But the people that do the opposite, the scammers and all those people seem to be the ones that actually, like, are being rewarded often. That kind of burnt me out, and this illusion me. Building successful software is just incredibly hard, period. Like, you can do everything right. You can use the fastest database. You can have the most optimal UX. You can do everything right and still not make it. And then, you know, we're now adding that additional complexity of decentralization and kind of, like, now have all of these additional constraints. So the first app I ever built on an AI API was in, like, 2023, and it literally got over a 100,000 users within a couple of days per day. It was, like, the most successful thing I've ever built. Oh, wow. Like, I can just spend a weekend building something, and everyone gets value out of it. That was a really great feeling as a builder. But, really, I think the big one was in December, and a lot of people have written this when Opus 4.5 and Codex 5.2 came out. They were kind of like a tipping point where you could say that there was, like, a before and after. Like, you know, this this is gonna change really everything. That job is, like, probably not gonna exist in six months. I'm not even, like, exaggerating on that.

Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist podcast. I'm Josh Davila, and I'm here today with Nader Davitt. You guys may know Nader because he was, for a long time, a pretty well known figure in the crypto space doing a lot of work in the DevRel at some pretty popular projects, including Aave, Ben's developer DAO. I think you were also founding member of, and most recently, Eigen Cloud, also was called Eigenlayer before. And but you recently transitioned. You did the pivot that everyone said to do, pivot to AI, once all the AI stuff started getting big. That was a really interesting thing to see because I've been following your work for a long time, really just in your perspective from a technical point of view. And, like, I saw you as someone that was really a really good follow in order to keep up with what was going on in the crypto space. And then, you know, AI by coding, agentic coding, whatever you want to call it, kind of, I think, has taken over a lot of the mind share of a lot of people, especially on social media in the tech world. So that'd be really interesting to have you on and just kind of hear some of your reflections on your time in the crypto space and kind of advice that you have for people who are still in it since I think you would have a really interesting perspective on that. So, yeah, I think to start off, I mean, it'll be great if there's any more introduction you want to give and, like, is there anything I guess, I really just need to know, like, what was the initial thing about the blockchain space that really drew you to it, like, its early ethos and whether you think that ethos has kind of has stayed or it's changed. And,

yeah, I guess, whether and, like, how do you think about your transition into AI? Yeah. Well, happy to be here and, you know, excited to maybe dive into this because I haven't really talked about it publicly, I don't think, other than when I kind of announced the move. So it'll be cool to kind of, you know, dive a little bit deeper into that and and just go back and forth over some of these different things that have been running through my head and maybe other people said as well.

Yeah. For sure. So, yeah, like, I'm cur like, what brought you to the crypto space in the first place? And do you think like, is it still interesting or exciting to you in that way?

So what brought me to the crypto space was 2020, I believe. 2021 was when I actually made the move. But 2020, I was starting to dab a little more into it. And I've been dabbling in crypto since, like, 2016, 2017, and as a spec like, in speculative ways, but not really in a way like a developer would until, like, the twenty twenty, twenty twenty one. At the time, I was working at AWS, which is a pretty started to become a little bit boring. I've been there for almost four years, and there really wasn't much happening in the cloud, like, world. We were sipping new features that were, like, incrementally in improvements or incremental improvements over the things we had. But for me, it wasn't, like, a really fun thing to wake up and do every day at at that point in time after almost four years there. And then I started learning more about crypto from the perspective of, like, a developer, from looking at DeFi protocols and smart contracts and all those things for the first time ever. And because the technology was so new and it was so just, I would say, not figured out yet, It just seemed so, so exciting relative to kind of the stuff I was doing at AWS. And I was also inspired a lot by some of the ideas behind, like, Web three. So, essentially, you could think of I I would kind of more categorize, like, decentralized social or decentralized, like, applications, shared back ends, more in that category as opposed to, like, finance. So that was always the thing that kind of really excited me and interested me. And, it was a complete, like, one eighty from what I was doing at Amazon, which was, like, boring, I would say, infrastructure style work. And this was more exciting news, things that just hadn't been figured out. Really, you know, most of the work that we're doing at AWS, we figured out how to scale. We figured out how to build things. Like, all these things that we were doing where, like, there were answers to it. We were just making incremental improvements. Whereas crypto seemed like, oh, nothing is figured out yet. So it just seemed so so exciting to me, and, I decided to make the change to work in the crypto almost overnight. Like, literally, within a couple of days, I decided that's what I wanted to do. And then I decided

