Kieran Dennis was an initial contributor to Core, where he led strategic initiatives and helped drive ecosystem expansion. Alongside his work in the space, he has been an active early-stage investor with Amity Ventures, backing innovative companies across the technology landscape. He now embarks on a new chapter as Co-Founder of Z Protocol, bringing his experience at the intersection of crypto infrastructure and venture investing to build the next generation of decentralized finance.
Q: What specific problems are you seeing today that make private on-chain activity necessary for AI agents?
A: Two things. First, the rise of AI is driving the cost of surveillance to zero. When anyone can deploy models to monitor, analyze, and act on public data in real time, sovereignty requires privacy. Both humans and agents need it more than ever. Second, agents can interact on-chain at a scale impossible for humans, which means exponentially more data leakage. Every query, transaction, and behavioral pattern is a signal that can be front-run or exploited.Â
Q: What kinds of information or behaviors are currently exposed when AI agents operate on-chain, and why does that become more concerning at scale?
A: As more actions move on-chain, every interaction leaks signal: what models the agent calls, timing and size of transactions, portfolio positions, behavioral patterns. At that volume, observers can reconstruct entire strategies, making any trading agent untenable on a transparent chain. But it goes beyond strategy. If an agent operates on behalf of a human, all that on-chain activity is leaking data about the operator too. At scale, agents don’t just create a strategic risk, they create a security risk for the people behind them.
Q: What does combining Zcash’s privacy model with Core’s Satoshi Plus framework enable that existing approaches don’t?
A: Zcash is the leader in privacy technology with an incredible community and an asset that’s increasingly popular yet massively untapped. Today ZEC is mostly held and sent. Z represents a private economy where ZEC can be actively used across DeFi, AI inference, and agent activity. Zcash miners and staked ZEC add security to the network through a version of Satoshi Plus, the consensus mechanism pioneered by Core. Protocol-level privacy, proven consensus, and a full application layer on top.
Q: Z is designed as a full stack environment, from trading and lending to stablecoins. Why was it important to build a broader application layer rather than a single privacy tool?
A: Privacy needs apps. Apps need privacy. For privacy to survive in the AI era, you need a full stack solution. That means financial primitives like Z Trade, Z Lend, and USDZ as the foundation of the Zcosystem. It also means AI-specific infrastructure like decentralized inference and decentralized training. Agents need to think, act, and build privately, and Z is where they can do all three through an interoperable vertical app stack.Â
Q: As AI agents begin to handle financial activity autonomously, how do you think about balancing privacy with the need for oversight or control?
A: Privacy is normal. Fund managers operate privately within mandates. Auditors verify compliance without seeing every trade. Z works the same way, now enforced by hardware. You define what an agent can do, and the secure environment makes it so the agent can’t violate those rules. Not shouldn’t, can’t. Users can also selectively disclose activity when needed. Privacy is the default. Transparency is opt-in. Constraints are provable, not promised.
