The Blockchain Socialist

I spoke to Leo Fan, co-founder of Cysic, about what zero-knowledge proofs actually are, and why they might be one of the more promising answers to the internet’s identity problem.We dig into how a ZK proof lets you prove something is true without handing over any identifying personal information, why that matters as digital identity systems become pushed by governments, and Cysic’s model for verifiable compute. Leo also breaks down why the hardware and cost problems around ZK have kept it from…

At Web3 Summit this past month, I gave probably what was one of the strangest presentations I’ve ever given. Over the past year I’ve been mulling over some big concepts and trying to put them all together in one coherent narrative. What if all this talk about the K-shaped economy is actually just a visual representation of a collective k-hole? Yes, that kind of k-hole.

I spoke to Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism, co-author of Inventing the Future, and most recently Silicon Empires, about why AI is consolidating Big Tech’s power rather than disrupting it. We dig into why the AI upstarts remain dependent on the infrastructure of the incumbents, why the gap between open and closed models may widen as frontier training costs spiral upward, and the real biosecurity risks buried under Silicon Valley’s safety discourse. Nick also breaks down what AI…

On June 18th, 2026 at Web3 Summit in Berlin I got to do two things I had been looking forward to for a while. The first was presentation on what I call The K-Hole Economy and the Permanent Underclass. The second was sitting down with none other than Yanis Varoufakis for a 20 minute Q&A, where I finally got to ask him the questions about crypto and web3 I had been sitting on for years. I even made it on to Euronews with Yanis! The recordings are coming and I will share them when they are out.…

I spoke to Sean Geobey, associate professor at the University of Waterloo and Director of Groupthink Labs, about collective intelligence, cooperative economics, and what decentralized technology could actually offer the solidarity economy. We dig into how collective intelligence works at scale, from participatory budgeting experiments in Kitchener to the structural barriers that make setting up a cooperative three times harder than incorporating a business. We also get into the limits of GDP as…

I spoke to Evan Miyazono, founder of Atlas Computing, about the neglected risks of advanced AI and what it would actually take to govern it. We dig into the threats he thinks aren’t getting enough attention, from asymmetrically offensive cyber capabilities and economic disruption to what he calls the “intelligence curse,” a dynamic where governments lose any incentive to invest in their populations once labor becomes synthetic. We also get into formal verification as a framework for AI…

I spoke to Scoopy Trooples, the pseudonymous co-founder of Alchemix, about self-repaying loans, the wreckage of DeFi scams, and what ethical crypto finance could actually look like. We dig into how Alchemix works, allowing your debt pays itself off over time and what’s new in V3. We also get into the broader rot in the space: meme coin pump-and-dumps, celebrity rug pulls, prediction market gambling, and how DeFi summer’s promise curdled into financial nihilism. Scoopy is one of the rare crypto…

I spoke to Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, an independent journalist and author of The Hidden Globe, about the world of offshore finance, special economic zones, and network states. We dig into her reporting on a proposed crypto enclave in St. Kitts and Nevis, the history and reality of these zones, and what happens when libertarian ideas about sovereignty and markets collide with real communities pushing back. The network state adjacent project is called Destiny and is being proposed by Olivier…

I spoke to Luis Bezzenberger of Brainbot and core contributor to Shutter Network, about MEV and threshold encryption for encrypted mempools. Luis comes from a background in distributed systems and has spent years thinking about how cryptography can level the playing field between ordinary users and sophisticated actors who exploit the transparency of public mempools. We dig into how threshold […] The post MEV Is Broken on Ethereum — Can Encrypted Mempools Fix It? w/ Luis Bezzenberger appeared...

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I spoke to VictorMuhagachi, co-founder of NEDA Labs, building digital asset payment infrastructure in Tanzania and East Africa, about what it actually looks like to bring crypto to communities in this context. Victor grew up watching mobile money transform how people transact across Africa but also watching 15-20% of people’s money disappear just in the act of […] The post Crypto and Stablecoins in Tanzania w/ Victor Muhagachi appeared first on The Blockchain Socialist.

I spoke to Nader Dabit, longtime crypto developer and educator who built at Aave, Lens, and Developer DAO, about what it felt like to be at the frontier of Web3 and why he eventually left. Nader spent years genuinely believing in decentralized social and censorship resistant platforms, and we dig into why those ideas haven’t found […] The post Why he left crypto for AI w/ Nader Dabit appeared first on The Blockchain Socialist.

I spoke to Nick Vincent, assistant professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University and author of the Data Leverage substack, about what it actually means that AI systems are built on the collective output of humanity’s digital labor and what we can do about it. Nick has spent years researching how data functions as a bargaining tool, […] The post Collective action strategies in the age of AI w/ Nick Vincent from Data Leverage appeared first on The Blockchain Socialist.