to start, like, interviewing at companies, and one thing led to another. Yeah. So it was really, like, a kind of a as a technical challenge, it sounds like Yeah. I think it's interesting that for you, what was interesting was not really the financial aspects even though that is, like, generally what a lot of people focus on.

Yeah. I mean, I think stablecoins were always really interesting to me, and DeFi was interesting to me, but it wasn't the most interesting part. The most interesting part was more of, like, the shared infrastructure ideas

resulting in products like, you know, a forecast or lens protocol and differentials social and decentralized front ends and stuff. So, Jimmy, at this point, do you I mean, are you disillusioned with kind of the crypto space, and has it been able to live up to those things that, like, you were excited about in the beginning, or has it really lacked?

Okay. The answer to am I disillusioned? Yes. I am disillusioned a bit, but that doesn't mean a lot of these things haven't really become successful. I think crypto has proven itself to be extremely good at certain things like finance, trading, payments, a lot of, like, really great powerful things that enable a lot of cool stuff. But the things that I was interested in and that I was trying to be a part of didn't really pan out as well. And then there's all the other stuff that's happened over the last few years with a lot of the, you know, the grifting and all of those things has Yeah. Seems to have just gotten worse. And our industry seems to reward those people. Or I wouldn't say our industry, like, does that on purpose, but they're very forgiving, like and people are get away with a lot of stuff. And I think for people that are in it for reasons that are more balanced, and I'm not gonna say, like, I wasn't admit I'm not working at a company to not get paid also. Like, all of us want to make a living, but it's not, like, the most important thing. Like, we we often almost always actually take less money to do things that we think are, like, more interesting and more impactful. But the people that do the opposite, the scammers and all those people seem to be the ones that that actually, like, are being rewarded often. You know, you could almost argue more often than everyone else. And that, yeah, that kind of burnt me out, and that that did build disillusioned me. And then kind of seeing what happened with Farcaster and Lens and, you know, a lot of these decentralized,

like, applications that weren't financial and not really making it was also a little disillusioning. So, yeah, it was kind of like a bunch of things. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on, like, why you think those maybe just speaking about, like, maybe decentralized social applications, like, why they didn't have the way that people wanted them to pan out? Building successful software is just incredibly hard, period.

It's just so fucking hard. Like, you can do everything right. You can use the fastest database. You can have the most optimal UX. You can do everything right and still not make it. And then, you know, we're now adding that additional complexity of decentralization and kind of, like, now have all these additional constraints. And this was an argument that a lot of people made to me, like, a long time ago. Like Right. So it's not like a new argument. Right? It was just something that I was not, I would say, bought and on in the sense of I thought that people would see the value of some of these features that can be, like, enabled by the centralization, and it would become successful because of that. But the barrier of, like, onboarding the masses is just really hard when you have these additional constraints. And kind of we've seen that happen over and over in different ways for these types of applications. Whereas finance is a more optimal, like, use case, I would say, trading and all these different, like, financial financialized applications or a better use of that. And therefore, that value proposition really shined a lot better as opposed to these other, like, ideas. Right. So I think, like, one of the things that I've, like, kind of felt

whenever there's a certain moment that I can't really say when exactly happened or that. But I remember feeling that, like, AI kind of took all of mind share and all the space and, like, air from the room that, like, a lot of times crypto would kind of inhabit just because it was, like, this new thing and people kind of figuring out, like you said, there's all this space to kind of figure stuff out and, like, play technical challenges around. But there's also been this kind of I think part of the thing is that, like, when you grab when you do something with AI, we do if you try a little bit of vibe coding, agentic coding, you are able to, like, immediately create something, and it becomes real. Like, you're able to, like, move from idea to to something that you can play around with quite quickly, and it has nothing to do with finance. And it was to be a moment of just like, wow. AI immediately made something that was, like, useful to me that had nothing to do with finance, and, like, I can begin play but it like, I feel like that interaction pulled it's, like, one of the things that pulled the air out of the room for crypto because crypto was just kinda repeating the same thing of, like, another meme growing launchpad, another, like, financialized bullshit, whatever. Yeah. I don't know if you have any reflections on that. Yeah. There was, like, two

