Web3 and AI are fundamentally opposed on a philosophical level.
Dr. Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot, was recently invited for an interview by Empire, where he shared his views on the current cryptocurrency industry. He believes that the phenomenon of hype far exceeds the number of teams that are genuinely doing work. In such an environment, we have not seen many practical uses and real-world applications, which has led to Web3 not achieving widespread adoption. However, Polkadot is working hard on Polkadot Hub and the next evolutionary phase, JAM, which is expected to bring true large-scale adoption to the entire industry!
Curious about the specific topics he discussed? Here’s a preview of the important topics in this article!
Why is the current crypto world considered a failure?
Is Solana creating "value"?
If crypto fails, why do you still stay in this industry?
Why haven't applications landed? Why haven't on-chain users surpassed one billion?
What has Polkadot done right, and what has it missed?
The next evolutionary phase of Polkadot, JAM, and its marketing issues
Speculative narratives are also built on narratives of real value
Web3 and AI are fundamentally opposed on a philosophical level
If we care about democracy, autonomy, and freedom, we need a reliable personality proof mechanism
Why is the current crypto world considered a failure?
Yano: Hello everyone, welcome back to "Empire." I’m starting today, and Santi will join us later. We are very honored to have Gavin Wood with us, who is a co-founder of Ethereum and also a co-founder of Polkadot. Gav, welcome to the show!
Gav: Thank you for having me.
Yano: Great! How have you been lately? Any news?
Gav: I just returned from India and China a few weeks ago, mainly giving talks about the JAM protocol at various universities. It was quite interesting; I met a lot of people and visited several cities. Now I’m just resting at home, taking a breather.
Yano: Sounds good. Let’s get into some substance today; I have many questions for you. First, from a macro perspective: you started participating in the founding of Ethereum in 2014 and have been working in the Ethereum space ever since. Then around 2015, you left the Ethereum Foundation, and by 2017, you left the Ethereum ecosystem to fully invest in the Polkadot ecosystem. That’s roughly the timeline, right? You could be considered an "old hand" in the industry. How do you view the development of the entire crypto industry? Are you satisfied? For example, we now have pro-crypto presidents and rapid development of stablecoins; do you think it’s "beyond expectations" or "below expectations"? Do you feel the industry should have progressed further by now?
Gav: I tend to lean towards the latter. There’s a saying by Gandhi: “There are two types of people in the world, those who do things and those who take credit.” I think the current crypto industry has a similar division. Many projects start with hype, and there are not many that are genuinely doing serious work. There are indeed some teams doing solid software engineering, but those truly pushing forward the core ideas of Web3, crypto, and Bitcoin are few and far between. Instead, there are more people trying to "take credit" — in other words, relying on hype and capital inflow to drive up token prices. To be honest, I’m not surprised by this situation, but it’s not what I hoped to see.
Yano: Is this feeling of "disappointment" because you think the resource allocation in the industry is misaligned? Are people’s focus points wrong?
Gav: Very misaligned, and very serious. It reminds me of a funny ad slogan from the 90s British satirical comic magazine "Viz": “No need for technological breakthroughs, just rely on market hype.” Too many crypto projects are in this state now — not focusing on creating new value, not committed to technological upgrades to make blockchain a truly usable social operating system, but only thinking about how to attract capital into their economic systems.
Yano: Let me play devil's advocate a bit. The issues you mentioned are actually the same across the entire tech industry: there are always ups and downs, bubbles and troughs. When the bubble is on, all projects get attention; when the bubble bursts, perhaps only a few survivors remain. Maybe out of 100 projects, only 3 will survive, but the truly excellent projects often emerge from the bubble. In fact, hype has its value; it allows a large number of startups to emerge. Although most will fail, the few that remain might become great companies. This is one aspect of building a company: on one hand, there’s engineering and product, which I know you excel at as an engineer, but on the other hand, there’s long-term hype, which can be categorized as marketing and sales. So, from this perspective, hype is also part of entrepreneurship. How do you view this duality?
