Crypto Megan Podcast | Building Trust at Scale: The Zyphe Identity Revolution

Data is now bigger than oil, right?

It's—

or it has the potential to be much more valuable than oil. And whoever's got the backdoor to this— so we talk about this a lot in AI— the backdoor is the people who own that data are going to be the world powers.

This is who you are. That's something you should fundamentally own. And I saw that the technology was maturing in such a way where we could really help solve that particular problem. Issue is oftentimes that data is now Now it's being stored too, because you have to prove that you did this process, right? Instead of having that be stored in somebody's centralized server, what we're doing is we are sharding it out, we're sending it across a lot of these decentralized storage nodes, and then we're putting a lot of layers of protection on that. I actually don't want people to think about compliance anymore. I think it, I think it just becomes your identity and your— I mean, ultimately it's self-sovereign identities, right? You own your own identity and you shouldn't have to about these things when you're going through onboarding. What's happening with my data?

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Megan Nielsen, AKA Crypto Megan, coming to you from Bitcoin Vegas here at the Sin City Crypto Studio. Wow, uh, it, it's just such an exciting atmosphere. There's a lot of, uh, energy in the air, and I have an amazing episode for you today with somebody who's propelling that narrative forward in a way that we really need to do so in order to scale in this space. So I'm super excited to Invite her to the show. Her name is Charlene Wang, the co-founder of Zyfe, a decentralized privacy-first identity platform. And we're gonna hear all about her rich background in Web2, what's necessary to really get those next billion users in, right? And to make this mainstream and to make it easy and simple and seamless. Charlene, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, yeah. It's really exciting that, you know, Zyfe has a presence here. At Bitcoin Vegas, I know you've had some incredible meetings. People are really wanting to know what's happening on the regulation front and how can we make this simple, seamless, easy, and compliant at the same time while sticking to some sort of, you know, criteria for the way that the data is handled. Because in the end, that is what we're here to do. We're here to improve upon what we did before and do it better and, you know, make sure that really that integrity of that data is intact. So Um, tell us a little bit about your background first and just how you kind of ventured into this world.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm, I'm excited to be here. I, I'm gonna talk about a topic that everyone loves, which is compliance. So, I'm, my name is Charlene. I'm, I've been in, oh, I've been in a lot of different companies. I've primarily done go-to-market scaling for a lot of fast-growing industries. My background, I started in management consulting, so I started at McKinsey and Company, and I was looking, working with a lot of large companies with a lot of their problems, all sorts of different problems. And then from there, I really moved into tech because I just saw that's where all the growth was happening and that's where all the exciting innovations were being brought into the world. So, went to a lot of fast-growing companies that some pre-IPO, some post-IPO, and then kind of meandered my way into business spend management and then fintech. So, previous to Zyfe, I had been at, I was an executive at Worldpay, which is a, one of the world's leading merchant acquirers, focused on the software platform side. So, really looking at how do you do payments for software platforms. And one of the pain points there is really around KYC and KYB. Absolutely, yeah. Know your customer, know your business, and just making sure that you're preventing financial crimes. And I met my co-founders, and I just saw that they were working on this particular problem with an innovative new approach. So, I said, you know what, this is, this is, I, I believe the right way to tackle this, this problem longer term.

Right.

Um, so, that's how I ended up here.

So, you went full-fledged into this world because you decided that you, something needed to be done, right? Because you left a very comfortable life in Web2 and a very nice position, right? I mean, you, you were in Worldpay. I mean, that's a massive company. Uh, what made you wanna take that leap?

Yeah, right. I mean, I'd been at a lot of different companies at that point. The thing that I'm always excited about is having this opportunity to take technology that's really truly solving a problem. And I think where we're at right now, when you look at Web3 and decentralization and what that does, it's really removing the middleman that doesn't need to be there. And where is that use case the most valuable? For me, it's around your identity. This is who you are. That's something you should fundamentally own. And I saw that the technology was maturing in such a way where we could really help solve that particular problem. And where do you lose your identity probably the most is when you're going through onboarding, and you have to go through this regulatory compliance layer, then you have to actually prove who you are. All that data that you're sending, that's your own personal data. That's your passport, your ID, your face.

Right.

That's sitting on somebody's servers for 5 to 10 years. And every time you go on an onboarding, go through an onboarding process, that happens. And that data's just sitting everywhere. And I don't know about you, but I get data breach notices every other day nowadays.

Yeah.

And people don't even think about that anymore.

