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NEAR Foundation Q&A: Operations Team
Recorded: April 2, 2025 Duration: 0:33:30Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlighted the launch of Gauntlet, a community-driven platform, and advancements in AI with Near AI's LLM. Despite market declines, there is ongoing growth with the adoption of Near Intents by various projects. Technological development continues with Near AI leading AI infrastructure efforts.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you for setting this up.
Let's just give it a few minutes here and let some people trickle in. Thank you. Okay, this might be our listeners today, possibly.
I think we can get started here.
I just want to say thank you for everyone to join.
I joined here.
We haven't done these in, I I think like a month now or something
like that. I know we were actually wrapped up with East Denver. It's just been kind of crazy around
here. So apologies for the break in kind of consistency. We were supposed to do these really
every two weeks, but we can get these at least restarted here. I also appreciate everyone
for submitting their questions via the Airtable form on the post. We did receive some good
questions and we can go over those now. Let's see here. right let's say i think we could probably just dive in we did receive a
quite a few questions about an ambassador program um specifically you know will there be an ambassador
program um you know kind of sending around you know looking at the contributors across the ecosystem and looking at how they can provide marketing benefits and really just helping community members.
I do know that we have a few initiatives in the pipeline related to this, which is good.
So without kind of confirming or denying, we are definitely looking at this.
And I do think it would be helpful for the near ecosystem.
Specifically, we are concentrating on the US as of now,
given the regulatory kind of change
and all of the positive news that's coming out of it.
But I don't know, I'm just kind of curious,
Jared or Dimo know for ambassador programs and
and maybe just kind of decentralized you know marketing in a way how do you guys feel about that
um i don't know if uh demo wants to take uh take he knows quite a bit about ambassador programs I think that like
I think they can be done
you know they're like anything
when you get into like that size
it's all about how it's run and how it's like
figured out
I do think that like I really think a lot of stuff
is going to be interesting once Gauntlet
launches because then you're going to have this like
much more like community way to like run ideas pitch ideas like if someone's got a really
solid idea and concept for an ambassador program there will be a way to sort of like
get that together and and see if it's something that is like you know heavily needed um i i mean
there were a lot of ambassador programs back in 2022, 2023 that kind of have like,
that aren't still around.
So I don't know why they haven't,
but anytime you can get community
and people to be ambassadors,
I think it's a good thing.
I don't know if Demo wants to add more.
Maybe not, but I guess for the ambassador program, I need to dig into why they kind
of fizzled out, but they are quite a bit to run.
And they do require a lot of resourcing.
But like you said, Jared, you do get a lot of benefits out of just the decentralization nature of it.
I guess for the members here and those not familiar with Gauntlet, how do you foresee that happening within Gauntlet of just a little bit more of a decentralization and those that want to help out with being an ambassador, maybe even an unofficial ambassador in their region?
How will Gauntlet help them support?
Before we hop onto that, I think Demo just got access to speaking.
And the Gauntlet, I think we should stand by for any Gauntlet-specific questions
for maybe a future one of these, because there's so much around that
that I don't think I'm the expert to talk about.
But I think, you know, I know as much as anyone in this chat where I've read the forum and stuff like that and, you know, uh, listened to
some eco collabs. So I have an idea of what's going on, but I don't know the nuances, but
I imagine as any sort of structure, you, there's a way to just like present proposals that if they
are approved to go on, you know, but, uh, Dimo, if you want to add anything to ambassador programs,
you, you, I do know you've said some great things but i understand it well well well ah there he is i didn't i i must have looked
so ignorant and so bad when you invited me to talk and it was just crickets
i was wondering where you are yeah no i mean i never shut the fuck up so like
it would have been out of character for me to not talk. Ambassador program, look, I know that there's a desire for it. And I know that there's a desire to earn for contributing as well. Now, I can't speak and I know we've nodded to the Garton stuff. We can't speak about what's going to happen i think i and i hope that that will fill um the gap in ambassador program
of the lack of an ambassador program leaves at least in the interim um but in terms of kind of
the next three months there's no like hard plan on that front yeah but if someone wants to pitch it
and it's not extraordinarily expensive i think the near foundation is kind of going into that area where it's like
all he is now.
And even Ilya himself has been hyper responsive,
I think on Twitter to people's suggestions.
So write something up,
make sure it's not crap and make sure it's not AI generated entirely.
And yeah,
there's people out there to hear you out.
