frankbraun
Frank Braun

Freedom | Privacy | Investing | Programming

The future is private.

Public Key

npub1vmu8mq9fr96c5e97p5ku3ga9507sek7htl9utpddd6t99cwqjersz5hxee

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxd7rasz53jav2vjlq6twg5wj68lgvm0t4lj79skkka9jju8qfv3cppamhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5q3gamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7yjxmtk

Publishing to

nostr.mom

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub1vmu8mq9fr96c5e97p5ku3ga9507sek7htl9utpddd6t99cwqjersz5hxee

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Last Notes

2026-03-25 00:39:48 UTC

Living in the early phase of the exponential is both exhilarating and exhausting, while the masses still seem completely unaware of the tsunami that is about to hit them.

2025-12-25 10:08:45 UTC

- reply

Sounds like a plan, let’s go!

2025-12-25 10:08:06 UTC

For every important person in your life there will be a day when you will see them for the last time.
Just remember that the next time you'll see them.

2025-11-18 13:55:56 UTC

- reply

Oh the irony.

2025-11-18 13:55:27 UTC

Just use Cloudflare and AWS and you will not have any issues they said.

2025-10-08 23:02:23 UTC

Technology leads, politicians follow.

2025-10-04 07:58:46 UTC

It's hilarious that the concept Homo economicus models humans as consistently rational, when it's actually quite the opposite.

2025-10-01 12:17:26 UTC

What I like about the Zcash community:
Nobody asked me if want to join a Telegram group yet —the standard in most of crypto.
Only Signal groups.
They get it.

2025-10-01 09:49:25 UTC

https://blossom.primal.net/7f3f5ed62effe8fb26397e7556d38bdd9c063f8a3607c2646d2e1e419433e8b7.png

2025-10-01 07:56:03 UTC

Zcash is getting repriced in real time.

2025-09-30 17:20:07 UTC

Being a Zcasher is easy compared to being a gold bug in the 1980s.

2025-09-30 17:08:27 UTC

Was there ever a U.S. government shutdown where the debt ceiling wasn't raised?
"No, we are not going to eat the cookies!"
*dancing around*
"Lets eat the cookies!"

2025-09-30 16:57:41 UTC

Long: BTC, ZEC, XAU
Short: USD, EUR, CHF

2025-09-30 16:36:07 UTC

Time for plan Z.

2025-09-30 16:31:15 UTC

- reply

That’s how ZIP 234 would change Zcash inflation:
https://blossom.primal.net/dc95b88e97ffab5f648868e3c6c0b13d6ef82940adc552298fa799027a17ad8c.png

2025-09-30 16:28:13 UTC

- reply

More details over at Shielded Labs:
https://shieldedlabs.net/nsm/

2025-09-30 16:27:39 UTC

NSM in Zcash
- problem: future security budget (tx fees not enough?)
- constraint: 21M cap
- proposal: Network Sustainability Mechanism
- ZIP 233: establish voluntary burn mechanism
- ZIP 234: smooths the issuance curve (adds burned coins)
- ZIP 235: burn 60% of transaction fees

2025-09-30 15:27:51 UTC

- reply

See forum discussion:
https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/crosslink-early-tokenomics-design/52154

2025-09-30 15:27:06 UTC

Crosslink proposal
- adds assured finality to Zcash by introducing PoS finalizers
- hybrid PoS/PoW ("defence in depth")
- rooster of 100 stake weighted finalizers (they take fee)
- yield for stakers (40% stakers, 40% miners, 20% dev fund)
- staking from Orchard pool
- 21M cap

2025-09-30 12:17:42 UTC

ZSAs (Zcash Shielded Assets)
- Orchard extension enabling the creation, transfer, and burn of custom assets (like ERC-20)
- also allows for NFTs
- assets can be wrapped assets (with bridging)
- same anonymity as shielded ZEC transactions, sharing the pool
- no freeze function

2025-09-29 15:22:22 UTC

Levels of wealth:
- debt
- no debt
- debt

2025-09-29 13:23:57 UTC

My largest holdings in order of size:
BTC
ZEC
XAU

2025-09-29 12:11:45 UTC

- reply

Not really. My guess would be: easier to integrate technically, better relationship management with exchanges, and less “shady” reputation.

2025-09-29 11:27:15 UTC

Zcash must be the only crypto project where being late (joining almost 9 years in) feels being early.
It's like the early days of Bitcoin, buying coins for under $100, exciting to read up on all the tech, etc.
Just this time with privacy and a workable scalability roadmap.

