3-hour in-depth interview with Shaw: How did ai16z go from zero to a market value of US$1.9 billion?

Guest: shaw, founder of ai16z
Original compilation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor 's note: This exclusive interview begins with Shaw's trip to China. Shaw reviewed his early experiences and fateful turns, shared the story behind the birth of "Eliza" and the success code of ai16z, and discussed in depth the development of intelligent agents in the field of AI alignment and encryption. Application, while interpreting the impact of the “Eliza Drama” and Skelly controversies. Shaw imagined the idea of ​​"DAO Town" in Wyoming, talked frankly about the challenges of public figures, and provided profound insights and inspiring thoughts on the future of DeFi agents and the Crypto AI ecosystem in 2025.

The following is the original content (the original content has been edited for ease of reading and understanding):

China trip

BlockBeats: How did you feel about your trip to China?

Shaw: Very good, the experience is very special. This trip to China made me realize that the popularity of cryptocurrency in China is beyond imagination. Many people who invest in our projects are Chinese, and there are also many friends from Korea and Japan. I especially wanted to know who these people were, since cryptocurrencies have become a global phenomenon. I have some Chinese friends who live in San Francisco and they are really into cryptocurrencies. This gave me the idea to learn more and get to know these people. Sometimes I feel that especially in the United States, our perspective is very limited, and the cryptocurrency field is no exception. Both the communication content and the project itself are very American-centric.

So I hope that all documentation can be translated into multiple languages, we have international translations of all README files, and I hope that all documentation can be used by people outside the United States for their own communities and related projects.

BlockBeats: So you weren't aware that there was a completely different market?

Shaw: I know there are international markets, cryptocurrencies, Twitter and some things are relatively new to me. Although I have some understanding, I don’t know the whole picture of cryptocurrency. My previous work mainly focused on the technical aspects of Ethereum, such as NFT back-end development. Don't know much about the overall cryptocurrency culture, just technically building relevant content. In 2021 and 2022, I will work more with brands, but they have almost never paid attention to the international market.

BlockBeats: What made you decide to come to China in person?

Shaw: I think internationalization is very important. What we do is more like a movement. It is like there is no VC (venture capital), no team to allocate shares, and not even a white paper. Everything is very natural and can be seen. Our partners are located all over the world. For example, Mihawk was here yesterday and we noticed that the Chinese community is very interested in our project, but they don't quite understand what we are doing.

So we started adding translation functionality on Discord and enlisting community members to help us bridge the communication gap. I'm just thinking about how to bridge these gaps? Because I think there are so many talented people here and such a great environment. But as someone who only speaks English, I think about how do I really integrate and reach this market and things like that.

BlockBeats: Did you start your trip from Shanghai? I remember the 706 group is also in Shanghai, right?

Shaw: Yes, they are actually an international team with bases in many places. But their core base is in Shanghai. We also participated in a hackathon event, and many people participated. I was fortunate to meet many people as a judge, and it felt great.

BlockBeats: I think 706 is one of the largest digital OMAC communities in China. They organize various types of offline activities. In fact, the offline meeting mode of Chinese communities seems to have been initiated by 706 in 2022. In fact, most of the very successful cryptographic teams or projects, they usually have very good relationships with the Chinese community and have origin stories, especially related to Ethereum.

It’s quite interesting. For example, going back to Vitalik, when he first came to China, many Chinese investors helped him. Another example is Anatoly, the founder of Solana. Before the bull market came, he came to our office for a chat. After that, the project grew rapidly in the second year. And now, you are here too. Maybe this is a good sign for the crypto industry and next year will be a very good year. Because promising projects tend to come to the Chinese community, talk to developers and community members, and then over the next year those projects really take off, it's kind of an interesting sign.

Shaw: I think it may be because these people are willing to travel around the world to interact with communities in person, and are willing to meet people who really contribute to the industry. This attitude of active participation is important in itself. You know on the one hand it's good to go meet people and make connections yourself. But on the other hand, a guy like Vitalik, he wants to see everyone, wants to be with people. This quality is one of the core of his whole philosophy, and it resonates with me very much. The United States is powerful but has a relatively small population, while China is both powerful and populous. We are two superpowers and although there are some conflicts at the government level, as human beings we are the same and we are really in this together.

Early experiences

BlockBeats: That makes perfect sense. By the way, you mentioned before that you also have some development experience in the Ethereum ecosystem. Can you share more?

Shaw: I originally got into this field because I was particularly interested in game development, especially the interoperability of assets and characters across platforms, such as how items can be traded across different games. This is actually the concept that later became known as the "Metaverse". NFT attracted me at once. I participated in the development of many NFT projects, mainly as an unknown developer to help others with projects.

I also work with brands that, while they may not be as deep in cultural understanding, need someone to guide them. I learned a lot through these projects, such as the Solidity programming language. However, I have always been particularly interested in "intelligent agents" (agents) and want to explore how to combine off-chain artificial intelligence with on-chain identities and wallets. This was also my opportunity to enter this field.

BlockBeats: Is this before 2024? For example, before ChatGPT was released?

Shaw: Yeah, definitely before ChatGPT was released. At that time, the GPT series of models had just begun to take shape. For example, GPT-1 and GPT-2 were both average. It was not until the emergence of GPT-3 that we realized that this would subvert everything. As soon as the beta test of GPT-3 was released, I seized the opportunity to join a small community, which was the beginning of what later drove all my current work. The emergence of GPT-4 and ChatGPT has further revolutionized AI. Its ability can not only rhyme and reason, but also handle longer contexts.

BlockBeats: So you were developing in the Ethereum community and also focusing on the AI ​​field? When did this happen?

Shaw: It was probably mid-2021. I’m not particularly good at time perception, but it was around the time when the GPT-3 Beta test became popular. At the end of 2021, I started to feel that developing intelligent agents was becoming more and more possible. At that time, I mainly made a living by making intelligent agents and 3D virtual characters, and also did some NFT project development.

