Shhh... It’s Confidential — Ep. 2 | NEAR Intents ft. RocketX, near.com & ShieldSwap

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:14

   [clears throat] Hey, what's going on, guys? Hey, guys. How's it going? Hey, everyone. Yeah, I'm Tyler from the Near Intense team. Uh, and I'm here welcoming uh Kieran from Rockadex and Charlie from near.com. So, how's it going?

2. 0:32

   Awesome. Thank you so much for for putting this together. I'm super excited to be here. I'm Charlie. I basically run marketing and growth at at.com. For those that are not familiar with Neo.com, basically it's one account for your whole crypto life, which is basically a place where you can hold, swap, earn, pay, and do this across over 30 chains. And what's amazing and why we're here is all of this can be done confidentially. So, this is why we're

3. 1:02

   excited to talk about this today and super happy to be here with Kieran and Tyler here. Yeah, likewise. Uh, thanks for having me here. This is Kenan from Rocketex handling uh product and those who are not familiar with Rocketex we launched back in 2021. We are the pioneer in aggregating centralized and decentralized exchanges into one single UI so that you know users don't need to worry about whether they're getting

4. 1:30

   better prices for a given pair via Dexes or centralized exchanges and you'll be able to compare all the rates uh in using a single UI so you always are sure you're getting the best price for your bucks and we did more and $2 billion volume till date and we recently launched the privacy swaps and getting very good traction more than 50% volume uh you know are via private swaps and said it's pretty exciting like you know more and more people are opting uh

5. 2:07

   privacy and we'll talk more about it you know uh in this video as we go further and pretty excited to work along with near intents both for the normal swaps and also looking for the for the launch of the private swaps as well. I mean you already launched uh private swaps but looking to also support uh confidential near intents on docket tech power. Pretty excited.

6. 2:33

   Awesome. We're excited to work with you guys. And then we're also joined by uh by Chadwick down here. Um sorry you're just hopping in but would you mind giving a quick intro on you and Shield Swap? Sure. Uh so uh Chav Exchange here, the senior PM for partnership integrations at Provable, the company behind uh Shield Swap. Uh really excited to be here. Um really excited to talk about Shield Swap as well. Um yeah, Shield Swap was announced about a week ago.

7. 3:00

   It's a uh confidential uh concentrated liquidity AMM uh built on Alo uh which is using zero knowledge proofs uh to provide um uh confidential by default compliance by design uh within a trading venue allowing uh users to swap and trade uh various assets in a confidential venue. Um so our our view is privacy is everywhere today because you know transparent ledgers turn transparency into persistent market surveillance. Um everyone knows like a reused wallet address can become like a

8. 3:35

   behavior identifier. Um and also like it could reveal like intent or even a trader strategy. So we believe crypto needs a better separation. Uh we believe zero knowledge proofs provides uh the ability to do this to keep wallet attribution confidential uh yet verifiable and providing evidence through like a governed audit process.

9. 3:58

   Um but I I think we all share uh uh that view of of why privacy or rather confidentiality is like important today. So excited to dive into the conversation and thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Um, and obviously it feels like the conversation is shifting a little bit just around privacy in general. Like it feels like, you know, this wasn't such a hot topic just a couple of years ago and things are like very slowly moving in that direction or probably more rapidly than than they

10. 4:27

    were before. Um, which is great to see for all of us uh, you know, privacy people that are that are here. Um, and a great time to be like shipping privacy tech for for the community. Um so did you guys want to start out by talking about like you know how you're thinking about privacy like in your own products like how you're how you're implementing it like what um you know what are you thinking about uh in terms of privacy like when you're building um like

11. 4:51

    rocketex near.com uh shield wallet and shield swap. Sure. uh I mean that's pretty interesting uh you know uh question over there and when we launched uh rocketex in 2021 right we are we were the pioneers in aggregating centralized and decentralized exchange into one UI though one of the reasons we did that is to get better rates we realized that lot of our users are using the CX routing to achieve the the private swap the

12. 5:28

    feature already which is hidden in what we have done right we are we are not uh explicitly you know promoting it as a private swap as such but all of us would have done it right whenever you want don't want two wallets to link uh to each other what would you do you send your funds to a centralized exchange and then withdraw to a different exchange that's how you avoid the onchain linkage and kind of you make those two wallets uh not linkable

13. 6:00

    on chain. So when we aggregated both leading centralized exchanges and dexes from uh from a trader perspective to to help them get better rates, most of them are using the centralized exchange routing to achieve this privacy, right? Uh this was back in 2021. uh there are like hardly like uh handful of chains maybe 10 to 15 chains but today you see there are like 200 plus chains and there are more and more chains

