Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 755 Near Token Rallies as Foundation Reveals Its AI, Privacy & Intents Strategy
Transcript
- 0:08[SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody, we're back here at the out east summit.
- 0:11[SPEAKER_01]: I am joined by the chief legal officer, C.I.L.O.
- 0:13[SPEAKER_01]: Abbey, V.N.A.than.
- 0:15[SPEAKER_01]: Check my hand.
- 0:17[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kidding.
- 0:18[SPEAKER_00]: I was wondering where that was going.
- 0:19[SPEAKER_00]: Where that was going.
- 0:20[SPEAKER_00]: There they are.
- 0:21[SPEAKER_00]: No, you been to join the conference.
- 0:22[SPEAKER_00]: It's been awesome.
- 0:23[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, I think we're going to have a beautiful day today.
- 0:25[SPEAKER_00]: Thank God.
- 0:26[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of regretting wearing this, although, you know, if you can see, we got some chickens here.
- 0:30[SPEAKER_00]: Got some, you know, some other stuff.
- 0:33[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, on this on this jack.
- 0:34[SPEAKER_00]: It's a nice nice nice nice piece nice little summer summer fit Yeah, and a beautiful summer day for us to to enjoy being being here with the Crypto's finest absolutely.
- 0:43[SPEAKER_01]: It was catch us up on on the near foundation a little bit about your role You guys have had just an incredible last couple years You know privacy intense You know cross chain swaps and and all that kind of stuff, but but catch us up on your background a little bit what you're working on And then we'll kind of dive into
- 1:03[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we'll never want to appreciate you guys having us on the pod.
- 1:09[SPEAKER_00]: So as I said, I'd be shaked by the nothing chief legal officer right near.
- 1:12[SPEAKER_00]: So I roll sort of spans and legal and strategy at the foundation where I've been for about three years now.
- 1:17[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, we're really excited about really two of the core areas that we're.
- 1:22[SPEAKER_00]: We've been working on for some time now and the first I mean comes back to the the founding of near itself, which is AI and and really near was found it as a you know as a way to to scalably pay people for for data sets actually and so you know that and that that was a sort of the genesis of the project as as a sort of blockchain now or I mean you're putting putting age on LIA you know
- 1:50[SPEAKER_00]: eight seven years ago at what have you and you know obviously midnight and and 2019 so so our or rather just after that but but you know I think we we we we we started with that we've come back to to to to those roots on the a.i.s.
- 2:03[SPEAKER_00]: and then on 10 so obviously as you mentioned you know
- 2:07[SPEAKER_00]: sort of pioneering really the the cross train assets whopping space.
- 2:12[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a hundred plus block chain supported or a hundred plus assets across 30 plus block chains, you know, we've now crossed about 20 billion in volume.
- 2:20[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a really exciting technology and really building what we think is the future of the transfer of programmable assets, which, you know, we're speaking about on a panel later today, but we think we'll also be, you know, primarily
- 2:36[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
- 2:36[SPEAKER_01]: So when you say AI and crypto, a lot of people take that and their imagination can run wild because these are two, you know, really big technologies, really big concepts.
- 2:46[SPEAKER_01]: What is AI meets crypto to the near foundation?
- 2:49[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so maybe I'll take it at a higher level for this, right?
- 2:52[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, if you think about, let's just start with an intent, right?
- 2:56[SPEAKER_00]: Or what is an intent, intent is just a way of asking for something to happen.
- 3:00[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's literally like my intent is to push this.
- 3:04[SPEAKER_01]: And I do it and my intent is to speak with you.
- 3:07[SPEAKER_01]: Like that's what you mean by intent.
- 3:08[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
- 3:09[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're intent is to push this, oh, and I need some help.
- 3:11[SPEAKER_00]: So here's a market and I'm available to help you.
- 3:14[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to push this together.
- 3:15[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 3:15[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think similarly we started with programmable assets because sort of crypto is a natural currency, if you will for AI and what I mean by that is it's programmable money.
- 3:36[SPEAKER_00]: And with near intends, you're able to swap, you know, X for Y.
- 3:40[SPEAKER_00]: That was the first intent, right?
- 3:41[SPEAKER_00]: So if you think of, you know, Solana for BTC or near for, for, um, for Canton, for example.
- 3:48[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to swap different types of assets,
- 3:51[SPEAKER_00]: That is the sort of the first layer, but the way that that happens and the way that generally you're going to interact with intense, right?