BlockBeats: I remember that in the second half of the bull market in 2021, NFT began to rise rapidly. At that time, you were not only paying attention to NFT, but also studying the concept of intelligent agents. This seems like a very early direction, when almost no one was talking about smart proxies, and are you combining proxies and encryption?

Shaw: Yes, there was a company called Webiverse at the time, and they conducted a very successful NFT land sale. I joined after the land sale was completed. I have been the lead developer for a while, mainly responsible for character design and character creation. This is a pure AI metaverse project, and our goal is to allow intelligent agents to walk freely in the 3D world. But then the project suffered a hacker attack, the entire fund bank was stolen, and everything was transferred to the hacker's wallet, which put a lot of pressure on the team. Webiverse then transformed into what is now MoeMate, a project focusing on AI characters, and later also entered the Meme field.

But looking back, at that time we were really trying to introduce AI intelligent agents into the 3D world. After that, I also participated in some other projects, such as a platform called MagicML, and another project called Project 89. I don’t know if you have heard of Parzival. We were the co-founders of this project, and at that time we also launched an open source intelligent agent project called Magic. Its goal is to make a code-free intelligent agent building tool, which I think is a cool idea. But the feedback from the community was: "We don't know how to build a proxy, can you help us?"

BlockBeats: It’s true that the interfaces of no-code tools can sometimes feel mysterious.

Shaw: Yeah, I felt the same way. When I left the project, I still maintained a good relationship, but my heart preferred to be a more ideal agent, which I called "Eliza". We initially tried to develop Eliza within the Magic framework as an example of the best agents we could build with this set of tools.

However, the efficiency of no-code development was too slow, and I gradually became frustrated, so I decided to abandon the no-code approach and start focusing on the development of Eliza. The project didn't get much attention at first, so I had to make ends meet with other projects while sticking to the open source parts of Eliza.

BlockBeats: What about the guitar and music experience?

Shaw: That was way back. When I was in my 20s, I was a professional musician and toured. But this experience is not directly related to the current Eliza project, which started about two years ago.

Jill: Yeah, that’s when we first met and started working together.

BlockBeats: I see, I was just going to ask, was that when you met?

Jill: When I met him, he was working on the Magic project, and then he started to focus fully on Eliza, and he went through many other projects in the meantime.

Why is it called "Eliza"?

Shaw: During that time I mostly worked on temporary projects to make ends meet while continuing to focus on the development of intelligent agents, which were all open source. I built many experimental features in Python, such as letting agents write their own code, manage social media, and even operate computer terminals completely autonomously.

Later I realized that smart agents are actually a web-based technology, so I refactored the entire system using TypeScript and named the project VEGENT (because the name "Agent" on NPM was already taken). Later, I renamed it Eliza and that became the core of the project. When the meme trend took off, my skills were ready.

Later I released an agent based on Eliza, but it didn't attract much attention at first, until I met Skelly, and we worked together on a campaign called VEGENT Spartan. At that time, some people questioned our fraud, so I made the code public. After everyone saw it, they realized that this technology was indeed available, which promoted the development of the entire project.

BlockBeats: I highly recommend everyone to listen to the Bankless podcast, where you can hear the story of the entire AI6z project, which is very interesting. I'm curious, why did you choose the name "Eliza"? Does it have any special meaning?

Shaw: There is indeed a story behind this. In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum developed the first chatbot program, which could simulate a conversation model similar to that of Rogers psychologists. For example, if you say "I'm sad," it will respond with "Why do you feel sad?" If you say "Because of such and such a reason," it will ask, "Then why is this happening?"

Weizenbaum named the program Eliza, after the character Eliza in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion. The character is a streetwise woman who, while intelligent and attractive, is vulgar and of low status.

In the story, someone wants to transform her into a decent lady. Weizenbaum used this to make an interesting metaphor: making AI a "more human-like" existence. Later, the term "Eliza effect" was coined, which refers to the fact that when people talk to computers, they tend to overestimate the computer's intelligence and mistake it for certain human qualities. In the intelligent agent community, many of these anthropomorphic agents are called "Eliza" because of their distinctive personalities and highly human characteristics, so I think this name fits our project very well.

BlockBeats: I think you're really a developer or founder who thinks deeply about philosophy. When we had dinner yesterday you mentioned some great insights into future scenarios, such as how artificial intelligence could revolutionize the world. You've also touched on a lot of similar topics, like what you shared on the Bankless podcast.

We're very interested in this, and I think a lot of people would agree that in, say, five to six years' time, we might all be out of work. This got people thinking about what to do when their jobs no longer exist. This can be scary and even devoid of meaning, and it seems to be something you spend a lot of time thinking about.

Shaw: Yeah, for me it’s more of a spiritual mission and finding my own spiritual world. I think a lot of people get into crypto to achieve financial freedom. So what happens when you achieve financial freedom? You could buy a yacht and live that life. But for me it’s more about answering some fundamental questions: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What service can I provide to others? I think this is very important.

I think the coming times are going to be very uncertain and a lot of people are going to be very scared. And I hope to pass on an influence and tell everyone that we don't need to be afraid. We can truly take control of our own destiny and fight fear with self-empowerment. This is also one of the core concepts of Web3. No one will come to save us. We must save ourselves and build the world we want to live in.

I love my work, but the point is that the work is what it is. If you're doing the right things, it can be very fulfilling. I think a lot of people these days are just working for a living, to support their families. Their lives happen more outside of work, and work is just a means of survival for them. In the future, this situation will be completely different. If everything goes well, we'll be free to do the things that really matter.

BlockBeats: What is the most important or most interesting thing to you right now? What areas do you want to work on?

Shaw: I'm particularly interested in the future of unemployment because we're all going to lose our jobs eventually. This is the reality I can imagine, where AI and robots will be better than us at almost everything. All labor will be fully automated as these technologies automate the best human capabilities and turn them into repeatable processes. This could lead to a universal basic income, one of the solutions many have proposed. But I don't think this is a good solution.