Gav: Promotion is indeed part of marketing, but it is by no means everything. I believe hype is essentially an excessive marketing that ignores the fundamentals. You’re right; hype can sometimes produce side benefits — it can indeed lift many projects in the industry. But the problem is, if there are only one or two truly valuable projects, then this method of capital allocation driven by hype is very inefficient. From Adam Smith’s perspective, this is not an efficient way to allocate market resources, and that’s what I’m truly worried about.
Is Solana creating "value"?
Yano: So who are the projects that are "worthy of hype"? For example, is it worth hyping Hyperliquid? What about Solana? Is Worldcoin worth it? These popular projects do have capable founding teams. Of course, we might all agree that meme coins, as purely speculative products, lack value, but some high-profile projects do have excellent founders and real users. How do you define the standard for what is "worthy of hype"?
Gav: I might not fully agree with the notion of "real users." Sure, some founders are indeed talented, but the question is — who are they serving with their talents? Are their abilities benefiting the public, or just serving themselves? I think some meme coin founders are indeed talented, or at least lucky. But you could also say that one of the true talents is "being able to create your own luck."
Yano: Let’s go back to Solana, Hyperliquid, and Worldcoin. These three are currently very hot projects in the market, and their teams are indeed quite strong. What’s your take on these types of projects?
Gav: I think they are indeed very talented at "making money for themselves."
Yano: But who can definitively say that Solana's users are not creating value? They are simply choosing trading targets and participation methods in a free market; isn’t that just the normal operation of market mechanisms?
Gav: The key here lies in the definition of "value." If the so-called value is unregulated gambling — even not fair gambling, filled with insider trading and false bets; if value means making a small group of insiders rich, then this kind of "value" is clearly untenable. But if we have to define it that way, then Solana is indeed creating "value."
However, if we return to the original intention of Web3 — to build a decentralized social operating system, Solana clearly has not made substantial contributions. This is precisely why I proposed the JAM protocol. I observed that Solana's development direction has fundamental errors, and I have clearly expressed why I think so.
Santi: I want to delve deeper into the topic of "practicality." In the crypto industry, external criticism is often directed not just at Solana, but the entire crypto industry faces accusations of being "casino-like." I’m curious about your perspective on this issue. After all, from an outsider's point of view, not just Solana, the entire crypto industry seems to be addicted to leveraged trading and speculative behaviors like meme coin trading. So I want to ask you, what do you think are the most practically useful application scenarios in the entire crypto field? After all, speculation exists on all chains.
Gav: Taking the Polkadot ecosystem as an example, several parachain projects are leveraging Polkadot's strong determinism and finality features (i.e., as a "world computer") to conduct business. One project I find particularly interesting is Mythos, which is the chain behind Mythical Games. They use blockchain technology to ensure that players truly own their game assets. This level of utility far exceeds meme coin trading because there is a clear demand for substitution: even without Polkadot, Mythical still needs server management for game assets, but the core value of choosing blockchain lies in empowering players with sovereignty. This sovereignty allows assets to flow freely within the Polkadot ecosystem, even cross-chain to Ethereum, being integrated by exchanges and authorized for use by other game developers. This is a true example of Web3 empowering the real economy — it genuinely brings additional benefits to Mythical Games. The key is that what they are doing on the blockchain, even without the Web3 aspect, could be achieved with traditional Web2 technology, which indicates that these functions have practical value. In contrast, things like meme coins are not seen in the Web2 world. This shows that they are merely "unlicensed casinos" that thrive in the specific environment of Web3, and the rules are very opaque.
If crypto fails, why do you still stay in this industry?
Yano: Well, Gavin, let’s change perspectives — you often mention the "post-Snowden era of the internet." I’m curious about how you understand today’s internet. What exactly is wrong with it? Do you think crypto technology can be part of the solution to these problems?
