Proof of Coverage

Connor and Mahesh sit down with Adam Jackson, Co-Founder and CEO of Braintrust. Braintrust is the first user-owned talent network, matching enterprise employers to vetted knowledge workers. Today, Braintrust boasts over 3,000 employers hiring from a pool of 500,000 freelancers who have collectively earned over $150M on the Braintrust network.

Adam discusses Braintrust’s origins from a DePIN-focused hedge fund, what DePIN means to him, the reality of the US crypto regulatory environment, and what levers Braintrust can pull to drive growth.

0:00 - 0:20 Hello Adam!

0:20 - 5:10 Why Remote Works Makes Sense

5:10 - 10:44 Adam’s Background and How Braintrust Came to Be

10:45 - 12:38 What does DePIN mean to Adam?

13:14 - 18:24 Braintrust’s Enterprise-Grade User Experience

18:24  - 21:53 The Upside and Downside of Decentralization

21:53 - 23:07 The Vetting Process for Knowledge Workers

23:07 - 28:15 Braintrust Revenue and Governance Model

28:15 - 32:48 Braintrust’s Growth Levers 

32:48 - 34:57 How Braintrust Can Pull Levers to Balance Marketplace Demand and Supply 

34:57 - 37:40 Braintrust’s Clients Don’t Care about the Token

37:40 - 39:02 Crypto’s Regulatory Environment

39:02 - 44:40 Has Technology Really Improved Productivity? 

44:40 - 48:30 Is Talent Happier Using Braintrust?

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Sami and Mahesh are joined by Sam Williams, Co-Founder and CEO of Arweave. Arweave is a permanent and decentralized storage network, designed for the preservation of humanity’s most important data. 

Sam discussed what inspired him to work on permanent storage, why he doesn’t view Filecoin as a major competitor, how Arweave is designed to store the highest-value data, and some of the exciting projects currently using Arweave.

0:00 - 0:59 DePIN Date Night

1:00 - 7:44 How recent global events inspired Arweave

7:45 - 12:09 Why Sam doesn't view Filecoin as a behemoth

12:10 - 15:04Arweave's competition

15:05 - 19:13 Bitcoin as a storage layer

19:14 - 25:09 Arweave's PMF

25:10 - 29:27 Applications currently using Arweave

29:28 - 34:52 How Sam thinks the industry can drive user behavior

34:53 - 38:30 What Sam's most excited about in the next few years

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Sami, Connor, and Mahesh are joined by Jake Steeves, Founder of Opentensor / Bittensor. Bittensor is a decentralized protocol for the aggregation and coordination of machine intelligence, which can be applied to many use cases such as AI training and decentralized storage and compute. 

Jake explains why open ownership models mark the death of the YC business model, his views on AI regulation, the most interesting use cases he’s seen for Bittensor machine intelligence so far, and why he thinks we’re entering a golden era of technological innovation and human progress.

00:00 The cold open that almost wasn’t

1:33 $TAO community as the NBA Youngboy fans of crypto 

7:15 The techno-optimists/effective accelerationists vs. the decels/regulators and how Bittensor strikes a balance

8:51 Bitcoin is apolitical

9:12 The meaning behind Jake’s screen name “Const_reborn”

10:25 Why the YC business model is dead

15:25 Should AI be regulated?

18:43 How the Bittensor community regulates itself

21:01 Bittensor’s vision and purpose, inspiration from Bitcoin

23:14 Bittensor subnets / use cases

25:32 Will regulation of centralized AI development be a boon for decentralized AI?

27:20 Can open-source AI compete with closed-source?

34:30 How Bittensor uses incentives and monetization to compete with closed-source AI

35:13 Bittensor Revolution upgrade and its subnet architecture 

40:40 Example Bittensor subnets 

44:30 Bittensor is a DePIN

49:07 What’s your most non-consensus take?

50:52 Outro

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Connor and Mahesh are joined by John Dogru, Founder of 3DOS, the world’s largest decentralized peer-to-peer manufacturing network. John walks us through the current state of the 3D printing industry, how 3DOS’ brings a new meaning to just-in-time manufacturing, dramatically improves rates of materials waste, and empowers a new generation of creators.

00:00 Intro

1:10 Are we aliens?

3:10 3DOS founding story

4:30 Where’s the 3D printing industry at today?

8:20 Not drop-shipping, but drop-manufacturing?

13:05 End-to-end use case 

17:35 How starting with higher ed strengthened 3DOS from the ground up

20:00 How 3DOS fulfils the last mile

23:00 How 3DOS helps load balance capacity across devices

26:20 Impact of democratizing manufacturing

29:40 The long-term vision for 3DOS

32:30 How 3DOS is using crypto principles to drive network activity and empower creators

27:05 How 3DOS is optimizing its incentive structure for quality

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Join Mahesh and Connor for a thought-provoking conversation with Greg Osuri, the founder of Akash Network.