in my opinion, at least, like, at least for me, there was two times when I was really compelled, maybe three times I was really compelled by the AI space as someone that's just always looking and excited about, like, the cutting edge or bleeding edge. And I'll go into more where I did think the future has even had a best beyond AI even. But for now, I'll say, it was, like, 2023 when GPT started becoming, like, pretty good in terms of what people could build on it with IGBT. I heard and talked to quite a few people that kinda pivoted into AI at that point from other areas of software. And it was a time when I also kind of considered it about doing that as well just because of the, you know, big value proposition, and you also have this opportunity cost of not doing things. And but I would say mainly the exciting thing was the ability to create valuable applications really easily, whereas it's so much harder to build value applications valuable applications on crypto that are apparent to the, like, normal person. So the first app I ever built on an AI API was in, like, 2023, and it literally got over a 100,000 users within a couple of days per day. It was, like, the most successful thing I've ever built. And I built, you know, tons of things on crypto rails before that. None of them had, like, really done that well. So that was a really cool feeling. Oh, wow. Like, I can just spend a weekend building something, and everyone gets value out of it. That was a really great feeling as a builder, and I think all builders love that feeling. Right? So a AI just makes it really easily easy to build cool stuff. Right? And a lot of us are in crypto because we like to build cool stuff. You know? So but, yeah, there was, like, a couple of times, I think, you know, 2023 and then, you know, depending on how tapped in you are, you might have seen the, like, improvements happening with, like, Claude and these other different coding tools or the agent decoding agent encoding LLMs that that have kind of, like, moments where you were like, oh, wow. This is we can kind of see where this is going, and, yes, this is awesome. But, really, I think the big one was in December, and a lot of people have written this when Opus 4.5 and Codex 5.2 came out. They were kind of like a tipping point where you could say that there was, like, a before and after. Mhmm. Like, before it was 4.5, I couldn't reliably say that the LLMs that are out there could do most of the work that's out there consistently, reliably, like a bar that most people would be okay with. But Opus four point five, like, was that. And that was, like, a moment where everyone was like, oh, shit. Like, you know, this this is gonna change really everything. And it became really, like, fun and exciting to start diving into that a little more. So, yeah, I would say at the moment for me, it was, like, two moments. Like, 2023, wow. This is crazy, and it's gonna change everything. And then twenty twenty five December,

wow, it's actually here, and now it is gonna change everything. So Which is pretty fast. I mean, that is like I feel like it happened much faster than I thought it would, I guess, or, like, the models have improved a bit faster than I thought it would. But, yeah, I guess I'm curious to talk I mean, maybe speaking on a little bit, like, what you see coming. One of the questions that I've kind of been asking a lot of the AI research that have come on is, like, what what you see the effects of Agencia coding on the on software engineering as a profession kind of generally. You know, there's the you know, a lot of people there's, like, the classic tweet that everyone is like, we're, you know, we're so screwed. You know, everyone's losing their job, and everything is going to you know, we're just not ready for this type of moment. Where do you stand on that? And do you think that I mean, one, I would imagine, like, everyone has basically said to kind of fundamentally changes a lot of software engineering, but I'm it kinda clashes with this contradiction of, like because one of the things that people talk about is the lack of need for, like, junior developers. How do we get more developers if nobody needs a junior developer afterwards? But, yeah, I don't know if you what your thoughts on that stuff.