That's a,
that's a great point demo i i i
definitely can echo and confirm kind of what demo is saying you know the the foundation is definitely
a lot more uh open and uh we have open ears and like uh like he said if you want to submit a
proposal go go for it uh just make sure that it's quality proposal and it's you know not astronomically
expensive um so you know that would be
potentially considered uh which is a good thing all right let's go on through another topic here
uh we did actually get some questions via the community members specifically Mr. Potato and Ewan, just being the community moderators.
There's some concern in the community about why, so this is one of the direct questions that we
received, why Potato taking all of the control of house to stake process? When can we see a public
report of moderators of the New York Protocol chat? I'm not really sure see a public report of moderators of the near protocol chat?
I'm not really sure about a public kind of report, but I don't think Mr. Potato and you have taken control of the entire house of state process.
It's really a joint effort via a lot of parties around the ecosystem, and it's quite a huge
process just to get this stood up.
But I don't know.
Do we have Mr. Potato on there?
I think we do.
Get him on, man.
Bring him to the stands.
Yeah, bring him on.
Let's shed some light really quick.
I don't know, Ewan or Mr. Potato,
do you guys want to shed some light
on some of the work you've been doing
with the House of State?
We've got to add him as speakers, guys.
Otherwise, we're going to have crickets again.
Only Jared can do.
Jared, you're going to be the man to add Mr. Potato here.
I hope you're listening.
Or Ewan, you can also.
Of course I'm listening.
I didn't know I was the only one.
How do you please guilty or innocent?
Yeah.
I mean, I've seen some of these criticisms in the chats.
To be very transparent,
I don't have any involvement in House of Stake.
But what I did identify a couple of months ago is there was a
there was a void in terms of communication so i've literally the only thing i've been doing is
trying to get comms out to the rest of the community i'm i don't uh call the shots it's a
it's something which is uh in the hands of the near foundation and conflict
i do have uh i've given like my feedback and based on my time in the near ecosystem
any things we should try and avoid but other than that my role is insignificant in this process
i wouldn't say it's insignificant. I will say that.
You know, the in full transparency.
Yeah, in terms of shaping it. Yeah.
The community moderators, you know, for everyone on this call are, you know,
paid on behalf of the NIR Foundation, like every other foundation across the ecosystem.
They have community moderators and Mr. Potato and Yuen, you know, they've been in the ecosystem. They have community moderators. And Mr. Potato and Ewan, they've been in the
ecosystem quite a while. They know the ins and outs. So it's really a fitting role for them.
And like they said, they amplify a lot of the messaging that we want to put forth to the
community. And really, like they said, they don't play an insignificant role by any means, but
they're obviously, and like myself and everyone on this call are not the decision makers uh regarding
uh any house of state process yeah i think like i mean maybe some of um the the feedback i've given
to like prospective candidates um maybe someone like a few of them might have thought
that because I'm inviting certain people
that I'm preempting who's being selected or not.
But the reality is when that happened,
I invited over a dozen people
and probably half of them didn't even get picked.
So it's very selective kind of criticism,
which I don't think we need more of in this ecosystem.
But yeah, just to kind of clarify,
my involvement in terms of decision-making is insignificant.
But as a community member and as a moderator for the ecosystem,
I'm trying to bring everything together.
And where can we, Mr. Potato,
where can we see the people that you recommended, you say?
Is that like for the people listening?
No, so I think like some of this criticism came
because we have the forum where all of the hardcore information
is there with regards to house of steak.
But there was feedback that we probably needed like a telegram chat to kind of discuss very
informal parts of like how house of steak works.
So I did set that up and it's an open telegram group. It it's public I've probably dropped in the link for more
people to join because that's what we want right so I think in the early days I invited all of the
prospective candidates who had put up an application I obviously don't know there was about 30 applicants
I don't know the 30 people personally, nor have I
interacted with them, but I invited about 20 of them. Some of them, everyone's put up
their telegram username in their proposal. So we've DMed everyone who would want to join.
But other than that, I think that's what triggered a few people to
think that maybe um i have more knowledge than i really do well question for you after you invited
people did you post the telegram publicly for other people to join or was it not that yeah yeah
yeah i mean uh it's it's been shared in the chats There hasn't been like a formal announcement because this isn't like the formal place to discuss house of steak.
The go-to place still remains to be the forum.
I got it.
As it grows, the idea is that this kind of becomes a more happening place to kind of discuss things before stuff gets formally put down on the forum.
Well, let's, yeah, I mean, that's good transparency
on your side, Mr. Potato.
Let's maybe reshare that link or maybe pin it somewhere
where people can join and, you know,
we might have a little bit less criticism.