- 4:00[SPEAKER_00]: So the first if the first intent is to, you know, swap a crypto asset, we later have a wider set of assets, things like tokenize equities, you know, private credit products, let alone things like
- 4:10[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I want to buy a new pair of sunglasses, for example, we think naturally all of those things are those are all intense and they're all programmable right and so what we're building really is a way for AI agents to interact with.
- 4:26[SPEAKER_00]: with programmability.
- 4:28[SPEAKER_00]: And again, we started with with crypto assets because they're the most natural, you know, first, first fit.
- 4:35[SPEAKER_00]: We've already seen a lot of traction with that, but the vision is far broader.
- 4:38[SPEAKER_00]: It's really encompasses the desire of anyone for anything.
- 4:43[SPEAKER_00]: And I use a term any one broadly, because it could mean person or their or AI representation.
- 4:48[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly, or agent.
- 4:49[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a lot of people have been talking about this concept of like, you can't give your AI agent access to your bank account or your credit card.
- 4:56[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen like, you know, AI agentic credit cards or something like I've seen Robin Hood came out with something like that.
- 5:01[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 5:02[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, every transaction has is going to have a 3% fee, you know, all that kind of star 3 dollar fee, whatever it is.
- 5:07[SPEAKER_01]: And so people were really talking about how AI agents are going to be great for like, you know, machine to machine micro transactions.
- 5:14[SPEAKER_01]: So you kind of unpack this future.
- 5:15[SPEAKER_01]: If you put on your futuristic,
- 5:17[SPEAKER_00]: lens or cap right you know what is a world where you have all these AI agents making micro transactions what are they doing on our behalf yeah it's a great question and and I think you know there's a number of layers to this right so so one layer for example is you know what would typically be human to human now so if I think of you know man my roof just broke I need to find contractors to do this I've got to go get quotes from all these contractors
- 5:45[SPEAKER_00]: is capable of actually going out and getting those quotes, right?
- 5:48[SPEAKER_00]: So how does that all happen, right?
- 5:49[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's the number of layers of transactions involved, right?
- 5:52[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, the way I see the future and, right, the future is now, by the way, it's already being built in front of our eyes and we're building it is, is an Asian marketplace, right?
- 6:01[SPEAKER_00]: So, so what, what does that actually look like?
- 6:03[SPEAKER_00]: I go on, you know, on to a platform.
- 6:05[SPEAKER_00]: I connect my, it could be a crypto wallet, it could be a fiat wallet.
- 6:08[SPEAKER_00]: And I say, I need to complete X task, and I'm connected with a marketplace of agents that are capable of doing this.
- 6:15[SPEAKER_00]: So again, if I use that at this example of a roof, man, my roof is broken.
- 6:20[SPEAKER_00]: Now the manual process, I gotta go find 10 people or 10 different contractors in my area.
- 6:25[SPEAKER_00]: I get quotes from them, compare all.
- 6:28[SPEAKER_00]: Now in the near future, we'll have, say, a comparison agent that is able to go out, source those quotes, compare them, figure out exactly what it is you want.
- 6:38[SPEAKER_00]: and then go and do that.
- 6:39[SPEAKER_00]: Now that process involves a bunch of microtransactions, right?
- 6:43[SPEAKER_00]: There's transactions involved in doing the web searches for example, right?
- 6:46[SPEAKER_00]: So paying for example, the search API providers, people like XF for example, and our tokens, right?
- 6:51[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
- 6:52[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
- 6:53[SPEAKER_00]: There are then there's actually the correspondence, right?
- 6:57[SPEAKER_00]: So emailing the people, figuring out the quotes, paying deposits.
- 7:01[SPEAKER_00]: So all of these things are our microtransactions, and what they require
- 7:07[SPEAKER_00]: transaction infrastructure to be able to do that.
- 7:09[SPEAKER_00]: And I think Near was built with that in mind, right?
- 7:12[SPEAKER_00]: It was sort of built for the future that Elia saw long ago.
- 7:16[SPEAKER_00]: And that really was, it's a couple of fold, right?
- 7:18[SPEAKER_00]: It's one, you know, horizontally scalable, right?
- 7:21[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, without getting too much into, you know, what that means, it means that we can really support a huge number of transactions, right?
- 7:30[SPEAKER_00]: And in an extremely scalable way up all the way to like a million transactions per second.
- 7:35[SPEAKER_00]: Um, on top of that, we've got right quantum resistance, which we just launch on main net right that was a huge announcement to huge announcement where the first really of any major protocol to my awareness, to to be doing that and so that means you know some quantum computer isn't going to go and hack your funds, which is actually serious it's yeah people are scared about.