Yeah. I think that there's a lot of nuance there. And if anyone is gonna sit there and say nothing is gonna change, like, everything is fine, they're obviously not being, like, honest. And then if on the other hand, people are like, oh, everything is gonna end. It's the end of the world. Like, those people are also not really being honest. There's a lot of, like, clickbait and stuff out there. There's definitely nuance there. Right? So for me, the way I look at it, it's like before you had the printing press, you had these people that were, like, scribes, I guess, that would, like, write books and stuff. And it was being able to, like, express your knowledge was only and your ideas was, like, only available to, like, a very small number of people, and it wasn't scalable. But after the printing press and as things progressed from there, you had a lot more people that were able to kind of express ideas. So a lot more people became, like, writers. And you ended up now having instead of the ability for only a small number of people to kind of, like, print and create, like, books at scale, you had this opened up to it to a lot more people. It might be kind of like an analogy, I would say, similar to that where the craft of software engineering has completely changed. Right? You can't sit there and say, oh, I'm gonna go and learn how to code and get out of school and become a junior engineer. That job is, like, probably not gonna exist in six months. I'm not even, like, exaggerating on that. So what does, like, software engineering look like? Well, you still need more of the advanced, like, senior level people that know how to architect and engineer systems together. And you still need, I would say, a little bit of knowledge around how source control works and how to wire in back end systems. So it's still like tech work. It's just a lot it's just gonna look a lot different. So if you want to be a software engineer today, you need to probably expand, like, what the definition of software engineer means. You can't just go learn JavaScript and expect to get a job. You should learn how to, like, orchestrate agents. You should learn how to do cloud computing. You should learn how infrastructure as code works. You should learn, like, AWS and maybe dive into DigitalOcean, all these different types of, like, server software or server services. You should learn everything about the most bleeding edge, like, agentic, coding tools. You should learn all these different things, and then you're so that that's kind of my definition of a software engineer today. And if you're not there, you're gonna be you're gonna lose your job probably, like, very soon if you haven't already. Uh-huh. So that's kind of where we're at. That doesn't mean that software engineering, like, is going away. It's just, like, you're gonna change a lot, and you can't just be a specialist at one thing. You kinda have to be more of, like, a jack of all trades, and I think staying on the cutting edge and bleeding edge is important. But at the end of the day, you just wanna provide, like, value to a company that's gonna hire you or be able to build something like yourself. Right? So if I'm gonna hire someone, like and I can just do the work myself with the prompt, I'm not gonna hire that person. But if I can bring someone in and they can do, like, a million things, then that makes a lot more sense. Right. It sounds like to me, like, you have to think like an architect rather than, like, a craftsman

maybe, if that's the right analogy. That makes sense. Like an architect or yeah. That makes sense. Like, to because you have the details the smaller bits can be figured out by agents. It's just knowing whether or not at the high level, this whole thing that you're trying to make sense in the first place and maybe from a architectural point of view.

Yeah. And there's, like, little complexities, like creating and configuring environment variables and having, like, local and testing and production, you know, systems. And all of that stuff is kinda like engineering type of stuff that you should know. And if you're just, again, just writing JavaScript and testing it locally and, like, that was your job in the past, then you're not as valuable as someone that knows how to do all these other things. So, yeah, just learning how to build end to end systems, maintain them. I think site reliability engineering is gonna be, like, around for a while. I think that type of work that's beyond just coding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, understand how to work on a server and stuff like that. Yeah.

So, yeah, I guess we can kind of all see what's coming with the AI stuff. I mean, probably models will, at the very least, improve. A little bit from now, they're already pretty good. I think one of the things that has been a narrative that's, like, for some bit in the crypto space is, like, this intersection of the two. And that you know, one of one of the things that I'm trying to figure out myself is whether or not it's like, does blockchain play a role in the ownership, governance, and verification of these the use of these AI models or not? Or is it simply, like, superfluous kind of, like, things that we thought would be interesting, but actually in practical reality, that's kinda too difficult? I'm curious for you, you know, having been in both now and deep in it, do you think there is anything interesting there with this intersection, or is it mostly bullshit? Because it seems like a lot of companies are raising on like, you just say AI and crypto in one sentence, and then you get money thrown at you.

