Episode link:
https://www.citizencosmos.space/jaya

Episode name:
Jaya Klara Brekke, Trust, Privacy & Drone Strikes.

In this episode, Citizen Cosmos talks to Jaya Klara Brekke, head of strategy at Nym. They discuss the nature of man and if we can overcome our innate greed and embrace the more altruistic aspects of human nature to build a better tomorrow. Jaya discusses privacy and decentralisation and how she distinguishes between the different iterations of each. Jaya also gives a lot of detail regarding Nym and Nyx. And as always, Citizen Cosmos plays the devil’s advocate at key times.

Citizen Cosmos
Good space time yall In this episode of The Citizen Cosmos podcast, I speak to Jaya Klara Brekke, Chief Strategy Officer at NYM Project Privacy Platform, working on infrastructure at the network and application layers. Along with Jaya, we discuss decentralization and its origins, trust networking. Privacy is a fundamental right and who needs saving. We also talked about some anticorruption, criminal activity, pain as a catalyst for change and drone strikes.

Jaya
Was super curious about the totally crazy mix of people that was in this hall. It was everything from dreadlocked anarchists to people in the financial sector all the way through to kind of devs and hackers.

Citizen Cosmos
The blockchain industry, doesn’t need saving is the greediness in the people.

Jaya
You look at some of the techs from the eighties and nineties and they talking about how this infrastructure is going to turn into a vehicle for mass surveillance. And that's pretty much exactly what happened.

Citizen Cosmos
Bridging ecosystems with bridges isn't enough. You have to bridge communities as well.

Jaya
Equality means everybody should have the same rights despite being completely different. That's the promise of political decentralization. There is no technical infrastructure without humans.

Citizen Cosmos
Before we broke it off into today's podcast, here is a round up of the latest news from the sponsor of this episode, Cyber. Cyber Congress Dao has been primarily working on improving the Bostrom hub. This work includes testing of the contracts, new UI features, verification, tools for online governance and polishing the Bostrom decks, adding MEV protection, new web front, and bring in indexing of chain swaps.

Citizen Cosmos
To try Bostrom head now to over Cyb.ai Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Citizen Cosmos podcast. And today I have Jaya from the NYM project with me. Jaya Hi.

Jaya
Hello. It's very good to be here.

Citizen Cosmos
Yes, it's nice to see you. We've been trying to get Nym for a while, actually, and the podcast is going to be about you, of course, but I have some questions about NYM as well. And because NYM has been a little bit in the background. No.

Jaya
Yeah, it has. I'm happy to give the full explanation for why, but we're very happy to kind of come out and be a lot more public. But yeah, let's get into that coming out.

Citizen Cosmos
It's good.

Jaya
Coming out.

Citizen Cosmos
Let's take it easy, though. So first thing is, first I would like of course, I didn't introduce you properly. I would like you to introduce yourself. Tell us everything that you do. Anything about yourself, Anything you want us to know.

Jaya
Yeah. So my name is Jaya and I am the head of strategy at NYM That's a kind of very fancy title for saying that I work with connecting the kind of deep work that's being done on the tech level to everything that happens externally in the world, right? So whether that has to do with understanding why privacy is relevant in terms of current affairs or why privacy is relevant for specific events that are happening in the industry or kind of tying it to people's personal experiences of navigating digital and our digital lives today, That's kind of my role.

Jaya
So it kind of spans everything from narrative to marketing to indications and figuring out how to make sense of the NYM project within a kind of broader ecosystem. In a broader context. What else can I say about myself? I guess my profile is a little bit for some time. I've had a foot in a few different industries, so I actually came into the whole blockchain space quite a few years ago.

Jaya
I think I initially read the Bitcoin whitepaper maybe already in 2013 or 2012 and ended up writing a PhD, which was a political analysis of the Bitcoin protocol and the Ethereum protocol. So when I wrote the PhD, it was kind of right at the early, early days of Ethereum. I think I went to the first Ethereum DEVCON in the city of London, was super curious about the totally crazy mix of people that was in this hall.

Jaya
It was everything from dreadlocked anarchists to people in the financial sector all the way through to kind of devs and hackers. So that kind of got me interested and hooked immediately. But generally my profile has also always been as a someone that sits in between the kind of crypto skeptics and the rest of the industry. So I'm a little bit of a crypto skeptic.

Jaya
I think the industry needs a lot of healthy criticism and healthy skepticism, but I'm also always looking for how to make sense of this in a kind of generous way. So how to kind of understand what are actually the possibilities of this technology and where does it make sense in terms of use cases and so on to build the types of distributed decentralized systems that we're building today?

Jaya
Yeah, I think that's kind of good enough as an introduction for now.

Citizen Cosmos
It's amazing. But I want to call you down straightaway because you said your title, you know, and sounds fancy. Mine is the chief manager of looking busy, so there is a lot. And then.

Jaya
So absolutely.

Citizen Cosmos
It's like damn bitcoin white paper. I have a question. You said you read it in 2012, 13, a little bit around the same time I did, I did a little bit earlier even, but it took me three years to understand it. Did you understand everything that was in there straight away? And it just made sense, you know?

Jaya
I mean, it took me quite a few years to understand as well. But I think understanding the Bitcoin white paper is I guess one thing that I've always found fascinating is like for me, the Bitcoin white paper, I see it as a piece of incredible literature, right? So it's incredible storytelling, just a few pages that just gives a kind of certain narrative and perspective on the world, which, you know, many parts of which I actually disagree with, you know, the kind of analysis of how the world operates.

Jaya
But as a piece of storytelling, I find it to be absolutely incredible, absolutely baffling. So for me, it was. And that took a little while to realize the reason why. It kind of got me interested was because before reading this, I was involved in a lot of political movements and activist movements that were heavily decentralized. And I came from a kind of generation that was super into the Pirate Bay and BitTorrent.