- 7:55[SPEAKER_00]: a serious problem, especially with machine payments, and then with all of that, you're then able to imagine this and build towards this future that you're asking about, which is machine machine payments.
- 8:08[SPEAKER_01]: Does it change like the user interface of the web, right?
- 8:11[SPEAKER_01]: Because right now, the web is for humans to point and click with their mouse and type in with your keyboard, but you know, if you kind of gain this out for the next five years, most of the web activity is going to
- 8:23[SPEAKER_01]: your bots, you speak on your phone, you know, find me, you know, 10 people to get quotes on.
- 8:28[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, it's almost like the web is going to become more nebulous, I think.
- 8:32[SPEAKER_01]: Like, do you guys have a firm view on what the web is going to look like in the near future?
- 8:38[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, it's actually funny.
- 8:39[SPEAKER_00]: I had this conversation with Ilya, maybe we've got a year or a year and a half ago and I didn't see it then, but I saw it, I see it now.
- 8:45[SPEAKER_00]: And what he said was, look, the web and generally app interfaces are in a collapse.
- 8:52[SPEAKER_00]: And what you're going to be left with is egentic interfaces that are created on the fly for you.
- 8:56[SPEAKER_01]: Because Elon also said that the apps that you know aren't going to exist in a few years, like I'm like this.
- 9:01[SPEAKER_01]: How is that going to work?
- 9:02[SPEAKER_01]: But he's just like, you're going to express your intent.
- 9:05[SPEAKER_01]: The AI's going to get it done, no app needed.
- 9:07[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
- 9:08[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, so there's, you know, you're seeing this across not only what we're doing, but even at the latest WDC, people get apples own sort of vision for their products, their, you know, Apple intelligence is very much going in this in this direction as well.
- 9:23[SPEAKER_00]: And, and that's to say, again, you know, you pick up your phone or you pick up whatever the future computing devices and you say,
- 9:31[SPEAKER_00]: I want to listen to X song and, you know, it's not Spotify that's opening and you're clicking the album.
- 9:36[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
- 9:37[SPEAKER_00]: The song just plays.
- 9:38[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 9:38[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, that you can do that with Siri, but, you know, and so it's a trivial example, but you can think of tons of examples where that isn't so trivial, right?
- 9:45[SPEAKER_00]: So for example,
- 9:47[SPEAKER_00]: I want to, you know, build a checkout page for, you know, for like a clothing store, I don't have a building.
- 9:53[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 9:53[SPEAKER_01]: Or like I want to go on my, I want to go on my banking app, and not go, I just want to say, you know, pay, you know, pay, price, you know, 25 bucks, right?
- 10:01[SPEAKER_01]: Pay, price 100 bucks for letting me appear on this podcast there.
- 10:05[SPEAKER_00]: But whatever it is, being able to do that immediately,
- 10:09[SPEAKER_00]: And without the sort of the latency and the frustration associated with a lot of the interviews, because if you think about it, you have to learn how to use every web.
- 10:18[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 10:18[SPEAKER_01]: They're all their own user interface.
- 10:19[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
- 10:20[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I think that, you know, that future is probably, I don't know, I would say two to three years away.
- 10:25[SPEAKER_00]: It's really not that far where for a dominant computing experience will be something like.
- 10:30[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, do you think and to kind of switch gears just to like some of the valuations we see in the market plays, you know, everybody's talking about, you know, these earnings and maybe it's a bubble like what would where do you guys stand on just the bubbly nature of AI do you think that this build out is sustainable or we're going to be over supplied with infrastructure and then, you know, model token pricing, you're going to come down like how do you kind of make a make sense of all this volatility and in this.
- 10:58[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, look, another great question.
- 11:00[SPEAKER_00]: I would say this.
- 11:01[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's, there's almost going to be endless demand for infrastructure, right?
- 11:06[SPEAKER_00]: That, that said, the pricing associated with it and the ability to charge premium prices, I think of as a sort of, what I call a diminishing return of intelligence, right?
- 11:15[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a certain point.
- 11:16[SPEAKER_00]: for most people in most tasks where more intelligence doesn't mean better results.
- 11:21[SPEAKER_00]: It actually just means, you know, enormously higher cost.
- 11:23[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
- 11:24[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is why you're sort of seeing across some of the top end of the source models now.
- 11:29[SPEAKER_00]: So you saw Kimmy K3 come out recently.
- 11:31[SPEAKER_00]: It's topping a lot of the benchmarks.