Gav: I actually don’t think crypto technology can solve many problems. Although I’m currently working in this industry, I see myself more as a Web3 practitioner rather than a "crypto person." Because most of the current crypto industry has turned into a form of "Mickey Mouse finance," which is to say, immature little tricks that are completely not the direction I’m interested in.
Yano: The reason I ask this question is that I vaguely sense you seem somewhat disappointed with the development of the industry over the past decade (perhaps that word is a bit strong), or perhaps you have a critical perspective. You are a genius engineer and could easily switch to AI or other fields, and you might already be financially free. Since you are dissatisfied with the current situation, why do you still stay in this industry? I think that’s the question I really want to know.
Gav: That's a good question. Indeed, in this industry, I don't think everyone's starting point is benevolent. But I also believe there are some people who are genuinely trying to do something beneficial for the world, not completely caught up in the vortex of "self-serving." It is these people that make me willing to continue staying in this industry. If I felt that the entire industry was just a bunch of people desperately chasing the next thousand-dollar profit, I would really have no interest in staying. But I do see and have interacted with some individuals who firmly believe that Web3 does not equal the entire crypto industry — it is just a part of it, and we are far from achieving the vision I outlined in the "Web3 Manifesto." Although this technology is currently being used to support the meme coin market on Solana, or essentially unlicensed gambling, I still believe it can achieve much more than that.
These chaotic phenomena are like the "scabies" in technological development: they may bring some attention and even indirectly benefit Polkadot, but they are ultimately a pathological existence. If we eliminate these bubbles, capital might flow more rationally towards projects that truly drive social change.
So what do I mean by social change? For example: personal data sovereignty, transparent governance systems, voting systems that can operate without large bureaucratic institutions, etc. Look at the collapse of citizen trust in the government in the United States over the past fifty or sixty years, with people questioning the existence of a "deep state" and whether tax money is used for public good. What we need now is a system that can achieve transparency and effectiveness in resource allocation, truly serving those who pay for it. And I believe this technology can indeed become a tool to achieve that goal. Although related applications are still in their early stages and need breakthroughs in scalability and mechanism design, I firmly believe this technology can significantly enhance the efficiency of social governance.
Why haven't applications landed? Why haven't on-chain users surpassed one billion?
Yano: Why have these ideas not been realized? Back in 2018, Blockworks held an event themed "Supply Chain on the Blockchain." You should remember that at the time, there were various advertisements claiming Walmart would move its supply chain onto the blockchain; Hernando de Soto wrote articles about using blockchain to improve property registration systems in emerging markets. But none of these have truly materialized. What do we have instead? A bunch of perpetual contract trading platforms, NFT markets, and large crypto exchanges. If you ask me, I would actually say these things have some value; at least they have created a whole new industry. But from the perspective of traditional social benefits, there are almost no results. Why is that? Why haven't we seen significant applications truly succeed?
Gav: To sum it up in one sentence: the products themselves are not good enough. In other words, the foundational platform products supporting Web3 are not yet sufficient to support more complex and meaningful application scenarios. Of course, there are some exceptions. For example, in supply chain and traceability, there are indeed a few real-world examples that have done quite well. There are many such projects on Polkadot.
For instance, the "social graph" should be controlled by users themselves, not by platforms, which is what the Frequency project is working on. It is a Web3 social network initiative led by Frank McCourt, and I think this is a very interesting direction.
There are also projects like peaq that track information traceability, which have great potential. We are starting to see some truly scalable and practically useful systems; most applications are meaningless if they cannot scale, which is one of the issues Polkadot is working hard to solve.