14. 6:30

    launching every month or maybe every week and we support 200 plus chains and rocketex and and and also uh private private private swap across all the chains from any chain to any chain via centralized routing is what we currently support and you know rightly pointed out by Charlie uh the reasons why people are choosing privacy uh depends on which background you are from. If you are a retail user and if

15. 7:03

    you are an institution everyone has their own reasons why you choose privacy. Um if you are a retail user you know the the social engineering scams are on the rise and as as uh uh sorry Chadwick has rightly mentioned you don't want to dox your wallet anymore. Uh there were times when you are worried about the safety of your funds. Now we are living in the times where it's more about your personal safety rather than the safety of your funds. You don't want your

16. 7:36

    wallet to be flagged uh or identified uh when you do you know swap with high volume because there are onchain analytics to analytical tools available now which can easily connect your wallet to your identity and the private swaps helps you uh you know do the actual trade without revealing your wallet address. That's how you know you are protected from the scanning of these hackers or criminals whoever are and if you are inst it's in institution

17. 8:12

    uh the private the the privacy aspect is is a given thing without that we cannot have institutional adoption and now the infrastructure is in place you know which uh near is is doing a great job in building that infrastructure and we also seen recently Polygon has launched uh with the private private mess and there are a lot of uh developments happening in the space for the institutional adoption.

18. 8:46

    uh right so these are some of the main reasons uh I I I you know I could think of where people are choosing privacy and and another aspect is also like CZ has mentioned in in one of his tweets right when an institution let's say he wants to pay salaries to to their employees using crypto you cannot just pay from your treasury account and and then your entire balance sheet is exposed right

19. 9:12

    yeah I mean not only is balance sheet exposed but everyone knows how much everyone one else is getting paid and everyone knows everyone's address and can track it them indefinitely. Exactly. Uh and there are some institutions who has their own trading strategies, right? If everything is onchain uh that's your niche or that's your uh edge uh your trading strategy. There is always someone who can reverse engineer

20. 9:38

    your trading strategies if everything is exposed on chain. So there are uh these valid use cases where one needs to keep their uh swaps and transactions private. So that's where the privacy is is on the rise I believe and it's only going to that adoption is only going to grow as we uh as the time passes by with the infrastructure uh developing on one side and more and more institutions are switching

21. 10:10

    you know to to onchain for the obvious reasons of you know saving cost and settlement uh faster settlement and things like that and that's where a a rocket text we are positioning ourselves uh our our journey has started as a CX index aggregator and we stick to our basics where we have our own proprietary routing via centralized exchanges but at the same time we we also aggregate other 100% DEX

22. 10:43

    based privacy solutions like confidential near entrance for example and I believe shield swap also uh is 100% Dex base we're always open and looking for this uh you know upcoming innovative confidential solution so we could aggregate all the leading we handpick the leading providers and and make the best available to our users right and why we handpick is also really important because achieving privacy is one thing at the same time achieving

23. 11:15

    privacy in a compliant manner is even more important so that when somebody uses uh specific solution for private swap. It doesn't end up you know being routed the funds doesn't end up being routed via uh mixers or sanctioned exchanges so that your your orders is poisoned you cannot use it anymore.

24. 11:38

    So we are uh we put a lot of effort in uh choosing which providers we uh we on board uh so that our users can you know uh achieve privacy without uh any hassle. Awesome. Maybe if I if I can chime in here u from our side maybe I'd zoom out.

25. 12:02

    Uh if you think about every other financial tool you're using right now, your bank, your broker, uh none of them are broadcasting your your your finance and your transaction to stranger. So that's not a feature. It's basically how money works. And so what we've been seeing is with the onchain market, we accepted this idea of we accepted the opposite. and not because we we made the ch the choice of it. It's because nothing was available in the

26. 12:34

    market right now. So that constraint is now done with confidential intent specifically on neo.com. And the question moves from how do I hide to uh why is it still uh the default? Why does my transaction on chain is public and everyone can see? And to chime in on what Kiran was saying is something we've been seeing is that confidentiality is not anonymous. It's you decide from uh

27. 13:04

    it's not hiding from everyone is you decide what you show to who when. And this is what makes it usable for real money. And this is how we're going to get people with real compliance obligation who needs to be able to audit uh to come in. And this is why this new wave is completely different from the past one.

28. 13:29

    Yeah. And just to just to follow up on Charlie and Kieran's comments like agree like every mature market in the world uh tradi was built on you know execution is confidential and settlement is auditable and crypto is the only uh the only ecosystem where like it got that completely backwards.