Jaya
So our versions of decentralization were kind of quite explicitly anti-capitalist, and they were kind of quite explicitly like post scarcity ideas around the digital world and then like seeing kind of a lot of the technologies that I was kind of used to from that background being kind of repositioned as something that can construct digital scarcity was something that I was like, Okay, wow, this is a totally different turn on things that I think I'm not happy about.

Jaya
But on the other hand, it's opening up all these new possibilities, and a lot of my friends got involved from there, were involved in like alternative currency movements and started to play around immediately, right? They're like, great, We can bring, you know, social currencies and alternative currencies to the Internet by making use of this new kind of technological advancement.

Jaya
So it was kind of this weird twist of things where it's like some part of me became was quite critical of this new turn on the agenda for decentralization. But part of me was also super fascinated by all the new possibilities that came out of it. Right? And I'm still very much in that state. That's exact that kind of describes me still today.

Citizen Cosmos
It's just very cool because you don't meet many people who are, let's say I don't like the word OG but okay, let's go with it. I hate those terms like OG tokenomics. I'm I'm sorry. I just it doesn't click with my internal being. I do use them. But anyways, I mean, it has a level of understanding. There's a second thing, which is obviously the highest point and is skeptical for so long.

Citizen Cosmos
It's good. I like it because it's not very often that you meet somebody who can do constructive criticism. It reminded me a little bit of a You remember George Carlin for sure. Yeah, the comedian. Yeah. And he had a sketch on Save the Planet, I think it was called Silly Planet. And I think his main point was it's like if the planet doesn't need saving, it's the people, right?

Citizen Cosmos
Because in the blockchain industry, this is need saving is the greediness in the people. That's what I'm trying to get at. And you mentioned the possibilities. I think it creates. And one thing it didn't or it did create the effect of a lot of people presumed it was private and still do and it didn't really did. That. Is that one of the reasons why you're still skeptical?

Citizen Cosmos
Because privacy is such an important concern or other reasons?

Jaya
Yeah, I mean, there's other reasons, too. I think like a lot of the core promises. So like both. Yes, privacy, absolutely. Also decentralization and also the idea of trust. So in the early days, there was this idea that we can solve the problem of trust, whether it has to do with money or with the law or with politics or whatever else, by creating these decentralized trustless systems.

Jaya
Right. And over and over and again, we see the actually the idea of a trustless system just never quite plays out that way in reality. And people, in fact, have to trust a lot of different aspects of the architecture, which then leads to the possibilities for new types of scams and so on, so forth. And so the kind of gap between the promise of a kind of trustless architecture that can solve the problem of of politics, the problem of economics via technology, through technological infrastructure, you know, that promise kind of keeps being broken and it's and I think this year it's been a kind of real a wake up call for people, right?

Jaya
There's only so much that people can take before it's like, well, come on, man like and of course we can get into the fact that like FTX wasn't really decentralized, blah, blah, blah, this and that. But the fact remains that like an industry that kind of prides itself on making these types of promises around trust, around decentralization and around privacy at some point has to kind of live up to them.

Jaya
So, yeah, that is the kind of the continued criticism. And when it comes to privacy, I think it's like it's one of those things that like was you know, it's been around since, you know, as a kind of core principle and pillar of the industry since the very beginning. And I would argue even before that, because if you look at the kind of technological history of blockchain and of Bitcoin, it of course, ties back into the whole kind of cypherpunk history where privacy was really a core part of the cypherpunk analysis of how the Internet was likely to play out.

Jaya
And unfortunately they were correct, right? You look at some of the texts from the eighties and nineties and you're talking about how this infrastructure is going to turn into a vehicle for mass surveillance. And that's pretty much exactly what happened. So that's why I'm working with with NYM today, not just to correct an error of the past, but also because I actually think that privacy is one of those topics that strikes at the heart of a lot of the problems that we see in the Internet today.

Jaya
And so I think it's not just solving from the past, but it's really laying the foundation for a radically different future and a radically different set of possibilities for online life and how online life might look like.

Citizen Cosmos
I think it's astonishingly ironic that in industry, which one of the biggest labels is Trustless, the biggest mistake that would do is trust people to do so. It's like, wait a second, The whole idea was not to trust these guys. The ironies there and.

Jaya
The irony is there. But I just want to make one correction, which usually gets lost here. People love to say like it's the problem of the human right. People love to say like, Oh, we continue to trust humans when we should. It's the trustless infrastructure. That's the point. But that keeps obscuring the fact that there is no technical infrastructure without humans, right?

Jaya
So this idea that we can solve all the problems through a technological solution is also a bit of a problem, right? So there's something else that's missing here. It's always going to be a combination of people and code, right? Not just people or code, because the problem of trust, we saw that with a DAO hack. Right. In Ethereum initially, right.

Jaya
It's like, okay, you don't just write a bit of code and then it's neutral and then it's perfect. It's like, no, that code needs to be corrected all the time because there is hacks there's errors and that.

Citizen Cosmos
So I was actually going to say in a way a little bit into the same direction. I was going to say my not the actual tag name, but you know, like on Twitter, you can put also a description. the user name has been decentralized decentralization for about five or six years now. I think so like I totally on the same line here with you.

Citizen Cosmos
It's interesting. But you know what I have since obviously you have been in this movement for a while and a question I have for you might seem strange for you, but this is why it might seem too simple for you. But this is something I really like to get to the bottom of with guests who really are. You can see that it's their values.

Citizen Cosmos
What is the decentralization for you? But I don't want a textbook example. I want like your own. What does it mean for you? Is it a spectrum? Do we need to achieve the decentralization? Is this decentralization of must? What is the decentralization? How is it going to help people? Like a lot of things there?

