Web4 Explained: Anndy Lian on AI Agents, Blockchain, & Digital Sovereignty

If you really want to have an AI play, then AI got to be the brain and not the co founders as the brain. I always say this AI is the brain, human is actually the architect. Architect gives the plan to the brain. The brain will execute, the brain will then bring the AI agent. The AI agents will be the worker. Then the worker will be working very closely with the users, which is the AKA the community. So this whole ecosystem got to be there in order for us to see a real Web4 project. Hey everyone, welcome to the Smart Economy podcast where we ask your favorite builders the questions you wish you could ask them yourselves. This is a production of neonestoday.com and I'm your host, Dylan Grabowski. In today's episode, we're joined by Andy Leon, the author of Web4 Age of Autonomous Intelligence, a book about the forthcoming integration of AI and blockchain. In this conversation, we discussed Andy's experience informing governments about cutting edge technologies, the pros and cons between bitcoin and meme coins, the three phases of the Internet, why blockchains still aren't 100% decentralized, what Web4 is and how AI is an integral part of that vision, and so much more. Just a reminder, nothing said in this podcast is a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens and that the guest or host might hold tokens discussed in any given episode. You can check out a disclaimer@www.neonestoday.com and if you enjoyed this episode, please don't hesitate to rate and review it on your favorite podcasting platform or don't forget to share it with your friends and family. Every rate review like share comment really helps us get more people listening to this podcast and getting more people that you want to hear from on the pod. I really enjoyed this conversation with Andy and I hope you enjoy it too. Hey everyone, welcome to the Smart Economy Podcast. Today I'm super excited to introduce our guest and Andy and I have been going back and forth on crypto Twitter for at least six years now. I've been honored to be one of the 84 people that he follows. Andy Leon is a book author, a long standing builder in the crypto space, and just an og. So thank you for joining the space today, Andy. I'm really excited about this. Hey, thanks Dylan. You know we, we met in real life too. So you, you are a good. Yeah, you're a good friend, you know. So good to see you, bro. You too, man. It took us a long time to finally meet in real life. I Don't even know how we ended up following. I always thought that it was because you're like, why is this guy, this American who works in Neo? What's his deal? You know, Neo was founded in the East. It was kind of like the, it was like the joy of the East. For 2017, 2018, it was a very prideful project for, for China and just like the APAC region in general, I think. So I always thought that was kind of why you, you, you took me under your wing. No, no, it's a, it's the good looks, bro. It's only the good looks. Likewise, brother. All right, well, let's, let's take a quick step back. If anybody goes to your website or digs into your history, they'll see that you're an og. So, like, what's your genesis with crypto? What. How did you get started here? When was the first time you learned about bitcoin? What brought you into working in this space full time? So my backstory is pretty straightforward. So I got into Bitcoin 2012, right? End of 2012 to be exact. Why am I getting myself into Bitcoin is because I invest in agencies. I invest in companies. So back then we were doing business with some of these really giant companies. You know, one of them is WeChat and a few others, right? So, so because we run an agency doing pr, advertising, marketing, everybody wants some, some. Some boost in their, in their social media, right? So they need to buy those, those anonymous account, right? So, so we started buying them, you know, from the so called dark web and we transact through bitcoin, right? So that was a really, really early part. You know, I, I didn't really, I didn't really understand what is, what is bitcoin all about, but I know that it's a form of, it's like a, it's a coin, right, that you could, you could just use it, right, to transact. I said, oh, that's, that's good, man. Fast forward to 2017, when I was investing into healthcare. I went into a, a very big pharmaceutical company. We talk about all sorts of things about healthcare, you know, and then we talk about fake, fake. Fake medicine, right? Then the, the consensus is blockchain is going to change that, that medical field, right? Because you can track, trace and get all these products on chain so that the counterfeit guys are just going to have a hard time trying to sell the fake ones, right? So 2017 was the time I get in. I love the case study about supply chain. I started A project as well, with a few friends. And of course I realized that the industry is very dirty, man. We never go for ICO because we have some money. So we put our own money in, we push the token, we sell the solution, supply chain solution. Then I realized that it's not sustainable, right? Because everybody's after money. And if we don't want to accept big money, you know, back then, it's easy to raise a 50, 100 mil. Then I tell myself, let's not do that anymore, you know, I just want to invest. So I started to give advice to, to government, I started to give advice to banks just, just to tell them that, hey, blockchain is here to stay, right? So right in the very beginning, everybody will say that, you know, that Asian guy, what is he talking about, right? I'm not saying that I'm not welcome, but I'm not like a superstar, right? I go in, you know, they will have that skeptical look, you know, but, but that's really in the beginning, right? But I, I, I hold my, my stand very clearly, right? What, what blockchain can do, what cryptocurrency can do, you know, how's the, how's the whole market going to evolve? So it came up, I came up with a book in South Korean, in English, it's called Blockchain Revolution 2030. So all the kind of scenarios that we have seen right now, from the previous NFT era, to the previous use case era, to the hype only era, is all in the book, right? Because it's a phase, right? On how product moves and so forth. So started to write books, you know, started to give more advice. You know, I even run my own investment company, right? Actually, the investment company has been around since 2015. And then 2017, 