- 11:33[SPEAKER_00]: that you know when you're able to offer sort of similar to fable or you know top-end model pricing or model performance at 20% of the price yeah obviously going to put competitive pressure on the market right um now that in turn means that the most sort of the most intelligence is reserved for the task that must require it so things like I'm trying to solve aerodosia's problem which is like
- 12:00[SPEAKER_00]: as opposed to, you know, I don't know, not to, to, to fluke on lawyers, but, uh, you know, most legal tasks don't actually require, um, open intelligence, let alone, you know, opens for fable level intelligence, right?
- 12:12[SPEAKER_01]: And so, or mom's lasagna recipe, she's talking to, you know, it's exactly.
- 12:16[SPEAKER_01]: You could use the base level.
- 12:19[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're seeing what we're seeing as like this proliferation of model routers.
- 12:22[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, open router has one, you know, one of these, these, you know, herplexes one.
- 12:28[SPEAKER_00]: And iron claw, we have a native one built built into our age and harness.
- 12:32[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
- 12:33[SPEAKER_00]: And what this just allows you to do is ensure that the tasks that, you know, that you're asking for inference on are directed to the right, to the right model, right?
- 12:41[SPEAKER_00]: And,
- 12:42[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think this is going to start to reach ahead once earnings are negatively impacted by AI consumption because people probably aren't, you know, they aren't maybe monitoring that they're they're token consumption in a way that they really should be, you know, everyone's under, you know, under fresher to lock up deals with santhropic with open AI, et cetera.
- 13:00[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, I think it's, yeah, is it a bubble?
- 13:04[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's the most consequential technology certainly of my lifetime is it.
- 13:08[SPEAKER_00]: So, so, you know,
- 13:10[SPEAKER_00]: if you keep running.
- 13:10[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's certainly good to keep running.
- 13:12[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a financial bubble?
- 13:15[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't say so.
- 13:16[SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, the competitive pressures are going to be the competitive pressures and the winners may not be the ones that you think.
- 13:20[SPEAKER_00]: It may not be the frontier labs, it may be neoclats, it may be near, for example, because we've built an harness and infrastructure that allows you to privately use any model, right?
- 13:33[SPEAKER_00]: And whether it's a frontier ones or it's the
- 13:38[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'd be remiss if I had the CLO of near and didn't ask about some of the landscape that you're kind of forecasting for, you know, the legal sort of side of the business, right?
- 13:48[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, obviously everybody's deliberating clarity act right now.
- 13:51[SPEAKER_01]: Does it pass?
- 13:52[SPEAKER_01]: Does it not pass?
- 13:53[SPEAKER_01]: How do you as a CLO of a foundation kind of plan out your your legal strategy, your domicile strategy to do things change?
- 14:02[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, look, I obviously look at Pauli market.
- 14:05[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and and in all seriousness, if you look right start of the year chance of clarity passing 80 plus percent right now You know, I think until yesterday was probably down to say 4045 now it looks like we're getting close to human ethics deal Which was this sort of main thing that the Democrats were
- 14:25[SPEAKER_00]: Senate Democrats will focus on as as part of trying to, you know, agree to it.
- 14:29[SPEAKER_00]: So I think, you know, in all seriousness, prediction markets and news are not a bad way of actually thinking about, you know, the likeness or likelihood of things happening, but, but as, as far as our, our forecasts, I think, look, we've, we.
- 14:43[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the US is sort of desperate for, and we are desperate as legal practitioners for some regulatory clarity, dare I say, you know, here, but that only starts the journey right the rulemaking that has to happen after and we saw this with genius right it's like okay now now's the fight over stable coin yield and rewards right and and.
- 15:00[SPEAKER_00]: You know, who gets to read the rewards of this legislation and, you know, Jamie Diamond is still, you know, is still still upset about it.
- 15:06[SPEAKER_00]: And still, still, still watching to his pearls exactly.
- 15:09[SPEAKER_00]: And so, so the legislation is, is the start of the battle, but it's, it's, in many ways, the most important because, you know, with the change of administration that, that, that, that, you know, and the change of the guard that always happens, you don't want to be in a position where all your leftlet is administrative guidance, right?
- 15:27[SPEAKER_00]: crumble can grow crumble can go away with poof and then we're sort of back to where we were three or four years ago with regulation by enforcement and we don't want that again.
- 15:36[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
- 15:36[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm I'm certainly hopeful that with with the the ethics deal potentially reached we'll see clarity pass this year before before sort of the end of the year.
- 15:48[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, I think elsewhere, we're kind of seeing the consequences of other legislative regimes, think of Micah, for example, you know, Binance being forced to exit, which is, you know, fairly crazy news.
