This episode has a lot to offer for anyone interested in the future of AI, data ownership, and building in Web3. Listen to Anna's founder journey with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara and Diksha Lyer.

We hope you enjoy listening to his Web3 founder journey with hosts Kenzi Watanabe , Sachi Mihara and Diksha Lyer.

Avery is the CTO and Co-Founder of Aptos Labs. He has spent over a decade building distributed technologies and scaling them to billions of users worldwide. Prior to co-founding Aptos Labs, Avery led the crypto platform team at Meta, focusing on all aspects of blockchain technology, from wallet infrastructure to L1 blockchain development—most notably the Diem blockchain.

We hope you enjoy Avery’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 X AI journey.

He shares the potential of decentralized AI infrastructure and why a community-owned approach is crucial for the future of AI and data. 0G Labs develops a technology blockchain platform. The Company offers an AI blockchain web3 modular platform that delivers advanced tools and applications that connect decentralized networks to unlock data infrastructure storage through machine learning solutions for businesses.

We hope you enjoy Michael’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 X AI journey.

The discussion covers agent collectives, challenges in AI standardization, and metrics for decentralized AI success. Ron also introduces Proof of Contribution and Collaboration as trust-building mechanisms in AI, along with Theoric’s core pillars—interoperability, composability, and decentralized innovation.

He delves into token economics, governance, and company culture, concluding with insights on leadership and the future of AI.

We hope you enjoy Uma's conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe and Diksha Lyer, where she talks in-depth about her Web3 founder journey.

We hope you enjoy Nick’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 founder journey.

He discusses the challenges and future of Web3 gaming, highlighting AI's potential impact and the qualities needed for founders to succeed. Learn about YGG's evolution, their innovative on-chain guilds, and the key to mainstream adoption of Web3 games. Gabby Dizon is a game industry veteran with over 18 years of experience. He co-founded Yield Guild Games, a play-to-earn gaming guild and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that provides gamers all over the world an opportunity to access the NFT game assets needed to start playing blockchain games and earn crypto-based rewards. He is also a founding board member of the Blockchain Game Alliance. Gabby’s mission is to onboard millions of gamers so they can find opportunities in the digital world. He believes that the future of work is in the open Metaverse.

We hope you enjoy Gabby’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 founder journey.

Prior to Akash, Greg founded AngelHack, the world’s largest hackathon organization with over 100,000 developers across 50 cities worldwide. He launched his career at IBM and later designed Kaiser Permanente’s first cloud architecture.

We hope you enjoy Greg’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 X AI journey.

We hope you enjoy Ethan’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 X AI journey.

We hope you enjoy DC Builder’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer, where he talks in-depth about his Web3 journey.

Quantstamp is a global leader in blockchain security, on a mission to secure the future of web3. To date, it has performed more than 500 audits and secured over $200 billion in digital asset risk from hackers. Richard Ma is a former software engineer at Tower Research where he developed software that handled millions of dollars using extreme testing methods. He was inspired to found Quantstamp to improve security auditing after investing in the DAO and experiencing the aftermath firsthand. Richard aims to secure the future of blockchain technology through the Quantstamp protocol and better methods for secure enterprise blockchain deployments.

We hope you enjoy Richard’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe and Diksha Lyer where he talks in-depth about his Web3 founder journey.

David Tse is a visionary electrical engineering expert who has made groundbreaking contributions to wireless communication, blockchain technology, and genomics research. He is a celebrated professor at Stanford University and a co-founder of BabylonChain, a blockchain project that is Scaling Bitcoin to secure the decentralized world. In addition, David is an advisor of Bain Capital Crypto, where he provides strategic guidance to the investment firm.

We hope you enjoy David’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer where he talks in-depth about his Web3 founder journey.

Sergey is the co-founder of Axelar and an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo. He was previously a founding team member at Algorand. He received his Ph.D. from MIT, where he was a Microsoft Ph.D. fellow. His Ph.D. dissertation was on designing cryptographic tools for the cloud using lattice-based cryptography.

We hope you enjoy Sergey’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer where he talks in-depth about his Web3 founder journey.

Before his role as the Co-Founder of Manta in 2020, Victor worked as a Research Assistant at Harvard's Belfer Center where he gained expertise in international security, diplomacy, and technology policy.