Another key issue is economic sovereignty. Many Web3 or "Web3-like" platforms are designed to limit the economic autonomy of projects. Take Ethereum as an example; project teams are forced to make users pay gas fees in ETH, which limits developers' flexibility and raises the user threshold — no one wants to buy a coin they don't even know, no one wants to download a special wallet for that, and even less wants to go to a DEX or centralized exchange to swap coins. This is a product issue — the foundational platform products are not good enough. But now we are starting to see some truly useful projects turning to Web3, and most of the platforms they choose are infrastructures like Polkadot that can provide "economic autonomy." This means that project teams can design their own economic systems, and users do not need to interact with a specific underlying platform coin to use the product directly.
Then there’s the scalability issue. Truly useful applications need to support thousands of interactions per second. If the platform cannot achieve this, it cannot support real applications.
Santi: I agree with you on this point. Currently, the cryptocurrency field is mainly speculative activities. Historically, every technological revolution has been accompanied by speculation, but we can definitely do better — tenfold or a hundredfold better. There are already some core products in the crypto space, but they haven't received enough attention and user growth. I find what you are doing at Polkadot quite interesting, especially since I have talked with the Mythos team and learned why they decided to migrate here. The question is, why haven't these high-quality technologies been widely adopted? If blockchain technology is truly superior to Web2 as Web3 claims, why haven't on-chain users surpassed one billion yet?
Gav: The user base has not yet surpassed one billion, partly because user migration takes time to settle. Especially when it comes to economic systems, user stickiness can be beyond imagination — there are profound economic principles behind this. For example, in terms of capital-driven projects, we see well-funded projects like Polygon and Solana directly spending money to attract developers to port applications to their chains. If project teams lack technical foresight, their CTOs may very well lose to the CFO in internal discussions, ultimately choosing to accept subsidies to deploy on chains that cannot meet long-term needs.
These chains cannot support scale expansion, nor can they achieve true economic sovereignty. So essentially, this is a "stickiness" issue that requires time. Project teams also need to realize the problems through trial and error. Just like the Mythos team initially chose Ethereum, only to later find that neither scalability nor economic sovereignty could meet their needs, they began to ask themselves, "Are there other platforms we can use? Should we give up on Web3?" They eventually discovered that Polkadot could meet these needs. But understanding this takes time. Humans do not move at the speed of light; there are too many things that hold them back — such as sunk investment costs and fear of loss, and these barriers need to be gradually dissolved.
As a believer in technology, I must believe that quality platforms will eventually gain the recognition they deserve, but I also have to face the reality: capital conservatism, market short-sightedness, and the obstruction of vested interests will all slow down the process. Fortunately, I have time — after 11 years of deep cultivation in this industry, I can still persist for another 11 years.
What has Polkadot done right, and what has it missed?
Yano: Gavin, what do you think you got right about Polkadot's vision, and what do you think you got wrong?
Gav: Regarding the successes, this is not just my solo achievement. Although the Polkadot white paper was primarily written by me, the protocol development embodies the wisdom of the team. What we have done right is to achieve breakthrough scalability while maintaining generality and risk resistance. Bitcoin pioneered the risk resistance system, Ethereum achieved a breakthrough in generality through Turing-complete languages, and Polkadot built a scalable architecture on this foundation — this technological breakthrough is still rare among projects today.
Another success point is the design of economic sovereignty, allowing project teams to bulk purchase blockchain resources and then allocate them to users based on their needs, which is completely different from Ethereum's "pay for each transaction" model.
As for shortcomings, the product layer is actually quite solid, but the early access mechanism had flaws. The Polkadot 1.0 version was like an "all-in" solution: to go on-chain, you had to form a professional team, participate in crowdloans and slot auctions, design a token economic model, and conduct market promotion. This high barrier severely restricted ecosystem development, which is precisely the direction we have been focusing on improving in the past year or two. We are building a more user-friendly experimental environment, just like Ethereum allowed developers to experiment at low cost back in the day — although not many applications ultimately emerged, the innovation vitality brought by the low barrier is crucial. Polkadot needs to maintain its core advantages of scalability and economic sovereignty while also creating a sandbox environment that allows developers to experiment easily; this is the direction we are continuously optimizing.
