Interview with Gavin Wood: Even Speculative Narratives Are Built on Genuine Value
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Interview with Gavin Wood: Even Speculative Narratives Are Built on Genuine Value
Web3 and AI are philosophically opposed.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsDr. Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot, was recently interviewed by Empire, where he shared his views on the current state of the crypto industry. He believes that hype far outweighs genuine builders—teams truly focused on building—and in such an environment, we’ve seen few practical use cases or real-world applications, which is why Web3 has yet to achieve mass adoption. However, Polkadot’s ongoing efforts with Polkadot Hub and its next evolutionary phase, JAM, could finally bring about the long-awaited breakthrough for widespread adoption across the entire industry!
Curious about what topics were discussed? Here’s a quick preview of the key themes covered:
-
Why is today's crypto world considered a failure?
-
Is Solana actually creating "value"?
-
If crypto fails, why stay in this industry?
-
Why haven’t applications been adopted? Why hasn’t on-chain user count broken one billion?
-
What did Polkadot get right, and what did it miss?
-
Polkadot’s next evolution: JAM and its marketing challenges
-
Even speculative narratives must be built upon real value
-
Web3 and AI are philosophically opposed
-
If we care about democracy, autonomy, and freedom, we need a reliable proof-of-personhood mechanism
Why is today’s crypto world considered a failure?
Yano: Hello everyone, welcome back to Empire. I’m kicking things off today—Santi will join in shortly. We’re honored to have Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and co-founder of Polkadot. Gav, welcome to the show!
Gav: Thanks for having me.
Yano: Great! How have you been lately? Anything new going on?
Gav: A few weeks ago, I returned from India and China, where I gave lectures at various universities on the JAM protocol. It was quite interesting—I met many people and visited several cities. Now I'm just resting at home and slowing down a bit.
Yano: Nice. Let’s dive into some heavy stuff then—I’ve got plenty of questions. Starting broadly: You helped found Ethereum around 2014 and stayed active in that ecosystem. Then around 2015, you stepped away from the Ethereum Foundation, and by 2017, you had fully left Ethereum to focus on Polkadot. That’s roughly the timeline, right? As a true veteran of the space, how do you view the overall development of the crypto industry? Are you satisfied? With pro-crypto presidents emerging and stablecoins growing rapidly, do you feel things are exceeding expectations or falling short? Do you think the industry should’ve progressed much further by now?
Gav: I’d say the latter. There’s a quote attributed to Gandhi: “There are two types of people—one who does the work, and one who takes credit.” I see a similar divide in crypto today. Many projects are built on hype rather than substance. While there are teams doing solid software engineering, very few are genuinely advancing the core ideas behind Web3, crypto, or Bitcoin. Instead, too many are chasing fame—essentially relying on buzz and capital inflows to pump their tokens. Honestly, I’m not surprised by this state of affairs, but it’s certainly not what I hoped for.
Yano: Is your sense of disappointment due to misaligned resource allocation? Are people focusing on the wrong things?
Gav: Extremely misaligned—severely so. It reminds me of a satirical ad from the 1990s British comic magazine *Viz*: “No technological breakthrough needed—just market hype.” That’s exactly the mindset of too many crypto projects today. They don’t prioritize creating new value or upgrading technology to make blockchains viable as social operating systems. Their sole focus is attracting capital into their economic model.
Yano: Let me play devil’s advocate here. The issue you're describing exists across all tech industries—it always goes through cycles of boom and bust, bubbles and troughs. During bubbles, everything gets attention; when they burst, only a few survive. Maybe out of 100 projects, three remain—but often, the most impactful companies emerge from these turbulent periods. In fact, speculation has value: it enables a wave of startups to launch. Most will fail, but the survivors might become great. This duality is part of building companies—one side being engineering and product (and I know you’re an engineer’s engineer), and the other being long-term narrative-building, which falls under marketing and sales. From that perspective, isn't speculation part of entrepreneurship? How do you see this duality?