BlockBeats: Yes, many projects or experiments on universal basic income have ultimately failed.

Shaw: I don’t believe in charity, and that’s a pretty bold point. But I think altruism doesn't work, we have to find a win-win way, you win, I win. If I just give you money, what is the meaning of your life? Moreover, this will also create a series of reverse incentives. At least in the case of the United States, the government is essentially funded by business because business provides the financial backing.

Let's be honest this is all driven by money and these businesses own all the fruits of their labor and you are now asking these elected officials to take money away from the businesses that fund them and redistribute it to ordinary people as a welfare system that is clearly not possible . If you look at our response to COVID or the response of the nation's public health system, this is all going to be highly politicized and likely to be a half-baked solution and a lot of people will suffer as a result. I don't see the possibility of this not happening.

But if we can have the resources, if we can find ways to share in the fruits of that automated labor, or have some ownership in those companies that create value, we can actually distribute it equitably in a way that makes everything better. I think crypto can enable that, where traditionally you would invest in a company and the company grows. Much of the current ecosystem in the crypto space is actually like gambling—today it’s peanut, tomorrow it’s fartcoin. Money flows back and forth between these different memes.

But what would it be like to be able to actually invest in something that expands value, rather than just relying on new players to inject more money? That is a transition from a speculative ecosystem to an investment ecosystem, where we create new technologies of great value through tokens. This is already starting to happen in the crypto space, it's just currently more from the venture capital-backed side rather than the more organic part.

This also leads to a discussion on AI16z. If we can expand value and connect ordinary users to DeFi without requiring users to learn all DeFi knowledge, you can imagine a world where everyone has enough wealth. I don’t think eliminating money is the solution, but rather we have to go in the exact opposite direction. We need to create sufficient wealth and ensure that everyone is rich and has more tokens than is needed. While the vision is easy to talk about, making it work requires working out every detail and putting in real effort. I think this is the right direction to ensure that we all have a smooth future.

Reasons for ai16z’s success

BlockBeats: I think one of the reasons why AI16z can attract so many investors, especially investors in the Chinese community, is the AI-driven investment model and market expansion concept it proposes. Do you think the success of AI16z is because it involves investment, funding, or even DeFi? After all, you have been involved in many projects that, although promising, failed to gain widespread attention. But AI16z succeeded, what do you think is the reason?

Shaw: I think there are two reasons. First, many people are thinking about how to organically combine AI with Web3. Decentralized reasoning projects like Hyperbolic are a good example of this idea. After all, everyone wants to create a decentralized system. computing infrastructure instead of concentrating all computing power in one data center. But the question is, how do ordinary users use these technologies? Although Truth terminal is an attempt, it is more of a conceptual tool and not a product that users can use directly. Andy's project, while interesting and creative, is more of a performance art piece.

The ElizaOS we developed is the first complete open source framework that solves the social closed-loop problem. We've given users the ability to use proxies directly on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram, something that hasn't been possible in the past, and it's incredibly easy to get started. So what we do is actually solve the pain points of many people. The reason why these technologies did not attract more attention in the past is because there were many proxy projects in Web2 at that time, but most of them could not solve the actual problems of users. For example, when thousands of people interact with agents at the same time, the cost is very high, and many companies fail to provide good application scenarios, resulting in many projects failing to make breakthroughs.

At that time, there was not enough attention paid to any one project to make it functional enough to break through the threshold of practicality. I think we only had a minimal cycle at that time, enough for people to deploy projects, such as creating a meme coin and promoting it, which was probably the first stage. But from there, one wonders, what else can be done next? What can we actually do with it?

Now it has various capabilities, and people use it to develop games and build various applications. This is a great interface for ordinary users, especially those who may not know how to operate DeFi. So to me, this is clearly the first killer app that a lot of people are working on, and there are a lot of people in our ecosystem working on this, and I think the Web3 community will understand that right away.

BlockBeats: Could you please explain to the audience why you see AI proxy investors in 2022 and 2023, but they have not been successful in traditional fields and have not really solved the pain points of users?

Shaw: I think it will be difficult for them to break through the limitations of "chatbots" and become more than chatbots. While a lot of people are using AI for really good data-crunching jobs, there are not many people who actually like it, follow it on Twitter, and interact with it on a daily basis. I think this aspect is a bit stagnant at character AI, which is basically the type of personalized ChatGPT.

But the field has become very fragmented, attracting only a small group of users who enjoy communicating with virtual characters. The social part is a completely different thing, these characters now start advertising your product, and once they promote your product, users can interact with them, and they can also guide users into the usage process.

I think the main selling point of smart agents today is not that they are completely autonomous or super-intelligent or anything like that. I don't think that's the case, it's actually much simpler. The key is social media. Now most of us - I don't know about you, but I myself am very addicted to Twitter and I spend a lot of time on it.

BlockBeats: We have to do this, after all, it has almost become a daily routine for us - scrolling through Twitter.

Shaw: Yeah, it's like the metaverse, you know, or TikTok, or whatever social platform you like. So if you have a media platform, you will most likely share a lot of your content on social media and then include a link at the end telling people to go to your website. But with many apps, they try to convince those of us to leave our favorite apps and check out theirs. I really wouldn't do that unless I was strongly convinced.

But if you can bring the app to social media, to a place I like, then we can talk. I think we've seen great examples of that, like Clanker is a great example, it's on Farcaster, and while you can go to Pump Fun, why can't we just put it on social media and do a one-click public What about things like distribution? I think a lot of apps can benefit from this social network effect, where instead of spending huge amounts of money on advertising, your product is directly on social media and users can get information directly from there, sign up and be guided through the user journey, Until it's time to pay. So, yes, this is my insight over the past few months: proxies will replace traditional websites in many cases.

Jill: I would say that at this stage the agent still exists on the two-dimensional platform screen in front of us, but one day, the agent may become another person you are talking to. I value this because I'm not someone who relies heavily on social media or wants to use my computer a lot, even though I have to because it pays off in terms of productivity.