Like, in the real world, you have to have product market fit in order to make it right, like in a regular software industry. So I think that's kind of what crypto needs to prove in in the AI space as well. There's a lot of, like, theory and ideas, and often those theory and those theories and ideas are ahead of their time, and they do end up being, like, really true, and those companies make a lot of money. Right? But what we've seen in crypto, it's more not that. It's more people promising the world and delivering nothing. And I think people are just tired of that. So specifically with crypto and AI, yeah, I do think there's a lot of potential there, and there will be some really big companies that are able to figure things out. But on one hand, you can argue that crypto is probably, like, at least stable coins are probably the ideal monetary, like, system for AI agents because they are permissionless, and you can send and spend and all these things without having to go through a lot of these, like, regulatory hoots. And that's true for sure, and I think that's gonna probably pan out to some extent. But who's gonna capture the value? Like, you can't just say, oh, like, crypto and AI are perfect, and AI agents are gonna use stable coins. So I'm building this company, and, like, we should be worth a billion dollars. Like, how are you gonna make money off of that? How are you gonna make money off of this? Right? Like, our company generates revenue, the company I work for now. A lot of these companies like Figma and all these companies are worth billions of dollars, and they've taken a huge hit over the last few months. And they're still generating, like, crazy amounts of revenue. They're profitable. They're literally making money, and they're worth less than, you know, some of the valuations that we've seen in crypto for companies that literally make, like, almost nothing. Right? So I think, like, what crypto is gonna start moving into, it's it's just gonna be like normal software because it's maturing. You're gonna need product market fit, and you're gonna need revenue, and you're gonna need to have a balance sheet that shows that I'm making a $100,000 a month, and I'm spending $80,000 a month. So I'm profitable, and therefore, people want to invest in me. Because you see the stock market is really out outperformed relative to crypto. And if you take it on a case by case basis per capita of the number of things that have launched on the stock market versus that have launched on, like, crypto, like, tokens, it's in crazy disproportion between what the valuations have changed over time because there are there is red tape to launching on the stock market. You have to go through a lot of scrutiny to be allowed to be a publicly traded company. And therefore, you can't really scam and, like, do this crazy stuff for the most part. Yes. It happens. But if it does, it makes national news. But it happens every day, every few minutes maybe, like, in the crypto space. Yep. And you have millions of tokens that have launched maybe. Where's all the money gonna come from? Like, where like, how are all these companies gonna be worth anything? But if you have to go through a year of red tape and proving yourself and revenue and, like, profitability and all these things to get listed on an exchange, which is a not the stock exchange. Right? Then then you have, like, already done all of this due diligence. So, like, the filtering is done upfront. Now I'm not arguing that that we shouldn't have permissionless token launches because those are great because they allow people to invest early because, let's say, the next Anthropic is a crypto company. If you spotted that early and you're able to invest, you should be able to invest. You shouldn't have to be a billionaire and, like, have all these connections. So there's definitely some, like, nuance there. But in general, what you're kind of seeing is the fact that I can go and write a script and launch a million tokens tomorrow. But to get list on the stock market, I have to put in ten years of work and have a profitable company. There's a massive discrepancy there, and that's why I think that crypto, in order to have that product market fit, needs to actually and they are, I guess. It is seems to be moving in the direction of profitability and revenue almost to the point where you're seeing crypto companies start to launch

their own stocks as opposed to tokens. Right? Right. Right. Yeah. So I mean, it's been kinda crazy to me to see, like, people refer to it as the revenue meta or something like that in the crypto space Right. As if it was, like, a narrative that you have to make a revenue token. Like, I I'm the socialist here, and I know you have to make revenue to take a company and make profit. That's the whole point of it.