Yano: Yes, its greatest advantage is that it allows people to quickly deploy code and get started. So how do you view the current Ethereum L2 projects? If I, as an outsider who has never developed on Polkadot, were to describe Polkadot, its core is a "native rollup main chain" that allows users to deploy their own chains and achieve an interoperable world. Initially, you and Cosmos were among the first to propose this vision — helping everyone build their own chains while using a shared security mechanism to ensure "the security cost of one chain can protect the security of a hundred chains." This is a great vision. But now we see that many L2 projects, such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon, have transformed into chain factories; they are no longer just L2 but are providing frameworks like "OP Stack" for others to build chains, focusing on interoperability. Projects like Zora and Base are also using their frameworks. They did not choose you, Polkadot, nor did they choose Cosmos; instead, they opted for these Ethereum-based solutions. What do you think?
Gav: This precisely validates the value of our early route. But it must be pointed out that the multi-chain architecture currently viewed as the "ultimate remedy" by these L2 projects is already a thing of the past in the Polkadot ecosystem. This is also the reason we launched the JAM protocol — we have already reached this stage and recognized its limitations. JAM (the next-generation architecture of Polkadot) is based on the lessons learned from our years of experience and observations of the current market and ecosystem.
We realized that "deploying rollups and building chains, we help you handle security and interoperability" — this is just a reasonable product form, but far from the optimal solution. Especially for these Ethereum-based projects, they attract users by appearing to be interoperable with Ethereum, but I think this interoperability is actually exaggerated. The Ethereum Foundation itself has begun to realize this, which is why they are now also trying to create "native rollups" and do not want to rely entirely on OP Stack or Polygon. After all, if you look at the validating nodes running on OP Stack, you can see what level they are at — it's truly a "cowboy-style" approach.
So now the Ethereum Foundation is also trying to build what they believe to be a more "reliable" scaling solution. And this solution actually looks very much like Polkadot 1.0; stepping back, it may even be Polkadot 2.0. But what they envision is certainly not JAM; JAM is the product of my careful consideration, a refinement and summary of everything we have built so far, and a reflection and redesign of the current state of other ecosystems.
The core of JAM is "system coherence" and a certain degree of "interoperability." I am concerned that the native rollup route Ethereum is taking, the attempts of those L2s to become L1s, and even our own design of Polkadot from years ago all share the same problem — achieving scalability by splitting use cases across different chains, which leads to a permanent fragmentation of the ecosystem. I call this "persistent partitioning." This is an inefficient way to scale — while it is feasible, it is not optimal. The goal of JAM is to address this issue.
The Next Evolutionary Stage of Polkadot: JAM and Its Marketing Issues
Yano: I read through 71 pages of the JAM white paper. Although it was just a quick glance, I roughly understand that you seem to be merging the advantages of Ethereum and Polkadot — retaining the low barrier characteristics of Ethereum's general smart contract environment while inheriting Polkadot's scalable and composable architecture. Is that a correct understanding?
Gav: That indeed summarizes our intention well. This concept is reflected in both JAM and the vision for Polkadot 2.0. We are now launching the concept of "Polkadot Cloud" or "Polkadot Hub," which will gradually go live in the coming months. This Hub will be compatible with Ethereum, allowing you to deploy smart contracts on Polkadot at a very low cost. You will have a high-performance, fully synchronized, structurally consistent smart contract environment, just like on the Solana or Ethereum mainnet. We want to combine Polkadot's scalability, decentralization, and resilience with a low-barrier, user-friendly, highly compatible, and strongly interoperable smart contract system.
