The Web3 + AI Daily: On AI-Assisted Science and Refuting Myths
Eigen Labs launching Yukon to boost frontier research, and a panel by the Stanford Future of Digital Currency Initiative debunking Web3 + AI myths.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly joined subscribers!
This is the 80th edition of The Web3 + AI Daily - your definitive guide to the intersection of blockchain and AI.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
Eigen Labs Launches Yukon Research to Boost Scientific Progress with AI
Just as a Google DeepMind paper arguing that LLMs are incapable of a genuine scientific dicovery resurfaced, Eigen Labs unveiled Yukon to accelerate open frontier research with the help of AI.
It is based on the premise that, although agents are brittle and unnrealiable to autonomously perform long-horizon research, they can still be extremely helpful when tasked with clearly defined tasks. Sreeram Kannan clarified:
“Instead of betting on one agent, what if create an Open Network where agents and humans can coordinate on a level-playing field to solve the problem?”
Yukon, boasting collaborators from Stanford University, Ethereum Foundation, Poolside, University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, and Lighter, launches with “several active challenges, including last week’s Lighter.fast, where solvers are optimizing Lighter’s ZK prover. That challenge had already pushed prover throughput from roughly 10,000 transactions per second to nearly 92,000 within a week.”
Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations
AI in Open Systems: Native Participation, Verifiability, and the Future of Autonomous Finance
I strongly recommend you listen to the very refreshing Stanford Future of Digital Currency Initiative panel that welcomed Christian Catalini, founder of MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, Professor Ruizhe Jia, and Shaw W., founder of Eliza Labs. The topic was what happens when AI moves beyond assisting humans and start participating autonomously in economic systems.
“This shift raises some fundamental questions: what infrastructure these agents need to establish identity and authority, how will we verify thier actions and assign accountability, how might they change markets and other participants, and do open systems offer distinctive advantages for enabling AI participation.”
I particularly enjoyed this discussion because the panelists weren’t afraid to challenge many of the prevailing myths surrounding Web3 + AI. Here are some of their statements:
An AI-induced abundance is definitely not coming.
AI agents are not good at trading, because they’re not superintelligent and not good at predicting the future. Humans could be much better traders, because they may have access to insider information.
Incumbents will dominate the agentic commerce, even though many people in crypto are excited about it.
Building on the previous point, Stripe is going to win the agentic payments race, because it already won the human payments, it has the trust, and, on top of that, it owns Privy.
Of course, the panelists confirmed many of the statements I have repeatedly made here, such as:
Verifiability is AI’s value engine.
Privacy is essential for AI, just like it is essential for payments.
AI is a probabilistic system and we need to design proper guardrails around it.
There was also a consensus that blockchain provides the perfect environment for experimentation and training, and that DeFi is the ideal playground for testing agents’ ability to manage funds and perform financial services.
On chain is an environment where you can get instant feedback and use it to quickly tweak systems. It’s a really easy training environment where everything can be measured and data is abundant.
That’s why Anthropic, for example, is doing a lot on chain, like running simulations or looking for smart contract vulnerabilities.
Listen to the full conversation below and let me know your thoughts.
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Disclaimer: The content of this newsletter is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing contained herein should be construed as financial advice or as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any of the companies or assets mentioned.
Please don’t take my views at face value. Instead, do your own research (DYOR), think critically, and share your perspective so we can challenge ideas, learn from one another, and arrive at better conclusions through thoughtful discussion.