That kind of seems like the underlying reason, maybe
a good loss in the shuffle of
the messages.
All right, let's see.
Lastly, any time when
there's like, I mean, DAOs are going to do what DAOs do,
but any time offshoots happen
behind
communities in
specific groups,
I think that ultimately leads to the division of trust within a DAO.
So that's just something that, yeah, definitely share that,
and we can follow up on that.
How should we, I guess more of a question,
maybe this is like an ops question,
but for these offshoot of Telegram groups and stuff,
I know it's so hard to track but like should we put like a i don't know like a resource page together of relevant telegram chats i don't
know i could just see that getting old really quickly i don't know how to give more transparency
to to some of these conversations i mean i don't know if you can really like control that i mean
i think it's just dow gonna do what dow's gonna, but, but it's a good idea. Something to think about and talk in a future time, maybe when
more discussion around gauntlet happens, but you know, I can see that. All right. That's all.
Okay. Well, anyway, I mean, look, if, if any other, you know, community members have,
have any feedback, look, you can always use the air table form. Please, you know, provide some
constructive feedback or, or maybe any helpful uh please you know provide some constructive feedback or
maybe any helpful suggestions uh you know rather than obviously uh complaining um but that would
be that would be helpful for us so submit the you know you can always submit your feedback and
suggestions via the air table form uh all right moving on really quick let's see what else do we
have uh a i llm uh when is the deployment of your AI LLM that is something
I need to follow up with near AI unfortunately near AI is leading the charge there for our for
our AI kind of infra builds so let me I can follow you can already you can already use it now right
like you can use like a v0.0.0.1 it's a very rudimentary
yeah it is a rudimentary version but you know you can like you if you actually like follow
the instructions when you land on chat.near.ai and you say like hey shop for headphones but you can
say like shop headphones that are cheap like you can actually go through
the whole process and it will find headphones for you and ship them to you which is wild by the way
which is wild yeah which is crazy um and and i would love for everybody to
suspend that disbelief for a moment and imagine what that leads on to right so so yes okay you
can do this now and you saw it in real time with with the chat gbt for or studio ghibli edits right
the new image model the leaps are huge and frequent and it's exciting.
What do you foresee the chat.near.ai doing next, I guess?
Maybe, you know, what are your predictions?
I know Jared has a good view on this.
So I'll-
Like what would you do with this chat.near.ai?
I don't know if I would purchase headphones, but maybe I would do some DeFi trading automatically.
I think the most important thing to think about when I think about the Near AI chat is it's not a one-to-one comparison.
User-owned AI versus corporate-owned AI are two totally different sort of approaches and philosophies.
And centralized AI that you give up everything is going to do things
quicker because they don't care about their user. They only care about the data, the profit, the
image, the training, and then spitting out the user once they don't have any more use from them.
User-owned AI, I think, is going to just take, the timing is going to take a little long because
it's a different focus. It focuses on the users.
And so in my mind, this near AI chat, it's going to keep growing.
And I think Dimo said it right.
The leaps are big in AI when they happen, right? It goes from not being using images to now I can do a whole branding campaign
from a text.
It's crazy.
And so I think with the near AI, as they keep bringing out more things,
like being able to own a
uh like i think if you saw shade agents right they're using a similar like shade agents will
be in near ai like it's going to be a platform for you to own ai and a bunch of other things but like
i think when you think about it comparing it one to one is a is a not the way I think about it. I think about it like in order to own your own AI in the future
is going to take a different approach.
And I look at how much can I own my AI
while still using it.
That's a good point.
I'm going to take a contrarian view.
Nobody gives a shit about that.
99% of normal people
who don't work in crypto or love crypto
are not terminally online people who don't work in crypto or love crypto or like not terminally
online, like they don't care in my opinion.
However, what they do care about is embellishing their life and making their life easier, solving
a problem.
I'll give you an example.
So is anybody, Jared, Dan, are you familiar with Honey?
Jared, Dan, are you familiar with Honey?
Yes, Honey.
Yes, Honey.
Yes, not the wonderful work of the bees, but the...
Oh, Laura, okay.
Well, I must have been wrong then.
What's Honey, Demo?
So Honey is a browser extension that you add to your browser
and you basically head to like a website,
like you've got Best Buy or Walmart or whatever, and it will
automatically find vouchers for you, put a voucher in and you'll save money. And you think, okay,
hey, that's a mess, right? Incredible. Now they were rolled up in a controversy because they
partnered with influencers KOLs to get people to download their browser extension. And then if the KOL would say,
hey, go and buy this chair. It's amazing. It's the most comfortable gamer chair ever.
