For this episode, we're sitting down with @shawmakesmagic. Fifteen years of building. Self taught out of San Francisco when the cypherpunk movement was still breathing and Silicon Valley was rewriting the rules of every industry on the planet. No formal training. No shortcuts. Shaw built ElizaOS, the AI agent framework that powered thousands of agents across Solana and became one of the most forked repositories in crypto history.

109,000 of you read the Shaw thesis. You made it the biggest article Wisemen has ever put out. Now the forgotten architect speaks for himself.

You know how Wisemen operates. When we sit down with someone, it's not surface level. This is 75 minutes of the kind of conversation most podcasts will never get. Not just about the projects. About the mind behind them. How Shaw thinks. How he connects with crypto at its deepest level. How a developer who barely had the money to buy into his own token watched that position reach $25 million at an all time high, then rode it all the way down to $120K without selling a single coin.

If you want to understand not just $MILADY.AI and $ELIZAOK, but the brilliant mind building them, this is where you start.

In this conversation, we explore:

- The real AI16Z origin: The DMT experience the night before launch. The ego death. The walk to meet the creator of Daosfun and the two words that sparked a billion-dollar ecosystem. None of this has been told at this depth before.

- The $75 million betrayal: A co-founder who never wrote a single line of code deleted Shaw from the repo, sold the project, forged documents, and walked away rich. Shaw went into debt. Moved home. Then built Eliza.

- From broke to $25 million to $120K: Shaw could barely afford to buy into his own token. A community member who believed in the project donated a massive share of supply to the team. That position reached $25 million at all time high prices. Then it fell to $120K. Shaw never sold a coin. What that journey actually does to a person and why he calls it both his greatest badge of honor and his biggest regret.

- The layer one debate: Shaw gives his unfiltered take on @solana, @ethereum, and @binance Chain. Where the volume is. Where the builders are. Where it's all headed. No allegiances. Just a developer breaking down what he sees from the inside.

- Creator fees and the new funding model: Shaw breaks down how he's using creator fees from Bags to employ developers and fund the entire build around his vision. No VCs. No raises. Just trading volume converting directly into the team that's writing the code.

- $Milady.AI and $ElizaOK: Shaw goes into detail about exactly what he's building, how the developer network around him works, and the bigger vision behind the technology. We asked him directly if he believed Milady AI could become his biggest project ever. His answer is going to surprise you.

- The culture war breaking crypto: Traders vs holders. Why Shaw believes the toxicity and rotation culture are killing the space from the inside. And what actually needs to change.

- The message to builders: Shaw's words to every developer who lost money, lost hope, and is questioning whether any of this is worth it.

This is the unfiltered story of one of the greatest AI builders on the Solana blockchain. A developer who did it at the highest level possible got completely counted out and became known as the forgotten architect.

But he never stopped writing code.

No hype. No script. Just the forgotten architect in his own words.

We hope you enjoy.

About The Wise Ones 👁️
The Wise Ones Podcast sits down with the builders and strategists shaping crypto's future before the mainstream catches on.

We present to you the fifth episode of The Wise Ones Podcast. Hosted by
@Wisemenmentors

For this episode, we're sitting down with Serj, the founder of $DEPLAY |
@deplaydotfun the first music prediction market built on Solana and a builder who walked away from licensing deals with Apple and Samsung to bet everything on crypto.

Serj | @SerjKorj spent years building AI technology in Palo Alto, licensing it to the biggest smartphone manufacturers on the planet. He bumped into Tim Cook at a Whole Foods, pitched him for 15 minutes, and three hours later had three Apple VPs at his showroom. Tim Cook gave him his personal email and one piece of advice: "I read all emails, but only once."

His previous @solana project hit hundreds of millions in market cap. Multiple hackathon wins. Followed by Toly, Raj, Austin Federa, Vibhu, and the entire Solana ecosystem. He earned every follow through years of building and shipping.

Now he's focused on one mission: bring the next billion users on chain through music and play.

In this conversation, we explore:

- The Tim Cook | @tim_cook moment: How a Whole Foods conversation led to Apple VPs at his door, and the one sentence that shaped how he approaches everything.

- The streaming mafia problem: 99% of artists earn zero from streaming. $DEPLAY is breaking that system.