2018, we pivoted into cryptocurrency investments. And then last year, 2024, I exited from the company as a GP. Exited. And then I never look back because I've, I've done this so many times. The number of projects that, that we have invested in, from the good to the bad ones and to the scammy ones, we, we, we have gone through the whole night yard, bro. So, so I decided to step out, you know, because I just don't have that, that passion anymore. And then I, I just started doing nothing. But of course, just pure investment, right? Buy some, some good tokens, you know, and then that's it. No, I don't want to, I don't want to invest into projects anymore. At least for the last one Year or now? Close to one year. Yeah, close to one year. I, I didn't take part in any projects as a, as, as an Andy. Right, because I just find that it's too scammy, man. I don't want, I don't want to scam, you know, because of, of some, some, a few dollars here and a few dollars there. So I just keep, keep myself busy, write some books, you know, give some advice. That's it, you know. So this is who I am, you know, of course, if you search really hard, you know, I'm, I, I advise, buy, bid, you know, I also do a lot of, some content work, you know, so Binance hundred. I, I got like some, some award from Binance, you know. So this is just who I am. I'm just keeping myself simple, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to tie myself to anything. Of course, if, if there's a chance, you know, to build a big competitor, a big chain or big exchange, I'm up for you, man. I can even fund, fund the, fund the project as well, you know, but so far I really see nothing, you know, But I, I'm willing to take up the challenge, man. Let me just jump right in because you're kind of, I think you're being a little humble and saying that you've just done nothing. And one of the things that's always fascinated me about you is how you're, you're out, you're in the space and you know, you've built this following on Twitter and you know, it's like, who's this guy Andy? Where did he come from? And now you're talking about the companies that you founded and the rooms that you've been able to build in, get into. And one of the things that's always fascinated me about you is when you go to your website and you see the, the rooms that you've been in, it's like, who is this guy? How did he get to be a former director, Deputy director of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs? How did he get into the Singapore Business Federation? How did he get into the Korea Esports Industry association, the Singapore chapter? So you have all these really interesting, unique ties to local governments, and I also didn't know your business acumen and how many businesses you've been a part of. So while you're saying you do nothing, you still have also found this way to carve relationships with governments and larger enterprise. So how do you find yourself in these rooms? How do you find yourself working with Singaporean governments with what's Mongolia? You're working for the Mongolia Productivity Organization. How do you make these relationships and how do you get these government folks to pay attention to the crazy crypto guy? Okay, so, so, so one thing about the, the, all these advisory. So I, I try not to touch the Singapore government because this is my hometown, right? But if you look at Mongolia, you know, and a few other actually many different countries that I have strict NDAs, you know, European countries, many different other countries, even in Southeast Asia, I, I, I got the chance to speak to them because of, of a lot of good friends, you know. So like, like for example, like one of my, I, I can't name name them but like some of my good, some of one of my friends is like the former Prime Minister for example, right? It's just about, just about our age, right? So, so through connections I got, I get the stage, I get into the room, I get a seat at a table to give them realistic advice, right? So my starting point was, I mean apart from the good looks that we joke about is I'm a very real person, right? So I'll just step into the room, I'll tell them that, hey, dude, that fella over there. That is right, if you're going to do that, this is ABC outcome. But if you have a choice, let me tell you, there's another fourth possible solution and this could be the best outcome. So each time when I make that, that call, I gain more friends. Because if you are in a government sector where you sit with all the different policymakers and the regulators, sometimes even the enforcement folks, they want to hear the real things. They don't want to hear things that are very fluffy. They'll say things like, oh, blockchain is going to change the world. You can say those in the stage, on the stage, right? But once you are in the room with all the serious people, you have to zoom into the detail and then get the details going and then people start to believe you, right? So, so that, that is, that is one of my best, I think one of my best selling point, right? So that's why when I go to Turkey, I have friends, I go to, you know, I, I go to London, you know, the, you know, the, the previous mayors or some of the, our friends. That's why I keep building that connection, right? But it's a very tiring thing, you know, because you have to answer to some of these questions that you would think that it's, oh, it's quite silly, man, this question. But I still have to answer in a very professional manner so that the minister can understand, his entourage will understand, and then he is able to translate this into good value so that everybody can understand. Right? So just be real, man. I think that that is, that is the best, best way, man. You know, never sugarcoat that's it. Yeah, I guess to kind of pull on that theme. I worked for various different governments for eight years, and it's very slow to get anything done in a government. And whenever something does happen, it's never, it was never my idea. It was always somebody else's idea. So how, how have you seen the kind of results of these reactions and relationships? You don't, I get that you're, you don't want to, don't even spill details, but have there been conversations that you've had with prime ministers, with government bodies where you might have changed their mind from doing something bad and you could point to, oh, they did this because of this conversation. I dare say that many of those guys who have spoken to me are kind of brainwashed by some of my