Compiled by: Kyle
This episode of the "Hack and Tell" podcast was hosted by Sam Williams, who invited Teng Yan as a guest, and the two had an in-depth discussion on the future of Crypto, AI, and decentralized computing (AO).
Background Introduction
Sam Williams (@samecwilliams): Founder and inventor of Arweave and AO, and also the CEO of Forward Research.
Teng Yan (@0xPrismatic): Former researcher at Delphi Digital, with over 10 years of experience in the technology industry. He is now the head of the independent research company Chain of Thought, focusing on the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence.
Key Insights
1. Synergy between Crypto and AI
Both Teng Yan and Sam agree that while there is a lot of hype around the intersection of crypto and AI, this convergence has real disruptive potential, especially in building trustless autonomous systems and intelligent financial agents.
Teng Yan points out that the current hype and experimentation indicate that the industry is rapidly evolving, while Sam emphasizes that intelligent financial agents, as a trusted protocol, can operate without the need for intermediaries, which is a crucial feature.
2. The Origin of AO
Sam mentions that AO was initially designed to address the content transaction needs of a decentralized social media network (Odysee, with about 7-8 million monthly active users, now acquired by Forward Research). To build a system that supports content ownership transactions and an efficient market, the team eventually developed a new blockchain that supports scalable smart contracts, which was an unexpected innovation to solve their own problems.
3. The Transformation of Agent Finance
Sam describes agent finance as the most intuitive combination of decentralized AI and crypto technology. He points out that decentralized financial agents not only eliminate the need for traditional intermediaries (such as funds and banks), but also allow ordinary developers to participate in the creation of financial strategies. This reduction in trust and barriers to entry will unleash a vast amount of untapped innovation potential.
Teng Yan believes that most of the current transactions on the blockchain are related to finance, so agent finance is the best entry point for AI agents to enter the blockchain.
4. AI Technology Advancements on AO
At the technical level, Sam shares how AO supports the running of LLMs (such as Llama.cpp) in smart contracts, emphasizing that this is an important milestone in bringing AI to the blockchain. He acknowledges that the current performance is still lacking (0.7 tokens processed per second), but this capability provides a solid foundation for the future development of complex AI intelligence.
Teng Yan states that although the technology is not yet mature, these experiments have paved the way for the development of AI-driven practical applications.
5. Practical Applications of AI on AO
Sam provides a detailed introduction to the Llama Land case in the AO ecosystem, which is an experimental platform that allows users to experience decentralized governance and monetary policy through an AI-managed autonomous system. The core of LlamaLand is an AI (Llama 3) that can autonomously decide on the issuance of currency, and users can submit applications to it, with the AI automatically deciding whether to grant rewards. This is not only an interesting gameplay, but also demonstrates the potential of autonomous AI in on-chain economics.
6. Philosophical Discussions about AI
Both express similar views - the rise of decentralized AI is not only a technological innovation, but also a philosophical debate between open-source and centralized models.
Teng Yan believes that the open system of decentralized AI allows global developers and users to participate, breaking the monopoly of large tech companies and making AI development more democratic.
Sam emphasizes that the neutrality and trustworthiness of decentralized AI's execution is the essential difference from traditional centralized AI. This open system, like a protocol, can execute in a neutral manner without being controlled or manipulated by any single entity.
7. Building AI Infrastructure
Sam points out that the current focus is on establishing infrastructure that can attract developers, including tools and frameworks, to facilitate the rapid construction and deployment of AI applications. By lowering the barriers to innovation, developers can more easily achieve the cycle from learning to development to production.
Teng Yan supplements that the AI agents on the blockchain are an ecosystem that develops from the underlying infrastructure to applications, which requires good development tools and basic platforms to support it.
8. Market Behavior and Growth
Teng Yan mentions that the volatility of the crypto market is often unrelated to technological progress, but many people view price as an indicator of technological maturity, which is a misconception.
Sam supplements that true technological development is gradual, and the market often overestimates short-term potential while underestimating long-term impact, which is a common phenomenon. He also observes that despite the fluctuations in market sentiment, technological capabilities are steadily improving.
9. Vision for the Future of AI
Teng Yan and Sam both believe that blockchain applications driven by AI will bring exponential growth.
Teng Yan is more optimistic, believing that this growth will be rapidly visible in the coming months.
Sam, on the other hand, believes that we will continue to feel the far-reaching impact of this change over the next 10 to 20 years. From financial agents to AI autonomous governance, these technologies will gradually penetrate more industries and applications.
10. Outlook for 2025 and Beyond
Teng Yan predicts that 2025 may be a critical juncture for the AI field, as the technical infrastructure will be gradually improved in the coming months, and the large-scale participation of developers will lead to a rapid expansion of applications.
Sam, from a long-term perspective, points out that the integration of AI and blockchain is a long and far-reaching process, the impact of which may last for decades, but the emergence of early users and use cases will significantly drive this process.
