Good Monday, friends of privacy!

Privacy tools are blooming and news keep adding up. Out of the many from this week, Privacy Hack by Solana starting or Brave boosting their adblock among others, one of the huge news is the announcment from Zashi and Electirc Coin Company developers about their aim for new, start-up Zcash Wallet.

So while we are waiting for more about that, let's check out the already published Zashi.

Tool of the week

• Meet Zashi - A self-custody shielded ZEC wallet for encrypted digital transactions

Insights

• Developers from Electric Coin Co. and Zashi are starting new ZCash wallet
• UK's officials legally enable Ofcom to read content of encrypted messages
• Vitalik Buterin says decentralized stablecoins still face three unsolved problems
• US's ICE received new budget and started buying surveillance tech
• Musk has monetized Grok in an attempt to block X.com users from generating porn of women and minors

Knowledge

• Learn how to disable Gemini everywhere with Tuta Nota's guide
• Thanks to DROP platform, Californians can block data brokers
• Brave has boosted their adblock engine performance
• 404Media's Samantha Cole takes a look at X.com's history of rampant abuse on the platform in light of X's users generating porn with Grok
• Founder of spyware maker pcTattletale pleads guilty to hacking and advertising surveillance software

Inspiration: Going On(Line) an offering of media from the web

• Privacy Hack by Solana just started, going on from Jan 12 to Feb 10
• Tech Talks Daily's Why Aztec Labs are building the Endgame for blockchain privacy
• Take our own Web3 Privacy Now courses through our Academy

Inspiration: Going Off(Line) an offering of IRL events

(new/changes in bold)

• Jan 31 - Feb 1 - FOSDEM 2026 Brussels
• Feb 5–6, - Digital Assets Forum - London, UK
• Feb 10 - 12 - Consensus Hong Kong - Hong Kong
• Feb 12-15 - MONEROTOPIA 2026 Mexico City
• Feb 17–21 - ETHDenver - Denver, Colorado
• Mar 6-7 - Logos Network's Parallel Society Lisabon
• Mar 1–2 - Crypto Expo Europe - Bucharest, Romania
• Mar 30 - Apr 02 - Ethereum Community Conference Cannes, FR
• Apr 15–16 - Paris Blockchain Week - Paris, France
• May 5-8 - RightsCon Zambia
• May 8-10 - ETHPrague Prague
• Jun 16-17 - Dapcon 26 Berlin