From a lot of Web2 companies. I mean, it's not just Web3, and we will talk about a big problem that just happened recently with Coinbase. Um, but this is a rampant problem in both worlds, right? And it's not just to the Web3 world, which people are always like, oh, you know, crypto things get leaked and hacked. And no, no, no. That's not what's happening here, right?

Yeah. If anything, the Web3 world is much more sensitive about privacy, which we really appreciate. And that's why we've built our technology in a Web3-based way.

Right.

But I think in, you know, in any time you're going through onboarding, any time you're just kind of putting your information out there, your digital footprint is growing and growing and growing over time. And people just don't think enough about that.

Right. And I know there's a lot of hesitancy to KYC with a lot of different exchanges, potentially because of this as well. Also because it's a hassle and it's a nightmare, right? And, and it's very hard to do. So, you know, you do say that you help companies implement this and that the KYC process can be in under 15 minutes or around there, that it's, it's a very seamless process.

Yeah. So, one of the challenges with implementing KYC and with a lot of these processes in general is you have to set up data retention and data storage. And depending on which jurisdiction you're at, that, that's different based in different countries, right? It could be anywhere from 5 to 10 years that you have to go back to the government and prove that you actually did that process.

Wow.

So, that's, again, a lot of time, and you have to make sure that that data stays secure. And you can do what you, you want, but the reality is that information is sitting on someone's servers, and in fact, it's sitting on multiple servers, and then there's backups of that information as well. So, all that takes integration time, and that also requires a lot of security and compliance that you have to build in-house. We offload all of that while taking care to have the highest standards that possible around that data security. And a lot of that is built into the way that we've decentralized the backend of the product. And so we actually offload, on the one hand, we make it more secure. On the other hand, we actually make it easier for companies to go through onboarding and can, in many cases, be done in 15 minutes.

Wow, that's huge. It is huge. And that's what we need to kind of make this simpler, but yet better. Talk to us a little bit more about what happened with Coinbase and if that could have been prevented if they had a system like yours.

Yeah, that's, uh, I, I mean, I don't, I don't wanna say bad things about—

No, but Brian Arnott, he, he came out and said, look, we're not, this was a mistake. We're, we're trying to fix it. It is that middleman link, right? And just to, it's a little bit off on a tangent, but I like to try to come up with things that the audience can identify with. And it's sort of like a SIM swap too, because there is that sort of, um, middleman or the person in the middle that's the sensitive spot, the weak link, and they were able to be bribed and they can give the data out that they have access to. Why do they have access to it? There's so many questions here. So then let's examine the Coinbase case. So what exactly happened with Coinbase?

So my understanding is they have somebody helping to manage their support who has access to a whole bunch of customer records, um, millions of customer records. And, uh, and this is me paraphrasing, I don't have the full amount of the information, but I believe that somebody ended up bribing somebody in customer support and that allowed them to get access to A lot of customer records at once. That's one of the ways that that's happening is there's a lot of people that have personal access to personal information, and then that information is something that can be very easily sent over to bad actors. And so it's— you introduce a lot of different links in the chain, and all these different links, they can pretty much take that information and send it out much easier than you would expect. So, what we try to do is, first of all, we give users, we issue users their own decentralized vaults, and that keeps their information, so they fully own and control that data. Now, for compliance reasons, you do have to show, as a company, that you've gone through those steps of verification for KYC or KYB.

Right.

So, you do have to be able to point to the source data, but the way that we give access to that data is highly controlled. There's a lot of security built into that. The way, there is really no way for the companies to kind of download a central database of all these different records. You may be able to potentially get one or two, but it would be quite a lot of effort to get everything all at once. And even the one or two, there's a lot of ways you can kind of secure that as well.

Right. So, just some added layers of security that would be— make it much more difficult to do what was done with Coinbase, for example, or in the SimSwap hack, because you do have employees that you're dependent on for that data in the middle. And as compliant and as secure of a company as you are, if you've got that sort of weak link in the middle of all of this data processing, it makes it vulnerable. Yeah.

So, and there's 2 things I'll actually add to that as well, because there's, there's a balance that we're trying to achieve with all of this, right? Because why do you even need to have that data to begin with, right? Because from a compliance and regulatory perspective, you're trying to prevent financial crimes. Now, a few years ago, there were a lot of things happening on exchanges that, that weren't that weren't great. And there's a lot of regulation out there to really protect consumers and to really protect the financial system from having, you know, bad actors do different things with money. That's why KYC exists. Now, it's not, it's not perfect, and it requires a lot of information from people being revealed.

Right.

