Founder: Evan Kaloudis
Date of Founded 2019 block 563345, incorporated into 2023
Headquarter Location: Fully remote; no HQ
Bitcoins held by the Treasury Not disclosed
The number of employees: 2
Website: https://zeusln.com/
Is it Public or Private? You can also contact us by email.
Evan Kaloudis marked a boundary in the sand on April 26th, 2024.
The news that the Samourai Wallet developers getting arrested You can also find out more about the following: Phoenix Wallet halting service to US customersThe man made public his intention to fight for Bitcoin’s self-custody. Lightning Network Wallets such as the one he designed, ZEUS.
https://t.co/n0ye9TcNYd pic.twitter.com/Me5ixLeBT0
— EVAN KALOUDIS (@evankaloudis) April 26, 2024
It was essential to defend the rights of Bitcoin holders in America to keep their bitcoins privately.
Kaloudis’s words cut the tensions in the Bitcoin world, and especially at X. The feeling of despair there was tangible.
After a week and half of Kaloudis’s deeply moving statement, I had the opportunity to catch up virtually with him in order to find out more about what he has planned for ZEUS — one of the most dynamic Lightning wallets on the market today — as we move into an era where the powers that be seem to want all bitcoin in a walled garden and tied to users’ identities.
Below is a transcript of our discussion, which has been edited to make it more concise and clear.
Frank Corva What is the purpose of ZEUS? And how does it differ from other Lightning Wallets.
Evan Kaloudis: Zeus is not a person who likes to compromise.
There are many wallets which will make sacrifices, for a variety of reasons. We’ve seen wallets which want the most slick UX but sacrifice privacy and self-control. Silicon Valley wallets have been known to lock you in a closed environment.
Zeus wants you to be able to pay for Bitcoin in the manner that suits you, regardless of whether you are just getting started or want to set up a lightning node on your phone. [editor’s note: ZEUS enables you to run a Lightning node on your phone] You can also run a node if you have experience and a running one at home. It could be an Umbrel The following are some examples of how to use Start9Or maybe even run something on the cloud. Voltage — you can connect to ZEUS with that, too.
Connecting is easy. Multiple backends are supported. It is our goal to allow people to send Lightning payments with as little intermediaries, and in the most private way possible.
Corva: Phoenix has stopped its US services due to the crackdown against Samourai developers and the subsequent shutdown of Samourai. Wasabi Wallet shutting down its coinjoin serviceDo you think it is inevitable that authorities will eventually target ZEUS?
Kaloudis: There’s an excellent chance Zeus will be targeted in the future. This is almost inevitable unless Bitcoin’s outlook in the country changes dramatically.
The regulators don’t know how Lightning Network operates. The Lightning Network can be read in many ways. When they clamp the screws, they do it with force.
It helps to put everything in context for developers, and those who offer products and services. We have much more to do despite all the progress we’ve achieved in the past six or seven year.
Corva: The price of bitcoin seems to be rising despite the fact that people are not adopting this currency as a means of exchange.
Kaloudis: What’s the current use of Bitcoin? The general use case of Bitcoin is people trading it just like stocks or as an entry to gambling on meme coins and shitcoins this cycle. People don’t [grasp] The technology should be used to its fullest. Meanwhile, the people up top are seeing the writing on the wall and trying to nip it in the bud while they can — medium of exchange is really the largest threat to them.
Michael Saylors would like to see everyone well organized, with KYC, so that they can benefit. They also want it to be a safe and secure place for people who are interested in investing.
Corva: Was this the reason why, in the latest version of ZEUS, you placed the node inside the phone rather than assuming users would run a home node and use ZEUS to control it? Are you trying to encourage people to accept bitcoins as an exchange medium?
Kaloudis: By putting the software on the phone, we were able to offer them all of the functionality that remote users would enjoy.
I believe ZEUS will really change, and that our priorities and two main lines of action are no KYC and self-custody.
I would rather either stop offering these Bitcoin payment channels in certain jurisdictions — we already have to comply with like with OFAC — or shut the company down.
The product we’ve created empowers so many that it can be used without any problems. Olympus ZEUS and its Lightning Node are well connected. LSP I believe that there would be thousands still using it. Open-source software is a great idea, and I am sure that many people would contribute.source Keep improving it.
Corva: You’re a great person and it is disheartening that you might have to leave your business. You’re the only person in your field who has built what you have and I think this is a great achievement. next A person of your caliber might not consider even starting as a founder.
Kaloudis: We’ve noticed a significant chilling effect with this crackdown. The opposing party has scored a major home run. There’s potential for this to snowball into a mass exodus of people from the market.
It is my hope that others will not be intimidated by me and instead take action to stop self-policing or leaving markets.
