Episodes

  • Computational Liberty And The Future Of AI

    Computational Liberty And The Future Of AI
    Nov 22 2023

    Company:

    Decentralised machine learning compute protocol. Connecting all of the world’s machine learning capable compute power that is capable of doing machine learning training work - including CPUs and GPUs - and opening its access to engineers, researchers and academics.

    Timestamps:

    2:30: Predicting Fires With Hedge Fund Algorithms

    5.45: Y-Combinator Accelerator

    7.00: Neural Networks & Computational Barriers

    10.30: Data Rights 

    16.00: Gensyn Origins & Trustless Dispute Resolution

    19:30: Self-Sovereignty & The Right To Build

    22.30: Homestead Principles & Social Contracts

    26.00: Cryptography As A National Threat

    28.00: Decentralised Incentives

    29.15: Regulatory Irony & Artificial Bias 

    31.00: Decentralised Democracy

    35.20: ML Compute Accessible As Electricity

    39.50: Paths To True AGI

    42.40: From Research To Execution

    44.30: A Thin Protocol For A Large Problem

    45.50: Crippling Costs Of Amazon & Azure 

    51.30: Future Proofing By Avoiding Shortcuts 

    55.00: Autonomy Needs Value Alignment

    1.05.00: 1% of US GDP by 20230

    1.13.00: A New Artificial Species

    1.22.30: Protocols Remove Oligopolies
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Web3 Freedoms with Nym Technology

    Web3 Freedoms with Nym Technology
    Sep 29 2023
    • The origins of Nakamoto and proof of work
    • A watershed event will drive mass adoption in privacy
    • Humanity’s biggest existential threats require freedom to collaborate
    • Privacy models have to extend to the network level
    • A connected private landscape doesn’t exist
    • Privacy loves company
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 9 mins
  • How Catapult Empower DAOs with Context

    How Catapult Empower DAOs with Context
    Nov 21 2022

    Key Takeaways:

    4.00 The global economic problem is a coordination problem

    6.00 Our news digest shapes the lens we view the world with

    9.00 Intellectual mining with blockchain

    10.49 Entrepreneur First and their meeting

    12.48 Discovering DAOs with Daolicious 

    14 The birth of Catapult

    16 The fatigue of DAOs and Onboarding

    19.00 The realities of fundraising and VC selection

    26.40 Why DAOs

    31.30 Revolutionising human co-ordination

    35:40 Decentralising governance

    38.50 The Cambrian Explosion of mechanism design

    44.50 Moving towards usefulness and usability with DAOs

    52:40 Establishing identity and purpose in multiple DAOs

    54.40 Your on-chain passport of contribution

    57.50 The onboarding flow of Catapult

    1.06.10 Every DAO needs context to unlock potential

    1.11.30 A vision of the future
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 20 mins
  • Taking DeFi Forwards With Vega Protocol

    Taking DeFi Forwards With Vega Protocol
    Oct 13 2022
    The need for real-world utility in DeFi that can improve the service and usefulness of centralized alternatives whilst retaining the values of decentralization.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 36 mins
  • Episode #3: Fair.xyz

    Episode #3: Fair.xyz
    Sep 12 2022

    T‍imestamp:


    1.36:

    Shared Interests ‍

    4.20:

    Co-founder Compatibility

    12.00:

    The Leap Into Web3 

    15.00:

    Encountering NFTs

    16.0:

    Demystifying NFTs

    26.49:

    Vision For The Future

    29.15:

    Onboarding Is Broken

    35.18:

    Answering The Skeptics

    40.28:

    Signals Of Mainstream Adoption

    46.40:

    IP Licensing Of NFTs

    49.22:

    Revolutions Needs Fanatics

    54.00:

    What’s Behind Fair.xyz 

    1.02.00:

    Team Anatomy In Web3

    1.04.30:

    Hiring Risks After Funding

    1.10.28:

    What Next For Fair.xyz

    1.12.21:

    Creating An Entire NFT Collection In 90 Seconds

    1.16.22:

    Bodyguards Preventing Gas Wars

    1.22.28:

    Minter Token & Rewarding Provenance 

    1.28.10:

    Walk Before You Run With Solutions
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 31 mins
  • Replacing opinion with blockchain in farming - Luis Macias, GrainChain

