Founder: Evan Kaloudis
Date Based: 2019, block 563345; integrated in 2023
Location of Headquarters: No HQ; totally distant
Quantity of Bitcoin Held in Treasury: Not disclosed
Variety of Staff: 2
Web site: https://zeusln.com/
Public or Non-public? Non-public
On April 26, 2024, Evan Kaloudis drew a line within the sand.
Within the wake of the information of the Samourai Pockets builders getting arrested and Phoenix Pockets halting service to US clients, he made it public that he was going to battle like hell for self-custody Bitcoin and Lightning Community wallets just like the one he created, ZEUS, to live on.
https://t.co/n0ye9TcNYd pic.twitter.com/Me5ixLeBT0
— EVAN KALOUDIS (@evankaloudis) April 26, 2024
The best to privately self custody your bitcoin in the US, he argued, needed to be defended in any respect prices.
Kaloudis’ phrases lower via the strain within the Bitcoin house, particularly on X, the place the sensation of despair was palpable.
Every week and a half after Kaloudis made his deeply felt assertion, I caught up with him just about to study extra about his plans for ZEUS — probably the most dynamic Lightning wallets in the marketplace at present — as we transfer into an period the place the powers that be appear to need all bitcoin in a walled backyard and tied to customers’ identities.
A transcript of our dialog, edited for size and readability, follows beneath.
Frank Corva: What’s the mission of ZEUS and the way is it totally different from different Lightning Wallets?
Evan Kaloudis: Zeus actually does not wish to compromise.
We have seen plenty of wallets that’ll make trade-offs for numerous causes. We’ve seen wallets that need to simply present the sharpest UX at the price of self-custody or privateness. We have seen wallets from Silicon Valley that shut you right into a walled backyard.
Zeus needs to allow you to make Bitcoin funds your means, whether or not it’s that you simply’re simply beginning off and need to spin up a full lightning node in your pocket [editor’s note: ZEUS enables you to run a Lightning node on your phone] or, in case you’re a extra seasoned veteran, and you’ve got a full node operating at residence. Perhaps it is an Umbrel or Start9, or possibly you are even operating one thing within the cloud with Voltage — you possibly can hook up with ZEUS with that, too.
There are a number of methods to attach. There are a number of backends we assist. We simply need to empower folks to make Lightning funds as freely as potential, with as few intermediaries as potential and with as a lot privateness as potential.
Corva: Given the latest crackdown on the Samourai builders adopted by Phoenix stopping its providers for US clients after which Wasabi Pockets shutting down its coinjoin service, do you are feeling prefer it’s inevitable that the authorities will goal ZEUS in some unspecified time in the future?
Kaloudis: I believe there is a actually good probability that down the road Zeus does get focused. It is virtually an inevitability until the outlook on Bitcoin on this nation drastically adjustments.
And regulators do not know how the Lightning Community works. It may be interpreted in so many various methods. However they know once they need to come down with the clamps, they’ve to return down robust.
That actually helps put stuff in perspective for us as builders and folks providing services. We nonetheless have an extended solution to go regardless of the nice strides that we have made within the final six or seven years.
Corva: It’s attention-grabbing how bitcoin’s value rising appears to have little to do with folks adopting it as a medium of change.
Kaloudis: What’s the basic use case of Bitcoin proper now? It is simply folks simply buying and selling it like a inventory or utilizing it as an entry instrument to gamble on shitcoins and meme cash this cycle. Folks do not [grasp] the know-how totally. In the meantime, the folks up prime are seeing the writing on the wall and making an attempt to nip it within the bud whereas they will — medium of change is admittedly the most important menace to them.
The Michael Saylors of the world, the Larry Finks of the world, the folks providing up the ETFs who stand to profit from quantity go up solely would love nothing greater than if everybody who was stepping into it had been neatly organized and accounted for, KYC and all, and if it actually did not take maintain as one thing folks self custodied or used as a medium of change.
Corva: Is that this why within the newest iteration of ZEUS you set the node within the cellphone as an alternative of assuming that individuals would run a node at residence after which use ZEUS as a distant management of kinds? In different phrases, are you making an attempt to make it simpler for folks to make use of bitcoin as a medium of change?
Kaloudis: We actually bridged a niche for them by placing it within the cellphone and providing up principally all the identical performance {that a} distant consumer would have.
I believe ZEUS goes to essentially evolve fairly drastically, however our precedence and our two laborious strains are self custody and no KYC.
I might moderately both cease providing these Bitcoin fee channels in sure jurisdictions — we already must adjust to like with OFAC — or shut the corporate down.
We have constructed such an awesome product that empowers so many individuals that even with out Olympus (a well-connected Lightning node that ZEUS runs) and our LSP providers, I am assured there’d be 1000’s of individuals nonetheless utilizing the software program. And I am positive folks would proceed to contribute to it at an open-source stage to maintain making it higher.
Corva: It’s disheartening to assume that somebody such as you would even take into consideration having to stroll away out of your firm. There aren’t many individuals on this house who can construct what you’ve constructed and this makes me assume the subsequent individual together with your expertise may simply contemplate not even getting began as a founder on this house.
Kaloudis: With this crackdown, we’ve seen an actual chilling impact. It’s an actual residence run for the opposing aspect, and there is undoubtedly potential for issues to snowball and for extra folks to maneuver out of the market.
I actually do hope that my actions encourage others to face up and never self-police or go away markets preemptively.