29. 13:51

    um so to speak like Jane Street, Citadel, they they don't publish their book. Uh Citadel doesn't stream their positions like uh these counterparties like can't reconstruct from like what you know what are the what are the strategies in the traditional finance world. Um and now we're seeing like roughly half of like the US equity volume is now executing in a lawful and like routinely away from like you know

30. 14:15

    transparent order books. Um because information leakage like in tra traditional finance markets is like at a cost that no no serious like trading desk will ever accept. Um so public blockchains being this market infrastructure that like publishes all the participants inventory flow and strategy in real time um to anyone who basically looks and that's just a non-starter for um a lot of these like bigger flows that are coming in into uh the ecosystem now. So I think um uh

31. 14:48

    having confidentiality like isn't necessarily a feature. It's it's it's a demand. It's it's something that you need as like a um to have a well functioning market. Um and I think now with with the attention on confidentiality and these audit auditable flows, it's really going to unlock uh major flows from the trady world as well as accelerate the DeFi ecosystem into um more interesting products.

32. 15:14

    Yeah. Yeah. And it almost feels like uh everything was transparent by default just because that's the way that Bitcoin was built and because they're just limited by their time as to like what they could actually accomplish. And obviously like you know other solutions like like Zcash are still like in the battle testing like hardening phase still but um you know it just seems like because of that original paradigm then

33. 15:36

    things are all uh public by default which was you know great as a um you know audibility tool but then you know as we get further down the path like and we you know start to think about like the practical applications of privacy um how um like all all the things that you mentioned are just um you from payments to institutions coming on chain and actually trading on chain to you know

34. 16:01

    treasury management um all that stuff is greatly improved by privacy and I don't think any any of those players would move their solutions over if there weren't um those kind of guarantees in place I mean that's definitely why you know um you know we came on here and started building uh the private shard and private intents so that way we can like start proliferate that out and just kind of like bring privacy on chain for

35. 16:25

    for bitcoin for stable coins so that way we can get to the place where we can do uh you know payments and like swaps swaps is one thing but payments and then you know actually like shielding your assets um so that's that's all the stuff that's really important to us so um yeah I mean where what do you think in terms of like actual like product decisions like I I'm curious to hear about like uh so I guess that was more like you know

36. 16:51

    philosophical around um you know why privacy is important, but like how are you actually implementing that into your own um in your own products and like you know what kind of trade-offs do you have to make with that or just like general thoughts around just the product decisions that you make around privacy in general?

37. 17:10

    Yeah, happy to uh take that on. So again with Shield Swap and Provable the company behind Shield Swap um our mantra is confidential by default compliance by design. Um so there is a balance that we need to strike here uh of like how that works. Um so within the shield swap protocol like the the protocol creates an encrypted compliance or encrypted evidence automatically and access to that evidence is restricted and governed offchain. Um and that way like every

38. 17:40

    single swap within shield swap the uh the AMM venue emits an encrypted attribution record containing several fields including caller requester pseudonym etc. Um and the operator defines which entities can actually use that capability under what authority and how access is logged to basically access those encrypted attribution records. Um so the protocol supplies this attribution level evidence. It doesn't establish a participant's identity. It

39. 18:11

    doesn't perform KYC. Um it doesn't decide on a disclosure request. Like all of that is is governed offchain. Um and so in that way we have a balance today of like again confidential by default uh to the public market with compliance rails and compliance design embedded into the protocol. Um, yeah, and with that, like early access currently for Shield Swap is open. You can go to shield.fi.

40. 18:40

    Um and uh I think right now we're looking for people to join who are like active onchain traders and teams who are already changing how they size and uh how they time and basically route their transactions because of public analytics basically exposes their strategies or exposes like sensitive activities that they're they're conducting. Um, but we're also looking for builders working

41. 19:04

    on uh wallet routing, uh, risk and compliance workflows to help shape the operating model. Um, I think that's how we're looking at it and that's how we've sort of built in terms of like the product. Um, whereas like privacy is the market default. It's not an exemption from accountability. Uh, and I think that's that's a carryover from Trady Worlds and and what's missing currently with uh, public ledgers today.

42. 19:31

    Yep. Uh I I would like to go next. Yeah. So that's pretty interesting question, right? So from a product perspective, how do you offer privacy features to our to our existing users? So as a rocket product when we launched back in 2021, uh we already support the normal swap features uh onchain, crosschain, centralized exchange, decentralized exchange, fastest rate, best rate. Now

43. 20:00

    you are adding a privacy feature. Uh right. So some of the things that uh that drove the product decision is how to make it easy for the user to switch to private mode or incognito mode in the app. And we support like 500 plus exchanges when it comes to the normal swaps. But when it comes to the privacy swaps, we handpick those few exchanges.

