Dev Ojha on the Osmosis Story and his Return to Privacy

In this episode, Anna Rose and Guillermo Angeris catch up with Dev Ojha, co-founder of Osmosis and longtime ZK researcher. They revisit the story of Osmosis since its 2021 launch as a key Cosmos DEX, its role in early IBC adoption, the DeFi summer surge, the Terra collapse fallout, and the later pivot by the team toward privacy-focused cross-chain tools. The conversation then turns to Dev’s return to privacy tech, focusing on Zcash. They explore ongoing challenges like shielded sync, nullifier bloat, and scaling shielded transactions, along with proposed solutions involving private information retrieval (PIR), oblivious synchronization, evolving nullifiers, recursive SNARKs, faster block times with pre-confirmation ideas, and paths toward post-quantum recoverability. They wrap-up with a discussion about the need for further zkVM optimization and his vision for a more private future.   

Related Links

• Osmosis
• Zcash
• Namada
• Fractal: Post-Quantum and Transparent Recursive Proofs from Holography
• Tachyon: Scaling Zcash with Oblivious Synchronization
• IBC Protocol
• Private Information Retrieval (PIR)
• Arkworks

Related Previous ZK Episodes

• Sean Bowe on Tachyon and the Evolution of Zcash

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