Jaya
There is a lot of things. And you've actually touched on a super interesting question, and you've also asked me something that I'm kind of doing a bit of soul searching about right now, because there is this tendency to conflate A lot of different ideas of decentralization, right? So to my mind, there's actually a very big difference between technological infrastructural decentralization, i.e. a decentralized network and decentralized network routing from how we understand Paul Brandt's original diagrams of the Internet and so on.

Jaya
Big difference between that and then when we're talking about political decentralization or decentralized decision making amongst human beings. Right. And I think the fact that people conflate these things causes a lot of confusion. And one of the big confusions that it causes is, you know, you look at Paul Brandt’s like network routing, in essence, all the nodes need to be the same because like, you need kind of full tolerance of some networks get knocked out, the networks, some nodes get knocked out, you still need the networks to kind of operate as intended.

Jaya
So all the nodes look the same. It's a kind of horizontal network of equally shaped nodes. Operation this and that in order to route packets effectively through this thing. Right? When it comes to human beings and it comes to the way that politics operates, it's almost the opposite of that. No human being is the same. People are not equal in their capacities.

Jaya
And the purpose of decentralization is exactly to deal with that fact, right? It's exactly to ensure that there is some kind of representation of all these different voices and these differences. And it's not to equalize everybody and turn everybody into the same. And I think this is a big misunderstanding when it comes to political decentralization. It's almost as if, like decentralized infrastructure understanding has kind of reshaped our minds.

Jaya
And we now think that, like in order for people to be equal, everybody has to be the same. Actually, equality means the opposite. Equality means everybody should have the same rights despite being completely different. Despite being radically different. Right. That's the promise of political decentralization. But so for me, this is kind of the important thing around the word decentralization, is to start to make some distinctions between whether we mean technical decentralization, whether meaning political decentralization, decentralized decision making in terms of management, and kind of a cybernetic understanding or what.

Jaya
Right. And we have to sort of to be specific because there's a lot of damage that happens when we start to assume that political decentralization has to mean everybody operates and speaks the same and thinks the same, because that's political violence right there. And in fact, it should do the opposite.

Citizen Cosmos
I think politics in itself is kind of presuming violence like the rule over another person or the rule of a somebody is opinion already automatically kind of presumes some use of violence, no?

Jaya
So it depends how you understand the word politics, right? If you understand the word politics as automatically meaning authoritarianism, then yes. But in fact, the word politics really all it has to all it means is the negotiation of incompatible differences. Right. So politics is what happens when people have to negotiate certain things that where someone is likely to lose out.

Jaya
Right. So we need to start having a debate. Okay. If we go if we go this direction, this person might not gain as much as if we go this, you know, and then you have to have a negotiation. So that's all politics really means. And then the form of how that politics takes place is, you know, it can be authoritarian, democratic, decentralized, centralized, whatever else.

Citizen Cosmos
I love it. I love it. I'm going to carry on being devil's advocate here. I'm going to go with your analogy. So if politics is a negotiation, considering it's not a brainer that we are social creatures, we are social mammals, to be more specific. Now, if we look at nature, social mammals don't negotiate very well. They negotiate with the use of power all the time.

Citizen Cosmos
The stronger one always wins. So doesn't that mean that negotiation would be violence and all the time and we are not capable of doing that?

Jaya
I think you should watch more nature programs. So apart from animals killing each other, you also have animals like different colored feathers. You know, birds that do a little dance, right? You've got like, I don't know, monkeys grooming each other.

Citizen Cosmos
So but it's showing off something better than the other. It's showing off like even in nature, whether it's plant or monkey or doesn't matter as regards to trees, for sure. I mean, they compete for light without even. But I'm not talking about trees I’m talking about monkeys now in birds and the same feathers. But again, the company is devil's advocate.

Citizen Cosmos
I'm just curious to what extent is a human being capable with his program? mammalism, I'm going to call it animalistic. So so to speak. And he's on the other end of the scales. He our social capabilities that arouses our logical capabilities. Are we capable enough to use those to overcome that binary, yes or no flight to fight decision or no?

Citizen Cosmos
That's the question I'm kind of gets in.

Jaya
It's I think we do that all the time. It's just that people tend to focus on the fighter flight and tend to focus on the extreme competitive and violent examples because those are the ones that hurt, right? So those are the ones that grab our attention. And then we tend to ignore all the everyday stuff where we never resort to those things where it has much more to do with, you know, do you have a crush on that person?

Jaya
You know, are you in love with that person? Do you feel sorry for this person? We have such a kind of like breadth of feelings that and ways of empathizing in ways of negotiating our social relationships that actually are the norm, the kind of hyper competitive and violent experiences and approaches are tend to be the exception, but we tend to focus a lot on those because those are the ones that are more spectacular.

Jaya
Those are the ones that demand an immediate response because they create a shock factor and because they put us into the fight or flight mode. And I think because those are the ones that hurt the most. And when when something really hurts, then you remember it. All the bits of kind of pleasure, boredom experiences that happen in between.

Jaya
It's it's easy to gloss over those. But I think if we pay more attention to those, we can see that humans have a huge breadth and capacity for other ways of living together that are that tend to function as a norm. And in fact, trees don't compete well, they might compete for light sometimes, but they also use mycelium networks.

Jaya
Exactly. To feed each other if another tree is sick. Right. So there's plenty there's plenty of examples.

Citizen Cosmos
Yeah, they do. Absolutely. For sure. It's like other whales raising whales through the top of the think to breathe water if they cannot, you know. And so there are many examples of animals.

Jaya
Things like that.

Citizen Cosmos
I'm just trying to think, are we capable of being the whale who lifts the other whale up or are we kind of the white shark that feeds on a seal always. And always.