- 16:01[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, one of the benefits, any given years, you know, the way that we're thinking about infrastructure and the way many are is sort of we've got guidance from from the SEC and others around sort of.
- 16:13[SPEAKER_00]: what it takes to be a non-custodial brokerage interface, for example, and the power that that that affords the technology platform.
- 16:21[SPEAKER_00]: And so with near one of the things we're thinking about, it's how do we give users the most possible control over their assets, and the most number of assets, and minimize our sort of
- 16:33[SPEAKER_00]: securities risk securities risk security risk as well right for users and and and also any touch points to troll and so you know I think for engineering teams across the space that's a that's a journey many are are going on in our focus on and you know I think we're actually very well well situated to to be a winner on in that front as well love it and then kind of just around that the discussion what's near for near.
- 16:59[SPEAKER_00]: What's next?
- 16:59[SPEAKER_01]: What's on the agenda?
- 17:02[SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy, Dad joke.
- 17:06[SPEAKER_00]: But I think a couple of things.
- 17:07[SPEAKER_00]: So on the intense front, I think some exciting new asset types going to be supported will be launching tokenized equities, for example, I'm in fairly short order.
- 17:17[SPEAKER_00]: So I think you're going to start to see proliferation of new things that you can do with your intense, right, which is
- 17:25[SPEAKER_00]: which I think is really exciting.
- 17:26[SPEAKER_00]: You want to bring more to our users and you know whether it's through near.com which you know is the primary sort of distribution interface or through other partners, distribution partners that we work with say ledger and others.
- 17:40[SPEAKER_00]: So I think new asset types and new ways of transacting is one.
- 17:44[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the other on a similar vein is you know on the AI
- 17:53[SPEAKER_00]: What a staking brought, you know, usually in the past, it was yield, you know, rewards for effectively providing, you know, proof of stake, um, security.
- 18:01[SPEAKER_00]: And, and we're thinking, you know, recently we, we, we, we cut inflation from from five to two and a half percent and we're with
- 18:09[SPEAKER_00]: probably going to cut it further, but the thing in ways to reallocate or rethink staking, because in more mature blockchains, the amount of rewards that are paid out just doesn't make sense, and it's effectively downward pressure or jumping advice.
- 18:23[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, on that on that front, something that we are super excited about is being able to stay for inference.
- 18:30[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
- 18:30[SPEAKER_01]: And what will you stake your tokens and you are credits for an LLM?
- 18:35[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
- 18:36[SPEAKER_00]: I like that.
- 18:36[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for LLMs that you can you can use through to iron claw, which is our secure agent harness.
- 18:42[SPEAKER_00]: And so, it's a new way to actually, you know, interact.
- 18:46[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, people are paying subscription plans or, you know,
- 18:49[SPEAKER_00]: I, Lord knows how much I spent on AI every year.
- 18:51[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a really, you know, especially as as you see as I said that diminishing return of intelligence, this is a really cool way for people to, to both learn about near to get involved in our ecosystem and then also to, you know, to use, you know, the front here and, you know, top end models by just simply sticking there near I love her and credits for it.
- 19:12[SPEAKER_00]: So we're really excited for for for that as well.
- 19:15[SPEAKER_01]: a lot on the horizon.
- 19:16[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, look, finally, we want, you know, and we'll be launching sort of a new version of Iron Club, which, which again, it's, it's sort of, you think of OpenClar or Furmy's, yeah, even Claude Code.
- 19:29[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, these are just agent harnesses.
- 19:30[SPEAKER_00]: These are places where you can, we're, we're, we're, we're able to use AI in, in a personalized, and, you know, in a personalized manner.
- 19:38[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're, we're really excited to, to have that
- 19:43[SPEAKER_00]: agent's bank accounts for example or or or or your credentials this is a safer it's more secure way to do that and so we're really excited to to to be putting out our latest version of this and you know more to come on me you know on the benchmarking front because we're going to have some some very
- 20:00[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think some exciting things, exciting evidence, for example, of how much, you know, how much safer, how much more secure and how much more performance.
- 20:11[SPEAKER_00]: Ironquiet, so love it.
- 20:12[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, lots, lots to hear about.
- 20:15[SPEAKER_00]: And you heard it from the horses map here, so there you go.
- 20:18[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
- 20:19[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we appreciate having you, Mr. Abbey V of the near-foundation.
- 20:23[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully we get you back on again soon.
- 20:25[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to talk to some other folks from the team, but until then, everybody, we got some more great guests coming your way.
- 20:30[SPEAKER_01]: So, stay tuned.