Opening Keynote: There Is Only Noir

Transcript

[Music] All right, thank you so much everyone. Sorry I am late. Uh I have no excuse other than disorganization. Um thank you so much for coming here uh today. You know this is the inaugural second no con. Um we've been doing this since when was the first one? like three, four, five, six months ago. Um, it's amazing to see the the turnout uh the interest in what we're doing. And so I just want to give some opening remarks about why uh why Noir is a thing if people don't already know. Al I'm standing in front of the thing here. Um uh and what what

to expect today. So yes, no. Uh there are no gods, there are no masters, there is only noir. Um, no is quite a special piece of technology. I think there's a reason why we're all here. And it's because, um, what Noir achieves is difficult. It's rare. It's high quality uh, programmable privacy uh, which is not the norm in our industry. You know, when I got started in 2017, uh, the the expectation was transparency. I mean, no one was talking about privacy except uh, the Zcash pioneers. Um, and people were blind to how limiting it made blockchain, how limiting it made web 3. You know, there

were all these really ambitious desires, goals for what web 3 could achieve. But, uh, without privacy, without the ability to manipulate identities, encrypted information on chain, none of it could happen. Um, I saw this, some other people saw this, we started building and here we are today. So you know I want to talk a little bit about why what is Noir. You know um Noir is a it is a Rustlike programmable uh um programming language that will compile your programs into zero circuits and um is the last chance we have of preventing the digital [ __ ]

apocalypse. You know I think that there's something that we're all a bit blind to. not well in this industry in general like what's become of our industry you know if you look around Berlin blockchain week what do you see you see me extractors block finality factionalists unification rollup fanatics L1 separatists and they're lost they're lost and only we have clarity of purpose only we can see that without privacy our industries collectively created the most perfect piece of surveillance technology that the world has ever seen. Complete warrantless

financial surveillance of the common man, the common human being. Not only is this possible, but without privacy, it's inevitable. Instead of our labor improving the human condition, we will have crafted digital shackles and bound humanity into a new grotesque digital surfom. And no is one of the last hopes we have of stopping this. I think you all see this. I think you all know the truth. You know, you could be you could be in Dubai huffing tokens with the rest of the degenerates. You could be ignoring reality, pretending everything's fine and talking about finality times or real time proving at the Vasha Stras in

Berlin, but you're not with any of them. You're not there. You're here. You're here. You're here with me. You're here with Noah. And you can see that there is only one way out, one way out of this mess. And that way out is Noir. one way out of the civilian state and that way is no. What is there? Yes. And there's only one way out. Say it with me. One way out. One way out.

One way out. Yes. Not as good. Thank you. Sorry, I just needed to get that out of my system, you know. Uh, oops. Um, so we got a pretty actionbacked schedule today. Learn Noir, see how it's being used today. Get Noir pills. Noir is good. You know, no is it's being used today. You know, it's not some, oh, here's something some nice thing that might, you know, be cool in the future like the rest of the web three trash.

No, you can use Noir today. You know, we have in the audience ZK Passport who uses Noir and has their app on the app store. If you haven't downloaded it, do it now. It's amazing. Do it. Um, you know, uh, and speaking of, you know, how you can use Noir, you know, what have we been doing since since the first Noack? Well, we released Noir 1.0, which was a very challenging, very hard, but we did it. Um, and people did some hacking, you know, did some Nohacking. Uh so we held no hack online hackathon. Um and you know this was a amazing moment I think for our language for the community.

Yes. Okay. You can pause it now. So what the hell was that? That was a recording of every single person who was presenting at no hack uh all at once. um loads of people you know building cool things and I want to just highlight some of it today you know like so you know we have open bands um they are a um a company review platform but where you have verified reviews you know instead of just people talking nonsense or having like where you know companies can pay for good reviews and you don't really know the truth using ZK to prove that you have an email address associated with a company and then you can talk [ __ ] about them and you know

salary reports and stuff um uh We got nori nori nori um a privacy preserving money market protocol built with no you know uh this is just a little hackathon right and amazing stuff you know we have um warp toad which is a privacy preserving bridge so you know you can bridge into different ecosystems and not have to worry about what people people being able to see what you're doing and doxing you and analyzing you know you have things like revalidate which is trying to um like allow for testing procedures in scientific research um which have integrity, you know, trying to solve some of this like

reproducibility crisis in science. As a former scientist, as a as a refugee from particle physics, this this resonates quite strongly with me. Um and ZK coverage, which is offering parametric insurance against hurricanes and tropical storms. Um this is particularly uh like nostalgic for me because the first hackathon I ever did um in 2017 my team uh tried to build a little insurance product on chain. Uh and uh you know people would that was the kind of stuff people were trying to do back in the day. We can do insurance, we can do supply chain, we can do property money markets and then what happened was well no privacy so no dice but now things are different. Now things are

different. Um then we have uh just so many um like being able to extract verified data from CK proofs, you know, like compliance about checking and not on blacklists, reputation systems, like all of this like all these are like apps that were built that that you know were working to some degree all in one hackathon. The amount of enthusiasm is just beyond compare. You know, ZK airdrops um being able to poke people in ZK. I'm sure there's more to it than that. Um, uh, you know, uh, and, um, like a lot of games, which is really exciting. You know, things like Fog of

Noir, which is a risk clone on Noir. Um, which, you know, I'm personally biased. I think it used my NPC library. I think a few of these did. Um, uh, but, um, like Among Us, basically like what what we what this shows is, you know, you can do really cool information asymmetric ideas with noir. And games are the great way to explore that because games are a great way of testing different forms of communication, social consensus, governance really um in a in a in a in a fun sandbox way. Um and here's just another smattering of some of these ideas as well as ei passport on the app store. You should get it. It's amazing.

So this is this is what I'm trying to say here is N is real. You know, it's it's not some future tech. You can use it today. You can build with it today. We're going to have a lot of speakers, presenters describing this, how to build in the state-of-the-art, showcasing what they've done. And, you know, yeah, this is um this is the place. This is the scene. So, get to know people here, you know, talk to them, ask like get curious about what they're doing, what they're building. You might, who knows, you might find um a co-founder for another the next big project, the next killer app. Um so, I just want to leave with one final note, which is noir. Noir is good. Thank you very much.

[Applause] One way out.