{"id":54773,"date":"2025-10-25T04:31:33","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T04:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=54773"},"modified":"2025-10-25T04:31:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T04:31:33","slug":"zcash-is-the-better-bitcoin-satoshi-couldnt-build-says-helius-labs-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=54773","title":{"rendered":"Zcash Is The \u2018Better Bitcoin\u2019 Satoshi Couldn\u2019t Build, Says Helius Labs CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Zcash\u2019s sudden resurgence is not just another rotation, argues Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz; it is a re-centering of crypto on first principles of cryptography and user choice. In a wide-ranging conversation on Messari\u2019s \u201cFully Diluted\u201d (Oct. 23) with host Dylan Bane and Messari researchers, Mumtaz framed Zcash as \u201csecret Bitcoin\u201d\u2014a full-stack, zero-leakage design for money that Bitcoin\u2019s earliest architects wanted but could not ship with 2010-era tooling.<\/p>\n

Zcash Proves Satoshi Right<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe simplest conceptual way to understand this is that it\u2019s a secret Bitcoin. It\u2019s an encrypted Bitcoin,\u201d Mumtaz said, invoking early forum posts from Satoshi and Hal Finney. \u201cYou have forum posts of Satoshi and Hal [Finney] saying things like, \u2018If we knew how to add ZK proofs to Bitcoin, it would make it a better Bitcoin.\u2019 But this is 2010 and they didn\u2019t have the tech. And since then, the tech has been made.\u201d In his telling, that lineage matters: Zcash inherits Bitcoin\u2019s monetary template while replacing probabilistic obfuscation with \u201cpure encryption.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

if you want to understand why certain Bitcoin maxis are violently coping and lashing out about a small 3B coin<\/p>\n

they are threatened and have lost the plot<\/p>\n

Satoshi in 2010: if we could add ZK to Bitcoin, a much better BiTC would be possible. Sadly, I don\u2019t know how. pic.twitter.com\/2c4Y5SIhT6<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) October 21, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mumtaz\u2019s critique of \u201cbolt-on\u201d privacy was unambiguous. Privacy, he argued, is not a feature toggle; it is a system property that must be designed from the ground up to minimize information leakage across the entire stack\u2014wallets, RPCs, mempools, validators, bridges, and application UX. \u201cPrivacy is not, in my view, something that can be bolted on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to start from first principles and approach the problem from a vertically integrated full-stack solution.\u201d He contrasted Zcash\u2019s shielded pool with approaches like Monero<\/a> and mixers that rely on decoys: \u201cWith Monero\u2026 you\u2019re introducing probabilistic decoys\u2026 it\u2019s that cups-and-ball game\u2026 with Zcash there is no obfuscation, it is a pure encryption\u2014if the ball just didn\u2019t exist at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The immediate catalyst behind Zcash\u2019s rally, Mumtaz suggested, was less a single headline than a confluence: product-level UX improvements, a shifting policy backdrop, and attention\u2014both supportive and hostile\u2014compounding on social media<\/a>. He pointed to the new Zashi wallet as a turning point: \u201cPeople are actually able to use this new Zashi wallet to have some fun\u2026 sending each other private messages and shielding stuff and tipping each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also argued the market had \u201cover-indexed on extremely weird coins\u201d while neglecting \u201cprivacy ideals,\u201d leaving Zcash\u2019s market cap \u201cpathetically low\u201d relative to its potential at the moment he began highlighting it.<\/p>\n

Regulation loomed over privacy the last few years. Mumtaz was blunt about the chilling effect of enforcement on privacy R&D: \u201cPeople were scared of going to jail for even launching tokens, let alone writing privacy code. And there\u2019s people still in jail for this.\u201d He sees parts of the US moving in a friendlier direction<\/a> under US President Donald Trump, while parts of Europe move toward surveillance and scanning of private messages.<\/p>\n

That divergence makes long-range forecasting difficult, he cautioned, but it reinforces why the industry should \u201cguard zealously people\u2019s right to privacy\u201d as crypto\u2019s legal status improves elsewhere. \u201cThere\u2019s people in jail for writing privacy code, but not for launching scams. That seems like a pretty big problem that we need to correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bitcoin, Solana And ZEC<\/h2>\n

On the perennial question\u2014why not add robust privacy to Bitcoin directly?\u2014Mumtaz cited both governance inertia and technical realities. Bitcoin core changes are hard by design, he said, and privacy demands more than a script-level patch. \u201cUnless you are designing with leaks minimized from the bottom up, the leaks kind of add up\u2026 It just takes one leak to compromise that privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zcash\u2019s roadmap featured prominently. Mumtaz expects the Tachyon work spearheaded by Sean Bowe to address \u201cstate growth\u201d and lay \u201cfoundations for scaling,\u201d cleaning up legacy design choices that waste compute, such as brute-decoding notes. He called for pragmatic fee markets to mitigate spam and for improving mining decentralization as price action draws new hashrate.<\/p>\n

But he rejected, in its current form, the \u201cCrosslink\u201d hybrid PoW\/PoS finality proposal: \u201cIt\u2019s a bad idea\u2026 With a privacy system especially, the more moving pieces you introduce, the more attack surface increases\u2026 It\u2019s unclear to me what exactly you\u2019re gaining from this other than kind of a new finality time.\u201d If given a token-holder vote, he said he would vote against it unless substantially revised.<\/p>\n

Mumtaz repeatedly returned to an \u201catomic unit\u201d framing of privacy: information leakage. He extended that lens to bridges and cross-ecosystem liquidity. Helius helped bridge ZEC exposure into Solana via NEAR, but he stressed users give up Zcash\u2019s privacy when they hold it on Solana. \u201cOnce that asset is on Solana, you don\u2019t have the privacy benefits\u2026 You can bridge it back and deposit in the shielded pool\u2026 then you get the privacy back, but while you\u2019re on Solana you\u2019re not going to have the same privacy as the private blockchain.\u201d The utility, for now, is market access and DeFi composability rather than end-to-end confidentiality.<\/p>\n

\n

In this episode, Messari Research team sit down with @0xMert_<\/a> , CEO of @heliuslabs<\/a><\/p>\n

They unpack:<\/p>\n

\u2022 The evolving privacy landscape in crypto
\n\u2022 Zcash\u2019s resurgence
\n\u2022 Solana\u2019s growing DeFi ecosystem
\n\u2022 Regulatory and technical hurdles pic.twitter.com\/f8N1Uqtk1k<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Messari (@MessariCrypto) October 23, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The market meta, he conceded, is cyclical because attention is finite. The objective is to ratchet the floor higher each cycle by converting narrative into durable engineering and sensible legislation. \u201cIt\u2019s on the builders\u2026 to use that momentum\u2026 to actually drive forward sensible legislation and harden the engineering of these systems such that they endure in scale and are usable for many people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked to handicap the 2030 leaderboard, he demurred on precise ordering but volunteered a long-horizon view in which Zcash belongs in the conversation alongside Bitcoin and Solana: \u201cIf you were to tell me 20 years then I\u2019m going to say Bitcoin, Solana, ZEC.\u201d<\/p>\n

At press time, ZEC traded at $267.<\/p>\n

\"ZCash<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zcash\u2019s sudden resurgence is not just another rotation, argues Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz; it is a re-centering of crypto on first principles of cryptography and user choice. In a wide-ranging conversation on Messari\u2019s \u201cFully Diluted\u201d (Oct. 23) with host Dylan Bane and Messari researchers, Mumtaz framed Zcash as \u201csecret Bitcoin\u201d\u2014a full-stack, zero-leakage design for money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-54773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}