusted setup anymore.

2025-07-22 20:33:42 UTC

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I don’t understand your question. IRL = in real life, right?

2025-07-22 20:29:43 UTC

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There is something new to learn every day.

2025-07-22 11:45:36 UTC

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That’s what makes it an asymmetric opportunity, if we get a privacy renaissance.