Jaya
I think we are different things in different moments, right? I certainly am right. Sometimes I'm the shark and sometimes I'm like the butterfly. You know, it really depends. But I'm not the kind of person that kind of wants to appeal to people's goodwill and kind of like hippie vibes to wish for a better world and some kind of abstract future.

Jaya
I actually think that in many ways, the circumstances that we're heading into as humanity is going to force us into that mode of operating. So this is not a kind of choice of luxury. This is not a kind of fluffy choice of kind of morality or or ethics necessarily. It's a real politic almost. And a new type of reality is like when you're faced with climate crises, you're faced with economic crises, you're basically faced with crises that are far beyond the individual.

Jaya
And without cooperation and without understanding for the conditions of other people, including animal life and plant life, we simply cannot survive. So it's not like a kind of fluffy I hope everybody's a good person type vibe. It's like step up, right? It's like step up or die. Kind of like, Yeah.

Citizen Cosmos
Well, this centralization is responsibility, first of all, right? People don't want responsibility. I mean, you mentioned interestingly, you mentioned pain and a lot of experience, pain in a lot of sorry cases. Pain means experience. I mean, I remember they they had this interesting study on one of the Tibetan monks who voluntarily the one with the Zen meditation. I think he recently died a few years ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Citizen Cosmos
I might be mistaken. I hope I didn't just bury a life person, but I remember they connected like a lot of wires through his brain, and they realized that he can actually literally about the flight of fight mode. He was literally able to attack his own amygdala kind of thing with happiness. And that because of the way of the knowledge of meditation, he would actually change completely.

Citizen Cosmos
The naval transmitters work and it was fascinating what they were like, what the hell out of the possible. So humans definitely capable of great and good things. It's just a matter of I think, I don't know. It's like that's what I'm trying to understand from you. Like, how do you see us, you know, getting there? I mean, if blockchain technology is which was one of the most promising things or is one of the most promising trustless technologies for a long time, you know, even though it's nothing new, it's just the right bits and bobs put together in the right order kind of thing.

Citizen Cosmos
But if that's also not going to help us, what's what's going to help us then? Well, what are we to do like to get to that state you describe in?

Jaya
Well, you know, nothing is going to save us, but a lot of interesting things will happen along the way. Oh, well, so I so yeah, now, I mean, I.

Citizen Cosmos
Remember going I was just going to say before you started the if you remember Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when the beginning there was like, are we all going to die? Shall we put some, you know, tinfoil paper over our heads? It was like, you can if you want, you know, I'm going to help you. Anxiety going on television.

Jaya
Exactly. And it's the same with the blockchain. Blockchain is like a tinfoil hat is like not going to save anybody, but it can do interesting things along the way. So coming back to this kind of point about pain, I think there is a tendency for people to really want to find an answer Exactly as a reaction to pain, right to painful experiences either in their own lives or in terms of how they understand the state of the world today.

Jaya
Right. There is this kind of immediate reaction to like, try and solve it. And it's like, when are we going to yeah, let's solve it and kind of let's arrive at a kind of final state, right? So people hope that they can solve the problem so that we can finally be free of all our problems. Or people think that there's kind of like an end moment where it's like we end up in dystopia or we end up in Utopia.

Jaya
But I think it's time to kind of grow up a little bit and realize that there is no end stage, right? We're continuing along a path and there's lessons to learn along that way. And and with each step we take, there's new lessons to learn. And it's kind of as simple as that. So when it comes to ways of dealing with pain, the traumatic events at the individual level or in the actual industry.

Jaya
Right. Which I think is relevant to talk about too. And the blockchain industry, it's important to not end up in the fight or flight mode that looks for a final solution and it looks for a final state of being. It's like, No, no, no. Let's carefully analyzed what's happened and take the next step. And it's as simple as that, really.

Jaya
But that does require calming down that kind of fight or flight reaction and reactivity to something that can be a little bit more considered and something that's a little bit kind of wider in scope and less trying to solve the whole world's problem in one go. Because what usually happens then is that you create your own version in your own head about what the world's problem really looks like.

Jaya
And then, you know, you end up with this kind of like you try and roll out some blanket solution across all kinds of people in places that are like, Oh, it's not relevant to them at best. And at worst it's actually damaging to them because they really didn't have that problem to start out with. So it's important to kind of calm down the ego, both on the level of humanity and on the individual level and be a little bit more.

Jaya
Okay. You know, it's not a grand narrative where we end up in heaven or hell. It's a kind of step by step process where we're working out some really interesting shit in the meantime, and if we pay attention, we can realize just how interesting that shit is.

Citizen Cosmos
Absolutely. I think the spectrum of things and like what you what you say and reminds me actually of. I don't remember which school of religion it belongs of the school fold, but it's the Japanese thing about perfection. And the whole idea was that they were trying to explain why stress such a big problem since ever. And why do we all stress is because well, we always think of perfection, but perfection doesn't exist.

Citizen Cosmos
This is just a word you. That is just something. And perfection exist for one state. The second and the next second. You're right. Not in that state. You cannot achieve what happened a second before in your head. So it's a never endless game of cat and mouse. So yeah, Jaya lets slowly move to privacy. I can see that both of us can probably go on for this centrilization thing for a long time.

Citizen Cosmos
But I still want to ask you this one about privacy, of course. And about NYM and maybe before privacy, a few words about NYM I mean, I met Harry last I don't know if you would remember me, but we met when you were launching the first public Testnet, I believe for him it was during CCC in 2019 and I was doing a speech as well.

Citizen Cosmos
And he was doing a speech in the same decentralization. what was it called was the Manero never mind what was it's called. But and actually, ironically, I just remembered you were talking about the first DEVCON. And I remember that the girl who was in the picture on first DEVCON, she was also there. I don't know if I should say her name or not, because I don't think she would like that.