ideas, right? And the cool thing about me is I don't want to take the credit, right? I instill the idea to the front man so that the front man can instill the idea to the minister, right? And then they can have a good discussion and think that is the idea, right? Because my role is not to be to run for Prime Minister. My role is to make sure that I empower them so that they can make the right decision. So I never want to be in the limelight. That's point number one. Point number two is that I don't want to take credit, right? If I'm an advisor to the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Finance got to look good, not me. You know, there's no need for you to quote me in the consultation paper saying that Andy Le says this, this and this, and we all agree my name will be shown in the minutes, you know, when somebody took, took minutes in the, in the meeting. But I never want to be part of the, the paper because the Finance Minister got to be the, the person who have the limelight, right? So that's how, that's how it works, bro. You know, there's no way I, I could, you know, I could have that kind of win, win, win, win, win kind of a situation, right? So my win is I give them the right idea, they see the value and they adopt it. That's it. You know, I'm very clear with where, where, where what I'm positioned in because I Run businesses. Right. We invest in companies, we talk to very, very smart people. So sometimes because we see it from that anger, we tend to, you know, we tend to know how to position ourselves, you know, so. So that's the fun part, man. Bro. So what interests me about you is you have. And. And I, I'm. I'm just going to say this in a sensational way. It doesn't necessarily mean how it sounds, but you get these opportunities to get into these rooms with people with power, and you get to have these conversations, these intimate conversations with elected officials and with other officials that are in power in different governments around the world. But if somebody goes to crypto, Twitter, and they go to your profile and they look at what's Andy all about, you're always talking about the community. And really, you've been kind of. And this has always blown my mind. I, I don't like meme coins. We've actually spoken about this on one of your spaces before. But you are a total believer in the community that forms around a meme coin. So I. And, and I would say that in the years since you stopped doing things, 2024, the past couple years, you've really been leaning more into community and meme coin. So why do you believe in meme meme coins so much? Why do you believe in these communities that form around tokens? Why is that? What makes you excited to talk about crypto today? I'm still very excited about crypto because I think it's still the future, future money, right? Then the future money should belong to the people, right? And the people equals to community. Right? Let me ask you this didn't. Are you here in the crypto space to make money? If I was, I would have done it wrong. But no, no, no, definitely you're not right. But do you know that many of the retail folks who came in to crypto is because they are fascinated by the number of Xs that we can get from the token buy, right? If you buy early in the ethereum, wow, you get a few thousand X, right? If you buy into this, you get a few thousand X, right? Now, honestly, it's very difficult. The only thing that can draw people in is buy a meme coin, right? Meme coin can give you a thousand x, right? If you go to like a swap or maybe like a terminal or even like a dex, it's difficult to get that 1000x right. So small money gives you more hope. Meme coin is the only thing that I can see that can gather people, make it happen. And then buy a dream. That's it. Right? So of course if you are an investor, not a gambler, you would have different portfolio, right? So maybe a 50% on, on memes and then the 50% on the layer one. Da da da. You know, so that is the attractiveness of meme coins. It gives you a hope, right? And it's the easiest way for people to gather, right? Why would people gather? Because they, they, they, they like so and so blockchain. No way man. Right. They, they gather because they can make money. They build because they can make money. Right? That's it. Right. So meme coins are actually the lowest hanging fruit for communities to be built and for the people together. Right? What, what, what killed the, the, the meme coin space right now at this current moment are the launch. The launches, right, the launch pads. If you make everybody so easy, so free to just click and be a developer, then you kill the game. You need to have a certain guardrail to make sure that people can understand what you are trying to do. Have fun and then build the dreams together because you lower the barrier of entry. Any Tom, Dick and Harry can become a developer per se. It kills the game, right? So, so I spoke to some of these launchpad guys, you know, the founders privately. I say hey dude, you know, are you not going to put a guardrail? They say no. You say the big boys are not doing that. You know, the big exchanges are not, not setting a guardrail. I'm not going to do it. Okay, but, but ultimately the control got to be dead. And the control should not, can't be coming from the regulators. The control should come from the industry, right? You might have a independent counselor, you might have a, you might have a not for profit organization set up the control, right? So we need to set the control and not give the power to the government. Because once you give the power to the government, they control your decentralized network. Then there's nothing to talk about, right? You'll be a centralized, centralized chain who pretends to be decentralized but is super centralized. And then why are we here, man? Why don't we just work for the bank, right? Why are we here? Right? So we got to understand why we are here, bro. You know, so, so it's a simple theory, right? If you are into the crypto space drive things that, that brings value to crypto. That's it, simple theory. Ben, I, I want to take a step back and say that the whole reason why I first got into crypto is yeah, I did want to make money. I didn't want to become like a millionaire at any means necessary. But like the first time I got my first staking reward, that was when everything changed for me. When I could earn passive income in crypto. And that was what opened my eyes in 2017 to what this place could be. And I also want to say