Gav: Promotion is indeed part of marketing—but not all of it. I see hype as over-marketing that ignores fundamentals. You're right that hype can generate secondary benefits—it lifts the entire sector. But if only one or two projects offer real value, then allocating capital via hype becomes highly inefficient. By Adam Smith’s standards, this isn’t an efficient market mechanism for resource allocation—that’s what worries me most.
Is Solana creating "value"?
Yano: So who qualifies as “worthy of hype”? For example, is hyping Hyperliquid justified? What about Solana or Worldcoin? These trending projects have talented founding teams. Of course, we likely agree meme coins lack intrinsic value, but some high-profile projects do have strong founders and actual users. How would you define the criteria for something being “deserving” of hype?
Gav: I may disagree on what counts as “real users.” Yes, some founders are clearly talented—but the question is: whom does their talent serve? Are they using their skills for the public good, or primarily for themselves? Even meme coin founders can be clever—or at least lucky. And perhaps one form of talent is precisely the ability to “create your own luck.”
Yano: Let’s circle back to Solana, Hyperliquid, and Worldcoin. All three are currently hot in the market, and their teams are undeniably strong. What’s your take on them?
Gav: I think they’re exceptionally skilled at making money—for themselves.
Yano: But who’s to say Solana’s users aren’t creating value? They’re freely choosing what to trade and how to participate—that’s just how free markets work, isn’t it?
Gav: The key lies in how we define “value.” If value means unregulated gambling—even less fair than traditional gambling, rife with insider trading and rigged outcomes—and if it leads to a small group getting rich overnight, then yes, that kind of “value” is being created. If that’s the definition, then Solana is indeed generating “value.”
But if we return to the original vision of Web3—to build decentralized social operating systems—then Solana has made no meaningful progress. That’s precisely why I proposed the JAM protocol. I’ve observed fundamental flaws in Solana’s direction, and I’ve clearly articulated my reasoning.
Santi: I’d like to dig deeper into “utility.” Outside observers often criticize not just Solana, but the entire crypto space, for becoming a casino. I’m curious how you see this. After all, from an outsider’s perspective, beyond Solana, the whole industry seems obsessed with leveraged trading and meme coin speculation. So let me ask: what do you consider the most practically useful application in crypto today? Given that speculation exists across all chains.
Gav: Take the Polkadot ecosystem, for instance. Several parachain projects are leveraging Polkadot’s strong finality and deterministic properties—as a “world computer”—to run real businesses. One particularly interesting project is Mythos, the chain behind Mythical Games. They use blockchain to ensure players truly own their in-game assets. This utility level far surpasses meme coin trading because there’s clear substitutability: even without Polkadot, Mythical would still need servers to manage game assets. The core value of choosing blockchain is player sovereignty—this enables interoperability, allowing assets to move freely within the Polkadot ecosystem, cross-chain to Ethereum, integrate with exchanges, and be licensed to other game developers. This is a prime example of Web3 empowering real economies—it delivers tangible benefits to Mythical Games. Crucially, what they’re doing on-chain is something they’d implement even without Web3, using traditional Web2 tech. That shows real utility. Conversely, meme coins have no equivalent in Web2—they’re essentially unlicensed casinos bred specifically in the Web3 environment, with extremely opaque rules.
If crypto fails, why stay in this industry?
Yano: Hmm, Gavin—let’s shift perspectives. You often mention the “post-Snowden internet.” I’m curious: how do you understand today’s internet? What’s wrong with it? And do you believe crypto can help solve these problems?
Gav: Frankly, I don’t think crypto solves much. Although I work in this field, I see myself more as a Web3 practitioner than a “crypto person.” Most of today’s crypto space has devolved into what I call “Mickey Mouse finance”—childish gimmicks, nothing close to what interests me.
Yano: I ask because I sense you’re somewhat disappointed—maybe that word is too strong—with how the industry has evolved over the past decade, or at least you hold a critical lens. You’re a brilliant engineer—you could easily switch to AI or another field, and you’re already financially independent. Given your dissatisfaction, why remain in this space? That’s the real question I want answered.