Yeah. I mean, you I mean, at some point, you have to pay the bills. Right? And the money and, like, for a while, we could be driven on hype, but that's still exhausting. Imagine every day you come to work and you're like, I have to go on Twitter and, like, talk about how our company's gonna be worth, like, a million dollars or a billion dollars or whatever. I don't know. In the future, even though we haven't done shit today, like, that's your job is to go on Twitter and, like, type yourself up. That's not fun. Like Yeah. Do you think a smart person graduating from, like, Stanford or a high agency smart person that drops out of high school that can go do whatever they want because they're that smart? Any of these, like, extremely smart people, they can apply themselves anywhere in the world. Do you think that's the type of work they wanna do, like, to go and try to, like you're essentially trying to kind of, like, con people out of their money into buying your token because you're promising the world that you haven't delivered anything. Like, that's not fun and exciting. That's exhausting to even think about. And that's kind of what crypto has been for the last few years. Right? Because you're kind of, like, getting more people to buy than to sell because you haven't made any money. And that hyperliquid is a great example of a company that literally makes money and, like, is doing some shit with it. Like, that that's an example. I'm not, like, you know, saying I support or I don't support or whatever. I'm like, you know, I think Hyperliquid's kinda cool, but it's just an example of a company that that actually makes money, and they're doing stuff with it and gets to them. Right. But it is still an example of a financialized use case.

Fair. Yeah. To me, at least amongst my cohorts of people in the crypto space, there has always been a hunger for something else that was not so financialized to to be something that was, like, big and successful in the crypto space.

For sure. Yeah.

Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about this if you're open to it because, you know, you're pretty well known in the crypto space. You have a big presence. You do a really good job at, like, herding the nerds together, I guess, and, like, bringing a bunch of people who are really interested in technical problems together. So, I mean, I think you think a lot about, obviously, technology, sovereignty, and, like, the control the control that, like, tech technology has as well and, like, who controls it and how that influences things. There was, like, a moment I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about because you've spoken a bit about being Palestinian, being Palestinian American. And I'm curious, like, how that perspective has maybe shaped how you think about technology and, you know, having still ongoing genocide. Yeah. If you have any sort of reflections in how, you know, there's a certain moment in the crypto space if you care to talk about it or not where, you know, the Zionists were out to get you a little bit.

But, yeah, I think you've you've helped quite well. Yeah. I mean, I've had to block people for sure. And I think what I've learned at this point, like, regarding politics and a lot of these very, like, heated things that that are out there. It's that there are people that, like, believe things based on ideology, and they're impossible to argue with. And all they do is drain you of your life and your energy and the positivity that you can bring into this world. So the only way to deal with them is to just delete them from your life. So my strategy has been, okay, I am very fortunate to make a good amount of money. No matter what I've done in the last seven or eight years, I've been very fortunate. The way that I can impact people is by, like, you know, sharing my own story every once in a while because I do have a large platform, and I've written about things in the past, and they're available on my blog, and I've never deleted anything. In fact, I try not to even edit anything because I want that story to stand at that moment in time because things have changed so much. Since then, someone can go back and see that snapshot of, like, where I stood at that point in time, and they can't argue that I've changed anything. But, yeah, for me, the most impactful thing I can do is just give back financially or personally or things like that because I have, like, a lot of mental health issues with anxiety, depression, and I would say, yeah, anxiety and depression are, like, the two things that that I struggle with a lot. And having, like, a public presence and then being attacked is something that is really hard for me to deal with. Like, I literally will go into kind of, like, a spiral for, like, weeks or months at a time for little things that might that shouldn't probably affect me at all. And I've had that happen so many times that I just don't wanna deal with it anymore. And I've also realized it's, like, pointless to argue with people online. Like and but what's also cool, though, is that the world is starting to become more aware of the truth of things that are happening in the world. It's crazy. The things that, like, I've known and a lot of other people have known and that I would say we're almost too, like, crazy to believe or things like that in the past are now becoming, like, general knowledge. Right. So that's really interesting to see. So I almost feel like the voice that I have, like, would, you know, still probably be good for me to speak up more than I even do at this point. But the but everyone is talking about it. Like, it's really interesting to see that a lot of these, like, people that maybe would have been bullied in the past are not afraid to speak up anymore. And it's becoming like you know, you have people, like, even, I don't know, Tucker Carlson that are coming out and talking about things that I don't even like. I really didn't like this guy, like, ever. But I feel like even people that I didn't like are starting to see the truth and things and speak their mind. And I don't agree with everybody all the time, but but it is interesting to kind of see people that I completely disagree with on everything start to come around and have, like, more balanced views on things, which is really interesting to see. But, yeah, I mean, for me, the TLDR is, like, I've dealt with a lot of mental health issues, like, lately with some of that stuff. So I've tried not to get in these online arguments anymore. And I think the most, like, impactful way that I've been able to make a difference is, like, monetarily helping people and doing things that I know this is gonna go and help this one person or this family. And then I can feel like I've done something, and they know that I've helped. And the world doesn't really have to know about it, and I can go to sleep at night without having to worry about someone, like, attacking me or my my family. Yeah. I've been completely fair. Yeah. Yeah. To see people like Taco Car Carlson somehow