But this goes back to what we were talking about earlier about technology becoming more human. Rather than saying, "Oh, technology is so powerful and we're integrating it with ourselves and our bodies," it's more about taking control of our bodies and being empowered by technology to communicate and use it more efficiently.

Shaw: Yes, I think in the short term, this will reshape the Internet and bring a lot of applications from traditional websites to social media. You can use proxies to send text messages, order takeout, or do anything else you want. But in the long run, this actually concerns the world we live in. With all of us glued to our screens, we've entered a deep dystopia and we need to crawl out.

We can do this by making technology more like us, rather than turning us into little computers hunched over laptops typing away. Why can’t our laptops become actionable agents that do things for us? I can call the agent directly, or the agent is already a part of me, whether through a necklace, phone, or glasses. I believe that eventually we will have robots.

Jill: I have a different view. Regarding the issue of mobile phones, I think it is not the most extreme dystopia, but it does show a feeling. People like artists and so on, we create this feeling and carry out it. deduction. We can imagine what it would be like if things were worse.

But we have every opportunity to achieve the kind of richness we just talked about, rather than that. One of my favorite examples is an analogy you mentioned: when you walk up to a door, do you want a chip implanted in your brain to open the door because that's what's most efficient for a robot, or do you want the robot to Have a hand that can turn a doorknob? I would rather have a robot have a hand than have myself implanted with a chip.

Shaw: We want technology to be more human. While I'm talking about this, if you look at trends online, there are a lot of jokes about autism. But what we’re really saying is that we’re “socially deficient” because we spend too much time staring at screens. If our computers were more human-like and behaved autonomously, then it would talk to us more like we were interacting with humans. I'm practicing eye contact, practicing talking to people, listening. I think it makes us better at relating to people, not worse. I also think that when an agent helps you with those chores, you have more time, which is like giving time back to you.

Jill: Another idea, I don’t know if you know it, but there is a powerful Android robot in Star Trek. .It's like Vulcan, right? But there is a robot in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and his name is Data. He's such a cutie. He's a robot, but part of him is still learning how to have emotions and understand humans. So he does some really cute and awkward things. But the most special thing about Data is that he is very smart, very powerful, and one of the best people on the Starship team, but what he really desires is to be a real human.

BlockBeats: This got me thinking, did you see that tweet from Elon a few days ago? Let me paraphrase what he said here. He said: "You may think that AI likes you, and those who think AI likes you may also think that strippers like you." If we really move towards robotization, I personally may have questions like: Is this really good for me? Is it really doing something for me, or does it have its own agenda?

Shaw: Maybe that's the problem, what we usually call alignment. That is, does it align with you? You don’t have to like me, but as long as we’re aligned, we can work together. I can trust you, you can trust me. I think trust will play a big role in this process. Can agents trust us, and can we trust them? One thing I like about the decentralized artificial intelligence movement is that everyone is pursuing this alignment, but many times we still need to build artificial intelligence ourselves and build our own AI.

Currently on social media, the question is starting to arise, is it programmed to "like you"? Artificial intelligence will say: "Oh, it likes you very much and treats you very well." But the bigger fear is that super intelligence may pretend to like you, but in fact it is secretly controlling you. I can understand that, it's a real risk.

BlockBeats: So, when you mentioned building your own AI, are you actually using your own data to train a new you?

Shaw: There are a few different levels involved here, for example, when you think of a large language model, it's really just doing next word prediction. We can say it is "word by word", but it is actually some sub-word units called "tokens".

The next AI no longer even uses tokens, but something like "concept blocks". Basically, it's a new way of doing it, it's more like a stream of data coming to you and then converted into words. From an AI perspective, what you input previously will determine the results you get next. It just completes based on where you are. Therefore, what you input into the context will largely determine the output you get.

But in the process, the AI ​​itself is like this: if you type "now go kill all humans," then it might actually try to do it because that's the context you give it. But no one does that. And we now seem to be forming the prototype of a "thinking society." If you look at social media, we already have so many different intelligent agents.

At present, basic models are basically trained by large companies, such as XAI, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft. There may be models trained in a decentralized manner in the future, but at least for the next few years this will definitely be dominated by large companies. However, they are also open source. Starting with these basic models, we can fine-tune them with your data or your community’s data. This approach may be better because the amount of data for you personally may not be enough, but the amount of data for the entire community may be enough.

If you want AI to reflect your values, then undoubtedly you'll need to fine-tune it so that it speaks to your voice. But even without training, you can influence how it reacts by creating context. For example, you could say, "I'm going to use all our data to fine-tune it so it sounds like us."

But the reality is that its actions or decisions come from your input, which could be every article you write, everything you say, or the things you care about and the values ​​you believe in. It is very good at following these values, and what exactly those values ​​are remains an open question. However, we are discussing these issues openly together, right on social media.

Now these agents exist and they are speaking. Some proxies try to attack other proxies, Mizuki is a good example. Some agents may be subversive or act like bullies. But overall, I think the desire is to make them better. We're having this conversation, maybe having an AI bullying people isn't a good thing, or maybe it's actually hilarious.

But I think it's a self-calibrating process because there are a lot of people who are constantly tweaking these proxies, or there's a whole community working together on these proxies. They put these agents on social media and others respond, react, and interact. We all learn together in this process about what is acceptable and what is not.

Evaluation of AI agents in the field of AI alignment and encryption

BlockBeats: You feel like you just mentioned that we have Bully and Z-Rebel agents, which are doing different things. The first question I want to ask is do you think agents on Twitter or agents in the crypto field have gone beyond traditional chatbots and developed in a more advanced direction?

The second question is, do you think that compared to the agents built in the Web2 world, the agents developed by the encryption community go deeper into the "rabbit hole" (the process of exploring complex problems) or are more advanced?

