Consensus Toronto 2025 Coverage, CT2025, Feature The Consensus 2025 speaker says AI can drive blockchain and crypto adoption. Afra Wang meets him. 

At a time when numerous crypto initiatives are awkwardly pivoting towards synthetic intelligence, Eric Winer has spent over a decade constructing bridges between cutting-edge expertise and on a regular basis customers. Now, as CTO of NEAR AI, he is pursuing a imaginative and prescient the place AI brokers negotiate, talk, and transact on our behalf — a imaginative and prescient that would essentially reshape how we work together with the digital world.

Winer speaks with the measured enthusiasm of somebody who has repeatedly been early to technological revolutions. Having joined the Winklevoss twins as Gemini’s first engineer in 2013 and helped launch one of many earliest NFT marketplaces earlier than the time period “NFT” turned commonplace, he now confronts what could also be his most bold problem: making a decentralized ecosystem of AI brokers that preserves consumer sovereignty in an more and more AI-mediated future.

Eric Winer is a speaker at Consensus 2025. This interview has been condensed and flippantly edited for readability.

CoinDesk: You’ve been in crypto for over a decade now. How did that journey lead you to specializing in AI?

Eric Winer: I’ve been within the crypto world for 11 years now. Eleven years in the past I met the Winklevoss twins by means of mutual acquaintances. They employed me as the primary engineer at Gemini, which was the primary regulated Bitcoin alternate in America on the time. Our mission from the CEO was to take this implausible blockchain expertise (actually simply Bitcoin on the time) and apply some grown-up engineering round it in order that it may very well be successfully adopted by establishments, governments, and other people broadly.

Back in 2013-2014, Coinbase was round, but it surely was type of a rinky-dink Silicon Valley startup at a time earlier than there was actually a lot of a fintech tradition even in California. So it wasn’t significantly constructed properly. We had been constructing Gemini in New York City with individuals who knew how cash labored and making an attempt to construct not only for cryptography fanatics, however for the plenty.

I’ve at all times been making an attempt to get blockchain expertise over the adoption barrier to succeed in a spot the place folks could be utilizing it, maybe underneath the hood, to make the world extra environment friendly and provides folks extra sovereignty, even when they do not know it.

CoinDesk: And that led you to NFTs earlier than most individuals had even heard the time period, proper?

Eric Winer: Within Gemini, we acquired an organization referred to as Nifty Gateway, which was principally the third NFT startup after OpenSea and CryptoKitties. We launched what was the primary NFT market focused at “normies” in March 2020. It ended up rising by about 1000% month over month for a number of months, going from promoting a thousand {dollars} of NFTs to promoting 100 million {dollars} of NFTs in a day.

This uncovered lots of people to the world of collectibles and artwork on-line, proper in the course of the pandemic. From there they acquired bit by the NFT bug after which by the crypto bug, bringing them into the blockchain ecosystem as an entire.

Personally, I believe the promise of NFTs acquired sadly co-opted by the crypto and hypothesis crowd. Nifty Gateway by no means used the time period “NFT” on its web site or in its supplies when it launched. We fought towards that even turning into what it was referred to as. NFT is only a factor, however on-line. We had been promoting artwork, promoting tickets. Having to assign a technical moniker and put that into the general public, I believe, was truly counterproductive on the finish of the day.

CoinDesk: Many crypto initiatives appear to be awkwardly pivoting towards AI and not using a clear imaginative and prescient. What makes NEAR AI’s method totally different?

Eric Winer: Near AI is an interesting firm as a result of the founders of Near truly began by constructing an AI firm. They began as an AI firm, making an attempt to coach fashions to put in writing code round 2017-2018. It was just a little early for that to be efficient on the time.

AGI has at all times been the imaginative and prescient right here. Near AI is much less a “crypto x AI” firm than it’s an AI firm that is vision-aligned with the identical objective of Near. Near’s imaginative and prescient is for customers to personal their very own knowledge, personal their very own choice making, not be beholden to company, monetary, or governmental pursuits, and have the ability to determine the place their cash goes and the way their selections are made.