And you clicked on it and you went through the process of buying it. What Honey would do is
it would take out their referral and add in the Honey referral so although they got paid when you downloaded honey they did not get
paid when you went on to buy a product honey got paid instead it's huge controversy they stole
millions if not tens of millions if not hundreds of millions from thousands of players around the
world and that is an example of something that serves the master, exclusively the master. Whereas if I can
go to chat.near.ai or whatever distribution channel, I can access this alternative AI through
and say, hey, I want you to find me the best deal on a new pair of shoes, these shoes, no funny
business, no playing around.
You can't just give me a sponsored link like I'll find if I search on Google.
Immediately, that serves me and every other person on the planet because now I'm actually getting the best price.
That's a good point, De.
I kind of like your contrarian view.
I really do think, I mean, I kind of side with you, Deemo,
but Jared has a point as well. I think that ultimately people are just trying to solve their problems very quickly using AI. And I think, and this is how I know that that that really near is, you know, on the right track with with open AI. We just recently saw chat GBTO, you know, release, I think an open source, you know, version of their model that, you know, you could get contributions to andbt you know release uh i think an open source um you know version of their model that
you know you could get contributions to and you know i think open source ultimately is going to
win um and because you know for for demo i mean for example if you if you were using honey and
then you got screwed over as a creator you know it's you know, the case that when you when a user experiences that, you know, that steal from them, you know, they're going to move to to an AI or a platform or infrastructure that's going to protect them.
But real quick, I agree with both.
Like, I get the contrary, but say open source, open source traditionally in Web two is basically a bunch of people doing free work and it getting stolen.
When you add blockchain, you add a mechanism to where people can actually make a business
model around open source.
And that really hasn't been done.
And that's also something that like, well, yeah, like people, I, I still think, and this
was a personal opinion.
I still think people are underestimating
how large AI is going to shift the entire world.
And I think it's going to happen in the same way
in big gaps too.
Like designers right now, that's rough.
However, there's still going to be a need for designers,
but at what point if they can't make a business model
off of contributing to the new mecha machine that is AI, there will just be nothing.
So that's just personal opinion.
But anyway, so you and Spam.
That's actually true, yeah.
I mean, look at the studio Ghibli stuff, you know.
I mean, AI just replicates a lot of work being done.
But, you know, you kind of still need to come up with some kind of equipment.
So for the space, the reason why there isn't that much people
is because there is some issue with joining uh a few people dm me in the chats so it's saying
the space video is not available yeah oh that's weird let me tell you that that that twitter
space is is the most undercooked piece of technology in the entire world. It's correct. Yeah, it really is. Why can't people join?
It's the worst.
My suggestion will be to make a new space
because I'm guessing there is an issue
with this space.
Of course.
I don't necessarily want to make a new
space, just because we have people already
in here.
Well, it's getting recorded.
It is getting recorded you are right should
we make another one i i don't know well can we answer the questions and send a recording like
yeah yeah well let's just do it and then if they want to listen to it they can listen to it
yeah and now we have now we have a good excuse for when people say hey why was that there's not
that many people in this business today well it's broken wasn't it and to be fair it has just came up on my on my screen as well it says details not available actually
and now it's flashback on it's it's knackered god it really is i don't know why they don't invest in
these spaces uh but you know not my uh not my call but okay let's uh let's move on a bit um
really the last question we have is is really i think, just more about the market. I mean, everyone's worried about the near token price. But to be quite frank, and just to answer this, this, this question transparently, the whole market's down, you know, other than, you know, Bitcoin being kind of trading flat for a while, you know, so I think it's not really just near, it's really the
whole market that's down and it's obviously causing concern with a lot of people. People
have a lot of money invested. But that's not really something New York can control by any
means. Any thoughts, Dino? You guys think the market's coming back here soon? Really,
it seems it's kind of being driven by
this uh strategic bitcoin reserve we need the big whale uh to cause some waves
well if you like i i don't i know nothing about macroeconomics i've been in crypto for a long
time not retired yet right so take that uh
my ability to predict the moment same same same yeah no one's retired here no um yeah i think uh
i think that you have the first pro crypto president even if he probably doesn't actually understand what it is and let's be honest he probably doesn't yeah i think you also have a guy who
is like look him i hate him i know he's divisive i personally i love him uh. He has a pretty huge ego.
That's extremely obvious.