Gav: That’s a fair question. Indeed, not everyone in this industry starts with good intentions. But I also believe there are people genuinely trying to build something beneficial for the world, avoiding the vortex of pure self-interest. It’s those individuals who keep me engaged. If I felt the entire industry was just chasing the next thousand-fold return, I’d walk away. But I’ve met and worked with people who firmly believe Web3 is not synonymous with the broader crypto industry—it’s only a part of it—and even that falls short of the vision laid out in my *Manifesto for Web3*. While the technology is currently used to support meme coin markets on Solana—essentially unlicensed gambling—I still believe its potential extends far beyond that.
These dysfunctions are like technological “scabies”—they may draw attention and indirectly benefit Polkadot, but they’re ultimately pathological. Remove the bubbles, and capital might flow more rationally toward projects driving real societal change.
And what kind of societal transformation am I talking about? Things like personal data sovereignty, transparent governance, voting systems that function without massive bureaucracies. Look at the collapse of public trust in government over the past fifty to sixty years in the U.S.—people question the existence of a “deep state,” doubt whether taxes fund public goods. We need systems that allocate resources openly, fairly, efficiently, and directly serve those paying into them. I believe this technology can be a tool to achieve that. Current applications are still early—we need breakthroughs in scalability and mechanism design—but I’m convinced this tech can dramatically improve governance efficiency.
Why haven’t applications taken off? Why hasn’t on-chain user count reached one billion?
Yano: Why haven’t these visions materialized? Back in 2018, Blockworks held an event themed “Supply Chain on Blockchain.” You probably remember the ads—Walmart claiming to put supply chains on chain; Hernando de Soto writing about using blockchain to reform property rights in emerging markets. None of that came to pass. What did we end up with instead? Perpetual futures platforms, NFT markets, major crypto exchanges. To be fair, I’d argue these have value—they’ve created an entirely new industry. But from a traditional societal impact standpoint, results are negligible. Why is that? Why haven’t we seen any major real-world applications succeed?
Gav: One sentence: the products aren’t good enough. The foundational Web3 platforms simply aren’t mature enough to support complex, meaningful applications. That said, there are exceptions. In supply chain and provenance tracking, a few real-world implementations have shown promise. Polkadot hosts many such projects.
For example, the idea that users should control their own “social graph”—not platforms—is exactly what Frequency is building. It’s part of Frank McCourt’s Web3 social network initiative, and I find it a fascinating direction.
Projects like peaq, focused on information traceability, also show great potential. We’re beginning to see scalable, practical systems emerge. Most applications are meaningless without scalability—that’s one of the problems Polkadot aims to solve.
Another critical issue is economic sovereignty. Many Web3 or “Web3-like” platforms restrict a project’s economic autonomy. On Ethereum, for instance, projects force users to pay gas in ETH—a constraint that limits developer flexibility and raises user barriers. No one wants to buy a token they’ve never heard of, download a special wallet, or go to a DEX or centralized exchange just to swap coins. That’s a product flaw—the base platform isn’t well-designed. But now we’re seeing real-use projects increasingly turn to Web3, and they’re choosing platforms like Polkadot that offer true “economic autonomy.” This means projects can design their own economic models, and users can interact with products without ever touching the underlying platform token.
Then there’s scalability. Truly useful apps require thousands of interactions per second. Platforms that can’t deliver this simply can’t support real applications.
Santi: I agree with you here. Right now, crypto is dominated by speculation. Every tech revolution in history involved speculation, but we could be doing ten or even a hundred times better. There are already solid core products in crypto—they just lack attention and user growth. I find what you’re doing with Polkadot quite compelling, especially after speaking with the Mythos team and learning why they decided to migrate. But why haven’t these superior technologies achieved mass adoption? If blockchain is truly superior to Web2 as Web3 claims, why hasn’t the number of on-chain users surpassed one billion?
Gav: The reason user numbers haven’t crossed the billion mark is partly due to the time required for migration. Especially with economic systems, user inertia is incredibly strong—there’s deep economics behind this. Take funding-driven strategies: we see well-capitalized projects like Polygon and Solana directly paying developers to port apps to their chains. If a project lacks technical foresight, their CTO may lose internal debates to the CFO, leading them to accept subsidies and deploy on chains that fail to meet long-term needs.