JAM is actually the next evolutionary stage of this concept. Your understanding is very accurate — we indeed aim to do these things, but the approach taken by JAM is slightly different. It is a minor adjustment to the underlying platform, not a disruptive research effort, but more of a product-level optimization, which is very critical. Through this optimization, I believe we can provide a smart contract environment that is not only low-barrier, easy to use, highly compatible, and well-interoperable but also "infinitely scalable" — most importantly, without needing to fragment the system into a main chain, an Arbitrum chain, an OP Stack chain, and so on. If you must fragment, then you are back to the parallel chain model. Of course, parallel chains are great for certain single use cases — for example, when you don't need much interoperability, it is the optimal solution. But to build an Ethereum-like "low-barrier innovation sandbox," a more advanced architectural design is required.
Yano: Alright, Gavin, let's integrate all the discussions. Suppose you really can create the JAM protocol you mentioned (with your engineering skills, I completely believe it), but there is another critical angle — from the conversation, I can sense that there might be aspects you don't particularly like but must face: marketing, ecosystem growth, and frankly, the common "behind-the-scenes games" in the crypto industry. How do you view these? When the JAM protocol goes live and the technology runs perfectly, how do you plan to handle brand promotion and user growth in these "soft aspects"? After all, having technology alone is not enough; you also need to navigate the industry rules.
Gav: You are right; this is indeed not an area I particularly desire to dive into; I don't want to jump into this "mud pit." However, there is a type of outreach I can accept, which I call "technical promotion" or "technical evangelism." Just like this interview we are having now, and for example, my previous speaking tour in Asia and writing blogs — these are things I am willing to do, and I would even be willing to do more to help people better understand what Polkadot is doing and why it is worth our time and effort to build these technologies. We want people to know that what we are doing is meaningful and valuable for the future.
But when it comes to "day-to-day operational marketing," such as hype and trending topics — I think some people are very good at this, and I believe Polkadot's treasury will eventually recognize and incentivize these individuals to serve the ecosystem, but this is not my expertise. As a technical expert, my core value lies in continuous innovation and deep interpretation. After all, I used to be a teacher, and I enjoy teaching. This "technical explanation" can actually be considered a form of evangelism or promotion. But asking me to advertise or promote in simple, easy-to-understand language without depth is not something I excel at.
Yano: So will you hire someone to handle this part? Or will you outsource it? Because regardless of whether you like it or not, someone has to do it.
Gav: It needs to be clarified that I do not hold an operational management position in the Polkadot ecosystem — I am not the Executive Director of the Web3 Foundation, nor am I the CEO of Parity. Of course, many people in the community have their opinions on how Polkadot's treasury funds should be used, and I usually do not participate in such discussions (I only occasionally express opinions). I believe reasonable market investment is necessary, but the problem is that I lack the expertise to judge "how much value a certain expenditure can create," which is beyond my cognitive scope. Therefore, such decisions should be made by professionals, and I trust the personnel decisions of the existing management team. As for the use of treasury funds under a decentralized governance system, it is essentially a process of community co-decision-making.
It is reassuring that many proactive actors have emerged spontaneously in the ecosystem — they actively promote Polkadot technology and may be incentivized in the future as a result. This reminds me of the early community atmosphere of Bitcoin: although Satoshi Nakamoto held a large amount of Bitcoin, it was the countless grassroots evangelists who truly drove the development of the ecosystem. They promoted the technology out of belief (rather than profit motives). If we can build a strong enough mission statement that resonates with more people about the vision of JAM, we can hope to form this bottom-up advocacy force. At that point, there will be no need for difficult hiring decisions or value judgments; the ecosystem will naturally attract suitable marketing talent.