    Replacing opinion with blockchain in farming - Luis Macias, GrainChain
    Mar 29 2022
    An early interest in programming evolved into a deep fascination with solving real-world problems. “It started at twelve years old when I picked up programming and saw I could create my own world with words and code.”Having moved twenty-one times before he was eighteen, Luis spoke of how he adapted and developed his programming skills through the early Internet as a means of communicating. At twenty-three he started his first company, a cloud-based management system that captured the useful information living on documents and indexed it for easy retrieval. “We ended up developing a very unique underwriting system that transformed a highly manual process by pulling multiple public and private data points from across the internet. We conquered 30% of the American market and had a successful exit in 2005 that gave me and Fernando Campos the freedom to work on the meaningful projects we wanted to.”Luis’s father-in-law was one of the larger players in South Texas agriculture and wanted a better way of storing and retrieving information than the shoeboxes and spreadsheets he stored them in. Nothing existed that was good enough, so Luis and his team built what they needed and digitized the entire process of recording grain in siloes with IoT. Everybody could see that large-scale innovation needed to be applied across the entire agricultural supply line, but hundreds of fatal tech startups before us had created a culture of distrust to tech.“We realised we didn’t need to create a single app, but an ecosystem that incentivized the use of systems, ensured trust, and removed human errors.” GrainChain was born.The world needs a sustainable environment to create sustainable food and the last two years have shown the havoc of a delicate supply chain. “Only two cents of that $6 Starbucks you buy are going to the farmers. How do we create a system that ensures they get paid more, that it’s been ethically produced, and that it’s chemically free.”Luis spoke about the need of building everything on a bedrock of trustless and transparent data that provides every touchpoint in the chain with the information they need to make their decisions faster. “What better way to get rid of human opinion than to put it into code.” Make it law on the blockchain. If everyone is part of the process of creating a smart contract, then nobody will be surprised by the resultsGrainChain’s north star points towards financial liquidity for both farmers and investors, total food transparency, and micro-insurance and security for the farmer’s products.Timestamp:1:30:An entrepreneur at heart that always asked what “no” really means. 4:01:Harnessing the ability to “create” in multiple formats.5:40Predicting the future with better data. Quality in, quality out.8:05Building our own thing and with the intention of making a difference.10:46Applying a digital solution with almost no connectivity in the agricultural industry 11:30Agriculture is in desperate need of sustainable tech innovation but has been successively abandoned by technology 13:21Creating the infrastructure of sustainable farming14:42The watershed for consumers choosing sustainable farming16:30Incentivizing the next generation of farming with technology and innovation19:10Most crops are sold in the future with a lot of variables using legacy systems20:45I needed to get rid of human decision21:38The vision of Fernando Campos and marrying blockchain to the problems in agriculture23:3A well-written contract never needs servicing27:16An emotional response to our first transaction on GrainChain29:10Flat earth and how we’re going to revolutionize the world with smart contracts35:16The challenge of deploying blockchain in an error-prone environment like agriculture 37:01Building an ecosystem on a bedrock of data trust 39.40Traceability in the food industry and the unachievable myths that surround it43:40Removing humans49:10When things go wrong58:59Convincing those that benefit from a lack of transparency in agriculture1:02:50 The future of finance means relying on data, not people, and causes, not borders1:04:48The future solutions of GrainChain 1:05:50 Increasing money to investors and reducing charges to farmers with automation1.12.04How replicable is GrainChain’s infrastructure to other verticals?1.13.04 The more participation the more robust the structure. This is the future.1.20:32 “People in my position don’t fail… they get tired”
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 25 mins
  • China, Biconomy, and a frictionless multi-chain future - Ahmed Al Balaghi, Biconomy

    China, Biconomy, and a frictionless multi-chain future - Ahmed Al Balaghi, Biconomy
    Feb 28 2022

    QUICKVIEW:

    A twenty-minute form started Ahmed on a life-changing road, via China, Vitalik Buterin, and the grassroots web3 communities that became Biconomy’s first customers. 

    We talk about the fundamental concepts that underpin money - the value we place, its usage as a proxy for conflict, and the fatalism of fiat currency that history is destined to repeat.

    Web3 communities feature heavily in Ahmed’s journey, from initiating the first blockchain association for students in China, to sourcing Biconomy’s first customers, and spending most of 2020 actively listening to specific problems discussed in grassroot meetups. 

    We discuss the use of trust in selling your solution and how adding value to the projects around you without an agenda is the best way to introduce your project. Solutions not sales. 

    Building core infrastructure for web3 means gradually decentralizing and building for the future while solving for the now. Avoid building in a vacuum, focus on intentional use cases, make it provable, and put the end user’s experience at the heart of everything you build. Back in the nascent days of Ethereum, that meant asking how they could empower devs to build simpler experiences for better adoption.

    TIMESTAMPS

    1:54:

    Intro to Blockchain and studying Mandarin in China. How a twenty-minute form changed my life. 

    5.18:

    How Google’s rejection opened the door to a series of Blockchain meetups

    8.16: 

    The paradigm shift to replace fiat currency and the value of money

    10.36:

    My introduction to Ethereum at $2 and speaking Chinese with Vitalik Buterin

    13:12 

    The meeting of Aniket Jindel and how a group of international students initiated the first Blockchain association in China.

    16:06 

    Meeting Sachin Tomar and assisting Polygon in an investment round during a Crypto Winter

    17:52

    Working for the Amazon of the Middle East

    18:33

    How a remote side project with staking planted the seed for Biconomy

    20:50

    A couple of hundred users on Ethereum made us ask how we could increase adoption and the life of developers and end-users

    23:15

    Meta transactions at a DAP level and focusing on why end-users have to pay gas fees

    25:23

    Making a full-time commitment to our vision and our first customer

    27:10

    Building during a bear market and avoiding building in a vacuum 

    29:16

    Our launch on Ethereum and Polygon

    31:19

    How we built our growth on trust and solutions 

    34:19

    A holistic ecosystem that makes web3 usable, frictionless, and gasless

    37:15

    An entire year of listening to our customers

    38:21

    Launching Hyphen 

    41.44 

    Things have to be frictionless at a transactional level. End users should be able to move freely.

    44:01

    Integration with DYDX - the easiest onboarding experience in crypto

    46:15

    Gas solutions: setting a preferred method for payments

    47:24

    What next for Biconomy

    50:46

    Multichain composability. What does the user’s next interaction look like?

    53:28

    Building for the future and solving for the now 

    55:36

    Focus on being impactful and useful over decentralized and trustless

    57:15

    The challenge of scaling a team in web3 

    59.51: 

    A shared narrative, North Star, and the founding values of Biconomy

    1:05:50

    Never lose the heartbeat of what you’re doing as a company

    1:09:40

    Aligning the team and the community with a vision. We know the direction over the destination.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 13 mins