44. 20:28

    You know who who fits into our criteria where the moment you say privacy, you also attract the bad actors, right? Who wants to misuse the platform and you need to handle that that in an efficient way that the user experience of the normal user doesn't go for a toss when you're trying to handle the bad actors. Right? So that's where we also built some additional validations on uh on our side so that we

45. 21:04

    already validate the onchain score of the wallet and either we process the transaction or we reject upfront. So so as to take care that we are not uh dealing with these bad actors. Yeah. So these are the some of the things that comes to my mind uh immediately.

46. 21:31

    Awesome. On on the n.com side, we started with confidential swaps and quickly we realized that as I've said before, confidentiality is not a feature. And so right now we working on making it the property of the account because if if only your trade is confidential, your balance is still can still identify you. Your payment still identifies you. When you're paying someone, the other side sees your whole

47. 22:01

    history. So it's like locking your your front door but keeping the windows open. Uh everybody can see what's happening inside. So we kept going. So we had swaps then we had deposit confidential deposit withdrawals sends and now we have earn where basically you can earn confidentially and you can do this from the same account with the same setting no new app which is why I think it's absolutely awesome and on earn

48. 22:29

    specifically something that we've done is we haven't been pitching the confidentiality part what we've been pitching is that on the earn side you're able to spend your earn balance. So we're not looking to make confidentiality us confidentiality the main thing of the product. We're pushing for also improvement in the user experience because we want you to come in use.com and stay with Neil.com and operate all your financial life from neo.com.

49. 23:00

    So this is what we've been doing and we are working on bringing confidentiality even further more. uh it's going to come to stocks, real estate, uh etc. So, this is what we're working on. Yeah, I would add something from the Sorry, you go K.

50. 23:21

    Yeah. So uh so we have we're working with one of the partners right where we initially launched the private swap feature uh they integrated our APIs and as in when uh you know they they see like very good traction from their users then uh they also requested private send feature where you're just sending the same asset from one wallet to another wallet without onchain link or you know any confidential.

51. 23:48

    We launched a private send feature across you know 200 plus networks and and all the major assets and we also recently launched private payment a feature where now anyone can create a payment link let's say is one of the use case we discussed earlier right uh let's say I want to raise an invoice to the institution and I don't want to share my wallet address with the institution the same way institution doesn't want to directly expose their treasury wallet. So one can

52. 24:24

    request a payment and where the the counterparty can send the payment where both of them can achieve the the you know uh the purpose without exposing their individual addresses. So this also is another feature which you know we almost developed on about to go live. So once we launch the specific feature right and the demand keeps on coming like can you do this can you do that so we seeing very good uh traction on the

53. 24:56

    product side with respect to the privacy features and I'm sure I mean there'll be more use cases and you know we we're more than happy to support our clients with these use cases. There's a a question from the uh from the comments. Any airdrop for the community and uh maybe Charlie if you want to plug the uh near at 333 um program real quick while there's uh some time here because especially as that relates to uh confidential intents and just confidentiality stuff because

54. 25:29

    that's directly related. So maybe that's worth just touching on real quick. 100%. Uh something I I I'll add on this is the confidential TVL which is basically the amount that is held in the confidential chart that allows us to uh offiscate the transaction and the balance of the users. So what we've been doing and I I'm on the marketing side and we've been thinking okay how can we grow this TVL and how we can incentivize

55. 26:02

    help people uh grow this TVL. So the more people uh are place their funds in this confidential TVL which is just placing funds in your near.com confidential balance the more people can uh the more your balance is is confidential. So what we did is we've put together a program called near ad 3.33 which basically depending on the amount of transa confidential transaction and the amount of balance uh stored on your

56. 26:34

    neo.com account confidentially you are able to earn some points that will be uh redeemed for near drop once we hit the confidential TVL of 70 million. Right now we're around 36 million. Uh with the recent bump in the market, it has grown.

57. 26:54

    It's going to grow even more faster because we have loads of marketing activities planned up. So join in, use near.com, use the confidential part and also refer users. Once you when you refer users, this counts towards your balance and your air drop that will be coming.