that I appreciate your perspective and your vision for why meme coins. A lot of people probably got into crypto because they could hit that home run, they could make that 1000x. And meme coins today is the only place to really do it. It's just my whole theory was that everybody was. The whole meme coin craze really happened in 2023 and 2024 was because of governments. The United States government was cracking down on crypto was operation choke point 2.0 was debanking people. And the only way that anybody could have a competitive edge in crypto in the US in 2023, 2024 was in meme coins. And that's when we saw just pump, fund launch and all these other crazy launch pads. So I always felt like it was the government that pushed people into playing with meme coins. True, true, partially, yes. But if you look at the space right now, the new meme coin, Stablecoin, you get what I mean, right? Because they accepted the fact that stablecoin is good. It's good because it's tagged to US dollars, right? When the distribution gets bigger globally, everybody's holding on to US dollar per se, in a digital manner. It helps with the debt, right? If all of this money flows back to us, the inflation will be so high that all the Americans would just be really, really poor thing, right? So the only agenda is to distribute the debt, right? And I think this is a very big meme because if you do not like the fiat, why do you push the agenda in this manner? And it's tagged to the end this peg to US dollar? I don't understand this man, you know, so. But of course that could be another topic for another day. But it's just strange, you know, to me it's strange. I love Stablecoin, but I do not like the fact that that it is only pegged to US assets or US dollar, right? And it become meaningless if you pack to the local currency. It should be somewhat in a basket. You have your currency, you have your native token or you have your Bitcoin. You form a basket so that your dependency on the dollar can go lesser and lesser, right? Then you distribute the so called bitcoin debt, for example, to everybody do the same thing that what the Americans have been doing. And that can be a new form of stablecoin. Right? Why are we kissing the man? What's the need? Why is there a need to do that? I don't know, man. I think the answer is simple. The the United States US Debt instruments like treasury bills were for the longest time viewed as safe instruments that would give you yield really easily. And so right now to have like a tether or circle that's just sitting in treasury bills, you're just earning yield from a safe asset. But as we've seen with every other fiat currency that has ever existed in history, they always go to zero. And so it's only safe for as long as it exists, which kind of. And we brought, I brought this up with you again on the space that one time we were on the Twitter space. Why are we not just getting everyone to get into bitcoin? Because if the fiat currency is going to collapse, then like bitcoin, Ethereum, these native tokens are the ones that are going to be the, the monies that survive. The US dollar, the Chinese yuan, any rail in any country, the British pound, you name it. So I guess another thing I want to ask you is what's your perspective on bitcoin? Because in the space that we were in, you were really pushing for meme coins. Because meme coins give that hope to somebody and it builds the community. It's a fun place to be. And maybe you, maybe you make it, maybe you don't. But like, if we're afraid of the dollar continuing to be as strong as it is, how come you're not out there making a case for everybody to get allocated more into bitcoin? I'm actually pretty very much pro bitcoin. Right, okay. But holding it as an asset is very risky. It's very, very risky. Right. You need to put big money in to get a small percentage of return. I didn't like it. Of course I do hold them. I didn't like it. In fact, I think we should have a good competitor to bitcoin because bitcoin right now, in very layman terms, it seems like abundant liquidity. Right. Bitcoin is down. Everybody is screwed. Right? That kind of element will not make bitcoin the future, future money. If you want bitcoin to fight even harder, to work even harder, then you need to find a good competitor for bitcoin or even a bitcoin upgraded version that can be working side by side or ranked side by side with the current Bitcoin. And I hope that the new asset can do better than Bitcoin. Right? And if that will happen, then we can say that, oh, our industry is maturing, right? It can even be an AI driven version of a bitcoin. Right? Because the consensus mechanism will change. The control mechanism is also going to change. Perhaps it could be an AI related coin. It could be an Nvidia coin or something. It has to tie back to the usage of electricity, computing power, proof of work, or maybe a more advanced version of proof of work that can drive the, the industry further right now is just. It's just not sexy enough, man. Bro, you know that that could be the easiest way to say it's not sexy enough for it to become the, the big, big future money. Things got to change, man. So a competitor would, would, would be, would be good. Maybe a AI coin or something, you know? Yeah. All right, let's use this as a perfect segue into why we have you on the podcast today. Even though I would love to keep talking about nothing but crypto with you in the future of it. You did recently write a book called Web4 the Age of Autonomous Intelligence. I went out and bought a book on my own, and this is a fascinating book. I. I got it on Sunday or on Monday, it Wednesday today. So I have not had a chance to read through all of it. But one of the lines that I really appreciated, and it's in the preface, is that it says, you said, I urge you to read with skepticism, question with courage, and build with purpose. So I really like that quote because it paints the. It lets the reader know that there's going to be a lot of difficult discussions that they have to ask themselves when they're reading this book. And the whole premise is that we're entering the age of Web4. Before we talk about what Web4 is, can you just really quickly and really briefly go through what Web one, two and three were? Wow. So Web one, okay. I would see this from a value capture and also from a user perspective. Right. So if you look at Web1 in the 1990s is all read only for consumer. Right? And the value capture is somewhat decentralized because it's not really