A Stellar House Miami Recap
Can Privacy and Openness Coexist?
Author
Claire Grant
Publishing date
Intro
When it comes to onboarding traditional financial institutions, privacy is necessary. But is it possible to weave privacy into the openness that’s core to blockchain?
During Stellar House Miami, SDF’s pop-up event bringing together leaders across blockchain and finance, Chief Marketing Officer Jason Karsh moderated a panel entitled “Can Privacy and Openness Coexist?”
The panel, which featured Shiv Shankar, CEO of the universal zero-knowledge protocol Boundless, and Robinson Burkey, co-founder of the interoperability platform Wormhole, concluded that privacy and openness cannot only coexist but also reinforce one another.
For those who couldn’t make it to Miami, we pulled together some of the best insights on privacy and openness.
#1 A privacy-centered stack to get excited about: Stellar, Wormhole, and Boundless
A major takeaway from the conversation was that the open nature of blockchain technology is not antithetical to privacy. In fact, the openness that’s core to blockchain can actually lay the groundwork for privacy.
Shiv emphasized the efficiencies that blockchain can bring to the compliance process for institutions. “The unique thing about blockchain is that it allows you to be configurable in what you share and what you don’t share. And also create a one-stop reusable honey pot, if you will,” he said. That reusable honey pot makes it easier for institutions to collect, leverage, and limit what data is collected.
Openness also makes it possible to create a tech stack that delivers privacy to institutions. Robinson outlined how Stellar powers settlement, Boundless covers computation, and Wormhole facilitates interoperability. By partnering with Wormhole and Boundless, Stellar “opens itself up to take payments from any use coming from any blockchain…in a privacy-preserving way,” Robinson said.
#2 The practical era of crypto is here
Robinson referenced conversations he’s had with institutions like J.P. Morgan, and claimed that the practical era of crypto is here. For institutions, decentralization (to an extent) is practical.
“[Institutions] love the model because they say, ‘these validators are fully doxxed and I can sue them if they do something wrong.’” Robinson said.
According to Robinson, the blocker for institutional finance isn’t necessarily decentralization, or settlement, or through-put. But instead, as Robinson put bluntly: “it’s privacy.”
Figuring out privacy that works for institutions is the unlock to the next phase, Robinson said. “[Institutions are] just going to settle things on their own private chain until they feel like these public chains have enough of the infrastructure to do things out in public,” Robinson said.
#3 Banks are here for the bottom line
In the spirit of practical application, Shiv stressed the importance of adding value to institutions without disrupting operations.
“Banks aren’t getting into crypto because they’re feeling it,” Shiv claimed. “The reason they want to move to crypto is because moving assets on crypto is cheaper…we have to make sure we deliver value to them with minimal disruption to their systems.”
Banks are migrating into crypto because it has the potential to positively affect the “bottom line,” Shiv said. He argued that the industry must relentlessly prioritize compliance and profitability to drive institutional adoption.
Building out privacy solutions is critical to that goal. Stellar, Wormhole, and Boundless are working together to get there.
Check out the full recording of the panel on YouTube.