Citizen Cosmos
But I did remember that as well. And they also knew each other. They also knew each other. So since then, to be honest, it's been what, one, two, three years almost. I'm going to be really bad. I know I shouldn't say this, but I don't know much is what's been happening with you guys Great. And this is my fault.

Citizen Cosmos
But maybe you could fill us up.

Jaya
And no problem at all. Yeah, exactly. I'll give you the full story. So, yeah, after CCC this is before I joined. I joined probably about a year after that, right at the end of the last Testnet. So what happened was the first public testnet was launch at CCC Like you said about three years ago, we then had two other Testnet, one called Finny and one called Milhon which were, you know, just trying out the kind of different, you know, the token incentives and this and that internally.

Jaya
And then we finally launched the live network early last year with a live token. So the NYM token. So for those who don't know at all what NYM is decentralized, mixed net and what a mixed net is, it's a kind of overlay network where Internet packets get wrapped through several nodes that then mix those packets together. So all the traffic in the Internet gets, the traffic goes through, it gets mixed together.

Jaya
There is timing, obfuscation. So the packets of a micro delays that make it impossible for an observer to analyze patterns of communication. So why is this important? Why is it interesting? The fact of the matter is that right now, both VPNs and even Tor, for someone is actually looking at the kind of traffic moving through the network, it's possible to trace the packets.

Jaya
Right? So, you know, with Tor like the packets, there's kind of slight distinction in their sizes. And this not so and there's no timing, obfuscation. So even though it's routed through a few different hubs. So if you have the right kind of methods of analysis, you can still more or less trace who's speaking to who by looking also at the kind of, you know, do what's called an end to end correlation attacks and looking at the kind of entry and exit of that network.

Jaya
So what NYM does is it protects metadata, IP and patterns of communications from any kind of surveillance. In other words, a super powerful privacy system that provides privacy at the network layer. So at the kind of one of the lowest layers of the Internet, the actual packet layer as it's routed through. So that's the NYM mix net. Now the interesting part, of course, is that we're here and the podcast is called Citizen Cosmos.

Jaya
So the question is how does this relate to the Cosmos ecosystem? And this is where I would say, okay, we can talk about this step by step. Let's take a step by step. We start with a mix that great. So that's the update. That's the update of NYM the mix net, which runs on a Cosmos blockchain.

Citizen Cosmos
And I was just saying it wasn't the next question. I'm sorry, but please go on. I was just saying no. As in, it wasn't like not to speak about it. I was like, No, no, no, it's not the next question. Like, Go, please go on. Sorry.

Jaya
Okay. Okay. So basically the NYM mix net is a tokenized mixed net. So what that means is that the mixed nodes that do the work of mixing traffic and providing privacy, they get rewarded through NYM tokens. And those rewards also operate as a form of internal quality control. So a form of internal reputation system. What does that mean?

Jaya
That means that anybody that holds native NYM tokens can stake on mixed nodes that they see as performing a good job of providing privacy. So it's a reliable mixed node. And by staking that mixed node, it means that makes it has good reputation and it means that it earns higher rewards and people who stake on there earn a share of rewards as well.

Jaya
So it's a tokenized mixed net. The token is a utility token that operates as the reputation system, and the token is run by a smart contract on our Cosmos blockchain, which is called Nyx. So the Nyx blockchain exists in the Cosmos ecosystem. This is our native chain. And what we were saying earlier in the podcast that we've been a little bit in the closet is basically that we have it feels a little bit like we haven't fully come out about the fact that we've got this basically general purpose fast finality blockchain in the cosmos ecosystem that any developer can take advantage of.

Jaya
And that's something that we really want to focus a lot more on next year because the mix net is kind of more or less up and running now, we're optimizing it and making it kind of more user friendly and there's going to be a lot of integrations and stuff. We're going to push the network towards mass migration next year, but we also want to focus on Nyx blockchain and make that available for the developer community to take advantage of.

Jaya
So I guess the way to think of it conceptually is that the NIM mix net is a super powerful privacy network that runs as the first application on the Nyx blockchain. Now the Nyx blockchain also offers additional privacy features and that's something that we're also going to start to get into a lot more next year. And it's something called Z K Nims, and that's basically anonymous credentials.

Jaya
So what's interesting here is that Nyx validators will be able to issue anonymous credentials via the Nyx... So they'll be kind of issuing authorities of credentials and hopefully, you know, by kind of putting out that library we're going to see a kind of a whole new set of applications taking advantage of that, which is something I'm personally really looking forward to because I think there is so much to still be worked out around the whole area of anonymous credentials.

Jaya
And I think zero knowledge proofs in general is something that's going to be super fascinating over the next year or so in the privacy space.

Citizen Cosmos
I have a couple of technical not technical technical questions, but just like a very high level in terms of you mentioned contracts, you guys use Cosmwasm

Jaya
Yeah, exactly.

Citizen Cosmos
Okay. Okay. I wasn't aware just the way just for the record, Citizen Cosmos is a good name. We are focused on Cosmos, but we also work with Ethereum, with other ecosystems out there. I think our goal is more to decentralize decentralization and help people understand that, you know, bridging ecosystems with bridges isn't enough. You have to bridge communities as well.

Citizen Cosmos
Yeah, I think that's a lot our goal kind of thing that has to be there. But back to the NYM you said the words mass migration. What does that mean? What does it refer to then?

Jaya
I say mass migration. When I say mass migration. But when I was explaining NYM

Citizen Cosmos
Yes, you were saying that we are getting ready for migrating network mass migration next in the wild and.

Jaya
Mass adoption

Citizen Cosmos
Write that down. But drive mass adoption. Oh, yeah, Yeah. Well, this is okay. Okay. Okay, well, okay.

