From
ages
9
to
11,
Edan
Yago
smuggled
gold,
hidden
in
his
clothes
by
his
mother,
out
of
South
Africa.
The
apartheid
government
had
instituted
capital
controls
to
stabilize
the
rand
amid
international
sanctions.
The
authorities
were
hunting
some
of
his
family
members
whom
it
had
designated
as
“terrorists.”
“Eventually,
we
were
forced
out
of
South
Africa,”
Yago
told
CoinDesk
in
an
interview.
His
family
were
no
strangers
to
tyranny.
Some
relatives
had
survived
the
Holocaust;
others
weren’t
so
lucky.
That
background,
combined
with
his
education
in
neuroscience
and
data
science,
led
him
to
a
career
working
in
Bitcoin,
with
its
value
proposition
of
wealth
that
governments
can’t
easily
confiscate
and
transactions
that
central
authorities
can’t
veto.
“Throughout,
my
focus
has
been
on
trying
to
develop
tools
for
greater
sovereignty,”
Yago
said.
A
self-described
“bitcoin
accelerationist,”
Yago
is
the
founder
of
Sovyrn,
a
decentralized
bitcoin
lending
and
trading
platform.
He
is
building
BitcoinOS,
a
“rollup”
stack
for
the
world’s
largest
cryptocurrency
designed
to
process
more
transactions
and
more
complex
operations
like
smart
contracts
than
the
blockchain
could
handle
otherwise.
Technical
achievements
In
July,
BitcoinOS
achieved
its
milestone
of
verifying
a
zero-knowledge
proof
on
Bitcoin
mainnet.
“This
is
a
big
deal,”
Yago
said.
“We’re
building
a
platform
which
is
going
to
allow
rollups
on
bitcoin,
and
through
that,
allow
us
to
maintain
the
security
of
bitcoin
without
introducing
any
changes
to
smart
contracts,
build
scalability
and
privacy.”
The
goal
is
“transforming
bitcoin
into
an
operating
system,
not
just
a
system
for
transacting
bitcoin.”
His
team
is
now
working
with
a
company
called
Emurgo
to
turn
Cardano
(ADA),
the
blockchain
whose
native
ADA
token
is
the
11th-largest
cryptocurrency
according
to
CoinDesk
data,
into
a
smart
contract
layer
for
Bitcoin.
The
first
technical
step
will
be
integrating
the
BOS
Grail
bridge
with
Cardano’s
open-source
ecosystem
to
allow
“trustless
bridging
of
BTC
and
Bitcoin
assets
using
BOS’s
ZK-based
BitSNARK
verification
protocol,
bringing
Bitcoin’s
unparalleled
liquidity
into
Cardano,”
according
to
a
Thursday
announcement.
A
crypto
OG
Yago
has
been
a
regular
on
the
blockchain
scene
for
more
than
a
decade.
In
2013,
at
an
early
Bitcoin
conference
in
San
Jose,
California,
he
pitched
the
idea
of
a
“cryptocurrency-based
political
zone.”
Three
special
economic
zones
in
Honduras
emerged
from
that
project;
they
are
fighting
a
legal
battle
with
the
government
there.
The
concept
was
a
harbinger
of
Balaji
Srinivasan’s
network
states.
In
the
years
since,
the
early
adopters’
lofty
visions
have
been
overshadowed
by
later
entrants’
obsessions
with
candlestick
charts
and
Lamborghinis.
“The
whole
crypto
ecosystem’s
challenge
is
that
it’s
a
mixture
of
high-minded
idealism
with
the
most
speculative
casino
stuff
and
that’s
a
difficult
thing
to
navigate,”
Yago
told
CoinDesk.
Nevertheless,
he
sees
a
silver
lining
in
the
sleaze.
“While
it’s
tempting
for
ideologically
driven
people
to
completely
reject
memecoins,
centralized
exchanges
and
all
the
nonsense
that’s
going
on,
the
truth
is
that
that
is
a
gateway
drug
for
people
to
actually
discover
how
they
can
be
more
in
control
of
their
financial
lives,”
Yago
said.
What’s
more,
he
is
trying
to
rehabilitate
an
idea
associated
with
one
of
the
more
unsavory
chapters
in
crypto
history.
ICOs
redux
Yago
said
he
wants
to
form
a
“coalition
of
established
DeFi’s
and
crypto
companies
to
bring
back
the
age
of
initial
coin
offerings.”
As
then-CoinDesk
columnist
David
Z.
Morris
wrote
last
year,
the
2017
ICO
boom
was
an
“orgy
of
fraud
and
scammy
behavior”
but
it
also
“funded
many
crypto
success
stories.”
Yago
said
it
is
no
longer
necessary
to
issue
tokens
through
centralized
entities.
The
correct
way
is
through
decentralized
autonomous
organizations
(DAOs),
ones
that
are
decentralized
in
more
than
name.
“Imagine
if
large
collectives
or
DAOs
or,
say,
six
projects
come
together
and
say
‘This
is
important
for
us
to
preserve
the
privacy
of
our
users
so
we
are
launching
a
crypto
application
or
project
together,'”
he
said.
“The
SEC
can
try
and
figure
out
who’s
to
blame.
That’s
the
secret.
We
don’t
need
to
fight
it
directly.”
The
arrest
of
Tornado
Cash
co-founder
Alexey
Pertsev
has
not
deterred
Yago
because
“Tornado
Cash
still
works,”
he
said.
Neither
has
North
Korea’s
use
of
Tornado
Cash
to
launder
funds.
“If
you’re
not
taking
casualties,
you’re
not
fighting,”
Yago
said.
“The
cost
of
an
open
society
with
freedom
of
speech
is
that
sometimes
a
terrorist
will
find
the
book
which
teaches
him
how
to
make
an
explosive.”