And I don't think that this guy is going to let his legacy be tainted by four years of terrible macroeconomics.
And if that means having to switch the money printer back on, that they will probably do it.
Even if it's worse in the long term which we all know it is yeah but also
i don't know there's a lot of there's a lot of people we're smarter than me who actually
understand macroeconomics and and maybe can see a bigger picture or they can see a more pessimistic
view i don't know demo i think that might be the greatest line i've heard i've been in i know
nothing in macroeconomics i've been in crypto a long time and i'm not retired like that's so good that's i'm with you um i just think it's like every time we
have any sort of like run like you know the nfts let a run there was a d5 summer the lot of around
and there was a mean coin mania that led a run i think until some use cases come out that kind
of create a run they're like to do stuff you know what i mean so but i know nothing about tokenomics like i'm so bad at this kind of stuff like i'm a bad trader like take that
i am too i feel like uh in a way disagree there's a need for it for utility i i think that it's
if you if you believe raul pal and the theory of the banana zone which i believe purely because it reaffirms my
confirmation bias same uh then then there's just a you know it's just a lag from crypto prices to
global liquidity and global liquidity is increasing so therefore you know take of that
i kind of i really feel we're at the the kind of precipice you know
everyone's just waiting i felt like that was six months yeah i know we're at the precipice for
for years now i guess but um but yeah i mean ultimately you know i think near is uh just
you know obviously a victim like uh like others uh
with this liquidity cycle i think the macro economics kind of stuck right now but you know
they seem to be turning a point uh but also yeah and yeah go ahead i think during this this like
pullback and i mean there's still tons of stuff building which is really cool and we're starting
to see it come out right like this near intense thing a lot of projects are incorporating it i just got off a call with someone to incorporate like there's a lot of really cool. And we're starting to see it come out, right? Like this near intense thing, a lot of projects are incorporating it.
I just got off a call with someone to incorporate,
like there's a lot of really cool stuff coming out over the next few months.
So like I, you know, I'm more of a close my portfolio,
focus on like what I can like.
That's a great point, Jared. And not only that, but you,
you mentioned something that, you know,
maybe a different use case will come about or a product that'll make some waves and get some near traction.
Feedback is always welcome.
If you go into Near AI, I'm almost certain they have a form length where you can submit an agent, for example.
But that's just one example of where a route that you could go to, to, you know,
suggest a product or whatever that, you know, that might actually make, move the market.
Yeah, go ahead, Jared. I think you're going to say something.
No, no. That was it. Not financial advice. Never follow me for financial advice.
Oh, yeah, I know. I should have done that at the beginning.
You want me to riff about data exploitation? Yes. Tokenomics? Not me. never follow me for financial advice. Oh yeah, I know. I should have done that at the beginning.
You want me to riff about data exploitation?
Yes.
Tokenomics, not me.
Well, look, at the start of the show,
I should have gave the disclaimer
and legal is going to be pissed at me again.
But this is obviously not legal advice.
It's not financial advice.
This is actually not advice at all.
But you get to listen to us rant
well and i do want i also hayley welch launched the meme coin that went down 95 in like three
days and the sec dropped her death she didn't even go to prison i know isn't that is that bullish
that means you don't need to give this data anymore. It might be bullish. That might be the bullet.
Maybe that's the signal that we're looking
for here. I interrupted Jared
as well. I'm so sorry. Go ahead. Oh, I was just
saying a lot of cool stuff, like kind of like pivoting
away from that. Just saying like in the future,
this next month of April,
a lot of cool stuff is going to be coming out. So everybody keep their
eye out for like a lot of new things.
Especially from like the content side and
like a bunch of things. So
yeah, it's not like an alpha drop, but just a lot of new things, especially from like the content side and like a bunch of things. So, you know,
it's not like an alpha drop,
but just a lot of cool stuff in that sense.
So we do have a lot of exciting initiatives,
you know, coming out.
We've been cooking and now we get to serve.
That's the worst.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
That was so demo.
I'm so sorry.
Absolutely essential that you never say that.
You know, I please,
man, it's all 90s references and
crypto boomer talking i'm sorry and marvel x-men it's okay i'm a crypto boomer uh as well uh but
that's a really about it uh for the questions here again i really appreciate everyone for joining
um we're going to host these uh more consistently over the you know every two weeks or so um so if you
have any questions or feedback or suggestions please use the air table form um and yeah let's
uh let's talk let's chat in another another couple weeks thanks all thanks okay thanks guys okay
cheers bye bye bye
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