So, that's where it's— what we're trying to do is that evil's out there, right? Like, it's, You have to, for better or worse, to be compliant with these governments, you have to show your information. You have to share that data.

Right.

Now, how do we make that much more secure? How do we make that easier? So, on the one hand, we're trying to decentralize everything, give control back to the users. The way that we're doing that, that's being done today, is that you have oftentimes a middleman, and sometimes there's another middleman in the middleman, and then there's a support agent somewhere. And they all have access to this data, and it's sitting in so many different places, all of which can be breached. So, we are taking that away and giving it back to the person who should have it, which is the user. And then, we're giving very strict access to certain parties in certain contexts.

Right.

And then, the other thing that we're trying to do with all of that is making sure that, as a user now, you have this information. You shouldn't have to go through the KYC over and over and over again and have your data just kind of, Continue to sprawl out across different platforms and different middlemen each time. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So now you can use the same data and you can reuse that. And if you need to do through a, go through a KYC process again, 'cause maybe your passport is expired, right? And sure, you can do that and that will be issued back into your own vault.

So in your own govern, like, so you have control of your data now.

Yeah.

That is, and like you said, the balance, that's, that's really powerful because it's still kind of going with the Web3 ethos, yet Now we've got some sort of layer in between that the user can have sovereignty over their data and decide who sees it and when. But there will be also the compliance part where if certain parties need it for certain reasons, it'll be there. But it's not just sitting on a server ready to be potentially hacked or somebody to get access to it that shouldn't get access to it. It's a much better system. And this is what I refer to as like a hybrid, right?

Yes.

Because there's the Web3 people and then there's the Web2 side and there's the compliance and regulatory side. We need that side to grow in this space, to scale, to go forward, to from those, against the financial crimes. So yeah, there must be a balance. Can you walk us through exactly how it works with Cyph?

Yeah, sure. And one other point I'll actually add as well on that is, because we are talking to a lot of Web3 folks, is that the question is, well, why not ZK? Why not zero-knowledge proofs, right? And that, I think, longer term, that's where I think we should move as a society. But for purposes of compliance today, that, that really doesn't work for regulators, because they'll look at that and say, that's great that you've verified to yourself that these guys are, you know, compliant, that you've done all the ID checks, but we don't trust that. So, we actually need to look at the source data. So, there's information that still needs to be retained, which is why there's still a little bit of a hybrid approach here, which is information is still being stored, but in a, in a decentralized way. To answer your question about what exactly we're doing, so, When you go through KYC or KYB process, there's usually a database that the government maintains, which has a source of IDs, right? So let's say, for example, your passport. US government has a database of passports. What you want to do in that process is, as you're onboarding, you want to verify this person is who they say they are, that they are kind of a legitimate person. And then when that person who's actually going through that onboarding is the person who matches that passport. This is very basic stuff.

No, that's okay. We wanna hear it simply, break it down so the average person can understand. Yeah.

Yeah. So a lot of times what you're doing is you're taking an ID, you're doing some kind of a selfie liveness check to make sure that it's, you are that particular ID. And there's a lot of kind of deepfake protection.

Oh yeah.

It's a whole nother—

It's a whole nother, yeah.

That's a whole nother—

Rabbit hole to go down. Yeah, yeah.

But there's sort of an AI versus AI, thing going on right now, which is deepfakes are AI, and then there's AI to help prevent deepfakes. And so there, there, it's, it's getting crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, bit of Darwinism going on there. But so you basically have ID, you're verifying who you, you are, that ID, and then that, uh, ID, and once you verify that you are that person, now you're being checked against a bunch of databases where, um, if say you're on some kind of sanctions list or you've committed a bunch of financial crimes and you're a known person who's trying to do money laundering, right? Or there's kind of like behaviors that are indicative of that. That's where the regulation requires that we're doing those checks and that we're making sure that there's nothing kind of illicit, like truly illicit going on on somebody's platform.

Right, which you wouldn't want. And it's essential that we understand that in the space and that we embrace that because We need that to go forward, or else we're going to just kind of be siloed, and we're not going to be able to scale and reach that mass adoption sort of target that we want to hit, where this is everyday life. So in order to make this everyday life and seamless, we need to be able to integrate those sort of mechanisms for protection, for regulation, to make sure that it's compliant, yet not in a way that is coming back to the user in a bad way, right? So they're having a better experience, their data is more protected, I mean, yeah, when you get those like credit alerts, like your data's been leaked to the dark web or, you know, whatever it may be. It's so, when I found what, when I found out what Zyphr was doing, I was like, man, this is such a big step forward toward where we need to be. And I'm all about solving problems. Like, I love that there's so many new projects and companies coming up in Web3 and that people are building and it's so cool, but I wanna find solutions to the absolutely pressing problems that we have. And I think that's why you felt compelled to leave your, you know, sort of more comfortable life where you were in Web2 to build this, right?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And I'll also, 'cause I kind of gave the compliance side, but the thing that we're also doing a bit differently, so KYC is a very known process.

