Would you snitch on your job… if no one could trace it

Imagine yourself working at a place where:

• You’ve been promised a raise for months – and you worked your a** off for it – but it’s always “next quarter”;

• Your manager keeps asking you to lie in reports to make things look better;

• Todd from accounting microwaves fish every. single. day. Needless to say, the stench is criminal.

And let’s say you really wanna keep this job – but you just can’t continue like this. So what do you even do?

You could complain about it on X… but if Karen from HR sees it… good luck.

Ugh, if only there was a way to speak up without exposing yourself…

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our show: Blockchain Fixes Everything!

In today’s episode: StealthNote – from the devs behind the Aztec Network – which lets you say what’s wrong at your workplace without anyone knowing it’s you.

How? Zero-knowledge proofs.

Basically, the app uses your company Google login to create a cryptographic proof that you work there – without revealing your name or email.

It’s like showing an ID that only says “I’m old enough,” with none of the personal info.

That’s zero-knowledge: proof, minus the details.

So now, you can say “hey, Todd, pls stop” without risking your job or your work relationships.

And it’s not just for offices – uni students are posting there too.

Right now, most posts are chill – people saying hi, appreciating privacy tech, etc. But this could be huge once people really start using it to call out serious problems.

This whole thing ties into what Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, wrote about a couple of days ago: privacy isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential.

He explains it with three main points:

1/ Privacy = freedom

If every move you made was visible to the public, you’d start shaping your behavior to avoid being judged or punished. You’d lose the ability to just be yourself, basically.

That’s not freedom.

2/ Privacy = order

Think about voting: if you had to share who you voted for, people can bribe or threaten you.

Same logic applies to any situation where someone’s decision affects others.

If those decisions aren’t protected from outside pressure, manipulation takes over and the system breaks down.

3/ Privacy = progress

A lot of the data needed for innovation – in healthcare, education, or AI – can’t be collected or shared without risking people’s personal lives.

For example, your health data could help researchers create better treatments. But if that data could be traced back to you, you probably wouldn’t consent to share it.

Privacy tech lets us keep control over our data while still using it to build better systems.

So yeah, StealthNote might seem like a small tool for venting about your weird coworkers. But it’s actually part of a much bigger movement to defend the basic right to say something true without paying a personal price for it.

And in a world where AI might literally read our minds someday, that’s the kind of protection we’re going to need.

🍋 News drops

💰 Some local governments in China are trying to make some extra cash by selling off crypto they seized in legal cases. Since crypto trading is banned in China, they’re working with private companies to handle the sales overseas.

⚠️ Someone hacked a ZKsync admin account and used it to mint around $5M worth of unclaimed ZK tokens. ZKsync said that no user wallets were touched.

🤝 KiloEx, a decentralized trading platform, got hacked for $7.5M and is now tryna get it back. They’re offering a deal: return 90%, and keep the other 10% – about $750K – as a “thanks for finding the bug” reward.

🚀 Semler Scientific, a healthcare tech company, is planning to raise up to $500M – and some of it will be used to buy more BTC.

👋 Ethena Labs, the team behind USDe, is shutting down its operations in Germany. This comes just weeks after German regulators pointed out some issues with the stablecoin.

🍌 Juicy memes