Those chains can’t scale or provide real economic sovereignty. So fundamentally, this is a “stickiness” problem—it takes time. Projects need to learn through trial and error. Like the Mythos team: they started on Ethereum, then realized neither scalability nor economic autonomy met their needs. So they asked: “Are there other platforms? Are we giving up on Web3?” Then they discovered Polkadot could fulfill these requirements. But understanding that takes time. Humans don’t move at light speed—we’re burdened by sunk costs, fear of loss, and other psychological barriers that take time to overcome.
As a believer in the technology, I must trust that superior platforms will eventually gain recognition—but I also face reality: capital conservatism, market myopia, and resistance from incumbents all slow progress. Fortunately, I have time. After 11 years in this space, I can commit another 11.
What did Polkadot get right—and what did it miss?
Yano: Gavin, looking back at your original vision for Polkadot, what aspects were correct, and where were you mistaken?
Gav: On the successes, it wasn’t a solo effort. Though I authored the whitepaper, the protocol’s development was a team endeavor. Our real achievement was delivering groundbreaking scalability while maintaining generality and resilience. Bitcoin pioneered resilient systems; Ethereum achieved universality through Turing-complete languages; Polkadot built on both to create a scalable architecture—a technical leap few projects have matched since.
Another win was economic autonomy: enabling projects to bulk-purchase blockchain resources and redistribute them according to their own logic, unlike Ethereum’s “pay-per-transaction” model.
Where we fell short was in early accessibility. Polkadot 1.0 was an “all-in” proposition: to launch a chain, you needed a professional team, participate in crowdloans and slot auctions, design a token economy, and run marketing campaigns. This high barrier severely limited ecosystem growth—something we’ve spent the last couple of years actively improving. We’re now building friendlier experimental environments, akin to how Ethereum allowed low-cost developer experimentation. Few apps emerged initially, but the low barrier sparked vital innovation energy. Polkadot must preserve its core strengths in scalability and economic autonomy while creating sandboxes for easy developer onboarding—that’s our ongoing optimization path.
Yano: Yes, its biggest strength was enabling rapid code deployment and hands-on iteration. So how do you view today’s Ethereum L2 projects? Speaking as someone who’s never developed on Polkadot, if I were to describe it, I’d say its core idea is a “native rollup mainnet”—allowing users to deploy their own chains and enabling an interoperable world. You and Cosmos were among the first to propose this vision: helping people build their own chains, secured via shared security so “one chain’s security cost protects a hundred chains.” A powerful vision. Yet today, many L2s—Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon—are pivoting into chain factories. They’re no longer just L2s but offering frameworks like OP Stack for others to build chains, emphasizing interoperability. Projects like Zora and Base use these stacks. They didn’t choose Polkadot or Cosmos—they chose Ethereum-based solutions. What’s your take?
Gav: This validates our early roadmap. But let me clarify: the multi-chain architecture that these L2s now treat as the ultimate solution is already outdated within the Polkadot ecosystem. That’s precisely why we introduced the JAM protocol—we’ve already passed that stage and recognized its limitations. JAM, Polkadot’s next-gen architecture, is born from years of lessons learned and observations of market and ecosystem realities.
We realized that “deploy rollups, build your own chain—we’ll handle security and interoperability” is a reasonable product form—but far from optimal. Especially with Ethereum-based projects, they attract users by appearing “interoperable with Ethereum,” but I think this interoperability is overstated. Even the Ethereum Foundation is realizing this, which is why they’re now exploring their own “native rollup” approach, moving away from full reliance on OP Stack or Polygon. Just look at the validator nodes running on OP Stack chains—you’ll see what level we’re dealing with: a bunch of “cowboy-style” operations.