Right.

But to your point, the issue is oftentimes that data is now, now it's being stored too, because you have to prove that you did this process.

Right.

That data, instead of having that be stored in somebody's centralized server, what we're doing is we are decentralizing it. We're, we're sharding it out, we're sending it across a lot of de— decentralized storage nodes, um, and then we're putting a lot of layers of protection on that and then are reconstructing that as needed, uh, for different access points.

Wow.

And so that's that. And then there's a lot of security that we've kind of built around that, which, um, I won't go into the details of, and my, my CTO is much more versed on that regardless. But we're, we're trying to control the access so that Information only needs to be accessed where it needs to be accessed. And the ultimate person who controls that data is the, is the person whose ID it belongs to.

Right. So would this then be sort of a solution to an employee who's working for a custo— a, a company like Coinbase or whoever it is, who sort of has access to this, but wouldn't be able to more like get in like they did with Coinbase? Right.

Yeah. So there's, there's a couple things it would solve for. For one, it cuts out a lot of middlemen. I believe with Coinbase, it was one of the support agents, and it was, I think, usually these things, and I didn't read the exact specifics, but a lot of times those are outsourced support agents. So we wouldn't, we'd remove a lot of those middlemen. The people who have access is the user, not even us, and the company.

So you don't have access to this even?

We don't have access. We cannot recreate your data unless you give us permission, You know, you'd have to give us the key and we'd have to go look at it. So, we don't even have backdoor access.

Wow.

So, it's, it's another layer of security. There's, I mean, we are a middleman as well, so we want to cut ourselves out of that process.

Right, right, right.

We're happy to help facilitate the exchange of information and to hold things and to make sure we're setting up the infrastructure, but we don't want access to your data.

Right.

So, that, that removes a lot of those layers. And then, the people who have access are only just the compliance teams who need to run some of these audits.

Right.

And in the future, we're actually even looking at more secure ways of managing that access beyond even that, which is kind of looking at potentially having different keys from people in compliance and the government. So, you have to go match different keys in order to get access. But for now, it's only the right people have access. And then, the other thing is we can control things where you're not going to go download a bunch of customer data and just send it out.

Right.

And, you know, you can't, We can control screenshots and things like that where it's just keeping that information exactly when you need it.

Right. No, and that's safeguarding it in the way that it should be. Uh, it's really important to me too, and it's a big narrative right now. Uh, I am on the board of Secret Network, which is, uh, all about decentralized confidential compute and TEE, so trusted execution environments. And that's like, um, you know, so that information, the sensitive information that's being transferred across the blockchain is also stored in a In a proper way, right? And it's a very important narrative right now. Um, you know, privacy doesn't equal secrecy and transparency doesn't equal exposure, right? Like those aren't one is the other. It's, it's a totally separate thing. And we, that privacy is necessary to scale, as is the, the way the data is managed. And those are the 2 most pressing problems, in my opinion, uh, right now that we're facing in the space in order to get where we need to be. So, I think that this solution is most definitely an innovative one, an important one, and a compliant kind of hybrid approach. Like you said, a lot of people are talking about ZK technology and whether or not that'll be the way, and maybe it will be, but it's just still way too early is your take on that, right? Like maybe somewhere down the line, we'll be able to get there, but right now we need a hybrid solution.

Right, yeah, and we, I mean, we can, it's not hard for us to take the verifications we have and turn that into a ZK proof. Uh, the issue right now is that it's not really something that is needed, right? And if, if need be, we can also issue authentication tokens that we can kind of put some on some chain and say, you have been verified, and that can be sent out elsewhere. But the source data is what we try to deal with, and the source data is what the government needs to really kind of You know, make sure that you are compliant.

Right.

And to your point earlier, there, you know, if you look a few years ago, crypto and Web3 was seen as the wild, wild west.

Yeah.

And honestly lost a lot of trust from everyday consumers and people around the world because of a lot of things that were happening at that time and a lot of bad press. And that has a lot to do with sometimes being a little bit too wild west.

Right.

So, we, we, We do have to kind of find that balance of how do you stay compliant, but also still stay true to the principles of Web3, which is decentralization, privacy, and giving people more control over their own information, money, whatever it is, and removing unnecessary intermediaries.