They discuss the importance of Akash and its implications as the first-ever super cloud for computing. Akash operates in a decentralized manner, utilizing crypto incentives to source compute power and providing it to those who need it through an innovative leasing framework. The conversation also touches on recent events, such as Mexico's Congress unboxing aliens, prompting reactions and thoughts on the existence of non-human life in the universe.

[01:02] Aliens and extraterrestrial life

[04:33] The cloud's influence on innovation

[07:23] Decentralized marketplace for cloud

[10:07] Aggregating latent compute resources

[12:59] Fragmenting the AI chip market

[16:17] Akash vs. competitors

[20:12] AI developers and user friction

[22:07] Network effects in crypto

[26:08] Crypto and AI convergence

[28:19] Incentivizing equitable AI

[31:43] Akash Network and community

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Join Mahesh and Connor as they dive into the world of co-owned AI services, with David Minarsch, Founder and CEO of the Olas Network.

Olas has created a general framework for developers to spin up autonomous AI services across chains, which perform key services on chain. These could be as simple as automating DAO governance around voting, or as complex as creating self-balancing index funds. The Olas SDK makes it incredibly easy to spin up a new service, and the Olas protocol lives across chain to coordinate the network.

We discuss decentralized autonomous agents, the scalability of such a framework, and certain use cases that we expect to explode in coming months. Shownotes:

0:00 Intro

00:35 David’s Background And Phd In Game Theory

02:30 Work At Fetch.Ai And On Multi-Agent Systems

6:00 What Is A Multi-Agent System And Introducing Olas

12:55 What Is Olas And How Does It Work?

14:40 What Is An Agent? What Is A Service?

16:55 Governance Product And How It Works  

19:10 Fund Management And Defi Products

22:30 Community Use Cases

24:30 Token Structure and Bonding Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Join Mahesh as he discusses the world of lucid dreaming with Eric Wollberg, Founder of Prophetic AI, and Evan Fisher, Founder of Portal Ventures.

Prophetic AI has created the first hardware device capable of stabilizing lucid dream states among casual participants. An operating system to explore consciousness, Prophetic aims to create a platform to allow us to explore the inner workings of our brains, which may present over time as immersive, VR-like experiences.

We discuss the process of lucid dreaming, the value of contextualized sleep data, and the implications of using such a novel mechanism to explore consciousness.

Show Notes

01:19 What is lucid dreaming and why is it important? 

03:45 Eric and Evan discuss their experiences with lucid dreaming

06:15 Eric’s background and origin on Prophetic

10:45 Key unlocks of the last 10 years

12:40 Business model and the value of dream data

18:50 Evan’s thoughts on sleep data

22:12 Regulatory and public backlash

27:25 Evan’s view on the brain and technology

Note: Mahesh and Evan are both angel investors in PropheticAI

Join Sal and Connor as they interview Cornelius Greyling, CEO of VulaCoin. VulaCoin (www.vulacoin.com) and its sister company Isizwe (www.isizwe.com) are connecting the next billion unconnected by providing low-cost, high-quality internet access to underserved communities, beginning in South Africa.

We discuss: how Isizwe’s operating model was determined by their sole focus on the end user experience, the unique challenges of building a network in underserved communities, how VulaCoin is enabling an ecosystem of small hyper-local businesses, and the current state of crypto regulation in South Africa.

Show Notes

0:00 Intro

03:39 Cornelius’ Background and Isizwe’s Origin

09:20 Isizwe’s Mission and Design around the End User

15:56 How VulaCoin lowers transaction costs and facilitates an ecosystem of small businesses

28:40 How Isizwe differs from other mobile money businesses

34:10 Improving the Crypto User Experience  

38:17 Why Solana?

39:37 South Africa’s Crypto Regulatory Environment

42:48 The Future of Isizwe and VulaCoin

Join Connor and Mahesh as they interview Denis Sklyarov, CEO of WiFi Map. Wifi Map is an eight year old travel and connectivity app that makes Internet connectivity as cheap and easy as possible for its 4 million monthly active users.

We discuss: how Wifi Map solves connectivity issues around the world, how a singular focus on their users helped them grow to 120+ million downloads without any paid marketing, and the exciting new products they have planned in conjunction with the launch of their public token, $WIFI.

Show Notes:

0:00 Intro

03:15 Denis’ Background and Wifi Map’s Origin

07:40 The problem WiFi Map solves

10:06 How WiFi Map serves their users

12:08 WiFi Map’s organic growth

15:18 Wifi Map’s User Personas

20:18 Why Businesses Love WiFi Map

24:16 WiFi Map’s Upcoming Token Launch

28:53 How WiFi Map Uses AI

31:52 Denis’ View on the Future of Crypto

Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The hosts or the companies they work for (Second Element Partners or Escape Velocity Ventures) may own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast.

Join Sal from EV3 for the third episode of the Proof of Coverage podcast as he interviews Neil Chatterjee, CEO of Andrena. Andrena is a quickly growing traditional wireless ISP (internet service provider) that's innovating in the DeWi space as well.

