Uneasy Money: Illia Polosukhin on Why Onchain Commerce Needs Confidentiality
Show notes
Illia Polosukhin, founder of NEAR and co-author of 'Attention Is All You Need,' on why confidentiality will let crypto become daily commerce — plus, some Near lore. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Multichain Advisors: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at multichainadv.com. Coinbase One: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained. ======================================================== Before co-founding NEAR Protocol, Illia Polosukhin was on the eight-person Google Brain team that wrote the transformer paper — the architecture behind every large language model running today. He never mentioned it. When Kain Warwick found out two weeks ago, via a crypto AI chatbot, his reaction was: you have to be kidding me. That backstory sets the tone for a conversation that moves from how transformers actually came together, to why confidentiality is what unlocks on-chain commerce for real businesses, and what NEAR is doing to keep criminals off its network without becoming a surveillance layer. The hosts also get into the Ethereum Foundation's identity crisis, why Illia thinks decentralization is a tool and not a goal, and what the economy looks like when AI handles execution and blockchain handles coordination. Host: Kain Warwick, Founder of Infinex and Synthetix Taylor Monahan, Security Expert Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Guest: Illia Polosukhin — Co-Founder, NEAR Protocol - https://x.com/ilblackdragon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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