Henri Stern: Privy, building for data privacy and security

Into the Bytecode

Here is my conversation with Henri Stern who is building Privy.
Henri was previously a research scientist at Protocol Labs and worked on Filecoin’s consensus protocol. And after many years of thinking through problems related to data privacy and security, he recently co-founded a new company called Privy where they provide a suite of API tools to store and manage user data off chain.

In this conversation, we talked through a set of topics that Henri has a unique point of view on — starting with the question around the seeming trade-off between privacy/security on the one hand and UX/convenience on the other. We talked about principles he has in mind in designing an off-chain data system; how privy does encryption and key management; how they do permissioning; and how they think about data storage.

Timestamps:

• 2:30 - designing the product/protocol roadmap
• 10:30 - privacy/security vs. convenience
• 19:27 - building an web3 application
• 23:20 - decentralizing Privy
• 32:09 - key management architecture
• 46:11 - verifiability, transparency as a disinfectant
• 59:02 - building a product with private data
• 1:07:08 - cofounder relationship