So now the Ethereum Foundation is trying to build what they consider a more “reliable” scaling solution. And that solution looks suspiciously like Polkadot 1.0, or perhaps Polkadot 2.0. But it’s definitely not JAM. JAM is my thoughtful synthesis of everything we’ve built, a reflection and redesign informed by other ecosystems’ current states.
JAM centers on “system coherence” and a higher degree of interoperability. I worry that Ethereum’s native rollup path, the trend of L2s becoming L1s, and even our own earlier Polkadot designs—all suffer from the same flaw: scaling via fragmenting use cases across chains, resulting in permanent ecosystem fragmentation. I call this “persistent partitioning.” It’s an inefficient way to scale—functional, but suboptimal. JAM aims to fix that.
Polkadot’s next evolution: JAM and its marketing challenge
Yano: I read the 71-page JAM grey paper—skimmed it quickly, but I got the gist. It seems you’re merging the best of Ethereum and Polkadot: retaining Ethereum’s low-barrier smart contract environment while inheriting Polkadot’s scalable, composable architecture. Is that accurate?
Gav: That captures our intent well. This philosophy underlies both JAM and the concept of Polkadot 2.0. We’re now launching “Polkadot Cloud” or “Polkadot Hub,” rolling out over the coming months. This Hub will be Ethereum-compatible—you’ll be able to deploy smart contracts on Polkadot with near-zero cost. You’ll get a high-performance, fully synchronized, structurally coherent smart contract environment, comparable to Solana or Ethereum mainnet. Our goal is to combine Polkadot’s scalability, decentralization, and robustness with a low-friction, user-friendly, highly compatible, and strongly interoperable smart contract system.
JAM is the next evolution of this idea. Your understanding is spot-on—we’re aiming to do exactly that, though JAM approaches it slightly differently. It’s a minor adjustment to the base layer—not revolutionary research, but a crucial product-level optimization. With this upgrade, I believe we can offer a smart contract environment that’s low-barrier, easy to use, highly compatible, interoperable, and infinitely scalable—most importantly, without slicing the system into fragmented structures like a main chain, an Arbitrum chain, an OP Stack chain. If you insist on doing that, you’re back to the parachain model. Parachains work well for single-use cases with minimal interoperability needs—but to create an Ethereum-style “low-barrier innovation sandbox,” you need a more advanced architectural design.
Yano: Alright Gavin, let’s tie it all together. Suppose you successfully build this JAM protocol (given your engineering prowess, I have no doubt)—but there’s another crucial aspect: from our conversation, I sense you may dislike but must confront it—marketing, ecosystem growth, and frankly, the common “backroom games” in crypto. How do you view these? Once JAM launches and runs perfectly, how will you handle branding, user growth, and these “softer” aspects? Because great tech alone isn’t enough—you need to play by industry rules.
Gav: You’re right—this isn’t a domain I particularly enjoy diving into. I don’t want to jump into that “mud.” But there’s one type I can accept: I call it “technical outreach” or “technology evangelism.” Like this interview, or my lecture tour in Asia, or writing blog posts. I’m willing to do more of that—to help people better understand what Polkadot is building, and why it’s worth dedicating so much time and effort. We want people to know our work matters, that it holds future value.
But day-to-day operational marketing—hype, chasing trends—I believe others excel at that. I trust Polkadot’s treasury will eventually identify and incentivize such contributors for the ecosystem. It’s just not my strength. As a technologist, my core value lies in continuous innovation and deep explanation. I used to teach—I enjoy teaching. This “technical communication” is itself a form of evangelism. But asking me to craft shallow, non-technical ads for the masses? That’s outside my wheelhouse.
Yano: Will you hire people for this? Or outsource it? Whether you like it or not, someone has to do it.
Gav: It’s important to clarify: I don’t hold operational roles in the Polkadot ecosystem. I’m not Executive Director of the Web3 Foundation, nor CEO of Parity Technologies. Of course, many in the community voice opinions on how Polkadot’s treasury funds should be used, and I typically avoid those discussions (only occasionally chiming in). I believe strategic marketing investment is necessary—but I lack the expertise to judge whether a given expense creates proportional value. That’s beyond my scope. Such decisions should be made by professionals, and I trust the current management teams’ hiring choices. Treasury spending under decentralized governance is ultimately a collective community decision.