Yeah, and you've certainly found that balance there, which is nice to see. So, what kind of companies can potentially use your services? I know there's a lot of startups that should have some sort of KYC compliance. Who is the perfect background to be able to use this technology, or how could they plug in with you, or how— explain how that process would be.

Yeah. So, anyone who really needs to go through a KYC process, a compliant KYC process, can use this technology. And I think it's, by and large, it's if you have a regulatory requirement where you have to do that.

Right.

If you don't have a regulatory requirement, Great. You don't, you don't have to go through the process. Like, it's probably good.

Yeah.

Um, but for, for all intents and purposes, when you're moving fiat currency in any way, shape, or form, that usually requires a KYC step. So I, I'd say anyone who, who needs to do that is somebody who can use our, our, our services. The companies that are gravitating to this the most are obviously a lot of Web3 players because they value the privacy-centric focus. We've actually had some Web2 Companies as well who are really interested, and that's because we offload a lot of the compliance burden.

Right, yes, and I wanted to get there too. So you take away the burden of the PII. Can you explain what that is?

So personally identifiable information. It's quite a mouthful. Yeah, there's a reason why.

We're learning a lot on this episode, that's for sure.

Yeah, personally identifiable information, which we were looking at statistics, and the amount of personal information on the internet has Doubled since 2021 to 2024.

Right.

So that's crazy. And if you think about it, that's your data. Again, those data breach notices that I get every other day, it's that that's becoming more common.

Yeah.

So personal identifiable information is very sensitive. It has, you know, your, like, for instance, your Social Security or your, like, passport number, your date of birth and address and all these things. And what that comes with is a higher bar of security. Also, a compliance requirement is making sure that you are securing that data in a good way. And a lot of times, companies have to have compliance departments that manage that. And they have to make sure that they're building out security protocols, they have to go answer a bunch of requests from customers when they say, please delete my data, and then, you know, GDPR compliance. They also a lot of times have to get insurance for this. So it— what we've seen is having this increases your compliance costs, something like 40 to 50%. Wow.

Okay, so they would no longer have to have the insurance, they could just let you handle all of that. Processing.

Yeah. And it's, I mean, many things, right? I went to the, um, the IAPP, the International Association of Privacy Professionals conference. They're fun. Well, I mean, great people.

The after-party was not quite as, not quite as fun as the crypto party, right?

2025, I'll put it that way. But, uh, there was a lot of, um, you know, they're talking a lot about like just privacy and security nowadays. Um, And it's there. It's it's a huge trend right now. Is there people who are making requests to get their data deleted, or they're asking about data? And I was we have statistic around Americans. Seventy nine percent of Americans are really concerned about what companies are doing with their data. Right. And that's in America, which is less sensitive than Europe, which started with GDPR and a couple of other jurisdictions. So people are caring a lot about their data nowadays. And so they call when you're as you scale as a company. They'll call your compliance department and say, "I want my data." Or I wanna get access.

Well, that's us.

Yeah, and so there's entire departments. I was at this conference and people were saying, how do we manage these data requests? They're called DPARS, Data Privacy Access Requests.

Right.

And so they, as companies scale, they have to build an entire compliance department just to manage people asking for their data.

So that is, people are really starting to wake up to this and to understand. I always wonder, do people understand even how, what is going on with the whole data thing? Data is is now bigger than oil, right? It's or it has the potential to be much more valuable than oil. And whoever's got the backdoor to this, so we talk about this a lot in AI. The the backdoor is the people who own that data are going to be the world powers, right? So there's a kind of like an imminent, and this is AI now. I'm not talking about KYC anymore, but threat there or or concern as to who is having control over all the data. And this is kind of like the decade of. the war of the data, like giving that back to the user, kind of fixing what's a little bit broken from the previous models. So that's why this is so interesting to me. And I did not know that so many people are actually concerned. It's nice to hear that people are doing this in a way. I know it creates problems for the company, but that's shocking to me.

Yeah, it's— that was one of the biggest complaints at this conference. The other one was actually AI.

Okay.

Which is interesting because everyone's thinking about AI governance and how do you manage data.

Right.

And in our case, for example, example, we can't actually take your data and train an AI model because we don't have access to that. And I'm okay with that. I don't, I don't need to train an AI model on your data. But if you use your data elsewhere and there's no, there's no really, there's not that many protections. A lot of that, that regulation is still kind of in the works.

Right.

And I think it's gonna be that way for a long time where you could put your personal information somewhere and who knows how that's being used. It could be used train some model, right?