2025-09-28 19:20:04 UTC

𝛂?
- total global assets (TGA): $1,000T
- market cap gold: $22T (2.2% TGA)
- market cap BTC: $2T (~10% gold, 0.2% TGA)
- undeclared offshore wealth: $10T+ (1%+ TGA)
- privacy coins: $8B (<0.1% offshore wealth, 0.4% BTC)
- ZEC: ~$0.97B (12% privacy coins, 0.01% offshore wealth)

2025-09-28 13:10:19 UTC

POV: You are in a country with transfer tax, high VAT, and high taxes in general:
“Cash or card?”
“Cash.”
“Nice!”

2025-09-27 12:28:22 UTC

Optimists buy gold, pessimists buy cans.

2025-09-26 22:33:25 UTC

Using Zcash as a mixer doesn't work — transactions going in and out can be correlated by time and value.
The only way to break this link is to use it as a store of value.
If the market demands more financial privacy and understands this dynamic, value will accrue to Zcash.

2025-09-26 22:11:23 UTC

Money is technology — technology evolves.

2025-09-25 11:41:01 UTC

The future is private.

2025-09-19 17:17:03 UTC

Get worse to get better.

2025-09-02 20:30:57 UTC

The claim that you lost your coins in a boating accident is more credible if those coins cannot be traced.

2025-09-02 16:05:16 UTC

Who would have thought that we weren't shitposting on Reddit 10 years ago but were training superintelligence.

2025-09-01 08:54:40 UTC

You can define an encoding that maps any blob of data to a single number.
To censor certain data, you'd have to censor certain numbers.
But under a different encoding, those numbers would be different.
So: censor all numbers.

2025-08-31 08:27:42 UTC

Just finished "Zero World Problems: New Standards of Living for the Post-Materialist Economy" by Aaron Clarey, great read.
Should be mandatory reading for the crypto twitter crowd that thinks trading meme coins from mom's basement is the best way to financial independence.

2025-08-26 14:39:37 UTC

If it’s OK to filter transactions with “too much” OP_RETURN data, wouldn’t it be also OK by the same logic to filter CoinJoin transactions with too many inputs and outputs?
After all, what useful purpose do they serve?
They are not transferring value.

2025-08-23 22:25:54 UTC

Seems like we have now reached the “but it just feels better” stage of privacy tech.
For many communism also feels better than capitalism.
How did that work out so far?

2025-08-21 13:21:04 UTC

Your threat model should include sophisticated technical attackers.
But don't forget to include the unsophisticated non-technical religious mob.

2025-08-21 12:42:36 UTC

- reply

With multiple assets in the same shielded pool miners can also not censor based on asset type.
And issuers cannot freeze accounts.
And there can be no risk scoring.
Just a free fee market.
Gasp.

2025-08-21 12:30:27 UTC

Having shielded transactions does not only make coins more fungible, it also makes transactions more censorship resistant.
You cannot censor selectively what you cannot differentiate.
Lesson in there.

2025-08-21 12:21:15 UTC

Bitcoiners: The network is censorship resistant.
Somehow also Bitcoiners: Let’s figure out how we can best filter “undesirable transactions”.

2025-08-18 19:04:12 UTC

I think there are usually no big reasons for short term price movements.
The Monero drama had a short term price impact and now that seems to be reverting. But generally it's more people are buying than selling that makes number go up and vice versa.
Both Monero and Zcash are down about 20% in USD term compared to one month ago while Bitcoin is mostly flat in that time frame.
And one month is still a rather short time frame.
The question that interest me much more than the infighting: Why are privacy coins in general underperforming at the moment?
Is it because we are still pretty early in the bull part of the cycle and privacy coins come later in the cycle?
Right now ETH is picking up, but SOL is still not really pumping. So from that perspective it might still be early "alt season".
Does the market simply not value privacy and we just have to accept it?
Or is it a communication problem that can be solved with better education and marketing?
Or is it something else entirely?

2025-08-17 23:29:41 UTC

While Solana celebrated a new record of 92,628 tx/s the dominating "problem" in Bitcoin seems to be how to best filter "spam" transactions while the mempool sits mostly empty.
Sad.

2025-08-16 17:56:12 UTC

"The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."
— Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975)

2025-08-15 14:09:45 UTC

The free market is a harsh mistress.

2025-08-12 21:20:51 UTC

The threat model for my life is: It's complicated.

2025-08-12 13:13:12 UTC

- reply

I don’t think so, here is my full argument:
https://frankbraun.org/layer1/

2025-07-09 10:57:23 UTC

CBDCs are great.
They'll sell the normies on the product category.
Selling them a better product in the same category afterwards will be easy.
"Hey, you want that, but without transaction fees, arbitrary account freezing, and full privacy?"