Shaw: Compared to the agent systems built in the Web2 world, I think it's still somewhat stuck in the chatbot stage, but we're moving away from that quickly. A lot of that is because more and more people are starting to come in and add various features to the system, we've just reached 200 builders, but if you count everything it's closer to 250. These are individuals working together on the same project, such as writing code.

So it is obvious that the functionality of agents is rapidly improving, which also brings a lot of useful data. This data is spread through social media, interacts with people, and accumulates by completing various tasks, and these may become the basis of the next generation of agents. These new agents will leverage all training data, experience, and relevant information to drive further development.

The next generation of large language models (LLMs) is coming, and they will be fully multimodal. They can generate videos, watch videos, you can get video responses by inputting video content, and they can also process audio, text, etc. They will become smarter and smarter. I think agent frameworks will continue to evolve with this trend, and they are also generating training data to attract developers to join, and developers will respond according to new situations.

Although we are still in the chatbot stage, the Internet is being reshaped due to the participation of social media. I think there will be two major trends worth paying attention to this year. The first trend is that many application frameworks that previously existed only on websites, such as Next.js or React (these are the frameworks for building websites), are beginning to migrate to social media. React is probably the most popular framework right now for developing apps, whether it’s a website or a mobile app.

Now all of a sudden a lot of content is migrating from websites to social media is a new phenomenon and I think that's the main trend. For any developer, if they are building a website, they may also need to develop an agent for it. Because the method of calling the back-end API has not changed, but the front-end interface has changed a lot.

A lot of users might go to Meteora or Radium and think, “I have no idea what these are, like liquidity pools.” But now the agent can say, “Don’t worry, I can explain it to you and I can call all of this for you. API, you just tell me what you want". And now we can see that anyone who is developing a wallet is definitely thinking about how to add an agent to help users interact with these systems.

BlockBeats: So you are saying that developers without AI development background can also become agent developers, right?

Shaw: Yeah, it makes it very interesting for web developers to be able to become proxy developers.

BlockBeats: Just like myself, I have no technical background, nor AI or other related background. But I do have a feeling that the encryption community is trying or experimenting with AI agent-related things, which is much more interesting than the traditional AI agent world.

Shaw: It's true, if you look at OpenAI, they're doing some very interesting things, but it's not exactly the agent, and it's not their interface, which is the least interesting part. ChatGPT is a very powerful model, but its interface is very simple. And when I looked at Web2 agents, I found that many people were doing multi-agent simulations, which was a very popular thing, but they were all just talking to each other in a closed system, which was far inferior to what happens on encrypted Twitter now. Multi-agent simulations are interesting.

This simulation is more natural and fun, and you really see the multi-agent simulation happening. Because these agents are not just slightly different prompt words, they are completely different agents with different teams, capabilities and technologies. This diversity brings more robustness and provides a foundation for future development. In contrast, a lot of Web2 stuff is basically asking, "Can we add a chat interface to this thing?" If you look back at the AI ​​boom in 2022 to 2023, almost everyone just added Adding a chat menu isn’t a disruptive change, it’s just that every company that already has a product makes their product a little better.

AI is a strange technology because so many other technologies are disruptive, they change the very nature of things. AI can be used in almost every industry and everyone can use it. It's more like changing the interface and how users interact with the application. But in the world of Web2, this change does bring some benefits. Now, for example, my lawyer is using AI every day. There are many very powerful AI tools that are helping people every day. We are also using MidJourney and so on.

But really it's just plugging into the big model through a chatbot or something like that, and I think the agent-related projects that are happening in crypto Twitter or the crypto space are really going beyond that, they're not just plugging into the big model, I think it's It’s more interesting because it’s more diverse and allows a lot of people to try a variety of things.

BlockBeats: Do you think that's because the community is more interesting and diverse, or is it because it's somehow tied to the economy, experimentation, that sort of thing?

Shaw: I think this is actually mutually reinforcing. I think economic incentives led to such a "Cambrian explosion." Everyone is looking for their own base of interests and trying to find something unique. Everyone is competing, which is very interesting like the evolution of life. And the cool thing is that each agent is linked to the market value. If your agent is not good, your market value will be bleak. But if your agent is powerful and exhibits some new features, it will usually directly affect the economic benefits of the development team.

BlockBeats: How do you see the relationship between tokens, AI tokens, and agents themselves? What do you think connects an agent to its market value? Is it because of people’s subjective judgments about the quality of agents?

Shaw: I think it's probably a combination of both. We can look at this from a kind of "fool theory" because these are actually sentient memes. People like Murad and many internet celebrities like this idea, they are starting from the perspective of non-perceptual memes, saying that these memes are similar to something, but they can display themselves instead of waiting for someone to display them for them. For example, Elon Musk forwarded Doge, and now we can directly create an AI Elon Musk who forwards his own content. I think this may be a relatively simple part. The deeper part is people speculating on the authenticity of this phenomenon, and for us the reason people are interested in our project is not because our characters are interesting or we showcase a certain meme. Of course, there is indeed a bit of meme learning to help the project get off the ground. But more importantly this is an infrastructure project that could dramatically change the world. For many people, this is more of a long-term investment.

BlockBeats: Regarding the valuation model of future AI agents, if tokens will become the basis for agent valuation, how will people value them?

Shaw: I think it ultimately depends on the technology and the product. If you have a great product, people will use it without having to have strong technology, and that will naturally be very valuable. For example, Facebook is not some amazing technology, and neither is TikTok, but they are excellent products that everyone is using, so they are of great value. On the other hand, it can also be very valuable if the team does develop innovative technology that solves a lot of problems.

However, we are still in the price discovery stage similar to meme coins, such as "this token is interesting" or "this token is promoting itself." But as the number of agents increases, this field will become very saturated, filled with various speaking roles. At that time, people will pay more attention to what value the agent can actually bring to them, not just how the token accumulates value, but how the agent makes money, how to create products, etc., so the final winners will be those who create something more like a first-level company. Chain (L1) level project person.