58. 27:13

    Yeah. And and the goal behind that is increasing the TBL of the confidential intent system which this creates this network effect for everyone that integrates like for for Rocketex and for shield swap and for every anyone else that uses confidential intents because the greater uh so normally like you like I've said this before like TVL is more of a liability where that's just like some kind of balance that is like not really doing much but when it's in a

59. 27:37

    confidentiality set like in confidential intents um it just creates um more guarantees of of confidentiality for the people that are using that solution. So as the TVL of the of confidential intents grows, everyone's balance becomes I don't want to say more private or less private, but um like it just creates more uncertainty around like whose funds are belong to whom. Um so it

60. 28:02

    just it strengthens the privacy solution as a whole. So um I mean that's the reason for for the campaign and just like it it improves everyone's experience. So like as we go forward and maybe one thing to talk about here is just like confidential by default designs because obviously like when things are split between like confidential and non-confidential um that's it's not as secure as just putting it by default. So like when you

61. 28:26

    think about just growing the TVL of the confidentiality set but then also um just making things confidential by default everything's going through that solution. It just makes things better for everyone that's using that solution.

62. 28:37

    So maybe um if anyone wants to comment on just like confidential by default designs like maybe where uh you know if we see you know this difference between fully public solutions and fully confidential solutions or maybe some kind of hybrid between both like what are you guys thoughts on uh on that or anything that relates to it? Yeah, maybe I can I can chime in here.

63. 29:01

    Oh Kiran, you want to go? Uh yeah, please go ahead. I I I have a question I'll share later. Awesome. So something we we've seen with the implementation of confidentiality in non.com is that Kiran was saying 50%. Right now on our side we're at 60 in July the last number in July we were at 69% of our users uh using the confidentiality transactions. And something that myself surprised me the most was that I thought people were

64. 29:32

    going to use the confidentiality aspect only for this like weird transaction where before you were going through a centralized exchange or doing something like that. But this is not happening. People are uh turn it on. So you you need to toggle it right now and it becomes how they use new.com as of today. So this this has been awesome and who has been using this? We've been talking to different type of users. It's

65. 29:58

    not the repay people who trying to hide small amount. It's our largest accounts, people who have more to lose on having people seeing what uh the amounts and the finance that they have. And something also that uh I'd like to highlight is that nobody asked us uh to have this feature. uh there is no uh telegram group where people were like okay we want confidentiality it's just a switch that we gave them we gave them the option and as of now we seeing more and more people using it by

66. 30:34

    default so it's the the answer we've seen is not like user want half of them want confidential the other want public is that once they try it confidential they never go Yeah, I have one question for you Charlie as well as Chad. So there are from the technology perspective, right?

67. 30:57

    I know like your intense confidential swaps is based on TE execution. There is also ZK based technology available. So any thoughts on why you chose this over this and you can also throw some light on what technology you're using.

68. 31:21

    Yeah, it's it's a really solid question. I mean there's lots of different uh technologies that are available TEES, zero knowledge, FHEs. Um each come with its own set of tradeoffs and scalability. Um that being said, I don't think there's like a default technology that's like uh industry standard. Um obviously zero knowledge is much more complicated than trusted execution environments. Um even FHE is on the other spectrum of more uh complications as well as like uh like

69. 31:54

    scalability concerns. Um it's been our stance and our team from the very beginning um has been you know curating uh zero knowledge technology. Um so there's a a huge domain expertise that we have on our team uh with these with uh handling zero knowledge proofs. Um that being said like there's uh a definite rationale to use maybe like hybrid systems. Um and again there's there's no like right avenue for you know what is applied but I think in

70. 32:26

    terms of shield swap uh we're leveraging zero knowledge proofs in a way um uh that others haven't been able to achieve um and I think this makes a very interesting compelling experience for for users to um basically walk into shielded and unshielded flows and navigate that experience um as well as like trading into a venue with like confidential swaps. Um so uh that that that's that's our general position.

71. 32:53

    Again, we have domain expertise in zero knowledge groups and uh it's really interesting to see like this venue uh leveraging that capability along with the uh specific stacks that we built in order to support that. And I think one of the things that we've approached is um there's been some attempts of basically um uh sort of reverse engineering or back engineering um confidentiality or privacy by design in certain uh protocols. But I think to

72. 33:23

    have like a truly confidential by default protocol, you need to rearchitect from the ground of the stack and I think that's exactly what founders did um and basically developing out the AIO chain along those primitives and again there's been some precedence from uh Zcash a lot of the Zcash early founders basically started provable and alo as a way to have programmable privacy uh using zero knowledge proof.

73. 33:52

    So that's a little bit of like the uh path dependency um uh of the history of how Shield Swaps is leveraging zero knowledge proofs today. Um but that that to be said, I want to kind of follow up to Charlie and Kieran's comments as well about sort of these network effects around confidentiality um or privacy by design.

