Zero Knowledge

In this episode, Anna explores the topic of the recent OFAC sanctions against Tornado Cash with 2 interviews: One is with TuongVy Le, Head of Regulatory and Policy at Bain Capital Crypto, who previously worked at the SEC and the other is with Michael Mosier, General Council at Espresso Systems, who used to work at the Treasury, within FinCen and at OFAC itself. For some context: On August 8th 2022, OFAC, a US government department issued sanctions against Tornado Cash, a privacy protocol that uses zero knowledge proofs to provide on-chain privacy. It was the first time that OFAC had sanctioned a set of smart contracts and a decentralized entity for which there's no clear ownership. This is an event which has had a ripple effect throughout the zk ecosystem and will be the topic explored in a series with different members of the community. In these two initial interviews, Anna explores what actually happened legally, what a sanction is, what kind of a tool is this, why it may have been issued and what p