Encouragingly, proactive actors have already emerged organically within the ecosystem—people promoting Polkadot tech, possibly earning rewards later. It reminds me of Bitcoin’s early days: Satoshi held vast BTC, but grassroots evangelists drove real ecosystem growth. They promoted the tech out of conviction, not profit. If we can articulate a compelling mission, if more people embrace JAM’s vision, we can foster this bottom-up advocacy. Then we won’t need difficult hiring decisions or value judgments—suitable marketing talent will naturally be drawn to the ecosystem.
Speculative narratives are built upon real value narratives
Santi: Exactly. Much of what you’ve discussed touches on community building, and crypto’s power lies in enabling large-scale collaboration. I believe that with the right incentives, we can achieve astonishing feats like Bitcoin did. Take Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS—an incredibly challenging yet fascinating shift. My point is, it’s not black and white—“speculation” isn’t inherently dirty or meaningless. Capital markets like Wall Street exist for a reason—they’re essential coordination mechanisms. Without value exchange, effective collaboration is impossible. Of course, none of us want a future defined solely by on-chain speculation and infinite leverage loops—we all hope for real utility. I believe we’ll get there. So from your perspective, what excites you most right now? What are you focused on? You’ve contributed immensely—what’s next? Where do you believe you can still make a real impact?
Gav: I believe the value of speculation rests on these systems creating real, societal (not just individual) value. While I admit the industry has drifted from that ideal in recent years, I still believe this value-creation ethos remains deeply embedded in crypto’s core. As you said, storms will come—projects that don’t create real value, these “zombie projects,” will be eliminated. They only survive because capital is trapped, propping up valuations despite lacking valuable vision or capacity for improvement. I hope to see them washed away. I’m also concerned about increasing centralization. Over recent months, I’ve seen many projects gravitating toward power centers, seeking validation from a few dominant figures. I think this harms the broader crypto ecosystem. Overall, though, I believe the projects that will endure are those with real product strength, resilience, and the agility to adapt. They’ll keep evolving, responding flexibly to shifting market demands. And by “market,” I mean not just financial markets, but the entire world—the technological, social, and political landscape in which blockchains operate. Blockchain is a unique technology—not just another app on your phone, but a socio-political one. The world is changing drastically, and this will eliminate some projects while forcing others to pivot and evolve.
Web3 and AI are philosophically opposed
Yano: You mentioned the “world is changing drastically”—let’s wrap up with AI. With AI advancing so fast, how do you see the relationship between AI and crypto? You once said they’re opposites—I’d love your updated thoughts. Are AI and crypto destined to be allies? Will AI run on crypto? Will AI agents hold tokens? Are they collaborators or adversaries? What’s your take?
Gav: First, I don’t really like the term “Crypto.” For example, CBDCs are technically “cryptocurrencies,” yet they’re highly centralized. USDT is called a cryptocurrency, but it’s also fully centralized. So the term “cryptocurrency” itself doesn’t have a clear relationship with AI.
The term I prefer is Web3. Web3 is a technological paradigm whose core principle is “less trust, more truth.” AI, on the other hand, is its opposite: “less truth, more trust.” Why? Because AI works by ingesting vast amounts of data from the world and outputting an “opinion”—usually via a black box, opaque process. This means when we use AI, we must trust the organization running it. We trust their data sources are comprehensive, not selectively edited; we trust they didn’t feed in fake data; we trust they didn’t tamper with the model. But crucially—we have no way to verify any of this. Ultimately, we get a super-centralized, hyper-trust-dependent “information system” that gives us the illusion of access to information, yet that “information” rests entirely on blind faith in a single person or entity. This stands in direct opposition to Web3’s principles.