Jaya
But I like the idea of mass migration. I am actually planning a mass migration as well, which might be interesting to the listener. The mass migration is, you know, half of the industry organizing is communities on discord. Right. Which like from a privacy perspective is like, terrible. So this is a community mass migration that I'm planning to stage next year, but that's a completely separate topic in terms of the plans for NIM next year.

Jaya
When I say mass adoption, it's basically, you know, the story this past year since we've kind of launched the live main that has been very much like getting the token economics up and running, right? So one thing is like the testnet that we've had, but like there is a reason to have a token and that can't be kind of set into gear until you have a token that has a real value and you don't have a token with a real value until you actually have made that right.

Jaya
So we launched main Net earlier this year and since then it's been a process of kind of, let's say, educating the community of mixed node operators in how the NYM token economics actually functions, because this is a mixed net. It's not a blockchain right Nyx is the blockchain, but NYM is the mixed net and the token economics work just a little bit differently.

Jaya
So it's been a kind of year of, on the one hand, optimizing the performance of the mixed net, and we're kind of starting to reach some really good speeds now and that's going to can't wait for next year. We can show you just how fast and powerful this thing can be, but also really getting people used to the token economics and use of things like delegating stake on onto mixed nodes, understanding what the reputation means, but using the various interfaces, looking at the mixed node explorer to understand what is a good performing mixed node, what's not.

Jaya
So that's kind of been very much what this year has been about. It's like putting this thing out into the world and then kind of tweaking it here and there to make sure that it's kind of really in shape. And then next year, in terms of mass adoption, it's really focusing on integrations. So the mix that is going to be something that for a lot of people is going to operate in the background of existing applications that they're already using.

Jaya
Right? So it'll be like your usual chat apps and so on that will just run, you know, traffic via the mix that are going to be kind of rolling out a whole load of partnerships for people with various wallets. And basically it's going to be wallets and chat apps to start off with and then also kind of improving the experience of users who want to use it more of the kind of VPN service.

Jaya
So that's the plans for the mixed net next year. And I it's going to be super exciting to see tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of users.

Citizen Cosmos
So you've noticed I like playing devil's advocate, so I'm going to carry on tornado cash.

Jaya
Yeah, let's go.

Citizen Cosmos
Tornado cash. Thats it thats all i have to say...

Jaya
You just dropped the bomb. It's like a band like.

Citizen Cosmos
Mike, like one zero deejay. Spin that shit. No, I'm joking. Come on. I think we have to do it.

Jaya
We have to. Do we have to find out if there is a huge problem with the criminalization of privacy and privacy technology. It's part of the task of NYM and other privacy projects to really intervene in the debate that can then shape regulators and the media's way of portraying these stories. Right. So to come back to like what we were talking about earlier, people like sensationalism, right?

Jaya
They like the pain. They like the kind of big story, the big stories tend to be the horrible headlines. Right. And so one thing that we're told that we're doing it NYM is here. We founded something called the Universal Privacy Alliance alongside Menta secret network and a whole bunch of other really good projects electric line companies, Zcash, Aztec mobile coin.

Jaya
Yeah, and I'm probably forgetting people now because there's a lot of people that have joined the alliance, but one of the main focus of the alliance is to intervene into this narrative, right? And to turn privacy from something where people immediately associated with crime to something that people associate with something that's normal, something that should be available to everybody.

Jaya
I was on a panel earlier this year with a basically a kind of law enforcement agent from the United States who was, to put it mildly, like very anti privacy. Right. And he kind of works with chain analysis and this kind of thing. And it was interesting on the panel that the moment, you know, there was something that clicked for him, the moment that me and one of the other panelists started talking about health data.

Jaya
Right. Like in his mind, all he could think about when it came to privacy was like criminals trying to hide something. That's the only thing he thought about. And I think that's often the case, right, is that when people think about privacy, preserving communications is immediately about crime. The moment we mentioned health data, all of a sudden he was like, Well, yeah, okay, I get it.

Jaya
I mean, maybe you should come in and talk to some of my colleagues about this. You know, we're like, well, you know, this looks so not go that far, but but it was an interesting moment.

Citizen Cosmos
The keep forgetting about cash. They keep forgetting that cash still exists. Right. Exactly.

Jaya
Exactly. And so there is a lot of work to be done on basically a game of associations. So it's like putting out visual material, putting out sentences, narratives, memes that just like, pushes people's mind in a different direction. So when they think about privacy, they think about fundamental human rights, They think about how things are supposed to be.

Jaya
They think about an Internet that is not full of like, bullshit crap because an Internet is purely a competition for your attention, you know, purely based on profiling and targeting to an Internet that is like, man, it's like more quiet, more secure, it's more sensible, it's more real because privacy is there as the default, right? You're not open to be a target from, you know, at every moment.

Citizen Cosmos
It's a very point about fundamental rights. I actually had this written down to ask you because I'm going to carry on with the devil thing. Does it have to be a fundamental right though Because I mean, I'm coming from this point. I'm coming from the point, by the way, the speech I gave when I met Harry was about privacy and digital slavery, just so you understand.

Citizen Cosmos
But still, I'm going to ask the question. I mean, you describe the Internet and the way it works, and I totally agree. I have done for three in one of the first three courses several years ago was modern four years ago, and both privacy was as well. But still, what I come across is that people are kind of happy with the Internet today.

Citizen Cosmos
They kind of like don't feel that they need to be saved. And they say, well, your subjective perception of whatever you believe in is not my subjective perception of it. And here my morals start to kind of play out because I'm thinking, well, but they need to be saved But did they really saved if they don't want to be saved?

Citizen Cosmos
It's like, so what do we do? Like, what does it have to be a fundamental right, end of the day or not?

