Conversation with Illia Polosukhin (co-founder @nearprotocol) also known on the streets as The Black Dragon, recorded live during [Redacted] Bangkok 2024.

Illia does A LOT of public appearances and interviews. On this interview we break norm and rather than focus of the tech (the WHAT) we focus instead on Illia's journey (Who and Why). Even though we only had 1 hour, the result has far exceeded our expectations. Some of the highlights:

* Illia reads in Megabytes. How his life changed when someone gave him a CD ROM loaded with 700mb of .txt books fuelling his imagination.
* Wild imagination and builder more from a young age. Not only did Illia start writing his own science fiction books when he was young, he also built a publishing platform to distribute them! Only catch - he never finished any of them as he got bored after he knew how things played out in his head.
* Learning how to code at age 10; importance of family and supportive teachers in school. Building games and keeping cheat codes in summer camp and more!
* Growing up poor, building character. How Ukraine has shaped VALUES.
* Broken internet and role of MATHs, formal verification, and AI agents.
* So much more!

Enjoy

Wide ranging conversation with Eric Winer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Managing Director at Pagoda.

What makes this podcast special is that it was recorded just a few days after the announcement of several spinouts and the rest of Pagoda sunsetting came out. Which sets the scene for a very honest and insightful Eric. Some of the topics we cover and personal highlights:

- Eric has been very early and led massive growth at Gemini and Nifty Gateway. Common thread: taking familiar user experiences, implementing high standards of delivery and excellence to bring web3 to the masses.
- The ways in which working for a hedge fund are different from building products; money as end goal cf. a real user as end-goal, how this influences team formation (skills and view-point diversity). Finally, we also touched on challenges of Product in an Engineering focused organisation (following up on our previous conversation with Alex Chiocchi, former head of Product at Pagoda.
- Raw, honest assessment of factors that lead to Pagoda dissolution: expensive organisation, on competitiveness and sustainability of NEAR ecosystem of third party providers, founder led organisations and the advantages of smaller, focused teams as startups over larger well funded organisations.
- A breakdown of a lot of Pagoda's services: what they do, importance, challenges going into the future, and opportunities for new providers.

There is A LOT more, including a lot said between the lines. We hope this conversation is well received by all stakeholders involved and that it may be useful in addressing some of the outstanding matters in the best way possible.

Resources
- Blog Post Announcing NEAR One and Chain Abstraction Spinouts
- Future of Pagoda Services Post

- NUFFLE: NEAR DA Spinout
- [Redacted] Hackathon

Follow on Socials
Eric - https://x.com/eric_winer
AVB - https://x.com/AvbNear
Wuipod - https://x.com/wuipod
Pagoda - https://x.com/PagodaPlatform

This is the second conversation we have with Cameron Dennis, although the first one never got released as it was deemed too spicy!

Cameron was one of the earliest contributors to NEAR Inc, spearheading Business Development and eventually recruiting a BD team. He's outlasted several NEAR Foundation CEO's, even it as some point he parted ways with NF due to a 'lack of culture fit'. A ruthless hustler.

Cameron provides unique insights into many things. Some of my personal highlights:

1. Evolution: we are very candid about the Evolution of NEAR ecosystem. With a focus on the lessons learned and practical suggestions on how to move forward, we provide a detailed overview for those who may have been lost or confused along the way.
2. What is NEAR, really? We drill down on the origins story, the pivots, the vision that has always been but nobody knows. NEAR is not just another blockchain, it is THE OPEN WEB.
3. Community Reset: is it time to start a cult?
4. Beyond crypto; this is a race for humanity and superintelligence.
5. NEAR AI is two things: a hub for everyone working on any piece of the AI stack, and the in-house Developer AI

Resources
NEAR AI Masterplan: https://near.ai/

Follow on Socials
Cameron - https://x.com/Cameron_Dennis_

AVB - https://x.com/avbNear
Wuipod - https://x.com/Wuipod

Wide ranging conversation with Romain Despoel, an associate at Polymorphic Capital. Romaind and AVB met at ETH CC Brussels 2024 and immediately hit if off. Some would say that sharing across two hackathons in such a short timeframe would bring any two people together, but we believe it is due to their shared past growing up in Venezuela that they have developed a strong friendship.

Some of the things we talk about that stood out to me:
- We open by discussing Venezuela. Romain's brief sting there when he was 7 and AVB's childhood, along with current electoral fraud.
- ZK Explainer: how it went from something cool but only theoretical Romain learned at uni to cool, real world uses cases in web3.
- Fully Homomorphic Encryption: what it is, how it works, why it is exciting!
- ETH CC Builds and hackathon stories in general. Being a builder is fun. The energy captured on the pod is contagious.
- Tales as a VC: challenges of investing in a Bull Market. Wild valuations, founders taking secondaries, what do people actually do for work everyday?!
- From Infra saturation to mass consumer applications.
- Infra fire round: hot takes on Real World Assets, Social, chain abstraction, DePIN.

