2026-05-10 –, Grégr Stage
You've implemented end-to-end encryption. Your keys never touch a server. You're using ZK proofs, stealth addresses, maybe even computing over encrypted values on-chain. Your privacy stack is airtight.
Then someone shows up with a $5 wrench.
This attempts to answer a simple question: where does the trust ultimately live, and can someone get there with a wrench?
The $5 wrench attack is a famous XKCD comic: the idea that physical coercion bypasses any cryptographic scheme. It's the unsolved problem that every privacy solution quietly ignores.
It doesn't matter how elegant your Aztec contract is, how well Zama's FHE encrypts your values on-chain, or how unlinkable your stealth address is: if the keys or the execution environment can be physically reached, they can be physically compromised.
This talk maps the landscape of modern privacy primitives and asks a simple question: where does the trust ultimately live, and can someone get there with a wrench? We'll look at what it would take to make a key management environment that is not just cryptographically secure, but physically inaccessible.
I'm a full-stack blockchain developer and former Developer Relations Engineer at Aztec, where I worked on ZK application development and contributed to the Noir language ecosystem. Previously at Polygon, I've been designing and integrating zero-knowledge products since 2022. I have an unhealthy obsession with what happens to your private keys when someone shows up in person.