connected, but it's a very static kind of environment. When you go to web2, you will see more content, more content generated from the user perspective. And the value capture is more platform, shareholder base. And then when you go to Web three, supposedly, you know, it's all about sovereignty. You know, individually you are the owner and the value captured is more for the token holders, right? But, but the biggest problem with Web3 is we are not decentralized, right? So if you, if you have a seat in the, in the, in the, in the, in the table, you would understand how the VC work, how the funds are being captured, how the VCs are actually driving all the tokens and controlling almost everything from code to governance to everything to the money, right? So to me it's not very decentralized, right? And the reason why I wrote the book, right in the beginning, I have like 23 versions of those. My shit. This is something that I really have to say. I think it's also in the book, I have 23 versions. The earlier versions were actually like an expose, right? I talk about this project, this project screwed up because of A, B, C, D, E. No, the more I wrote, I wrote, the happier I get. But the thing is, after a while I realized that I can't publish this because although the NDA is expired, but I can't expose them, you know, because in many ways we were all part of the value, right? So I couldn't expose them. But of course then I started to zoom into all the problems, you know, from the consensus mechanism, from the coding, from the architecture, why Web3 is not decentralized. That's the reason why I started to talk about Web4, right? So Web4 is more like a connective network, so it has its own brain, right? The user role is very intent driven and the value capture is more from the community and user. So you become more like an emerging paradigm. And of course you would think that why you are looking at this from a web3 angle, that's why you think there is a need to integrate AI into Web3 and make it decentralized. But that is not true. If you talk to the AI users, they are very skeptical about where their data is being used. If you talk to the government, they have the same thing, right? So they are very worried, right? So the way forward is not to have one or two big companies to monopolize the whole AI scene. So you are seeing from the AI perspective, therefore the AI should also be decentralized, right? So if you get the C from these two sites, it means that both sides can actually marry together and make it work. So that's why I started to talk about Web4, because Web4 will be a new era on how content is being created, how people see AI, how people use AI, how AI works better in a decentralized environment so that everybody can be a Policeman to control each other. And it works perfectly into the blockchain scenario. If you have AI as the brain, right. The blockchain will become the security layer or the consensus layer, it become the spine. It works perfectly, Right. It's a good marriage, right. So I kept pushing for this. I started talking about Web4 in 2021, where I don't see many people talking about this, right. But I'm just not happy, right? Because I invested in certain project. It's not decentralized, you know, how can it be 1% in circulation? But when you make the calculation, there's like 20% in circulation. So there's a lot of this, right. So once we get into that, I tell myself, you know, in 2021, Web4 got to work. Right? So 2023, I did a keynote speech, right, With a very big word, web4 behind back in 2023. I'm actually the top. When you search web4 and AI, I'm actually the top because I'm the only one that's talking about it. Right. Of course, right now there are many people who are talking about it, but I am definitely 1000% one of the earliest guy who were talking about it back in 2021 because I believe in AI. We invest in AI early as well, and we believe in it. Right. So that is the reason why to me, Web4 must exist. Yeah. And again, I really wish I had time to read through the whole book because there's gotta be a lot of nuance in there that I'm not picking up. But, but skimming through the book, I was able to kind of extract that. You're not necessarily saying Web4 is just blockchain plus AI. There are ways in which AI can be used, leveraging blockchain to enhance pro processes. A perfect example is daos. I myself am on a dao and it's like pulling teeth to get DAO members to participate and to vote. Because when you're on a dao, you're not. You're probably not getting paid, you're probably not making money for it. You're making decisions for an ecosystem. You have to put time into researching what the proposal is, understanding it, examining the people who are putting the proposal together. All of this takes time. But if you have an AI agent or some sort of AI entity that can help with that, coupled with some sort of identity solution that shows that this isn't a bad acting agent. This has gone out of its way in the past to examine DAO proposals in an objective manner that was just One instance in which I under, I was starting to see what the vision for Web4 is. I'm not just going to slap AI and blockchain onto a project and say, oh, that's Web4, let's go raise it $10 million. That was one of the use cases where I was like, okay, I can kind of see where the nuances. And so today when you talk to people about AI, my experience is openclaw is a self hosted AI agent and there's a lot of problems that I've ran into with that I am just constantly fixing problems that my agent creates. So how do you kind of address the skeptic who knows what AI is today, knows that it's still rough, we're still in the very early stages and maybe they don't have an optimistic outlook for what AI and blockchain can be. Because if my experiences were the same for everyone, my AI agent would have sold all my crypto by accident and that would have ruined Web4 for me. So how, as AI evolves and agents evolve, how does the vision of Web4 evolve as well? What do you think Web4 is today and what do you think it could be in five years? You see, right, right now Web4 to many people is actually a concept, right? And to the Web3 native, in a very simple manner, they would think that web 4 is about web 3 adding AI. That is not what I'm trying to drive at, right? If you really want to be decentralized, you need to change the whole mechanism. The architecture got to be changed, the consensus mechanism got to be changed, new ZK protocols got to be added in so that you can