We had a blast recording. Hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think

Resources:
Polymorphic Capital - https://polymorphic.capital/
MBD - https://www.mbd.xyz/
FHERMA - Platform for FHE Challenges: https://fherma.io/

Follow on Socials:
Romain - https://x.com/romdespoel
Polymorphic Capital - https://x.com/polymorphiccap

AVB - https://x.com/AvbNear
Wuipod - https://x.com/wuipod

Wide Ranging conversation with Nick Havryliak, co-founder at Assisterr. Assisterr is a Data Provenance Protocol & Marketplace of domain-specific Small Language Models (SLMs) owned by the community.

Summary
In this episode we discuss the convergence of Web3 and AI. They delve into Nick's background in consulting, product management, and his journey into Web3 and AI. Nick elaborates on the limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs) and explains the advantages of using Small Language Models through the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) process. They also brainstorm innovative applications for community-generated data, such as leveraging past hackathon projects to enhance future hackathons. Throughout the conversation, they explore the importance of maintaining human-centric values in AI development while navigating the evolving technological landscape.

Spicy and Memorable
Things that stood out to me (AVB) and kept me reflecting long after episode was recorded:

* Importance of keeping it human. On dancing, focusing on enjoying life and spreading good vibes.
* How the geopolitical (Ukraine) has shaped Nick's worldview. The West just doesn't get it.
* Approaching Dev Rel with a Product Mindset; leveraging AI to obtain efficiency gains and unlock more value and new use cases.
* The limitations of current LLMs (trained on publicly available data) and how to create incentives for procuring privately held data.
* Cost structure of different approaches to AI: RAG, fine tuning, and own base models.

Resources

Assisterr - https://www.assisterr.ai/
Assisterr on X - https://x.com/assisterr

Nick on X - https://x.com/nick_havryliak

Wide ranging conversation with Mario Reder. Mario is an engineer at Orderly (on-chain perps), lead dev at Shitzu (NEAR's OG memecoin and most active community).

Some of the topics we covered include:

- How we was lured from being a web2 developer to web3 thanks to WASM
- The beauty and nuance of Rust language
- The origins of Shitzu: how AGT managed to get him onboard
- Memecoins & Fundamentals....
- Alpha on everything Shitzu has been building, plus a major launch coming up!

Resources
Delegate to Shitzu Validator - https://shitzuapes.xyz
Trade Shitzu NFT on Mitte - https://beta.mitte.gg/?contractAddress=shitzu.bodega-lab.near
Farm $Shitzu on REF.Finance - https://app.ref.finance/meme

Follow on Socials
Mario - https://x.com/marior_dev
Shitzu - https://x.com/ShitzuCommunity
Protocol Pawns - https://x.com/ProtocolPawns
Shroom Kingdom - https://x.com/shrm_kingdom

Zahid is the founder of Jutsu. Jutsy is the co-pilot of web3 enabling and empowering developers to be 10x more efficient!

Some of the topics we cover on this wide ranging conversation:

1. Just origins: feeling the pain points at ETH Denver 2023 hackathon
2. Jutsu evolution: hackers using it and winning in the wild
3. Philosophical musings on AI: defining Agents, challenges for adoption and opportunities.
4. Core infrastructure of Consumer application? What are the differences and why it matters
5. Road to mass adoption: what web3 can learn from the web2 world
6. and more!

0:00 Ep 63 - Jutsu
01:39:13 Dev Rels & Presence at Conferences
01:42:47 Community

Follow on Socials
https://twitter.com/tryjutsu

https://twitter.com/AvbNear
https://twitter.com/wuipod

Resources
Blog Post 'Nearcon: the Post Protocol Era' - https://thecryptospace.substack.com/p/nearcon-the-post-protocol-era-is
Nearcon 2023 Panel: DAOs and Collective Intelligence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj2PpoZW47g&t=14431s
The Big V Value Thesis - https://x.com/DrNickA/status/1749062167188349052?s=20

'Why? The purpose of the Universe' by Dr Phillip Todd

Factory DAO - https://www.factorydao.org

Follow on Socials
Dr. Nick - https://twitter.com/DrNickA
Factory DAO - https://twitter.com/FactDAO

AVB - https://twitter.com/AvbNear
Wuipod - https://twitter.com/wuipod