making the circle and changing his view and all of that stuff, I think it just I mean, I wanna I think it shows just the obviousness of the situation and just, like, how the amount of mental gymnastics that you have to keep doing in order to convince yourself that's that, you know, just keep following the line of, like, American media or whatever is, like, I think for too many people, even on on the rights, even in on the conservative side are it's too much to bear. It's, like, you know, too obvious in the same way that maybe, like, you know, people trying to convince that Joe Biden was, like, mentally all the way there too. I mean, it was like, you know, you could see it with your own eyes. It's not hard to say.

A 100%.

But, yeah, I guess because yeah. The, I mean, Des's perspective for you, like, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts when it comes to the creation of decentralized technologies that I imagine that, like, this type of perspective also, like, like, I'm interested in decentralized technologies because I'm interested in decentralized power. Because, like, many of the type of issues that I'm interested in, I feel like have been ones that have been centralized around very specific type of actors, very specific type of people. And AI in particular is, like, often framed as this, like, ultimate centralizing technology as far as, like, how, you know, the companies that make these big corporate models are able to concentrate power and wealth to themselves. And then crypto is kind of meant to be this, like, counterweights to it. But in practice, it hasn't really been or it maybe has been in, like, some in small ways. And, you know, I I mean, I tried to practice it, you know, where I talk about sending, like, a bunch of crypto to people in Gaza to send aid to them. Like, it's to me, this is, like, crazy thing that we're able to do, but it's something that doesn't get, I mean, doesn't get that much attention as what it could be whenever people really love to talk about the decentralization aspects of crypto as well. So, yeah, I'm how are you thinking, like, these, like, tensions between decentralization and technologies and Super interesting,

yeah, areas to dive into. I think, like, for me, central resistance has always been something, like, really cool. It's like someone can go and delete my Twitter account tomorrow, and I'm just done. And that was why this entire social was always so, like, interesting to me because it is, like, the expressivity of what it means to be censorship resistant. Like, what does that mean to actually be expressed in the real world? Well, to me, it's kind of like having a platform that no one can take away from you and having places to, like, collaborate and talk, do things that are not able to be censored. Because the biggest platforms today are very prone to censorship, and that hasn't changed at all. Right? Like, Twitter is worse than it's ever been in terms of that. Like, we're not seeing, like, a lot of bans happen that I know of maybe. Like, I'm sure it's happening, but they can and they still do ban people. And you see that happening on Instagram as well, and then you start seeing now, like, these these groups of people that are buying these companies. Like, there's a been a conglomerate now with a lot of the media companies and TikTok and all these different things. It's just getting worse. So, like, the idea of censorship resistance is has continued to be that one big part of, like, what I got excited about. It's just hard to actually build a, like, platform that I would say has mass adoption. It is cool, though, to know that I can go and I can actually save information somewhere on Ethereum or another network or some other, like, place that isn't gonna be that cannot be erased. That's really great to know. But how can people discover that and things like that? That still is to be, like, you know, yet determined. Like, you know, we don't really have a great network for that right now, I would say. So there's that aspect, and then there's the decentralized payments and, like, stable coins and stuff like that. So that's really important because with the stabilization become you know, you have destabilized currencies and you have people that are taking other people's money. Right? Like, you you literally have a lot of that happening when you have wars and things like that. So the ability to kinda, like, score money and prepare yourself for these sorts of situations, at least giving people that ability, and they have had that is really great because, you know, you can obviously have all of your money in your head, and no one could really take that from you. Or if they can, it's gonna be in a very, like, crazy violent way. At least, no one can just, like, come and rob you. Right? So, like, the all those sorts of things are really important, and they really still, like, excite me and make me care about, like, crypto and the ethos of crypto. But in terms of AI, yeah, this is a really another interesting point. It's almost kind of like how the social networks are. The people with all of the power are able to kind of control, like, what the outcomes are, and they can stare these things in very underhanded ways that are not visible to us. So there's a lot of, you know, discussions around the ethics of OpenAI and ethics of anthropic and then these things, especially in the last week. But, really, it's always kind of been a topic of discussion. And you can see a clear, like, fork in the row what happened in the last week between what Anthropic and OpenAI was willing to do. But you could even argue that Anthropic has already crossed the line of what ethical coders should have been because they've already had these contracts with the government to to do these sorts of things. Right? So you have, like, these different models and these different, like, I would say, training datasets that affect the the future of the world because, like, people grow up now in this world where they're talking to AI, and AI is kind of, like, the source of truth. So, like, if the source of truth is tainted, then the truth is going to be, like, written by whoever is in charge of these large models. Now I have hope that we're gonna have, like, open source models and the ability I think this technology is gonna progress in the next few years that you'll have really great models that are trained fairly that are available to everyone. I'm not as worried maybe as as some people are. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Maybe