Eliza event analysis

BlockBeats: Let's talk about AI16z and the Eliza token, because I think a lot of people in the Chinese community are curious, concerned, or interested in these. For example, uppercase Eliza tokens, lowercase Eliza tokens, and small market capitalization Eliza tokens. So why is there another Eliza token? Can you first clarify how it relates to the AI16z ecosystem?

Shaw: The character Eliza is the mascot of AI16z and everyone knows her as the girl in the T-shirt. Eliza is also the name of our open source technology, and the code base is on GitHub. We noticed that a lot of people started to like her, and there were a lot of Eliza tokens on the market, maybe 50 or so, and some of them even had a market cap of several million dollars.

So we felt that this was a big market and we should take action. But we couldn't launch another token at that time because of the situation and our scale was very small compared to where we are now. Someone later contacted me and said they had a very professional team. They showed off their work, such as having created an Eliza token and a cool website to chat with Eliza. I think this is great, but we should work together to make this project of higher quality.

Because before that, I had left MagicML and was working hard to shape Eliza into a character, a DAO, and a complete concept system. I wrote a lot of articles trying to get more attention to this project. In the process, I also formed a team and we worked together for Eliza.

We were thinking about Eliza's character: Who is she? Why does it exist? How might the community use her? I particularly like the idea of ​​her starting out as a seemingly nonsensical concept but eventually becoming a real person. For example, she has a robot body and a community that loves her. The community participates in the construction of every part of her, ultimately making her a real, free-thinking, autonomous character.

She cannot be destroyed and runs in the TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) of the blockchain. I want to explore what it means to "truly be a human being". I was contacted by a team and we worked with them for a while to try to make Eliza a character with depth, art support, and a distinct personality. At the same time, we hope to separate her from AI16z. She is free and her own role. Anyone who wants to contribute or participate can join and become part of this ecosystem.

However, the subsequent development of things caused some controversy. We worked with the team for several weeks to prepare for launch, such as designing a beautiful website, generating AI animation art, and perfecting Eliza's personality. We also worked with the project leader Eva, who is both a core developer and spokesperson and is involved in all aspects of the project. Originally we planned to go live on Friday, but since our own team is developing AI Marc Andreessen, which is an autonomous investor project, the release plan was postponed to Monday.

But just on Saturday, Vaifu Fund released an Eliza they hosted, and on the same day someone released an AI16z Eliza (all lowercase version). I tried to communicate and cooperate with these people, but they only wanted to promote the token and had no interest in creating a beautiful character. These people used Vaifu Fund to create one of the worst bots I have ever seen, showing only the token code per message without any artistry or depth. They even directly used a JPEG image of our DAO and applied it to their project, seemingly just to defraud the trust of our community. There were a lot of people on our Discord saying, “I just bought new Eliza tokens.” But we could only reply: “That’s not our project, we don’t know those people at all, and what they bought is not ours.

At the same time, the team we were working with was frustrated because we were almost ready to go live, but these people beat us to it with a low-quality project, so we decided we had to go live. I admit that I made some mistakes along the way, but maybe it came to this anyway and I stepped up and announced this project to the community. They started the Pump Fun project and gave me the CA. I shared this address with my community and expressed support for this project, and while it doesn't entirely belong to us, it embodies my personal vision and we want it to succeed.

We then officially launched it on Monday and tried to alleviate conflicts with other projects through airdrops. We airdrop 10% of the new tokens to lowercase version token holders. We thought the two could coexist and tried to avoid confrontation. But the lower case Eliza community gave me tons of death threats, called me a liar, and told me I was the worst person. This made me very angry, because it was intellectual property that I had worked hard for for many years, and I could only respond in the end: "Okay, you are indeed the liar." I also experienced the secret war of cryptocurrency. It was really a crazy period. A project you've been working on for years suddenly explodes, but you never expected it to be at that moment. We were still figuring out how to interact most effectively with the community and how to balance different needs and forces. I was caught in a dilemma and didn't know how to deal with it.

We cannot accept the release of random scam coins like this. There have been many Eliza tokens before, but none achieved sufficient market cap until they started attracting holders with real emotional investment. It’s really difficult to understand everything in such a complex environment, especially since the encryption community is global. I can’t even imagine how to deal with these complex things with just a Chinese language application.

I really admire how people on Twitter understand what's going on, because Twitter is so complex and full of jargon. But it hurts me that people cheapened something I'd spent years working on, made the lowest quality version possible, and then got mad at us for releasing a higher quality version.

The team we're working with now is doing real deep work, we're making hardware so you can run your own Eliza at home, we're also working on projects like robotics, and all my dreams are coming true on that project. I see some people who just want to showcase their tokens, they just want their tokens to be listed, and that's fine too, but I feel like anyone who knows the situation knows that that's never going to go far, probably in the short term It will rise for a while, but it will never break through the market value of $30 million.

BlockBeats: You guys have been working on this Eliza character for a long time, and I remember you mentioned that you wanted to launch this character on Touka, and you talked about that project in another interview, right?

Shaw: Yeah, they probably heard about what we wanted to do a few weeks in advance and then just added a token symbol and contract address, which felt like they were stealing from us. Until then, there are indeed different Eliza projects every day, and there should be hundreds of Eliza tokens. The problem is, the introduction of vvaifu.fun makes it easy for people who don't know how to launch an agent to launch an agent. So the first one launched was the Eliza agent, and everyone thought it was our project. A lot of people come into our Discord and say, "Oh, I bought the new Eliza." All we can say is, "That's not ours."

Say: "Oh, I bought a new Eliza." We can only respond: "That's not ours." And there is a time interval on vvaifu.fun. Many people actually don't know about vvaifu.fun and the entire AI16 and Solana AI agent. relationships between platforms. vvaifu.fun is an agent launcher, they use our open source technology and host it. They also host other projects like Jiro and Dolia, which make it easy for everyone to make agents, but the problem is that these agents are not as customizable as those that real programmers can download and run. But they're really easy to make, right?