No. Yeah. And that's a little bit scary to the average consumer, apparently. Uh, now that's, that's really great to hear because that means that people are starting to wake up to that. Um, so then where, where do we transition from there? What do you— I just, there's so much going on here now at Bitcoin Vegas, some of the topics, and one of the most pressing themes is the regulation. How is that going to be done? You know, I had a podcast with Kevin O'Leary and we talked about that as well. Um, how are we going to get proper regulation that doesn't stifle innovation, but that still complies Obviously, you guys are doing a fantastic job with that. What are you expecting on the regulation front? Where do you think we'll be heading from here?

Yeah, I think we are— well, there's different markets are going in different directions, I would say. I think if you look at— a lot of my team is in Europe, and Europe is much more kind of— they're thinking a lot more about regulatory frameworks that work for different industries, but also really protect consumers. So in crypto, there's, I think it's MiCA something, and I get MiCA. Yeah. And I, I'm gonna butcher whatever it means, but basically it's a regulatory framework around crypto assets and BASP something, crypto asset providers.

Yes.

So there, there's a lot of requirements that are going into place like KYC and AML, anti-money laundering. That is being put in place around crypto, crypto assets. And that's something, and I've, we've actually been talking to clients around the world. We've been talking to people in Africa and the, in Africa, a lot of times what happens in Europe that kind of follows in Africa and in Asia and, and elsewhere. The US is its own kind of special snowflake, right? In many ways.

Yeah.

But I, I could definitely see that. I mean, regardless of which administration, over time there's going to be more kind of regulation in this area around, you know, how do you, uh, how do you do crypto? And are you— what does KYC look like in, in that regard? Um, but I, I do think one thing I do see is there— this administration, and I think future ones, are, are very friendly towards crypto as an asset class. So that, I think, is— we're gonna— it's gonna continue to grow. Uh, there's a lot of momentum behind that. But how do you make it a more legitimate asset class as well. And that's where a lot of the protections really come into play.

Yeah, and it does seem to be, uh, that there's less fear around in the market in general. Uh, there's starting to be more confidence coming back into the market. Uh, I see more mainstream people starting to get back in again as they see the first, uh, pro-crypto administration in history coming out. You know, we had Vice President J.D. Vance here at Bitcoin Vegas. Uh, so we've just been making a lot of noise, and it's, it's really cool to see companies like your, your company here, Zyf, uh, just on the cutting edge of that innovation and tackling it in a way that is feasible for our, all parties involved. And that's really what we need at this moment in time. And that's one of the questions I'll ask you on our rapid-fire round as we're getting to that now.

All right.

Um, you know, what's most important for adoption? You know, actually, I'll ask it to you now. So, this is a question that I often ask. Is it trust? Is it UX/UI? Or is it regulation? What, what do we need to work on the most to get to that point of, uh, adoption or mass adoption?

Can I pick 2?

All right, we'll let her pick 2. We'll let you pick 2.

I think trust and UI/UX.

Okay.

And both of those, and the reason why I say that is because it goes back to the user. Mm-hmm. So trust is something that I as a user have to have. The UI/UX is something that I as a user, uh, benefits me and benefits the onboarding process. You can't introduce too much friction, right? Or people just go to the path of least resistance and go somewhere else.

Right.

The regulation tends to follow what people care about. And so I think the regulation is based on the users ultimately, you know, democratically elected governments are always kind of following the, the crowd. So I think those 2, trust and UI/UX, are very important.

Right. And so if a company's already using certain protocol or certain way to KYC, can they switch to your to Zyfe easily, or the way that you guys function, or how would that work? How is the integration there?

Yeah, the switch to us is very easy because, as I mentioned, the— we offload a lot of the APIs and a lot of the integrations you have to set up because you just don't need that in our case. It's— the technology is fundamentally different. Uh, you just don't need as much security and, you know, uh, data retention sort of solutions out there.

Right.

Um, now, for intents and purposes, some companies have their own processes and, and kind of Internal inertia, and that's what we fight a lot more. Honestly, for bigger companies, sometimes it's more the internal inertia. Just so-and-so doesn't like change.

Right.

That's actually the bigger issue.

