It was revealed that the identity of the 6th participant in the “trusted setup” ceremony, who was known by the pseudonym “John Dobbertin,” was Edward Snowden.

The former United States defense contractor was among the other six participants, including Zcash creator Zooko Wilcox, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd, and Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh. All of them received a part of the private key needed to create Zcash.

Allegedly, Snowden didn't get any compensation, and his involvement was just for the public interest. In his interview with Zcash Media Snowden said: “The reason that I did that was I saw it being worked on by a number of trusted academic cryptographers. And I thought it was a very interesting project because when we look at cryptocurrencies in general, we generally see the cryptographic properties is being used to make sure it’s a fair ledger, but not that it’s been used to ensure that it’s a private ledger. The problem with that is you can’t have free trade unless you have private trade and you can’t have a free society without a free trade.”

What is your opinion on Snowden's role in Zcash?