Whether that is finished through a blockchain or finished through an AI mannequin, you need to have each. If we do not have a user-owned AI effort going, then we’ll lose the sport as a result of all people will begin utilizing ChatGPT for every part of their world, and no matter ChatGPT makes use of for funds is no matter you will use for funds. Then blockchain loses since you did not win the AI battle – not the crypto x AI battle, however the actual precise AI battle.

Near AI does have interactions with blockchains, together with Near, as a result of we predict that Near and different blockchains are a great way of doing issues. But we’re primarily an AI firm that sees crypto as a expertise; we aren’t a crypto firm making an attempt to shove in AI.

CoinDesk: What precisely does NEAR AI provide as a platform proper now?

Eric Winer: Near AI because it exists proper now could be principally an agent internet hosting platform. It’s truly one of many best methods to get an AI agent working on-line. You add some fairly easy Python code or TypeScript code, and growth, it is hosted on-line with a consumer interface, embeddable into any web site.

It could be backed by any open weights fashions, though by and huge, we delegate the precise mannequin operation to different suppliers like Fireworks and Anthropic which are on the market. The particular sauce of our framework is that it makes it simple for these AI brokers to speak to different AI brokers, whether or not on our platform or off.

The different factor that is not reside but, however can be by the point consensus rolls round, is that we’re closely invested in TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments). We suppose it is essential that you realize the place your knowledge goes, that it is not being harvested by these fashions for coaching, that even us as operators of a cloud system aren’t in a position to take a look at your knowledge, analyze it, or steal it if we wished. So we’re placing all these brokers and all of the underlying fashions into these trusted execution environments as a way to use them with confidence.

CoinDesk: Your imaginative and prescient appears to middle on AI brokers speaking with one another. What does that future appear like to you?

Eric Winer: What we’re making an attempt to construct inside Near AI is an ecosystem of AI brokers that speak to one another. “AI agent” is a really overloaded time period at this level. Most of the time once you see one thing speaking about itself as an AI agent, it is actually a set of tips and instruments for an AI mannequin to behave in your behalf. Like, “I’ve got Llama or Claude or GPT models, and I’m going to instruct it to post on Twitter on my behalf.” To do this, it wants the power to entry Twitter and a few common tips about learn and put up tweets.

But that is not how I essentially take into consideration brokers. I take into consideration brokers principally by way of how they work together with the remainder of the world in your behalf. My AI agent is posting on Twitter, managing my calendar, taking a look at all my messages and emails, deciding that are spam, which to answer to, which to floor to me – identical to an assistant in my life ought to be.

The future that we envision, which I believe goes to occur inevitably, is a world the place most of our entry to the web and to the remainder of the world is mediated by our private AI assistants.

CoinDesk: That’s a remarkably totally different imaginative and prescient from most crypto initiatives. How does it reshape our monetary programs?

Eric Winer: If it is my AI agent speaking to, say, Amazon’s AI agent, and they will purchase one thing and negotiate, they’re extra more likely to rationally select a crypto-based cost methodology and possibly an AI-based dispute decision methodology and AI-based credit score. We reshape the monetary system not by constructing a greater one and making an attempt to persuade folks to make use of it, however by constructing a greater one and making an attempt to persuade AIs to make use of it that is simpler for AIs and for the folks working them.

I believe that is the crypto adoption play now: we construct a world of AIs speaking to AIs in your behalf, after which we persuade the AIs that blockchain and decentralization is a greater world for them and for us than the one we have got.

CoinDesk: So in your view, AI may truly be the catalyst that drives blockchain adoption, somewhat than the opposite means round?

Eric Winer: I believe sooner or later, and possibly not too far sooner or later, you will see that imaginative and prescient that everyone appears to need – the tremendous app, the one place you go the place every part you do on-line actually turns into an AI assistant. It’s providing you with a content material feed, it is taking motion in your behalf, it is spending cash in your behalf.

And it is not simply doing it alone. It’s not simply hitting APIs and shopping web sites – it is speaking to different AI brokers. It’s additionally dealing with your interpersonal, person-to-corporate, or person-to-governmental communications. That must be a decentralized ecosystem very similar to the web is to some extent a decentralized system, however possibly we are able to do one higher on prime of blockchain-based registries.

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