really achieve that decentralized future, right? So, so right now what I really see, like I've mentioned very, very briefly, is that blockchain is, is actually the trust layer. It helps with the verification, immutability, censorship, resistance, true user sovereignty, right? But the AI is actually the connective layer, right? They give you the understanding, they help you with the reasoning, they help you to adapt and then most importantly, autonomously execute some of the agreed outcome, right? So, so, so this kind of concept, although it seems like it's very straightforward, but it's not easy because if you want to have a connective layer, you need to work from a rule based system. At the very beginning things are very rigid. A is A, B is B. That's it. To then move on to a stage two where the large language model will be more generative, right? They talk among themselves and they learn from each other, right? They Learn from all the human interaction, right? But then stage four or stage three would be the autonomous agents, which is one of the core thesis of how Web4 should be is that they will have proactive goal for decomposition. They are capable of planning, executing and maintaining the state over a period of time, you know, so it become like a, like a true consensus mechanism, right? So if you just imagine you are in a dao, right? You're the human being is the architect of the, of the, of the whole system, right? They come up with architect right? Now in web three, the so called architects want 50%. So if you have two founders, they want 50, 50, right? In the AI space, it will reduce the human interaction and reduce the human core developer power. And most of this power would go back to the community at large, right? Not the fake accounts at large, and also back to the AI, right? In order to hit that balance, at least on the consensus level, Things can be more fair, right? The whole autonomous agent loop is from perception that I talk about, right? You try to make sense of all the unstructured data, right? You try to make sense of all your on chain transaction. Oracle price feeds your user through all those very neutral language from the different user. That's a perspective anger. Then you go down to reasoning where I talk about the LLMs. Then the last bit would be the action. So that would be the simple way to talk about the autonomous loop, right? And this is, to be honest, something that is very missing, right? When we talk about autonomous loop right now, a lot of people would just come and say, hey Andy, what about the 402, right? Well, that's a long way because in order for 402 to really effectively work to sort out all these micropayment, the infrastructure got to change, right? For example, if you want to go for Netflix, ideally with 402, you can just pay for 30 minutes to watch that movie and then you will stop at the 30 minutes. But that's in the ideal situation, right? But if the infrastructure from the Netflix platform is not changing to these so called micro payments, then there is nothing automated or nothing different from a user payment that you trigger by yourself using your PayPal account, right? So in order for full automation to really exist and work perfectly, there must be check and balance, right? And the check and balance can reside in the more decentralized Web4 environment where the agents can execute with ease and in a more controlled environment within the blockchain infrastructure. So it's fun. It's fun. What I like about the book Web4 is you're talking about a concept. And when we look at the race to get to the end goal of this concept, today we have like MasterCard and Visa creating agentic payment solutions. We have Arbitrom and Basecoinbase working on their own solutions. You mentioned X402 and they're very young. They haven't been adopted yet. I mean, even x402 has. I don't think there's been more than $20 million transacted on it since it went live in November of last year. We're really early is all I'm trying to say. And I kind of wanted to go down this line of logic as well, which is why I mentioned my experience with openclaw, because we're still really early with AI agents as well. Um, my experience is I was sold this dream where I could launch my Open Claw and my agent's gonna manage my calendar and gonna do great research for me and all these great things. And that is not the reality. So where do we stand today with AI agents? Do you see that we're on the right track? Are we not? Are there things that are missing to help build these skills and these abilities into AI agents? To get to this vision that you have in this book? What's missing today with AI that's going to help Web4 become real? It will still go back to the simple word check and balance. Right now we can see this from a very different perspective. If you see from an AI company perspective, things are all controlled by the AI big companies, right? So the agents are working for you. But if you are on a cloud server, your data might be leaked, right? So to me is check and balance got to be there right now the AI is like a very hardworking intern, right? She's gorgeous, she works really hard, but it's not most effective. You need to train her, right? You need to train her, give her the right data, give her the right instruction and train her over a period of time. And she can be quite costly because she couldn't drink the pantry's coffee. Every single coffee must be Starbucks at least, right? That's how some of this AI agent cost half a million dollars in token. So I think the checker balance is really missing. And I think that trust layer should be built on blockchain, right? So that you can consensusly agree or disagree. You can even share your GPUs, right? Or even TPUs. You could do a check and balance between AI and not with one centralized entity to check and balance. It's an AI with all the people that we talk about, the community to do the check and balance, right? Then it become a very self governing, controlled environment where community contribute, AI gets correction, AI becomes smarter, community gets the answer, right? So you have to see this from a very architectural level, right? So the very first layer will be like the interface layer, right? Natural language, intent based ux, just a human touch point. Right. Then now we talk about the agent layer. The agent layer would be, it could be a multi agent swarms, it could be state orchestration. There's a lot of autonomous goal execution, right? You tell them this is outcome you