edwardsnowden

🕙 The secret ceremony that nobody could know about, and Edward Snowden was there.

In 2016, just as Zcash $ZEC was about to launch, its creators faced an existential dilemma: if anyone knew the "master key" of the system, they could mint infinite coins, invisibly, without leaving a trace.

The solution was a unique ceremony in the history of cryptography.

Six individuals, in six different countries, each generated a fragment of that key… and then they had to destroy it. If at least one was honest and destroyed their part, the network was secured for good.

The protocol was executed on computers that were subsequently incinerated. Some participants live-streamed the process. They used physical dice to generate entropy. One participant connected their computer via a USB radio to avoid any digital tracking.

For 6 years, no one knew who the sixth person was.

In April 2022, it was revealed: it was Edward Snowden. The same guy who exposed the NSA's mass surveillance. He participated silently, without announcing it, as a public service act.

"I did it because I believe in privacy," was all he said.

The irony is brutal: the most surveilled man on the planet helped build the world’s most private coin.

And the story doesn't end there. This week, Zcash remains at the center of the debate: a 4-year vulnerability was discovered in its privacy protocol, and the network responded with an emergency hard fork.

The question that nobody can answer: did someone exploit it before it was found?

Did you know the story of the Zcash ceremony?
#zec #ZECUSDT #EdwardSnowden #InstitutoBlockchain #FranBerlin