We discuss:  Andrena's quickly growing, core WISP business, the technological breakthroughs that are allowing for innovation at the edge of connectivity, and the role Andrena sees DeWi playing in the buildout of next-gen networks

Show notes:

0:00 - intro, Andrena overview and model

2:37 - Neil's background in healthcare analytics, then connectivity at Facebook

6:02 - what's so hard about the fixed wireless industry?

13:01 - why is mm wave spectrum and point to multi-point connectivity so important?

15:30 - is there enough unlicensed spectrum for DeWi to succeed?

19:00 - the golden age of wireless

19:30 - DeWi cartel installations in Salt Lake City?

20:14 - Andrena's background and involvement in DeWi

24:12 - owning your backhaul and transport is the best position to be in

25:56 - bear take on DeWi?

29:23 - can the DeWi model work for mobile?

34:41 - any ideas on how to validate indoor cellular coverage?

39:42 - outro, socials

Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The hosts or the companies they work for (Second Element Partners or Escape Velocity Ventures) may own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast.

Join Connor and Jonah from Second Element Partners (SEP) along with Mahesh from Escape Velocity Ventures (EV3) for the second episode of the Proof of Coverage Podcast, where we interview Rich DeVaul, the CEO of newly launched DeWi CBRS project XNET!

We discuss:  Rich's unique background in tech and telecom, what makes XNET different, and why XNET believes its points of differentiation will help it stand out in the rapidly-growing DeWi CBRS space.

Show notes:
0:00 - intros (Connor, Mahesh, Rich)

5:00 - Rich's background at Apple, Google, etc. (Mahesh, Rich)

11:30 - overview of XNET, what makes it special, lessons learned from Project Loon (Mahesh, Rich)

16:11 - telcos as dinosaurs, DeWi as fighter jets, XNET as a dinosaur with a jetpack (Rich)

18:20 - "pioneers get shot, settlers get rich", the second mover advantage (Mahesh, Rich)

20:57 - Helium & Pollen building a data-only network, XNET building a full-service network (Connor, Rich)

28:32 - XNET tokenomic innovation, data tickets expire to maximize for utility not speculation (Rich)

33:20 - why did XNET choose to launch as the most centralized DeWi protocol? (Connor, Rich)

40:25 - DeWi's pivot towards more centralization early-stage (Connor, Rich)

42:50 - why are XNET rewards lower than Helium/Pollen for early-stage deployments? (Connor, Rich)

46:50 - token lockups will keep XNET's circulating supply very low (Rich)

49:29 - timelines for paid data transfer (Q1 2023) (Connor, Rich)

54:50 - what are the biggest challenges of being a crypto entrepreneur? (Mahesh, Rich)

58:36 - social links

Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The hosts or the companies they work for (Second Element Partners or Escape Velocity Ventures) may own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast.

Join Connor and Jonah from Second Element Partners (SEP) along with Sal and Mahesh from Escape Velocity Ventures (EV3) for the first episode of the Proof of Coverage Podcast.

We discuss:  Helium as the "0 to 1" moment for token-incentivized physical networks, the evolution of the proof of coverage (PoC) model, "why now" for DeWi,  eSIM innovation, and more!


Show notes:
0:00 - personal intros, Hexagon Wireless as a protocol-agnostic DeWi accelerator (Jonah)

7:15 - intro to EV3, why investors see DeWi as a massive opportunity (Sal and Mahesh)

13:28 - EV3 VALUE-ADD as Hexagon seed-round investors, their elite deal-sourcing strategy (Connor and Mahesh)

15:40 - why we created the Proof of Coverage podcast, target audience (Connor)

18:08 - Helium LoRa as the 0 to 1 moment for token-incentivized physical networks (Jonah)

20:34 - smart DeWi skeptic takes, evolution of the proof of coverage (PoC) model (Sal)

23:51 - potential future improvements to PoC tokenomics: time-based vs. growth-based token emission models, extending PoC runway for a DeWi protocol (Connor)

26:30 - location-based PoC models, incentives for creating contiguous coverage (Mahesh)

30:00 - "why now" for DeWi? as illustrated by Sal Gala via his "Moats of a Telco" meme (Sal)

38:07 - DeWi isn't crypto innovation, it's telecom innovation (Mahesh)

39:37 - eSIMs lowering consumer switching costs, T-Mobile vampire-attacking other MNOs via eSIM trials, iPhone 14 to have 6 eSIM slots and ZERO physical SIM slots (Jonah)

42:36 - eSIMs are bullish for DeWi...continued (Sal)

45:00 - who's gonna default on their phone? (Connor)

45:31 - first-mover vs. second-mover advantage (Helium vs. Pollen) (Connor and Sal)

48:51 - Twitter usernames, it's not goodbye it's see you later

Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The hosts or the companies they work for (Second Element Partners or Escape Velocity Ventures) may own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast.