BeaconLayer
@BeaconLayerHQ • 107,842 subscribers
Accelerating Web3 builders, products, and networks. Podcasting the conviction, craft, and scale behind them. 📧 Advertisers: [email protected]
Videos
“What happens when someone inside one of the most iconic retail platforms of the last cycle sees its limits up close?” Kenzi Morikawa / 3061.eth speaks with Jay, Co-Founder of Sei, to trace the path that took him from the early days of Robinhood in Palo Alto — through hypergrowth, the IPO era, and the shock of the GameStop moment — to building in crypto. They discuss how witnessing the mechanics and constraints of traditional financial infrastructure firsthand reshaped his thinking, why the suspension of buys during one of retail’s most defining episodes left such a lasting impression, and how that experience ultimately pushed him toward systems designed to be more open, more resilient, and less dependent on centralized control.
BeaconLayer88,027 views • 6 days ago
“High-performance infrastructure only matters if it expands what users can actually do onchain — and makes that experience accessible at scale.” Sachi Takamura / 0699.eth sits down with Jay, Co-Founder of Sei, to examine why parallelized execution is becoming increasingly important for the next generation of onchain applications. From trading and DeFi to high-frequency user activity that simply breaks in low-throughput environments, they discuss how lower fees and greater execution capacity can fundamentally reshape the user experience — especially for smaller participants who are otherwise priced out. They also explore how this plays out in practice through projects like Bancor’s Carbon DeFi, where Sei has emerged as the ecosystem driving the strongest activity and volume, underscoring how performance advantages translate into real adoption.
BeaconLayer51,182 views • 6 days ago
“Bitcoin was the first distributed systems paper I read with an economic layer built into it — and that changed everything.” Kenzi Morikawa / 3061.eth catches up with avery.apt 🇺🇸, Co-Founder & CTO of Aptos, to trace his journey from high-performance computing and supercomputers, to scaling data infrastructure at Meta, to discovering Bitcoin and realizing that crypto was distributed systems with incentives natively embedded — the insight that ultimately led him to co-found Aptos Labs.
BeaconLayer89,209 views • 17 days ago
“What inspires you to get up and build every day? For me, it’s pushing Web3 forward — making blockchain a true public utility for everyone.” Diksha Nanduri sits down with avery.apt 🇺🇸 (Co-Founder & CTO of Aptos) to talk about what drives him: building the next era of the internet where blockchain brings ownership back to users and enables permissionless, trustless transactions that connect people globally.
BeaconLayer73,719 views • 17 days ago
“DA layers really differ across three dimensions: performance, programmability, and AI-native design — because on-chain AI can’t operate in a world measured in mere megabytes per second.” Sachi Takamura / 0699.eth catches up with Michael Heinrich (Ø,G), Founder of 0G Labs (Home of Infinite AI), to break down how 0G compares with Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA: why throughput needs to increase by orders of magnitude, how to move beyond the broadcast bottleneck, and why a decentralized storage network is essential for ultra-fast data ingestion and retrieval.
BeaconLayer96,796 views • 28 days ago
“What if a Web3 identity starts less as a brand — and more as a challenge to yourself?” Kenzi Morikawa / 3061.eth catches up with dcbuilder.eth ⚪️ for a deep dive into the origin of the DC Builder name, pseudonymous identity, and why crypto culture made merit feel more important than background. They break down how the 2021 analyst wave, DeFi Twitter, and the ability to be judged by ideas alone shaped the way DC entered the space — first as a researcher and writer, then as someone who wanted to become a builder. The conversation also explores why “Builder” became a social forcing function, how pseudonyms create contrast and memorability, and why in Web3, what you think and what you build can matter more than who you are offline.
BeaconLayer77,279 views • 24 days ago
“Back in 2016–17, crypto felt like a true idea factory — hundreds of experiments, zero gatekeeping, and pure creative energy.” Our host Diksha Nanduri sits down with Michael Heinrich (Ø,G), Founder of 0G Labs (Home of Infinite AI), to explore one of the most exciting parts of building in Web3: a culture shaped by experimentation first. They also dive into how tokenization creates new ways to fund and sustain projects — including open-source work — beyond the limits of the traditional Web2 business model.
BeaconLayer81,528 views • 28 days ago
“After moving from Berlin to Silicon Valley, I found myself bored at a new school — so I started spending time at my dad’s SAP Lab: fast internet, endless reading, and the beginning of my love for technology.” Our host Kenzi Morikawa / 3061.eth sits down with Michael Heinrich (Ø,G) (0G Labs (Home of Infinite AI)) to trace his origin story — from early curiosity and a growing obsession with tech to his path into Web3, and ultimately, the founding of his company.
BeaconLayer66,270 views • 28 days ago
“What if the real unlock for AI x crypto is not speculation — but proving intelligence can be trusted?” Sachi Takamura / 0699.eth sits down with dcbuilder.eth ⚪️ for a deep dive into the intersection of AI and crypto, from DC’s work building the ZKML community to why zero-knowledge machine learning could become a core trust layer for AI on the internet. They break down how ZKML makes it possible to prove that a machine learning model produced a specific output from specific inputs — without forcing everyone to rerun the full computation themselves. The conversation also explores why this matters for model accountability, transparency, and verifiable AI at scale, plus the projects pushing the space forward, from Modulus Labs and Giza to EZKL and new research around proof of inference.
BeaconLayer42,734 views • 24 days ago
“High-performance infrastructure only matters if it expands what users can actually do onchain — and makes that experience accessible at scale.” Sachi Takamura / 0699.eth sits down with Jay, Co-Founder of Sei, to examine why parallelized execution is becoming increasingly important for the next generation of onchain applications. From trading and DeFi to high-frequency user activity that simply breaks in low-throughput environments, they discuss how lower fees and greater execution capacity can fundamentally reshape the user experience — especially for smaller participants who are otherwise priced out. They also explore how this plays out in practice through projects like Bancor’s Carbon DeFi, where Sei has emerged as the ecosystem driving the strongest activity and volume, underscoring how performance advantages translate into real adoption.
BeaconLayer56,827 views • 1 month ago
“Gary Gensler was teaching a class while I was on campus. I skipped it—and I’ve regretted it ever since.” Kenzi Morikawa / 3061.eth links up with Anna Kazlauskas, founder of vana, about those small early moments that quietly shape how you think—like brushing up against future regulators, and realizing way too late which conversations you should’ve been in the room for.
BeaconLayer75,909 views • 1 month ago
“Gary Gensler was teaching a class while I was on campus. I skipped it—and I’ve regretted it ever since.” @kenzimori links up with Anna Kazlauskas, founder of vana, about those small early moments that quietly shape how you think—like brushing up against future regulators, and realizing way too late which conversations you should’ve been in the room for.
BeaconLayer Podcast97,452 views • 2 months ago
“Why does Web3 research feel more alive than any other industry?” Diksha Nanduri joins dcbuilder.eth ⚪️ for a conversation on what makes crypto research so unique: the open debates, the public forums, and the fact that anyone can go from reading an EIP to DMing the people shaping Ethereum’s future. They break down why Web3 research isn’t locked behind institutions or closed rooms — it happens in real time, across threads, forums, chats, and communities where ideas can move fast and still go deep. The conversation dives into how this openness changes the role of a researcher: not just observing the space, but actively entering the flow of proposals, technical debates, and protocol-level thinking before they become mainstream.
BeaconLayer37,336 views • 24 days ago
“What if the most important AI infrastructure isn’t the biggest model — but the one you can actually trust?” Sachi Miyasaki sits down with Karan Sirdesai Karan, Founder of Mira, to explore how Mira is approaching decentralized AI from a more focused angle: making machine intelligence reliable enough for real-world use. They discuss why Mira is not trying to become a full-stack AI protocol, how its approach differs from networks like Bittensor, Ritual, and Sahara, and why focusing on trust and verification could make Mira a stronger fit inside the wider AI infrastructure stack. The episode also breaks down Mira’s reliability architecture, from its core verification layer to node-level consensus, and why the next evolution of AI APIs may not be about simply accessing more models, but about knowing whether the answers you receive can actually be trusted.
BeaconLayer79,152 views • 1 month ago
“Back then I was nerding out on central banking—then I showed up at MIT and ended up mining Ethereum from my dorm room.” Kenzi Morikawa / 3061.eth catches up with Anna Kazlauskas (vana) about her early arc: how a straight-line interest in institutions and monetary policy flipped into crypto after she found the small, ideology-heavy MIT Bitcoin crowd—right as Ethereum was starting to take off.
BeaconLayer59,443 views • 1 month ago
Before “crypto AI” became a category, David was already exploring the ideas behind it. @kenzimori catches up with David Minarsch ☴ on his early path into crypto x AI — from studying Bitcoin’s economics and computer science during his PhD, to witnessing the 2017 wave of crypto builders up close. The conversation traces how David’s work across game theory, machine learning, and agent systems eventually shaped his thinking around autonomous agents and open-source coordination infrastructure.
BeaconLayer Podcast79,056 views • 2 months ago
The pace of decentralized AI is becoming a builder’s advantage — better tools, faster feedback loops, and entirely new capabilities emerging in real time. But that speed comes with a cost: it’s hard to ever be fully offline when the frontier moves this fast and yesterday’s assumptions can age out overnight. Diksha Nanduri sits down with Anna Kazlauskas, founder of vana, to unpack the whiplash speed of decentralized AI.
BeaconLayer49,266 views • 1 month ago
“Virtual machines are like cities — once they reach critical mass, they become magnets that are incredibly hard to displace.” Diksha Nanduri catches up with Jay, Co-Founder of Sei, to unpack this idea at a deeper level — why systems with flaws can still dominate simply because that’s where the activity, liquidity, and people already are. From New York and San Francisco to onchain environments like the EVM, they explore how network effects compound over time, why newer ecosystems struggle to pull users away even with better tech, and what it actually takes to break that inertia.
BeaconLayer35,544 views • 1 month ago
“Virtual machines are like cities — once they reach critical mass, they become magnets that are incredibly hard to displace.” Diksha Nanduri catches up with Jay, Co-Founder of Sei, to unpack this idea at a deeper level — why systems with flaws can still dominate simply because that’s where the activity, liquidity, and people already are. From New York and San Francisco to onchain environments like the EVM, they explore how network effects compound over time, why newer ecosystems struggle to pull users away even with better tech, and what it actually takes to break that inertia.
BeaconLayer Podcast39,106 views • 1 month ago
“What if AI gives us a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild the internet from the ground up?” @kenzimori sits down with Karan Sirdesai Karan, Founder of Mira, to unpack the founder journey behind Mira and the early conviction that AI would become far more than another tech cycle. They trace Karan’s path from teaching himself to build, sending cold DMs, experimenting with crypto arbitrage, and working alongside figures like Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal, to spotting the AI shift before it became obvious to the broader market. The conversation also explores why Karan has consistently chosen the unconventional route, how his time at Accel exposed him to frontier AI companies early, and why the pace of AI progress made one thing clear: this wouldn’t just change startups or software, it would reshape how humans work, think, create, and interact with the internet itself.
BeaconLayer47,416 views • 1 month ago