Jaya
So no one needs to be saved. I don't like saving people either, but I do like paying very close attention to reality and what's really happening around me. Right. And try and kind of analyze realities as best I can, also to understand the likely dynamics as they're going to play out in the future. Right. And let's be honest, like solving privacy is not something that happens from one day to the next.

Jaya
It's a long term project of transformation. And again, it has to do with also like one thing is that an individual is like, yes, I'm happy with the way the internet works today. I love it. I get fed ads about things that I really like. So this is perfect. I love giving my data away so that the algorithm can know me better, which is like, you know, fair enough.

Jaya
But I think it's important to understand for that privacy should not be something that's going to like block things, but instead opens up new possibilities. So for me, it's like, you know, there's arguments around things like, okay, imagine if the information that was fed to an algorithm was even more sensible and you had a little bit more choice in the matter about what you get fed and when and in what kind of scenario.

Jaya
So it's like has more to do with the ability to exercise some control than like blocking and shutting down everything that exists right now. The other point that I wanted to make is that I think the kind of the consequences of the lack of privacy is only slowly dawning on people, right? So like with Edward Snowden revelations, it was very much like, oh, outrage, you know, And a few people kind of felt it to be kind of outrageous.

Jaya
But it was like at this very abstract kind of like meta, like societal level, Right. Where it very easily becomes a kind of question of morality and whatever else. But the consequences of what Snowden revealed then are still playing out Like we're still kind of getting to know those consequences. And some of those are more violent than others, right?

Jaya
So some relate to directly drone strikes, right? But for others, it's more subtle than that. It's more like mental health problems, depression, loneliness, like all of these are consequences of a digital environment and the kind of these sub sumption of a lot of social relations into the digital environment that's so heavily based on profiling, targeting a manipulation, right, and sorting people into categories, so continuously sorting people into categories and breaking society down into categories, that's what happens?

Jaya
And so a lot of the narrative work is about drawing the lines between these things, right? So it's like now when people think about privacy and not many people think like, Oh yeah, I need privacy because it's going to help me with the fatigue that I'm feeling or the mental health problems that I'm having. But like, the more we start to articulate those things, the more people will start to get it.

Jaya
It's like, Oh yeah, actually, maybe the reason why I have, you know, some of these health issues is, is literally because I'm provided through digital interfaces. I mean, there's lots of things that we could go into here, but like, I guess that would be my response.

Citizen Cosmos
I love that you're going into consequences about privacy. I think one of the first things that came into my mind, I moved to Berlin actually during when a week before COVID, the whole thing started. This whole shitshow and toilet paper, lack of toilet paper should show up. But anyways. And then I'm like one of the first thing I did, and I think it was like a week after I came to Berlin or a week after the whole thing started was I think I wrote an article which was consequences of privacy laws passed during that.

Citizen Cosmos
And I think people didn't understand of the amount of anti privacy laws that have been passed. Unfortunately, they don't see that during the last three or four years of being absolutely astonishingly crazy under that SOS. And like boop, it's like in the First World War, right? It's like, hey, now the government is going to intervene and then do any business whenever they want.

Citizen Cosmos
Of course we will remove the laws after the war is gone. No, you haven't. It's been 100 years, guys. Yeah. So. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree with you. It's crazy the adaptability that sometimes our killer feature in Survival, amongst others, is sometimes killing us as well. Like getting used to those like Web 2 to advertisement models, you know, like they're the only thing that could ever exist, as they call it has to be like that.

Citizen Cosmos
I feel you. I feel you. Totally. Yeah.

Jaya
And it's about opening up their imagination, right? It's about, like, you know, articulating for people that it doesn't have to be this way. It's not normal, right? We can do things differently.

Citizen Cosmos
It's crazy how people put together responsibility and privacy and lack of privacy. They kind of like for some reason, people think if you're private, that's unresponsible to others. It's like, what? Why is it like, what? What? What are you talking about? What's what's what's going on here? How does it how did it connect? But the reason, by the way, I was asking before, validator not validator?

Citizen Cosmos
I didn't get to that, but I wanted to get to that because I would assume that a lot of our listeners are some to do with validation and have to do something with validation We are validators ourselves.

Citizen Cosmos
Ourselves. But I guess the tornado cash case could. Could it affect I don't know, the people who want to validate Nym or that's not the case. And this story. Do you know what I'm getting at? Like I could see.

Jaya
Yeah. With NYM Re really try to toe the line here. Right. So, like, we we're not a kind of project that's like on some kind of kamikaze mission against all the governments of the world. Legal compliance is is important to us because we think that there is, like, a lot of different fronts to take this debate on. Right.

Jaya
And we don't want to end up in a situation where what we're building gets shut down immediately just because we want to kind of like be loud and confrontational with governments. So, you know, we are quite careful around compliance and we're quite careful about taking the debates and taking the confrontation in a kind of reasonable manner that doesn't put people at risk like that.

Jaya
You know, at this stage of the project, absolutely important for us because it's important for us that this that we have a chance to realize the system, you know, I think it's possible to get to a point where like the adoption and use of the NYM mix, net becomes something that that, you know, not just a few kind of like crypto wallets take advantage of, but that there's actually institutional adoption.

Jaya
Right. So like some you know, another piece of interesting NYM history is that actually like the technologies that or the use and NYMhave come out of European Commission funded R&D projects. Right? So it's not a far stretch to imagine the European Commission actually like integrating with and using the NYM mix net, for example. And so like for us, what we're hoping to see is a kind of wide, broad spectrum of both institutions, traditional companies, crypto companies, chat apps and everything, integrating with the NYM mix net Exactly.

Jaya
In order to prove the point that this is a system that is for everybody in order to protect the network layer of communications in general. Right. So and then at that point, you kind of get out of this like immediate association or kind of use only for some kind of headline crime situation that is like, you know, we're trying to kind of move away from that.