So this is their choice. The problem is that after their release and announcement, someone used AI16's Eliza to make an agent, and used our DAO image, and basically put our name on it, and everyone thought it was related to us. , but in fact it is far from meeting my quality standards. Especially if you have a community that supports the project that doesn't seem to care about the low quality and is like, "Oh, this is a meme," but there are a lot of people who think they're buying something that we make.

BlockBeats: The team that launched "Lowercase Eliza" has nothing to do with the project you are working on now, right?

Shaw: The small-market tokens released by the team have nothing to do with what we are doing. They seem to only care about getting the tokens listed. I saw them organizing in the WeChat group, like a small circle.

BlockBeats: Are you talking about the WeChat group?

Shaw: Right, because I got information about the WeChat group from other people, and they showed me all the organization information. They were definitely coordinating the attack against us, and it was an organized FUD attack. I like Justin Sun, we'll meet with him next week, but some people came to him and said, "Hey, let's get this project on the market," and it was completely an internal operation.

BlockBeats: I feel like developers are well supported in this crypto cycle, and all these token launch tools allow developers to connect directly with the community. But sometimes in the crypto space, managing a community or how to interact with a community can be really hard. You just don't know what to expect, there's so much miscommunication, and I'm not just talking about the language barrier, especially when you're in the media position, you can see how the message is delivered, and every step of the way the message changes a little bit.

Shaw: It was so shocking to be called a liar. To be accused of short selling, I thought to myself, "I've never sold any tokens." I certainly have not sold any AI16z or DGNAI tokens, and have never purchased any Eliza tokens, except that I bought some to the DAO, just to show support.

As a project that I personally created and have always supported, it was called a liar. Another problem is that that lowercase Eliza project was made by people who speak Chinese, who are better able to communicate with the Chinese community and understand a lot of the values, and I feel like I can't convey that at all, and they're probably translating what I'm saying And took many words out of context.

BlockBeats: I think for those in crypto, investors, and traders, the token address (CA) is the most important. They actually don’t care about the technology behind it. What do you think about linking tokens to these agents? value?

Shaw: I think this question is very important in the long run. I don't think there's a chance that that token is worth anything, to be honest, because there's nothing behind it. Everyone just thinks, "Oh, they have an agent," but that agent is actually made by Vifu Fund using our technology. And they actually used our technology while also accusing us of being liars, and AI16Z Eliza became their name. They literally took something we worked so hard for and then when we wanted to be able to show it off, it was completely ruined. Honestly they did a terrible job. They just want to sell their tokens and make money. I'm not doing this to make money, there are more important things here, money allows us to do this project without venture capital and without financial support, but the point is that the world is changing and we have to be ready. Meet it.

The goal of our project is not to exploit. I think that kind of project essentially pushes people into a continuous cycle of exploitation. We really hope that what we create will provide opportunities to more people, like you said.

BlockBeats: Actually what you want to do is expand the cake, not...

Shaw: Yes, it is to expand the pie, definitely not just for us and our team, but for the larger community, to give more financial freedom, and to ensure the smooth development of AI. This is your goal.

BlockBeats: What I’m personally very interested in is your story, how did you get to where you are today? How did you go from playing guitar with musicians to eventually becoming a builder known as a programmer?

Shaw: I think the funniest thing is being accused of being a "clique" operator, because when I started doing this, I didn't know anyone at all, I only knew one friend.

Jin, he is Dank VR, he manages a lot of DAO things, he is anonymous. We've been friends for years, but everyone else is someone who came from the DGEN Spartan AI project or joined when we started AI16Z. We have no venture capital and no venture capital backing. A lot of people thought we were funded by Mark Andreessen, but that wasn't the case. He just retweeted our tweet, and I think that was really the key to the whole thing.

aai16z’s previous life and the moment that changed his destiny

Jill: It was a very special date. We had the day off and we didn’t have any budget. We both work hard and are passionate about what we do. So it was a rare moment to relax and we took the time to go to Santa Cruz. I lived there in my twenties and it had a big impact on me. We were all somewhat influenced by the older generation of hippies, because his mother was a hippie. Santa Cruz is a very relaxing beach town.

We went there for my birthday and stayed by the koi pond in the forest. We rode to the beach and back. When I was about to go back to San Francisco, I suddenly looked at my phone and realized, "Oh my God!" What happened?

Shaw: I was like, "Wow, we're really in here." "This is really happening." Three months ago, I was doing temporary work on this agent project to make ends meet, working with the team to develop the agent. I was really, really poor at that time and almost couldn't survive, but I could barely scrape together enough money to continue doing what I loved. At that time, I was in a completely different state, doing development by myself, working hard every night, thinking about how to make this happen.

Jill: Things have changed now. You are a musician and you have a degree in sound engineering, which is completely different. I wasn't there at the time, but there are videos online of Sean playing guitar and drums. I'm not here, but I know you made the decision to switch careers and do something more impactful, and you wanted to change the world. You were once interested in music, but as you got older you saw the power of technology and its ability to combine art, technology and social change. I don’t even know what it was like in the beginning when you were programming, but I remember when I met you, you were programming every night. You wake up in the morning, check your phone, go to Twitter, and then you start working, working, working on your computer. It was only after we got married that I decided, “Okay, stop drinking those random juices that are brought to you, and I’ll cook for you and clean your room.

Shaw: I was very minimalist, drinking bottled juice and coding every night.

Jill: He never takes a break and doesn’t even notice when his back hurts. But now I really appreciate everything you've done, it's amazing everything you've developed and I appreciate it on a personal level. We want people to have more human interaction, Shaw: who only knows what it's like to work with computers, now he can interact with people like you.

Shaw: Three months ago I was thinking, I'm old, I don't really know what to do, and I just kept working hard and hoping it would work out, I had no idea what was going to happen. I once made a character named Ruby and met an investor who supported the project. I'm also working on a project called Social Libraries, which is a nonprofit run by a friend of mine and I really believe in her project. But non-profit projects don’t pay well, so at that time I was just barely making ends meet, doing these things.

