Zcash and Starknet founder says Bitcoin's "ossification" leaves it exposed to quantum threats

Ben-Sasson says crypto rails are being rebuilt before most people notice

Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of Zcash and Starknet, opens by arguing that most people only know volatile assets like Bitcoin and don't realize "the infrastructure for the global economy is being rebuilt as we speak." He says blockchains and zero-knowledge technology will become the main rails for both humans and AI agents transacting in the future.

Asked why adoption has taken so long since Bitcoin's creation, he compares it to historical shifts: paper cash took centuries to spread from China to Europe, and credit cards and ATMs took decades to gain acceptance. He adds that technical challenges around privacy, scale and cost needed to be solved first, which took additional time.

He also recounts his own path into crypto: a 2013 talk on zero-knowledge proofs at a Bitcoin conference in San Jose led Bitcoin developers including Gavin Andresen and Greg Maxwell to ask him for code, which he says was the first time anyone had asked for his cryptographic work to be applied in practice.

Bitcoin's privacy gap and its "ossification" problem

Ben-Sasson argues that Bitcoin's public ledger severely limits financial freedom, comparing it to tweeting every purchase. He says governments and firms like Chainalysis can track all transactions, not just illicit ones, which he calls a problem for ordinary users' privacy.

He says this is part of why he and co-authors wrote the 2014 paper "ZeroCash: Bringing Privacy to Bitcoin," hoping Bitcoin itself would adopt it via a fork; instead, the technology became Zcash, launched in late 2015 with a team led by Zooko. Ben-Sasson says he has no formal involvement or holdings in Zcash today but remains friendly with the Zcash Foundation, Zcash Labs and miners.

On why privacy only recently gained attention, he points to Bitcoin's "ossification," improved wallet products (Zonal, Visor) making Zcash more accessible, and a more open regulatory landscape than in Zcash's early days, when he recalls Italy's parliament discussing a ban.

Quantum computers and "superintelligence" as risks to Bitcoin

Asked whether Bitcoin held for 20 years is safe from quantum computers, Ben-Sasson says: "I wouldn't say it's 100% safe." He argues that Bitcoin's resistance to soft forks and its "no updates" culture increases risk, saying leaders dismiss concerned voices as "fudsters."

He contrasts the SNARKs used in Zcash and Ethereum, which he says "melt away" under quantum computers, with ZK-STARKs, which he says remain secure against quantum attacks and require no trusted setup. He credits his 2018 white paper, titled around "post-quantum secure zero-knowledge," as predating mainstream quantum concerns.

He says his team built the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction, led by researcher Avihu Levy, but that without a Bitcoin soft fork there is limited capacity to protect the network further.

Starknet's pitch: programmable, private, quantum-agile money

Ben-Sasson describes Starknet as what Ethereum is to Bitcoin, but for Zcash: a system offering programmable private money with swaps, lending and borrowing. He says Starknet's core technology, ZK-STARKs, is post-quantum secure, and that its "account abstraction" design avoids enshrining any particular signature scheme, making it easier to upgrade cryptography without rebuilding the network.

He says the team is exploring building a Starknet layer one to remove dependency on Ethereum's roadmap, which he calls "maybe too slow" toward quantum safety, and ties STRK's role to governance over decisions like this potential migration, plus eventual mining rewards if a proof-of-work layer one emerges.

"I don't know what the future holds, but I do know where I am heading to... the fastest, most agile, most correct form of post-quantum secure, programmable privacy." — Eli Ben-Sasson

He claims sovereign wealth funds, large financial institutions and asset allocators have reached out to his team about quantum risk, and says he is "100% sure" quantum concerns are already affecting investment decisions, alongside AI's dominance of investor attention.

The agentic economy and Ben-Sasson's biggest worry

Ben-Sasson points to the supervega.app options-trading platform built by StarkWare as an example of an application he says depends on Starknet's scale and account abstraction for its user experience. He argues businesses need privacy to operate on-chain, citing StarkWare's own practice of paying employee salaries in stablecoins on Starknet without revealing amounts between colleagues.

He predicts agents will adopt blockchain rails before humans or large banks, because agents will find chains with scale, privacy and agility easier to transact on than conventional systems.

Asked about the biggest risk to his vision, he says it is that the world may simply prefer convenient centralized systems, drawing a parallel to the historical prevalence of centralized political systems over democracies, and to AI potentially consolidating around a few large labs. He says he remains on the side believing "decentralization, empowerment of individuals is going to win," but acknowledges he could be wrong.