Jaya
So, yeah, in terms of kind of like valid that like legal risk to validators, like if anyone does have any like specific concerns around that, like absolutely feel free to reach out individually. But I can say, you know, compliance is actually pretty important for us because we want this project to survive and be real.

Citizen Cosmos
Absolutely. Understand what you mean. Still, I think definitely I have seen interest in privacy projects I think arise since since the whole tornado cash thing happened. And I think that's the obvious response of the market, right? It's like, well, guys. But anyway, it's not, not the point because I think again, it's I would love to, to discuss this more, but I'm going to get to the final question because I just realized I don't know.

Citizen Cosmos
It always happens always happens whenever you have an interesting conversation with a person so cool and our is going, we need to invent something for those extending hours in a day or something like that or. Jaya Blitz Three questions. They're not. BLITZER Such you feel free to answer them in a very long way, in a very short way, up to three projects outside the top 20 that you follow in and you think are interesting in terms of what they developing

Jaya
Oh, you know, you do you know, you caught me in like a really tight spot because, you know, have you ever had when someone is like, what's your favorite music? And then you just go blank cause you.

Citizen Cosmos
Don't have to be really favorite, favorite. You know, you could just say three interesting projects that you follow in outside of the top 20 by Markets Cup. And I hope not Stablecoins but of course, feel free to say them as well.

Jaya
So I don't know where gnosis is in terms of market cap and if I'm allowed to mention gnosis, but I actually think like gnosis and kind of multisig, you know, multisig wallets. And I know that that crew are actually they're working on some kind of private voting system right now. So for me, I find that project to be super interesting for a variety of reasons.

Jaya
Like first of all, like Multisig wallets have turned out to be like a major tool for the whole industry and beyond, right? So it's kind of the core of most daos and it's like I think it's like it as a tool not just for people in the blockchain industry, but even beyond is something that kind of sparks a lot of imagination.

Jaya
And so, you know, having multisig wallets that, you know, includes some form of private voting, this not I think is fascinating and I think this is is a project that everybody should follow and tinker with and play around with. And then, of course, I would also mention manta because they are not just great collaborators in the Universal Privacy Alliance, but also focusing on chain privacy is like super important.

Jaya
One of the big kind of contradiction in blockchain is obviously that there's like people emphasize the importance of privacy, but are building public ledgers, right? And so the possibility for and the tooling for on chain privacy, I would say is probably absolutely my my second here and then secret network as well. So opening up the design space for customizable privacy, it's another fantastic project with a super sound group behind it.

Jaya
So yeah, I'd probably say Gnosis is probably like pretty major already as a it might not qualify for your like not so well-known project, but you mentioned a.

Citizen Cosmos
Singles.

Jaya
Anything goes.

Citizen Cosmos
Yeah, it's perfect. I think on our podcast I would say there's probably Secret Network is more known to the listeners than than I would assume because we did like several episodes which cover either Secret network itself or a project built on secret network or somebody validated Secret network, even though we have some fun with Gnosis as well. But that is for the very careful listeners to find.

Citizen Cosmos
It's buried within 15 minutes of one episode. You have to really like go out there and find that it's not easy, but it is with the founder, I believe, of or not the founder. So it's one of the guys from Gnosis. Second question sorry to daily things that motivate you to keep on building privacy and to keep on doing everything you do in your daily life.

Jaya
To daily things. Is my team at NYM Absolutely. And then and the NYM community, you know, when I see the NYM community, kind of like posting and talking about the reasons for being involved and why they find the project important and inspiring, those are the things that that keep me going. You know, it's like I love getting DMs, I love getting people contacting me on various platforms when they're interested in what we're doing.

Jaya
So I'd say those kind of feedback from the community and the motivation and work of my team. Yep.

Citizen Cosmos
Last one. One person doesn't matter or dead or alive. Well, it'd be hard for that one to follow that person, but one person that you recommend could be a writer or a developer. I don't know. It doesn't matter. The an account or a project to follow for people that might help them or to read the book of that might help them to succeed in life and to be happier and life.

Jaya
Or again, this is a tough question. I have so many favorites I choose.

Citizen Cosmos
Any one doesn't have to be your favorite favorites. It's one that's helped to change you. Maybe.

Jaya
Obviously you should follow NYM right? So NYM will change your life, follow all the NYM accounts.

Citizen Cosmos
And then one 1%. Okay, good. 111001. Okay.

Jaya
Yeah. And then in terms of following accounts, like I find Meredith Whittaker, the new president of Signal Super inspiring, and partially because, like, she comes from a background in A.I., right? So from someone that has moved from kind of AI and the ethics of A.I. with Google to privacy, it's like you suddenly realize, you know, she represents the full data pipeline, right?

Jaya It's like privacy is an intervention into the kind of industry that's producing AI in in deeply unethical and fucked up ways. So it opens up the imagination of what you can do. If you have privacy as the default, you can actually build artificial intelligence in a way that's much more closely related to people having some decision making over what data is, input it and stuff.

Jaya
So yeah, I would say those two.

Citizen Cosmos
That was a fascinating last answer that goes for a second. Like continuation of the.

Jaya
Another, our.

Citizen Cosmos
Realm of.

Jaya
Another.

Citizen Cosmos
Myself. Yeah, I'm going to hold myself. I'm going to hold myself Jaya, Thank you very, very, very, very much for updating us. What's going on with NYM and having the time for this fascinating conversation. And I know people are busy building and you yourself probably as well. So and it seems like you are. So thank you for finding the time to join us.

Jaya
Thank you for the invitation. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

Citizen Cosmos
Thanks, everybody.

Jaya
Bye. Thanks, Chao Chao.

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