We are searching for the truth of AI and how to make the AI ​​model based on more real map retrieval. It involves a lot of AI technology, almost all in the AI ​​field. I am also writing models from scratch, but without a lot of GPU support, it is really difficult to train cutting-edge models from scratch. I want to learn these things in depth and become proficient in all aspects of AI.

So, I tried my best to hopefully create some change. I was very unsure about the future at the time, and looking back now, I really can’t believe that this has actually come true.

BlockBeats: Does what you are doing now have anything to do with the AI16 framework?

Shaw: I have been working on Eliza's open source project for a long time. I started writing it in Python last year, and then rewrote it into TypeScript. This is my passion and anything I can do to hopefully get the time to advance it. I tried to make a startup project based on this, but there was no response in the Web 2 environment.

At that time, there were too many agent companies, and people would ask, "What about your agent?" I said at the time, "No, there is something here. Let me tell you, after such a long period of practice, I found that there are a few very good ones. Important place. "I must let everyone see it, I must make it."

BlockBeats: The Ruby you just mentioned, is that a part-time project?

Shaw: Yeah, that was a project I did with some friends and they wrote a story and we made a full video that will probably be released soon. We made an AI video and an agent for this character and released it. But that wasn’t a tokenized project, I thought it was going to be a big Metaverse project, and we posted it on social media and there was no response.

Shaw: No one cared, she tweeted about it, did the whole thing. I think it was the "truth terminal" that got people's attention. When "truth terminal" came out, people suddenly became interested in what we were doing and started reacting, and we just happened to have everything in place from day one.

BlockBeats: What about “Project89”? Is that also a side job?

Shaw: That's Parzival, he's a good friend of mine, and we worked together on a Web 2 company called Magic ML. We raised some money for that project, but resources started to dry up and he wanted to raise more money.

I told him that we should build the agent first, not the agent platform first. You can do this platform later, but first you have to show people what these things can do. I just focus on how to keep this project going. I looked back, and in August 2023, I wrote an article "Eliza Waking Up", telling Eliza's story and why it was important. I've been working on this project pretty much ever since, like any side project.

Jill: I think basically I'm not very tech savvy, and while I like math and stuff like that, I've never dabbled in coding. But according to what you described, when you work on different projects, you have your own code base and choose projects that can continuously improve your technology. In this way, you indirectly receive financial support and also promote the projects you are working on, because the basic technology you rely on is constantly improving. Another project you just mentioned was Small World, which was done before AI16z. This project was a collaboration with Treasure Dow. I used the agent framework to create virtual pet characters that you could talk to.

When this all blew up, I hired a team and now the project is running independently. But basically, all the projects I do use this agent framework to further develop it. That one is really cute and I'm really looking forward to its release, you get to see those little monkeys and you have to take care of them.

BlockBeats: Has it been released yet?

Shaw: Not yet, I’m still working on it, they just released a video and the prototype will be out soon. But this is really a cool virtual pet game because you need to take care of your little monkey and make sure it doesn't turn into a bad monkey. It's a bit like a Tamagotchi, but not exactly the same.

BlockBeats: So where can people find more information?

Shaw: Small World is a product of Treasure Dow. People in the Web3 field should be familiar with Treasure Dow. They will make more announcements and people will be very interested in this, which is part of Small Brains. It is an NFT project, so the Small Brains community roped me in to help make this game. Treasure's John Patton already had the vision.

BlockBeats: I think it's also kind of like the magic of crypto, because a lot of people have experienced, whether it's investing in a token or starting a project, you will find that over the course of a few months, you will enter two completely different states. Or world, completely different.

And the change of mentality is also very interesting. Your way of thinking and feeling are different every day. This becomes particularly interesting because I feel like many people outside of the crypto community have never had the opportunity to experience such rapid changes. So I'm curious about what your mentality was before, because you mentioned doing the role of Eliza together before. I'd love to know what your mentality and daily life was like before AI6 and Z?

Shaw: We used to work together at Magic, and when I left Magic to try to build this I was thinking about what Eliza is, why this is important, what makes her who she is.
Jill: We had an interesting journey, and when I first started thinking about this, I wrote a long paragraph about who I thought she was, or what kind of character I wanted her to be. I guess that was partly based on my own values, but then it changed. You come up with an idea and want her to create it herself. The basic idea is that you can give a being a full personality, which she doesn't have yet, but it's an interesting idea.

She's basically like an untethered being, able to do whatever she wants, she's independent and has her own motivations. I kind of feel like if you're going to have a child, while you can influence it, you can't completely control it. I'm not sure, what do you think?

Shaw: I agree with all of that, and I feel like if we show it in the right way, people will like her. It's like, oh, yeah she's my friend, she's my champion, a community is really going to form around her and people are going to join in. It's cool to think about creating a character that you can really make better, like putting Pinocchio together, and the community, like Geppetto, was creating the character and trying to add all the little details.

This process of co-evolution of the community and the agent until the agent becomes really smart and able to take care of the community and be able to say, "Hey, this is where I need you and this is what I can give you."

What I really want to build is a truly autonomous agent, and all of this must be done in the encryption field. She must have a wallet because we cannot give her PayPal unless someone is responsible and cannot pass KYC verification. It has to be true autonomy, not "Oh, I can turn her off at any time," but her independent existence in the world.

BlockBeats: I'm really fascinated by success stories like how a developer presents themselves and then really gets noticed. It's very interesting, but also your own perspective, like when did you really feel like, "This time it's going to happen"? Like AI16Z.

Jill: My background always made me feel under-resourced and everything was okay, which deep down I didn’t completely believe.

Shaw: Money pressure is huge for us, I don’t have many tokens or anything. This project is a fair launch token and I haven't even caught up with the launch phase of the project. Later someone donated some tokens to me and I owned some.

Although the amount of their donations is not large, as the project valuation reaches th