That's such a, that's such a thing. It is. It's, there's a lot of red tape and there's a lot of resistance against change. And, um, we're seeing that in a lot of different verticals. And I, I think I would agree with you. Yeah. That, that's kind of like the hardest thing and, and just kind of transitioning over into better tech. It'll make this function even easier and, you know, be better for the user. It's just that internal friction. Yeah, right. Absolutely. So just about like educating them on why this is necessary and why it's better for them, why it's easier, very competitive as well as far as what's out there in the market now. And that's why I love the product so much. And I want to do my best to highlight projects like yours on this show because, you know, what we're all searching for and want essentially is for everybody to be able to adopt this space. Which I said many times on the stream, and it's what I'm most focused on. So how do we go about that? And there's so many different facets, but this is one of the biggest ones. So I'm very excited to see what, what, how Zyfe evolves. You know, you said eventually maybe you'll, you'll use ZKs down the line, but what, what stands out to me is that you're very nimble and that you pivot. And that's also what I like about companies that are building in this space, that they're faster. You know, they, they adapt, they go with whatever's needed in order to progress. And that's something that also we don't see a lot in Web2. It's kind of slow.

Yeah.

Methodical. It takes a lot of time. So, what are you most excited about for the future of, you know, this space and anything upcoming for Zyf? Talk to us a little about the future plans. Yeah, right.

So, it's interesting, we were talking about ZK and, you know, some of these other directions where the industry's going. We really see ourselves as the privacy-first identity platform, decentralized identity platform. We're, we're in KYC, KYB because that's where a lot of the, the focus is right now is on, you know, regulating those areas. But we think that our fundamental value is to give control of data back to users and then offload some of the nightmares and headaches from companies because we think that users should be free to kind of onboard and use whatever applications they want without worrying so much about their data and what's going on there. It should be seamless, it should be frictionless. They should be able to reuse that information. I, they shouldn't have to go through the same process over and over again. And then companies should just focus on building great products and services and not, you know, having to worry about onboarding or retaining data or managing DPARS for, you know, like that.

Yeah.

I think that's where we see ourselves going longer term is wherever the market leads us. So, this solution we actually co-developed with one of our early customers, Oracle Labs Filecoin.

Filecoin, love Filecoin, yeah.

Yeah, so we actually—

For data storage.

Yes, yeah, we actually co-developed the solution with them, and we co-developed with a lot of our early customers, which, so the use cases that we built were really built around our customers. And, you know, KYC/KYB is where we're focused right now, but in the future, we just see ourselves as an identity platform. And if ZK is where the industry's going, then we're gonna do ZK.

Right.

And we're just gonna try to do it the best that we can.

That's fantastic. That, I mean, that's a beautiful summary of what, what needs to happen actually is that you'll just adopt the technology as it's gonna be used as we're getting there and whatever's necessary to be compliant, but maintain that integrity. Uh, it's really cool to help, just to hear about Filecoin. You know, they're one of the strongest in this space as far as, uh, decentralized data storage, right? So, um, that's really cool to hear. And I just, I thought of a use case just, uh, right as you were talking about. Earlier that happened with Apple as well, that all the permanently deleted photos from people's phones started to pop up all of a sudden. How can that be? How can that be? Right?

Like, that worries me out.

I'm calling people, I'm calling it all out because we need to think about this, right? This is a massive issue. I mean, imagine that you dated, you deleted a photo apparently 10 years ago and it pops up. I don't know. I'm just giving years. I don't know how long ago this was that people deleted photos. Yeah. It happened. If you Google it and it's like, that is scary, you know? And we don't want that sort of fear, that burden to be placed on the user, nor on the company to have to deal with the potential fallout. So you're actually taking the burden off both sides.

Yeah, for sure. That, that, that actually scares me.

It scares me, right? Yeah. So I want to go ahead and—

All these photos I've deleted.

Oh my God. Exactly. And I want to highlight that on the show because that is what's happening right now. And if we don't protect that data, we're not going to go in the way that we should go. We're not going to get it right this time. Right. So we need to prevent all of that, potentially the SIM swaps, which is a huge thing in crypto, by cutting out the middlemen, which we talked about earlier, just that sort of weak link for human error in the data or, you know, some sort of leak, right, in a way that we don't want. And this is the best way to safeguard that. So it's really important to me. I'm really passionate about this, and I'm really excited about Zyf. And I hope that all companies will consider, you know, this kind of solution as we go forward. And really opt to protect their customers' data integrity and also take the burden off themselves. That to me seems to be like the summary of what's happening here.

Yeah, I think a lot— I don't know if we're getting into closing thoughts, but I think a lot about digital footprint. And this actually, for me, one of the things that really stood out about the privacy conference was your digital footprint and how that's growing over time. And if we're actually talking about a lot of these social media platforms, over time, more and more those people are are no longer alive, right? And your data is sitting there, and that's actually— there, there is no clear jurisdiction around how to use that data. So I mean, that I think about, like, that, that's only growing over time. So how can we control that and maintain that and just make sure that we're really protecting people's identities?