- How $DEPLAY works: Artists upload tracks, prediction markets auto-create for each song. Fans predict if it hits top 10, top 3, etc. Artists earn a cut of every prediction in real time via smart contracts.

- 5-10x more per stream: Artists earn five to ten times more than Spotify paid instantly to their wallet, not months later in a PDF.

- Everything on chain: Every play tokenized on Solana. All data transparent and verifiable. No black boxes. No manipulation.

- The onboarding breakthrough: No seed phrases, no wallet setup. Users play first, discover crypto second.

- Telegram Stars: 900 million users can predict using in app credits. Win real crypto. Zero friction. They don't even know they're using Solana.

- The Seeker phone play: Native lock screen integration. Raj called it out specifically. This is what Solana Mobile is betting on.

- The flywheel: Every artist brings their fans. 1,000 artists with 1,000 fans each is a million new Solana wallets. That's how you scale adoption.

- Nearly 1,000 artists onboarded: Organic growth. No paid marketing. Just a product that works.

- The 2030 vision: One billion users onboarded through gamified crypto experiences. Not through tutorials through play.

This is a founder who's been building since 2014, already took a project to hundreds of millions in MC, and is now going after the biggest target in crypto: real consumer adoption at scale.

We hope you enjoy.

@SerjKorj | $DEPLAY

@deplaydotfun

@solanamobile
@toly
@rajgokal
@Austin_Federa
@vibhu
@SolanaFndn

About The Wise Ones:
The Wise Ones Podcast sits down with the builders and strategists shaping crypto's future before the mainstream catches on.

We present to you the fourth episode of The Wise Ones Podcast. Hosted by

@Wisemenmentors

For this episode, we're sitting down with @PopPunkOnChain, the Ethereum legend who walked away from institutional money to launch what looked like a gaming token on Pumpdotfun, which later developed into building infrastructure to reimagine every streaming platform on the internet.

Pop spent years optimizing smart contracts for the biggest protocols in DeFi LayerZero, SushiSwap, Radiant Capital. His code runs in the systems you use every single day. He had the venture backing, the institutional salary, the credibility that opens every door in crypto.

Then he quietly launched a token with zero announcements, and gave the community the chance to buy supply, knowing exactly what was coming next.

But what most people don't know is why he made that decision - and what he's actually building.

This isn't your typical founder interview. PopPunk reveals the full story of leaving his high-paying job with a three-month-old son at home, the decision to give the community first access instead of stacking bags himself, and how $70K in creator fees with zero team is funding a business that could change how every live stream works.

If you hold $PUMPCADE, build on @pumpdotfun, or want to understand what separates legitimate ICM projects from pump-and-dump schemes, this conversation is essential.

In this conversation, we explore:

- The walk-away moment: Why he left institutional money and venture-backed startups to build on

http://Pump.fun and what convinced him to go all-in with a newborn at home.

- The stealth launch strategy: How he intentionally didn't buy supply before V2 dropped, even knowing it would 100x, because he wanted the community to become early investors.

- The evolution from V1 to V3: How arcade games became embedded wallets, then prediction markets, and why each version unlocked the next level of scale.

- "Trenchifying" prediction markets: Why fast-paced betting (minutes vs 24+ hours) is what Solana actually wants and how it's fundamentally different from Polymarket's approach.

- The streamer token problem: Why 99% of stream tokens die after day one and how embedded betting utility solves it by giving creators sustainable revenue.

- Creator fee economics: How $70K with no team is funding a real ICM business and why this revenue model scales when others fail.

- The Pumpfun relationship: Getting into group chats with the team, why they support real builders, and what's coming with tournament sponsors.

- The ICM antithesis: Why $PUMPCADE is the reverse of every failed launchpad that raises $20M then disappoints, and why building in reverse actually works.

- The vision beyond gaming: Where this goes when you're building infrastructure for all live media - Twitch, Kick, YouTube, live sports, anywhere there's a chat box.

No hype. No promises. Just building in public and letting the work speak.

We hope you enjoy.

@PopPunkOnChain

@pumpcade

@pumpfun

@a1lon9

@pumpspotlight

About The Wise Ones:
The Wise Ones Podcast sits down with the builders and strategists shaping crypto's future before the mainstream catches on.