Web3 encourages us to collect data ourselves, to analyze and understand it from first principles. That’s why many in the Web3 community despise RPC (remote procedure call) servers: we don’t like Ethereum depending on servers hosted by third parties—even if they’re usually stable and transparent. AI is a supercharged version of a “trust-based” information system. It delivers a “passive feeding” model of information, with a single source—forcing us to accept a CEO’s version of “facts.” To me, that’s extremely dangerous—a world where global information access depends on one person or organization is a pathological world. Yet that’s precisely the direction many AI companies are pursuing—they want to become dictators of truth.
Therefore, I believe Web3 and AI—especially mainstream, centralized AI—are philosophically opposed. And I also believe that if humanity hopes to survive in a future saturated with AI, we must develop robust Web3 systems.
If we care about democracy, autonomy, and freedom, we need a reliable proof-of-personhood mechanism
Yano: Gavin, let’s end with “proof of personhood.” I saw your tweet last December: “This is precisely why we need a solid Web3 proof-of-personhood system—and urgently.” I’m curious: first, why do you place such importance on proof of personhood? Second, what’s your take on Worldcoin’s approach?
Gav: Worldcoin’s approach is flawed. It’s based on trust—similar to how we previously discussed trusting RPC providers. Worldcoin requires us to trust a single entity: Who issues the credentials? Who decides whether my iris scan is valid? Who controls the global biometric database? At its core, it’s a centralized authority controlled by a single private key. Even worse, this entity holds absolute power to determine “who is human” and possesses iris data from users worldwide. That’s absurd—and eerily similar to the AI model we just criticized. Not to mention it’s driven by the same individual.
If you want to build proof of personhood in a Web3 system, it must be constructed from first principles—no arbitrary authority deciding who is or isn’t human. I believe this matters because most human interactions are based on the assumption that “the other party is also human.” Sometimes it doesn’t matter—like in market trades, where you don’t care if the buyer or seller is a bot. But in many contexts, we absolutely care whether we’re interacting with a person or a machine. For example: dating ads. I want to confirm it’s actually posted by a human, not a robot. Or in a chat room needing to ensure 200 members are real people, not bots—because we rely on these interactions to shape our understanding of the world. If I believe I’m engaging with multiple independent humans, I’m more likely to approach truth. But if one person controls hundreds of accounts pushing the same message, I’ll be misled. Humans aren’t perfectly rational—when we see many “different avatars” saying the same thing, even with varied language styles, we instinctively assume “this view is popular” and adjust our beliefs accordingly—not because the idea is right, but because we subconsciously avoid conflict or assume others know better. These psychological vulnerabilities can be exploited. And AI gives bad actors unprecedented tools.
We’ve seen this before—Cambridge Analytica, Romanian elections, where six or seven thousand political Twitter accounts were actually operated by a Russia-linked organization. AI makes such manipulation vastly more powerful, and we haven’t developed equally effective countermeasures—or ways to use AI against AI. If AI is controlled by someone susceptible to influence, it’s fundamentally compromised. So I believe that if we still believe in “Enlightenment liberalism,” if we care about democracy, self-sovereignty, and basic freedoms, we need a reliable proof-of-personhood mechanism to ensure our digital interactions uphold these values. If we fail, we’re already living in a “digital dictatorship.”
Yano: Okay, I originally wanted to end here, but it sounds too dystopian. Let’s end on a positive note: Gavin, what are you most optimistic about in the coming years?
Gav: Looking back, our social systems were never perfect to begin with. I’m 44, grew up in the UK, and witnessed an era when public services and social bonds were relatively strong. But under the pressure of internet technologies, these systems are showing strain. Now we’re experiencing dual transformations: breakthroughs in Web3 technologies like Bitcoin and BitTorrent, and a shift in awareness among global leaders—politicians, civil servants. While upheaval brings crisis, it also offers a historic opportunity to rebuild our social operating systems—replacing outdated, inefficient institutions with more transparent, flexible, and fair ones. That’s where my hope lies, and why I dedicate myself to building Web3 infrastructure. We need the right technology to support a better future society.
Yano: Beautiful. Gavin, congratulations on all you’ve achieved on this journey—it’s been an incredible ride. We’re all rooting for you, and we look forward to seeing you again.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
PolkaWorld