If you speak to those who develop the space, or are doing their own work in the area. own They know what they are doing is insane. It’s obvious that they know this. “Hey, I can go work for one of these FAANG companies and make $200, $300 grand easily, and I make a fraction of that with a fraction of a chance of success if I go and work on Bitcoin and try to start my own company.”
But that’s the thing with Bitcoin developers — despite all the challenges that lay ahead and the pressures that are mounting, there’s nothing else they’d rather do. It’s a big moonshot but, if successful, everything changes. There will still be many crazy developers.
Corva: What do you think? Do these developers seem to be less publically antagonistic now that they have seen what has happened with the Samourai developer and how the prosecutors used the tweet They welcomed Russian oligarchs in order to utilize their services against them. Are you more likely to take the offensive or keep quiet? work quietly?
Kaloudis: It’s so funny when someone comes out and shows their bravado. The Samourai team built an entire company around this. The Samourai guys gathered a legion of loyal fans and users, and this was largely responsible for their success.
Please continue to talk shite if you’re a pseudonym. If you are a public person, then it is not wise to kick or poke at the hornets’ nest.
It is time to think a bit more critically. In the fights of today, we will have to continue to give up a great deal. To win a battle, you need to have a strategic approach.
Corva: Let’s shift over to something more optimistic — your plans for ZEUS — and let me ask you some questions that some plebs on Nostr and X asked me to ask you. What are your plans for self-custodial channel users who don’t want to use Bitcoin to pay you?
Kaloudis: Great question. There are many challenges on the front of self-custodial. There are people who can help. Super Testnet There are some people who’ve come up with innovative and creative methods of self-custodial payment, as we have done in our ZEUS Lightning address This is new stuff hedgehog protocol.
It is important to note that the pre-funding problem still exists. We’re tackling a difficult challenge.
In the end, I think Bitcoin will need to undergo a number of changes at the protocol level. Those are the things that we’re more bullish on — the things that still enable self custody. On these things, we’re very bullish. covenants. We are really big on payment and coin pools. Stuff like Ark This is a novel idea.
It’s not our intention to make people break their bank accounts to open payment channels. It becomes increasingly expensive to set up your first payment channel, or use ZEUS, as Bitcoin prices continue to rise.
It will take more people to push for change. “Hey, this ossification push is stupid. It cripples Bitcoin.” The Larry Finks and Michael Saylors we spoke of earlier would be thrilled if core protocol and code remained as they are. Consider who will benefit if the current system is maintained.
Be open-minded, and we’ll see what else comes up. Because there is a great deal more to be done to achieve scale.
Corva: When will ZEUS be able to offer splicing?
Kaloudis: The Splicing Process [some]Dependent on what? LND for. It’s something I wish to see, but it may not happen. We could probably see this in Lightning’s core interfaces as well. You would see it sooner in Zeus’ embedded node. This is truer than the features it offers users [to do]As a Lightning Service Provider, we would benefit greatly from reducing our costs.
Corva: What are the ways that ZEUS and Nostr integrate?
Kaloudis: Zeus now has two Nostr-integrated products.
Zeus has a Contact Book where you can easily import your Nostr contacts. It’s a simple way to send payments to the people that you follow. For those who are familiar with Venmo in the US, this is similar to decentralized CashApp.
Nostr also powers our Lightning self-custodial address service. This is the very first Lightning address on a mobile wallet that uses the Super Testnet. ZapLocker Our server will serve up invoices to the users that have been signed off by Nostr. If you own a ZapLocker compatible wallet, then you could say: “Oh yeah, this invoice hash, this got signed by Frank and I’ll press this button to make sure I’m really looking at Frank’s profile and that it’s really him who signed off on it.”
Corva: You bring a lot of innovation to ZEUS. Do you take into consideration existing regulations as you construct or are you building and hoping you don’t break any laws?
Kaloudis: It is important that we act with good will. We already have measures in place to prevent the bad actors using our system.
If regulators come to our door we’ll have to show them that this is not a “free for all”. We have the data to identify bad users and remove them from our platform.
It’s not something I will say. “Hey, Russian oligarchs come use Olympus,” You won’t get very far trying to achieve this. ZEUS does not allow for that.
ZEUS allows you to make payments on a daily basis without any restrictions.
Our hardlines are what guide us. And our hardlines include self-custody and no KYC. Our users are not paying for us. The users are empowered by us to handle their payments themselves.
As soon as we are labeled a “money service business”, everything will be affected, including individual Lightning node users, miners, and even self-custody. And like I said in my post, that’s the hill to die on — self custody.
Alternatives are too bleak to consider and will require some people, predominantly in the United States to speak out.
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com