That's a really good point. What happens afterward, right? Yeah, like, there's so many questions that we don't consider really because it's just sort of We do what's asked because we want to use the service, although there's always that lingering fear of what's happening here, or like, you know, trust me, I got you sort of thing. And it's like, we're cutting out that sort of having to trust this process that isn't bulletproof by any means, right? The traditional process. So, um, it makes me feel safer as a user. And certainly you can imagine a lot of companies feel safer that they don't have to deal with that because that is, uh, not good. Right. When that happens, it's not a good look for the company. And it's just not great for the reputation either. I mean, you have to see all these companies come out and, and do cleanup and damage control, and it's like, how do you trust that company again? Really? I mean, you build back up to it, but you don't— you just want to avoid that if you can.

Absolutely.

Right? Yeah. So then as we're closing now, what are you most excited about as far as narratives in the space? Obviously compliance, KYC, that is Zyfe's thing, but what are you most excited about for these upcoming years? In this space?

Yeah, well, I, I think it's, it's funny to be excited about compliance. Uh, I actually, I want it to be a non-issue. I actually don't want people to think about compliance anymore. I think it, I think it just becomes your identity and you're, I mean, ultimately it's self-sovereign identities, right? You own your own identity.

Yeah.

And you shouldn't have to think about these things when you're going through onboarding. What's happening to my data? That's just you. It, you should show up as you and you should say, this is me. And then that's it. And nobody else owns you. You just are you. So I, I, I want us to first think about our privacy so that we're making sure that we're protecting it. And then I want us to stop thinking about it because we feel protected and we feel like we own our own privacy.

Wow, that was powerful. I think that was very, very well said. Uh, you summarized a lot of what everybody's thinking and feeling in this moment as we're getting to the exciting part of the market. But people, are going to have to start KYCing because maybe they never even got involved with crypto before and they're suddenly finding themselves wanting to sign up to an exchange or a service or an app. So, I'm sure this will kind of calm the fears a little bit of the people out there that are looking to get involved now and companies who are building in this space. It's just so necessary. So, we're really looking forward to that. Where can people find you or contact you if they want to get involved with Zyph?

Yeah, at our website, zyph.com. I'm gonna spell it because apparently not everyone knows how to spell it. Z-Y-P-H-E dot com. And it's dot com, so hopefully that's fairly easy to find.

All right, perfect. So now you know where to go. Charlene, it's been a fantastic conversation. I can't wait to catch up with you again sometime soon and see where Zyfe is. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll talk again soon.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

All right, so it's time for the rapid-fire round. You know, we're doing this on every single episode, so we're going to do it with Charlene too. Are you ready?

Sure.

They're going to be very quick answers to just some fun questions that we have here, and then we'll do a mashup of it later. So let's get right into it. Bull market top for Bitcoin this cycle, pick a number.

Oh gosh.

$200,000. Okay. No, it's very interesting. We'll reveal all, all the answers later, but good. $200,000. Um, Ethereum versus Solana, what's your pick today? Hmm.

Ethereum.

Okay. Wanna— you done there? So a lot of people are like, I wanna expel, I wanna explain that. Or you just going with Ethereum? Why?

Oh, for good reason.

Yeah. No, I'm also on the same page. I just think it's a very solid chain. I think they're going to come around. I think that things will work out. And I am also on your side. Let's just put it like that. And I also have a mashup for that too. Biggest mistake crypto founders make?

Not thinking about non-crypto people.

Hmm. I love that answer. I love that answer, truly. Most underrated crypto project right now? Anything on your mind? Or narrative?

I know, I'll skip it.

Adoption utility. Biggest barrier to mainstream adoption: regulation, UX/UI, or trust?

Trust.

Right. I would agree on that too. Trust is very fundamental. Which comes first, crypto in every wallet or AI in every app?

Oh, that's a no, man. Um, hmm. AI.

Okay. All right. Is the average consumer ever going to care about decentralization?

I hope so.

Also good answer. Yes. And then last question, crypto as a payment method, niche forever or next-gen norm?

Next-gen norm.

I would agree with you. At least we would hope so, right, on this podcast, as the whole point is that we're moving toward a digital world in which we're all kind of interacting with this technology and it becomes, uh, you know, our daily lives, part of our daily lives, embedded in our daily lives. And that's what we're working toward here. So that's it for the lightning round. Um, stay tuned for more and we'll see you next time.