want, they execute it. So that will be the agent layer, right? Then you have to look deeper into the protocol layer as well, right? There'll be AI enhanced web smart contracts. You have all your different cross chains. You have a more dynamic consensus. Right now the consensus is if you are part of a dao, the founders have the most power. And then whatever you want to veto, it will never happen, right? So the protocol layer got to be there. And then last but not least, you have to look at the data layer as well, right? You need to look at real decentralized storage, right? You need to have decentralized Oracle networks and not just use a chain link. And then that's it, right? You need to have ZKP verification. You can even adopt ZK ML as well, right? So zero knowledge based machine learning. So then you will form that whole immutable foundation so that all four layers can work together, right? So the complexity of the bottom three layer is entirely the key of what we are trying to build, right? What we are trying to build from a Web3 perspective. That's it. So that vision got to be there. We got to reclaim our digital sovereignty and the identity as well. If we give everything to the government, give all our data to the AI company, then we become the product. But if we have a more consensus, agreed mechanism, you know, then then it'll be a win win situation, right? You get your wins, we get our wins and then it's going to be win win, right? So all these things got to happen, bro. I just want to push back a little bit and allow me to be a cynic, allow me to just be the devil's advocate when we talk about web3 and increasingly with web4, there's a lot of this value that's placed on the individual not wanting to share their information and data with the enterprise or the government. But my experience has been that people really don't care if they share their information with, with the government. Or with the company in America, every single person I know has had their data leaked dozens of times. At this point, if people don't care about owning their data and who gets access to their data? Does this thing that we're envisioning and that we're building, is it really going to have an end user? At the end of the day, you look at it this way, right? So no matter what, the users will still be living in the real world, right? And in time to come, AI would become a very heavy part in everybody's life, right? If you want to trust the AI, we don't talk about personal privacy first, right? If you want to trust the AI, how are you going to do it? Do you trust an AI that is more decentralized or do you trust an AI that is controlled by a centralized entity? Right? So if you keep the privacy agenda out, the trust factor got to, got to remain, right? So if the trust factor got to remain, then to me as a, as an end user, I would want to have a decentralized AI, right? I want my, my input to be more private, right? Then you, you coming to talk about the private stuff, then I want by output to be more accurate, right? So let's say your AI, you're decentralized. There's a thousand nodes. All these thousand nodes are run by IQ269IQ guys. Then maybe your output will be very, very high and very smart and everybody will just gain from that, right? So that all the smart iq, big iq, big question, all of them can be answered in a manner that everybody agree and verify. And that's where the trust comes in and that's where the consensus come in. If we continue to run in the DAO environment that is controlled by power and who has the most money, then it defeated the purpose of us trying to be decentralized. So whatever that mechanism is called is a failure, right? So if AI can kick in from the agent level to make it more fair, then we are really winning this whole decentralized concept, right? You can't be telling people that, oh, I want to be decentralized, but actually I'm centralized. That is something that, that I, I don't agree is the same as Michael Sailor telling everybody not to sell, but he's selling, right? Then the optics is really bad, right? So I don't care about Michael Sailor. I, I don't hold any mstr, but I, I care about our environment because we want to be decentralized and let's be decentralized. That's it, right? Yeah, sounds simple, but humans are just too greedy, man, you know? Yeah. As we kind of like zoom out and wrap up, we're, we're kind of nearing the end of our time. What are the projects right now that are giving you this feeling that they're building towards Web4? Who are the projects today that you feel like are going to end up in this vision of what you're envisioning, which is autonomous thinking built on top of true decentralized web3 rails? Is there anything, any team, any product, any project that you look at today and you're like, oh, they're building to where I think we're going? Quick answer is no. Right. But the closest that I can see is a bit. Tensor is doing very close to what I envision, but definitely because of the kind of token allocation and the kind of a power play, it will end up to be just another Web3 project. Right. If you really want to have an AI play, then AI got to be the brain and not the co founders as the brain. I always say this AI is the brain, human is actually the architect. Right. Architect gives the plan to the brain. The brain will execute, the brain will then bring the AI agent. The AI agents will be the worker. Then the worker will be working very closely with the users, which is AKA the community. So this whole ecosystem got to be there in order for us to see a real true Web4 project. Right. Because you need to sort out the architecture, you need to sort out the protocol layer, you need to sort out many different things, you know, so, so, so far, I think Bittensor is very close to that ideal situation. If they can relaunch it, make it, make it different, I, I think it will be great, you know, but if not, definitely there will be new projects coming up. And, and, and I want to emphasize on another thing is that it should be open source. If you want to be decentralized, you want things to be transparent, then you have to work on the open source model. Open source model doesn't mean that you're not for profit. Open source model means that you share what you have developed so that your builder can build on what you believe in and build on the source code that we all agreed upon. Right. Of course there can be some tweaks and so forth, but ultimately it has to be open source. And when the user base grow, AI