We hope you enjoy Victor's conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer where he talks in-depth about the founding story of Manta Network and his Web3 founder journey.

Sandy has rich experience in research, business development, and project strategy. Having worked as both a startup founder and blockchain investor, she has unique insights into the development, compliance, and application of blockchain technology and open-source technology.

We hope you enjoy Sandy’s conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer where she talks in-depth about her Web3 founder journey and the early days of building Scroll.

The DAO has its native token, BADGER which allows users to vote on proposals put forward by community members. Voting power is determined by the amount of BADGER owned, and proposals that receive enough votes are implemented on the platform.

We hope you enjoy Chris’ conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer where he talks in-depth about the formation of BadgerDAO and his Web3 founder Journey.

StarkWare develops zero-knowledge proof technology that compresses information to address the blockchain's scalability problem. Before founding StarkWare, Eli was in core academia, earning his Ph.D. under Abel Prize winner Avi Wigderson and completing his postdoc from MIT and Harvard. His research focused on probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs), and during the 2013 Bitcoin conference, he saw how his technology could address many of blockchain’s issues.

Today, StarkWare boasts three major technologies that significantly advance blockchain technology into the future. But Eli believes one of the biggest challenges will be to ensure that blockchain remains decentralized: “Whenever you have a system of great value, some parties will benefit from it, and they will want to increase their hold on it.

The whole point of blockchain and Web3 is about resisting that or finding ways to distribute and broaden the influence of various corners of society on it. I don’t know of a good solution today, but it’s the biggest long-term challenge."

We hope you enjoy Eli's conversation with hosts Kenzi Watanabe, Sachi Mihara, and Diksha Lyer where he talks in depth about the Stakware story, scaling blockchain with zero knowledge, and his founder journey in Web3.

Sreeram's journey into the realm of Web3 began with a deep-seated belief in the power of innovation to drive positive change. He recognized the potential of blockchain technology to democratize innovation and empower individuals to create value without the need for established reputations or access to exclusive resources.

This unwavering belief led Sreeram to abandon his academic career and embark on his entrepreneurial journey into the world of crypto.

Biconomy is a multi-chain relay infrastructure and transaction network that aims to make Web3 user-friendly, accessible, and affordable. Learn about the challenges of crypto adoption and how Biconomy is simplifying user experiences. Explore the pivotal moments and lessons learned in the startup world, from Polygon adoption to the importance of staying connected with customers.

Primarily focusing on Web3 education & blockchain games, YGG has reshaped the gaming landscape. It caters to an ever-expanding community comprising gamers and blockchain enthusiasts alike.

Beryl's leadership shines brightly, earning her well-deserved recognition like a coveted spot in J.P. Morgan's Top 100 Women-Powered Businesses in the Asia-Pacific region. She's also a proud member of the inaugural cohort of Technology Pioneers and Unicorns at the World Economic Forum. Her journey is nothing short of an inspiration, particularly for women-of-color founders in the Web3 sphere.

Founded by a team of serial entrepreneurs and engineers in 2017, Hashed is the preeminent blockchain firm in Asia with a portfolio that spans the globe. We started Hashed because we saw an opportunity for blockchain to not only reinvent the global financial system, but the very fabric of the internet itself. This is one of the most consequential moments in human history — an opportunity to overlay the power of digital networks onto human ones, and to usher in a future where technology empowers individuals, and not the other way around.

Jiho talks about building in the bear market, being “small and unrecognized” yet confident in their founding team, vision, and community.

The team wanted to build a Web3 community that would reward those with the technical knowledge and those willing to learn about the technology. He perfectly sums up their founding principle: “Something that can play into childhood nostalgia is going to be a compelling way to educate people on Web3.”

Jiho also talks to us about the obstacles the Axie Infinity team faced while building and maintaining their product. One of those was working with the community on expectations around the company’s roadmap as they put out features. In fact, it was one of his biggest learnings:

“I think we're always thinking about the intended action that we want to coordinate with the community and the outside world. And how do we ensure that the things that we're launching and saying, that we can actually do that? I think it's more important in Web3… How do you turn your community into your best evangelists? And how do you have them doing the things that are most beneficial and helpful for the network, which benefits everybody? I think an understanding of aligned incentives and different economic models and the cold start problem is something that a lot of Web3 startups have to think about.”