The Narrative of Speculation is Also Built on the Narrative of Real Value
Santi: Yes, that is indeed the case. Much of what you just mentioned involves community building, and the power of crypto technology lies in achieving large-scale collaboration. I believe that as long as the right incentive mechanisms are introduced, we can achieve astonishing accomplishments similar to Bitcoin. For example, Ethereum's transition from PoW to PoS is a highly challenging yet fascinating shift. The point I want to discuss is that this is not a black-and-white issue — it is not that "speculation" is dirty or meaningless. Just like the existence of capital markets such as Wall Street, they are also an important part of the collaborative mechanism. Without value exchange, effective collaboration cannot be achieved — that is my viewpoint. Of course, we all hope that the future will not be just pure speculation and an endless cycle of leveraged games on-chain, but rather something that can truly bring practical utility. I believe we will eventually reach that point. So, from your perspective, what excites you the most right now? What are you currently focused on? You have already made significant contributions to this field; what do you want to continue doing in the next phase? In what areas do you think you can still make a real impact?
Gav: I believe that the speculative part of value is built on the foundation that these systems can create substantial value for society (rather than for specific individuals). Although I think the industry has indeed deviated from this original intention in recent years, I feel that this concept of value creation is still deeply embedded in the core of the entire crypto world. As you mentioned earlier, we will eventually face a storm; those projects that do not create actual value, those "zombie projects," will ultimately be eliminated. These projects barely maintain their valuations simply because funds are tied up there, but they do not have a truly valuable vision or the ability to continuously improve. I hope to see these washed away. At the same time, I am also concerned that we may fall into an increasingly centralized trend. In recent months, I have seen many projects gravitating towards power centers, seeking recognition from a few powerful individuals, which I believe is detrimental to the entire crypto ecosystem. However, overall, I believe that the projects that can go further in the end are those that possess true product strength, resilience, and the ability to flexibly adjust their direction. They can continuously evolve and adapt to changes in market demand. The market here is not just a general market but the entire world, the technological and socio-political environment in which blockchain exists. When it comes to blockchain, it is a very interesting technology; it is not just an application on a mobile phone but a socio-political technology. Currently, we see the world undergoing tremendous changes, which will inevitably eliminate some projects while forcing others to change direction and evolve.
Web3 and AI are Philosophically Opposed
Yano: You mentioned that "the world is undergoing tremendous changes," so we can wrap up with AI. AI is developing so rapidly now, and I want to talk about your views on the relationship between AI and crypto. You have previously said that AI and crypto are opposed, and I want to hear your current thoughts — are AI and crypto a community of shared destiny? Will AI operate in the crypto world? Do AI entities need to hold tokens? Is their relationship collaborative or adversarial? What do you think?
Gav: First of all, I actually don't like using the term "Crypto." For example, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) can technically also be considered "cryptocurrencies," but they are clearly highly centralized. USDT is also referred to as a cryptocurrency, but it is also completely centralized. So, the term "cryptocurrency" itself does not have a clear relationship with AI.
What I really want to use is the term Web3. Web3 is a technological paradigm, and its core idea is "less trust, more truth." AI, on the other hand, is its opposite — it is "less truth, more trust." Why do I say this? Because the working mechanism of AI is to — ingest a large amount of data from the world and then output a "viewpoint" (usually opaque and black-boxed). This means that when we use AI, we must trust the organization running the AI behind it. We trust that their data sources are comprehensive and not "selectively edited"; we trust that they have not fed in false data; we trust that they have not tampered with the model; but the key is — we have no way to verify whether they have truly done so. Ultimately, what we get is a super centralized, super trust-dependent "information system" that creates an "illusion" of obtaining information, but this "information" is based on complete trust in a person or organization, which is in direct opposition to the philosophy of Web3.
Web3 encourages us to collect data ourselves and to understand and analyze it using first principles. This is why many people in the Web3 community despise RPC (Remote Procedure Call) servers: we do not like that Ethereum's operation relies on servers hosted by others, even if they are stable and transparent most of the time. AI is a super version of a "trust-based" information system, providing us with a "passively fed" way of receiving information, where the source is singular; for example, you can only trust the "facts" stated by a certain CEO. This is very dangerous to me — a world where the acquisition of information relies on one person or one organization is a pathological world, and this is precisely the direction many AI companies are pursuing — they want to become the "dictators of truth."