would be very cheap or even free. Right now it's not free because there's a big IPO that is slapped to the whole AI model and I don't like it. I Like the Chinese model, a lot more, because Chinese model is more scalable and is cheaper. The output based on all those frontier model, in my humble opinion, is less than 1%. The task that you give them, how they execute vis a vis American frontier model and Chinese frontier model, I think the difference is less than 1% in my opinion because I compare this with the task that I have given them and maybe some of this chat prompt that I've given them. The output is more or less the same, you know, so it all boils down to how you prompt it, right? How you engineer it and then how you work it through. Right? So this, this is a very, this, this Web4 concept, you know, is the, the final outcome will be very similar to Industrial 4.0, where everything is automated. Right? So I want to see that happening. To be honest, if everything can be automated in that manner, I think it's going to be really sexy and it's really going to change a lot of things that we see. You could look into autonomous finance to make DEFI more defined and sustainable. You could even look at a more advanced healthcare system in our countries. And then we can also push the creator's economy to the next level using AI. Generated content authenticated on blockchain for provenance, you know, and then creators can easily attribute, license, monetize using, you know, using AI. So there's a long, long, it's a long, long process, right? But in order for, for it to do it, I think the brain and the spine must really be connected so that we can, we can, we can drive this Web4 agenda to the future and people will be able to accept. I think that should be the way, man. I think in the book I say something like this, I say the technology is ready, the architecture is defined. Now we should really intentionally design an autonomous future that secures human sovereignty, protect digital identity and serve a collective good. I think that the collective good is something that could be really missing in this space. We don't want to just empower one or two individual, we want to empower the community. So collectively we can do the good and collectively we can, you can drive Web4 to the next stage where it's going to be win, win for everybody, right? So yeah, for anyone who has not yet, I would highly suggest going to Amazon. What other websites are we selling web for? I think it's on Google Books as well, if I'm not wrong. Subsequently there will be other platforms, but the main place is still going to be Amazon. And if you guys really look at the Pricing, I deliberately put it to the lowest that I can with Amazon. Of course, we don't talk about the shipping fees and so forth, but in terms of the hardcover, it's just 1699. I think it's one of the cheapest because I'm not out here to make money. Right. And again, in my book, at the adornment page at the end, I said all proceeds will be donated. I don't need that money. I just want to make sure that the concept of decentralization can be upgraded. And everybody should understand that we are not really decentralized. And the power of decentralization will exist if all of us agree and align ourselves with AI. And that would be part of the journey of what I'm trying to push for Web4. Right. So. Well, I really hope more people can read 199 for the ebook. Just go for it, man. Guys, $10 for the softcover. I have been really enjoying reading it. And I also just want to say something that I don't think a lot of. There's a lot of Americans in crypto, and I've been learning another language myself. You wrote this book really well. It's in your second language. I just want to give you kudos to you and your editor. You guys did a great job. I only hope that one day, in the language I'm trying to learn, I can write as good as you did. And this book, it's a fantastic book. Lots to remind yourself of where we've come from and using those experiences to help build where we're going to go. I highly suggest everybody watching this go out and buy Web4 right now yourself. The Age of Autonomous Intelligence. Andy, thank you for finally hopping on the podcast with me. I'm glad that it was the book that served as the impetus for this conversation. I've always enjoyed chatting with you and it was awesome to finally have you on the pod. So, thank you so much for your time for the book and for sharing your insights with us. No problem, man. Thanks, bro. You know, I always wanted to speak to you, but we. We didn't find suitable timing even when we met face to face, I think in Hong Kong. But. But. But that's cool, bro. Yeah, in Texas, too. So we. We should. We should catch up more often. You know, if you have any podcast, let me know. You know, happy to join in. I might also start a podcast session myself soon, you know, and then I try to invite friends and fans and community to come and have a chat. Yeah, maybe, but. But that's again, something that we could. We could work on together. Right? Yeah. I would love to join a future podcast episode with you. Yeah. So thank you for your time today. What's the best place that someone can find you out there? Just come to Twitter, man. I'm very active on Twitter. If you have a good post, a good reply, I might just reply. That's how it works, man. Get in the arena and try things, folks. All right, Andy, thank you for your time today. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks, bro. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Smart Economy Podcast. To stay in the loop with all of our latest guests and insights, head over to www.smarteconomypodcast.com and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for all of our latest video content. And if you enjoyed today's discussion, please consider showing your support by liking commenting and review viewing this episode on your favorite podcasting platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and bring you even better content. We'd also love to hear from you, so please drop a comment on Spotify or YouTube to share what topics you'd like us to cover or who you'd hear us to interview next. And if you or someone you know would make a great guest, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're always on the hunt for fresh voices and new perspectives. And for our NEO token holders out there, please consider voting for Neones today as your council representative. 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