74. 34:13

    Um agree like confidentiality like compounds with usage. So every time like Rocket X basically routes like to a shielded venue, it makes it more confidential for everyone that's already inside. Um and so in that way like we're not competing for the same user. I think it's like an ecosystem approach um of who do we use, how do we route certain things. Um and that's why we've been really thrilled to work with uh with Near Intense as like a primary like crosschain swap router. um because

75. 34:46

    that's really important to have these like privacy guarantees or these privacy flows. Um in terms of us like we also have seen like the default flow is uh to set in confidential or shielded state. Uh there's still a need for users to basically like navigate when to go private and when to go public. Um but all in all like as we're seeing with shielded swap um like a fully private flow or fully shielded flow or confidential flow um is really important

76. 35:14

    for users as well as traders and like it's only as strong this whole confidential flow is only as strong as the weakest hop. Um so in that way like every participant who trades in this venue in the shielded state makes it stronger for everyone else and uh you'll see network effects on top of that.

77. 35:39

    Charlie, I think you wanted to chime in before. Yes. Um, in term of T versus EK question, I think from our side is we chose simplicity because we building a consumer app and TE allowed us to create the best distribution and UX for us to cover over 30 chains.

78. 36:03

    And I think that's all from from our side on this choice. Yeah. I mean, I think like Chadwick said it best, there's just trade-offs between every single solution that's out there, like that's just technology in general. Like you're always making some trade-off versus versus another. So while like you know zero knowledge is good in in some respects tees also have their advantages being able to scale really quickly and uh you know it is like different trust

79. 36:31

    assumptions between them but there's already kind of baked in trust assumptions when you're using some like a lot of platforms anyway. So it's like it's really just how uh yeah where you want to put the trust assumptions and where you want the confidentiality to live. Um, so yeah, I mean there's definitely room for everything here like and and that's and that's just part of like the ecosystem approach that we, you know, just kind of touched on there is

80. 36:55

    like we want to grow this this ecosystem around um, you know, confidentiality, not just be like all right, here's here's the one solution like just just use this one and this is all you need. Uh, because that also ends up being like a, you know, creating a universal standard that becomes like the 58th standard in the like in the book. uh which you know we've seen a million times. So um yeah just like some of my thoughts around that um just scalability.

81. 37:21

    Yep. And from Rocketex's perspective right we being an aggregator you know from day one our primary objective has been to give the best user experience to our users. I mean we welcome all kind of technologies whether it is TE, FH, ZK or if there is any other technology as long as the end to end flow and the user experience is is uh tested and goes through our filter criteria we add them to our platform. So it becomes really easy for the end user to pick and choose

82. 37:55

    which service provider they wants to use uh from a from a retail user perspective and also from our B2 B2B partners with one API integration they can also pick and choose which partner which technology they want to make it available for their users that's always been at the core of uh Rocketex and and as an aggregator as well like I think for for us like it's a lot easier to just be like all right let's just put everything confidential because like as a product you can just make that decision and do that but like as an aggregator I think it's a little bit

83. 38:29

    different because you have to weigh specifically like all right let's just say everything is like public like you know things were like even not that long ago um if you're just an aggregator you're you're just providing prices and then the only real two dimensions to think about is price and time of execution so it's like how fast is this swap and then what is the price that they'll give me for this swap And that's

84. 38:52

    like kind of binary. Like you can just literally create a formula that that does that. But then when you put confidentiality and privacy into the mix like it's not you can't really put that into like a math formula to say this is the number one choice for the user. So it kind of creates this like you know uh like qualitative dimension to like being an aggregator which is kind of

85. 39:14

    interesting I guess. May maybe like you have some thoughts around that. Yeah, I mean it's really uh you know giving all the options to the users to choose from and making it really easy to you know pick and choose. I would say you know as as simple as that. I mean that's our job as aggregator. We are not taking any sides or we're not uh suggesting uh to use a specific provider. We we just transparently give all the information in an easily consumable way for our user so that he can he or she

86. 39:48

    can make uh the informed decision about which provider to use. Yeah, of course. So, uh yeah, where did you guys want to go next? Like is there any um you know I want to give you make sure you guys have the time to talk about like any anything in specific that you want to talk about.