before we go, last question, and then we can go. But are there any, like, advice based on your time and, like, reflection on the crypto space that you would give for people who are still in it? What are things that they really need to hear now or else, like, kind of crypto is awash, basically?

Yeah. No. I mean, I've learned so much. Wow. Like, I've made so many mistakes, and I've had a lot of great also experiences that I would say were a success as well. So I would say that a lot of the people in crypto have this way of selling things in a way that are kinda, like, aspirational. And it's important to work with people who are grounded that have a balance between aspiration and reality and that they can actually accomplish things that they say they're gonna do and that you don't get conned by someone. I mean, there's been so many examples of ideas that sound so amazing to me that I was also bought into that idea. I might not have worked for that company, but I believe in that person. Like, they may be we believe in them only to be let down ever and ever. But there are also examples of people that kind of have ideas that were great, but they were grounded, and you kind of, like, almost see that difference in in who they are. Right? So I would just say be careful about the people that you believe and try to kind of, like, really question everything. And if you can kinda do that, you can probably come to a place where you are not being led down a path that isn't, like, true or right and that you're able to work on things that might actually have the ability to find success. You don't wanna spend a year or two doing something that like, for instance, let's just say, like, if I had decided to go work for Movement Labs, there was a point in time when I first met him that I was, like, impressed by him a lot. But quickly before all this stuff happened, I kinda made a realization, oh, okay. I see what's going on here. And then imagine staying and kind of believing in that founder for, like, two years or something. Right? That would really suck. So, I mean, that's just kind of an example of, like, you know, try to do due diligence about the idea, product, person that that you're working for and work on things that either, I would say, have the ability to be real true valuable things at some point in time in the future. Or even if you know the thing that you're not working on is ever gonna be worth anything, it's still really cool to do cool research and stuff like that. So, you know, find the thing that you want to be working on, but don't put too much trust in some of these founders. You you heard it here. Don't trust those founders at the five things that are more grounded in reality. Yeah. There are great people out there. Like, you know, but they're the exception. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

Well, thanks so much, Neda, for coming on and sharing your reflections. I think, yeah, it's a huge loss that you left the crypto space, but totally understandable and totally fair. You're, anyways, I think working on really cool things. And, yeah, I'm sure I will see you soon again.

Totally. I mean, I'm still in a bunch of my crypto group chats. I still I'm still, tapped in to a lot of things happening, and who knows? I could dive back in some form or fashion as well. I think the cool thing about AI is, like, it touches everything including

crypto. So I think that it's not like one or the other. I can maybe do a little bit, which is fine. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. If you like what I'm doing here, consider supporting the show on Patreon. Your contributions help me keep doing this work and dive deeper into the politics of decentralized technologies. I promise you absolutely zero financial returns, no airdrops, and your investment may go to zero. But But you will get good content. Check out patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to support the show.