However, in case you speak to people who find themselves growing the house or doing their very own startup, they already know that what they’re doing is loopy. They know that, “Hey, I can go work for considered one of these FAANG firms and make $200, $300 grand simply, and I make a fraction of that with a fraction of an opportunity of success if I’m going and work on Bitcoin and attempt to begin my very own firm.”
However that’s the factor with Bitcoin builders — regardless of all of the challenges that lay forward and the pressures which might be mounting, there’s nothing else they’d moderately do. This can be a moonshot, but when it succeeds, the whole world adjustments. So, I believe there’s nonetheless going to be plenty of loopy devs.
Corva: Do you assume these builders will likely be a bit much less publicly antagonistic after seeing what occurred to the Samourai builders and the way prosecutors are utilizing the tweet during which they welcomed Russian oligarchs to make use of their service within the case towards them? Do you assume it’s higher to go on the offensive verbally or to only maintain your head down and work quietly?
Kaloudis: Man, it is simply so enjoyable once you come out with the bravado, you already know? And the Samourai guys constructed a complete model round it. They primarily assembled a military of diehard followers and customers and that largely contributed to their success.
In case you are a nym and you’ve got the power, then please proceed the shit speaking. However in case you’re a public determine, it isn’t going to be clever to poke the bear or kick the hornet’s nest, as Satoshi stated.
We do want to start out pondering a little bit extra critically. There are nonetheless plenty of concessions we’re going to must make within the battles which might be occurring now. You must be strategic to win a battle.
Corva: Let’s shift over to one thing extra optimistic — your plans for ZEUS — and let me ask you some questions that some plebs on Nostr and X requested me to ask you. Are you exploring methods for self-custodial customers to obtain funds with out initially having to fund a channel with Bitcoin and what would this appear to be?
Kaloudis: Nice query. On the self custodial entrance, there are plenty of challenges. Now we have folks like Super Testnet who’ve found out actually modern methods to do issues self custodially with funds, like what we have carried out with our ZEUS Lightning tackle and stuff like this new hedgehog protocol.
The pre-funding subject nonetheless stays. It’s a tough problem that we’re making an attempt to handle.
I in the end assume that plenty of protocol stage adjustments must occur to Bitcoin. These are the issues that we’re extra bullish on — the issues that also allow self custody. We’re actually bullish on covenants. We’re actually bullish on coin swimming pools and fee swimming pools. Stuff like Ark is fairly novel.
We do not actually need folks to interrupt the financial institution to arrange fee channels. As Bitcoin’s value retains going up, it turns into dearer, not less than in greenback phrases, to open your first channel and use ZEUS in a self-custodial means.
We need to attempt to keep away from that shifting ahead, however it’ll take increasingly plebs pushing to say, “Hey, this ossification push is silly. It cripples Bitcoin.” And the Larry Finks, the Michael Saylor varieties we had been speaking about earlier would love nothing greater than if the core code base and protocol simply stayed as is. Take into consideration who actually advantages if issues keep that means.
Let’s be open minded as we push ahead and let’s examine what different proposals come down the road, as a result of there’s much more we’ve got to do to scale.
Corva: When are you able to deliver splicing to ZEUS?
Kaloudis: Splicing is [some]factor we rely on LND for. I might like to deliver it in, however who is aware of? We in all probability might see within the core Lightning interfaces, too. It could in all probability be simpler to see that ahead of in say the embedded node in Zeus. Extra so than what it permits customers [to do], it could actually profit us because the Lightning Service Supplier in lowering prices.
Corva: In what methods does ZEUS combine with Nostr?
Kaloudis: Zeus at present has two Nostr integrations.
Now we have a contact ebook in Zeus in which you’ll be able to import all of your contacts from Nostr. This provides you a good way to simply ship your funds to folks you observe. In that means, it is form of like a decentralized Money App or decentralized Venmo for funds for folks conversant in that within the US.
We additionally use Nostr to energy our self-custodial Lightning tackle service, which is the primary of its type on a cellular pockets powered by the nice Tremendous Testnet ZapLocker spec and principally use Nostr keys to log out on the invoices that our server serves as much as customers. So, in case you have a suitable ZapLocker pockets, you possibly can say, “Oh yeah, this bill hash, this received signed by Frank and I am going to press this button to verify I am actually Frank’s profile and that it is actually him who signed off on it.”
Corva: With all the improvements you deliver to ZEUS, do you retain present laws in thoughts as you construct or do you simply construct and hope you’re not breaking any legal guidelines?
Kaloudis: Now we have to behave in good religion. Now we have already put measures up that can stop unhealthy actors from utilizing our system.
We’ll must possible present regulators, if they arrive knocking on our door, that it isn’t only a free for all right here. And we’ve got information that may assist us determine and kick unhealthy customers off our platform.
I am not going to say, “Hey, Russian oligarchs come use Olympus,” since you’re not going to get far in case you strive to try this. ZEUS is simply not conducive to that in any respect.
What ZEUS is conducive to is to have the ability to freely make your day-to-day funds.
What’s guiding us is our laborious strains, and our laborious strains are self custody and no KYC. We’re not making funds on behalf of customers. We’re simply empowering them to make these funds for themselves.
If we get labeled as a cash service enterprise, then the whole lot else goes, from particular person Lightning node operators to miners probably to self custody itself. And like I stated in my put up, that is the hill to die on — self custody.
The choice is simply too grim to even take into consideration and it’ll take some people, largely in the US, to face up.