87. 40:07

    Is there any um any topics that you guys wanted to to bring up for yourselves? Yeah, I mean we have spoken a lot about the privacy aspect of it and uh the the public ledger or being transparent also there are like good enough use cases like Alon Mus said once popularly that the government should just have all this spending on chain that's pretty use good use case where public money how you spend it right there's pretty good use

88. 40:37

    case on how to make use of the uh the transparent ledger or even let's say there is an NGO which is raising funds from people and and how you're going to use those funds you know uh perfectly suits the transparent ledger part of it so it's not everybody you know privacy is the only way that the public uh ledger use cases you know are there as well so it's about uh choosing the given use

89. 41:09

    case and and going about uh you know whether to go with the public uh ledger or you want to go for the available privacy you know solutions out there 100% maybe I can jump in here uh earlier we were discussing about the social layer we've been seeing dabs everywhere pushing the social layer and something social layer is is great take copy trading copy trading is Great because people uh opt in they are they are they

90. 41:45

    get paid etc. This is not a problem. The problem comes by when you didn't opt in and you you have uh people can see everything that you're doing. So that's that's what's around it. And I think what Kiran was saying in the end is like you need to have both available for everyone. And it's not like once it's not public versus default. is public versus confidentiality is two things living uh uh together achieving different purpose.

91. 42:17

    Yep. And to piggyback on that in terms like there is a balance like again it's all about selected disclosure like you can't have a market where everything is like fully private you need to have a balance between public information that can that can drive price discovery um liquidity structures etc. Um so again like our approach for shield swap is like not making the market unknowable.

92. 42:39

    Um we're just trying to stop making the participant the product. Um and in social transparent chains like the the participant is known. It's it's it's a behavior identification. Um and and that's great for certain use cases but um in terms of like a very highly functioning very effective market um yeah just not making the participant the product and balancing between you know uh providing that information in a very confidential way with conf you know with compliance rails that it can be uh

93. 43:12

    accountable to but providing uh price discovery direction size as like public verification, publicly observable events for a well functioning market. Um, so it is a balance in that regard of of what information is confidential and what do you make observable in terms of a market or a venue and and how do you structure that and that's been our focus around like the architecture around what do we selectively disclose in this venue.

94. 43:41

    I had a question for you, Chadwick. Um, especially around how it relates to Alio. Like Alio, they're, you know, close partners of ours, one of the one of our like integrated chains and obviously like very aligned on the uh, you know, just confidentiality aspects.

95. 43:56

    Um, and, you know, I think we're just mutual mutually big supporters of each other. So, how does Alio relate to uh, Shield Swap and like what is your like what is the like division between the two and where things go in like in your ecosystem?

96. 44:11

    Yeah. Um so Alo is the L1 chain that's uh built with uh the zero knowledge proofs. Um it is a system it is a basically like underlying protocol layer what shield swap is deployed onto. So shield swap is the application layer. So you can view this as like maybe a three uh a three layer process. So you have the L1 chain itself which is the AO chain which provides all the primitives

97. 44:35

    to allow um view key shielding transactions uh etc like different transfer protocols for maintaining public and private state for um uh as well as like uh providing encryption records for um confidential attribution etc. Then you have like the second layer which are in the integration layer like the bridges the the the um near intense crosschain swaps etc that provide the inbound and outbound to the alio chain.

98. 45:05

    Um and then shield swap sits as a venue uh directly deployed on Alo leveraging the Alo protocol uh and those primitives to provide um confidential by default and compliance by design. Um so again like we're we're joined at the hip. Um again provable as the company behind it's like the labs company from Alio. Um Provable's been working uh very closely with Alo developing developer tooling um validator stacks as well as shield

99. 45:37

    wallet which is the flagship wallet for interacting with the Alo chain. Um this is a wallet that's on iOS, Android and Chrome extension. Um it basically allows you allows users and entities to interact with the Alo chain walking through flows of shielding and non-shielding transactions interacting with the various applications that are deployed on Alo. Um and so shield wallet becomes as like the functional flagship wallet to interact with shield swap the

100. 46:02

     venue on the chain. Um so uh in that way I think we're we're very joined uh in terms of vision. uh we see a world where um leveraging zero knowledge proofs is um is simple and applicable um and allows a whole new way of transacting in terms of uh whether it's private payroll or you know confidential by design like different DeFi venues. Um I think that's what we're seeing as the Alo ecosystem grows and flourishes. Um, so as as the

101. 46:36

     labs company, we're really uh focusing on more DeFi primitives um and building out these primitives that were in the Trad 5 world and bridging them on to into the DeFi ecosystem. Well, I I was uh I was able to go to an event you guys hosted just last week at the uh at your New York office. at the Fireblocks office and it was cool to see so many supporters of just the Alo ecosystem and stuff and a bunch of privacy focused people that that were there. Uh it was cool to see like all

