Building “Compliant Privacy” for Crypto: Avishay Yanai’s Founder Story

Building “Compliant Privacy” for Crypto: Avishay Yanai’s Founder Story

From Beyond the Code by Yitzy Hammer

April 20, 2026 · 56 min · Episode 93

About this episode

Yitzy Hammer interviews Avishay Yanai about his journey from academia to co-founding Soda Labs and the challenges of building compliant privacy solutions in the blockchain space.

After a six-week hiatus spent between reserve duty and bomb shelters, Beyond the Code is back with Avishay Yanai , co-founder and CEO of Soda Labs . In this episode, Yitzy sits down with one of Israel’s top cryptography minds to unpack the founder journey from academia and VMware to building a startup at the frontier of blockchain privacy. They discuss why most on-chain privacy tools are either fully transparent or regulatorily radioactive, and how Soda Labs is trying to build something different: privacy that institutions can actually use. Avishay explains the technical and commercial thinking behind “compliant privacy,” why they passed on the crowded MPC wallet space, and what it really feels like to go from researcher to startup CEO.

People in this episode

Host: Yitzy Hammer

Guest: Avishay Yanai

Topics covered

  • cryptography
  • blockchain privacy
  • startup journey
  • compliant privacy
  • on-chain privacy tools

Keywords

  • compliant privacy
  • blockchain
  • cryptography
  • Soda Labs
  • MPC wallet
  • startup
  • privacy tools

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Soda Labs, VMware

Places: Israel

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