Therefore, I believe that Web3 and AI (especially mainstream centralized AI) are philosophically opposed. I also believe that if humanity wants to survive in a future world where AI is prevalent, we must develop a robust Web3 system.
If We Care About Democracy, Autonomy, and Freedom, We Need a Reliable Personality Verification Mechanism
Yano: Gavin, let's talk about "personality verification" in our final discussion. I saw you tweeted in December last year: "This is exactly why we need a solid Web3 personality verification system, and it is urgent." I'm quite curious: first, why do you place such importance on personality verification? Second, what do you think of Worldcoin's approach?
Gav: Worldcoin's approach is flawed. It is based on trust, essentially requiring the same trust in service providers as when we use RPC nodes. Worldcoin asks us to trust a single entity: who is issuing the credentials? Who has the authority to decide whether my iris has been scanned? Who controls the biometric database of everyone? This is essentially a central authority controlled by a single key. Even more frightening is that this entity not only has the absolute power to determine "who is human" but also possesses the iris data of global users, which is outrageous. This is the same as what we just discussed regarding AI, not to mention that it is all orchestrated by the same person.
If you want to implement personality verification in a Web3 system, it must be built on "first principles," without any "arbitrary authority" deciding who is human and who is not. The reason I believe this is important is that most of our human interactions are based on the premise of "this is another human being." While sometimes it doesn't matter whether someone is a human or a robot, such as in market transactions, in many scenarios, we care a lot about whether the person on the other side is human or machine. For example: in friendship advertisements, I want to confirm that this is indeed a person posting, not a robot. Or in chat rooms, we need to ensure that 200 members are humans and not robots because we derive our understanding and judgment of the world through these interactions. If I believe I am communicating with multiple independent individuals, I am more likely to approach the truth. But if it is actually one person controlling multiple accounts to say the same thing, I will be misled. We humans are not entirely rational beings; when we see many "different avatars" saying the same thing, even if these avatars have different language styles, we subconsciously think, "Oh, this viewpoint is popular," and thus change our minds, not because the viewpoint is correct, but because our subconscious does not want to conflict with the group or feels that others know more than we do. These psychological mechanisms can be exploited by those with ulterior motives. Now AI has given them unprecedented tools.
We have experienced this before, such as in the Cambridge Analytica incident and the Romanian elections, where 60,000 to 70,000 Twitter political accounts were actually controlled by an organization with Russian ties. AI has made such manipulation more powerful, but we have not yet found more effective ways to counter it, or to use AI to fight against AI. If AI is controlled by someone or an organization that can be influenced, then it is fundamentally problematic. Therefore, I believe that if we still believe in "enlightenment liberalism," if we still care about democracy, self-sovereignty, and basic freedoms, we need a reliable personality verification mechanism to ensure that our interactions in the digital world are based on these values. If we cannot achieve this, then we are essentially living in a "digital dictatorship."
Yano: Alright, I originally wanted to end the program with this, but it sounds too dystopian. Let's switch to a more positive question: Gavin, what are you most optimistic about in the coming years?
Gav: Looking back, our social systems have never been perfect. I am 44 years old this year, and I grew up in the UK, where I witnessed a time when public service systems and social bonds were relatively solid. However, in the face of the impact of internet technology, these systems have shown signs of fatigue. Now we are witnessing a dual transformation: breakthroughs in Web3 technologies like Bitcoin and BitTorrent, as well as a cognitive shift among global leaders (politicians, civil servants, etc.). While turmoil breeds crisis, it also harbors a historical opportunity to reconstruct the social operating system — replacing outdated and inefficient old systems with a more transparent, flexible, and just technological framework. This is my hope and the motivation behind my efforts to develop Web3 infrastructure; we need the right technology to support a better social future.
Yano: Great. Gavin, congratulations on all your achievements on this path; it has been an incredible journey. We are all cheering for you and look forward to seeing you again.
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