102. 47:08

     that support uh just come out for you guys. So I think I think there's a lot of support for what you guys are building in the privacy space. So we're we're join there's a there's a obviously a very tight ecosystem. So we're just thrilled that um I think there's there's a lot of passion um and a lot of uh mind share around you know how do we how do we bridge this gap how do we make u functionality within these like confidential flows so again with like rocket x uh near intents uh uh I

103. 47:43

     think there there's a lot here that's shared amongst with the ecosystem and what we're driving forward uh forward with so Yeah, 100%. you guys want to give some uh you know closing thoughts like you know if there's anything that you want to touch on just for yourselves you can promote like where to find your um you know how to use your um use your product or anything like that what whatever you want to say we can go around if you want to start uh I I I like to say I I've been I've

104. 48:13

     been working in the privacy space onchain privacy space for five years and I feel it's the on the marketing side and I feel it's the first time where we're not trying to scare people away And we rather explaining them that it's not normal. There's another solution.

105. 48:29

     It's not about people are watching you. It's more like think about it. You can do it privately. We keep being great confidentially. We keeping great UX. So this I'm extremely excited about it. And this why I'm excited to work on neo.com and for if you're doing crosschain bridges, if you're using Zcash, if you're paying with crypto, if you want to earn with your crypto, use near.com.

106. 48:56

     If you're trading pers with crypto, use near.com. The app is expanding. Our product team is shipping constantly on the daily basis. I struggle to do all the announcement because there's so many things coming out. If you have uh ideas, feedback, feel free to chime in in the comments when we talking about a product. And if you want to try out.com, you can head down right now to near.com uh today and and start start using it.

107. 49:24

     And and thank you again. I'm super excited to be here with with everyone. Yeah, I think for for us um if you go to shield.fi I um again it's we just announced Shield Swap last uh last week. Uh there's early access now on shield.fi FI. Um and we're looking to go live uh probably likely in Q4. Um but uh early access is available there. Um there's a whole set of documentation guides that are also available on that site as well.

108. 49:56

     Um again um any traders who are um you know changing their behavior because of transparent ledgers um basically like reveal your strategies and your sensitive information. Um please check uh check out Shield Swap. I think it's going to be an incredible venue. Uh we've gotten a lot of excitement, a lot of interest already from um people on other chains and uh other traders on other chains um looking to build with us and we're really excited to also build with uh with Near Intents. Um so there's

109. 50:28

     a lot there. Um check it out. Uh happy to answer any questions um as well and thanks for having me. So yeah, you can just head over to rocketex.exchange. Uh the landing page tells you uh you know how to go to the app and we are the only one one of the few providers in the market that support 200 plus leading chains. You can jump from one chain to another chain without onchain linkage. you know the crypto also this know goes with the narrative

110. 51:02

     now it is let's say Robin Hood season then it's going to be Solana season ethereum season and and traders you know usually jump from one network to another network uh and when you do that you don't want uh your strategies to be exposed you don't want your uh Robin Hood wallet to be linked to your Ethereum wallet or uh let's say Solona wallet and stuff like that right So make use of the private

111. 51:29

     swap option available on rocketex. Go fund your poly market wallet or kali wallet or uh whichever wallet you want to fund privately. And yeah have fun. Awesome guys. Awesome. And if if I can chime in I forgot one thing and the marketing team is going to kill me if I don't mention it. Uh don't forget September 10th we have a near virtual day coming up where I'm sharing this exclusively. We're going to have Ilia and Alex Kdanov

112. 52:02

     talking is the first time they come back together and this we're going to have many more people around confidentiality around postquantum era etc. So please chime in and and come in and share your your excitement with with what we're building at near near intense and around.

113. 52:21

     Yeah, we're gonna have a ton of guests up on there, too. So, um, expect some good conversation and, uh, some good thought leadership uh, from that side. And like on that note, thank you guys so much for for joining us. Like, um, you know, you guys are like very valuable partners to us. And, you know, I think that that together like we're building this this great like uh, you know, privacy e privacy focused ecosystem

114. 52:43

     which um, you know, hopefully we can we can grow like many many times from here. Um, and I'm confident that we can too. So, thank you guys. so much for for sharing uh today and yeah, we'll um we'll see you guys next time. Hopefully we'll we'll do more of these episodes.

115. 52:58

     So, uh every couple weeks we'll we'll come back on to do some more, you know, confidentiality kind of focused spaces, but also just more generally about intents. Um and yeah, we'll definitely like hope to see you guys again in the future. Thanks for having me. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Tyler. Cheers.

116. 53:12

     Bye. Awesome. See you.