Today, Axie Infinity is one of the biggest Play2Earn NFT games in the crypto world. Sky Mavis recently closed a $152 million Series B round eyeing Axie’s expansion, which brings the company valuation to $3 billion.

Listen to this episode as Jiho discusses the Play2Earn economy, his responsibilities as Chief Growth Officer at Axie Infinity, and more.

Coming from a musician family, Yat Siu was training to be a musician when he wrote software on his Atari ST in the 1980s to read music notations. While his software did not win him any marks with his teachers, he found that others used and appreciated it enough to pay him for it.

Soon, Siu would begin working for Atari themselves. He would also go on to work for Silicon Graphics and AT&T. His earliest tech entrepreneurial pursuit was establishing Hong Kong Cybercity (the first free web page and e-mail provider in Asia, later renamed Freenation). His foray into Web3 was, thus, inevitable.

In 2014, Siu co-founded Animoca Brands, which now uses blockchain and artificial intelligence to build games and other products. This occurred when Siu and his co-founders understood that NFTs enabled digital ownership of items. In fact, this principle led to Animoca Brands pivoting to blockchain.

“It’s a belief and conviction that came on a theory we had, which is ownership. So that’s why we always talked about digital ownership, which eventually became treated as property rights back in 2018. The principle of ownership creates network effects in which people build and compose on top will become so large that it basically becomes unstoppable."

“You don’t need to be out there; put your name or face anywhere. You don’t have to go to Stanford or any big college. You don’t even have to go to school to be in Web3 because I see people in smaller villages from India building on Web3,” says JD.

In this episode, JD speaks about getting into Web3, scaling Polygon, and what he expects and would like to see for the future of Web3.

Website: unhashed.fm

Twitter: @UnhashedFM

Lucas had always been passionate about computers and coding. But, in 2017, after working in the tech space for seven years, he decided that he wanted to revolutionize the finance industry and use blockchain to build the backbone for financial transactions. That’s how Centrifuge was born and became a platform to help people access capital for future needs.

Before Sota Watanabe founded Astar Network in Japan in 2018, he studied information technology at the San Francisco State University in the US. He then worked at a blockchain startup, Chronicled, in the San Francisco Bay Area. After returning to Japan, he worked as a blockchain researcher at the University of Tokyo. But when Gavin Wood, the creator of Ethereum and Polkadot, visited Japan and talked about Web3, Sota decided to make Astar the Future of Smart Contracts for Multichain Hub on the Polkadot blockchain network.

Before Nischal launched WazirX and Shardeum, he started his entrepreneurial journey by creating a social media company (what began as JustUnfollow is now Crowdfire) in 2010. He was a software developer, and before 2010, he had a day job and worked on his app on the weekends and any free time he had. This social media app was based on the idea that most people needed a single account to manage their Instagram, FB, and other social media pages. The app was successful and got 20 million users. In 2017, the large social networks started changing many rules, which affected all the businesses built on their platforms. That’s when Nischal decided that he would build his next projects on a decentralized platform.

In terms of structure Republic has four different companies - a holding company, Republic Retail, Republic Capital, and Republic Crypto. Its mission has been to democratize finance and increase access and inclusion. But the regulatory framework makes it very difficult for retail investors to invest in early-stage startups in the US. The framework is based on an accreditation system with a series of requirements that need to be satisfied for an investor to participate in an early-stage venture. These include an average annual income above $200,000 or an average household income above $300,000 or a net worth of $1 mn and a few other parameters that keep a lot of retail investors out.

Before she dived into the world of web3, she was a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte. Her journey to discovering crypto began in New York in 2017 when the city had become a hub for investors and entrepreneurs interested in blockchain. Having spent years working in banking, capital markets, and private equity, she understood how crucial digital assets and blockchain were for making the global economy more inclusive. After working at the crypto exchange, Huobi, in international business development, partnerships, and leading the global markets institutional business unit, decided to launch her firm, C² Ventures. The company focuses on empowering the creators of the next-generation web3 and metaverse applications.

The game first launched its closed beta in September 2019 and currently includes poker, blackjack, roulette, backgammon, and slots. In a candid conversation, Miles shares his journey of building play-and-earn poker in the metaverse, its search for establishing product-market fit, the future of Web3 and more.

This episode was supported by Diksha Lyer and Sachi Mihara.