Building Crypto/AI Products with Kalman's Forge

Shai Perednik shares his crypto origin story and how he founded Kalman's Forge, a Web3 venture studio. He discusses the ideation and product development process at Kalman's Forge, emphasizing the importance of building a strong foundation and validating ideas. Shai also explains the funding structure at the venture studio and how they collaborate with VCs and other incubators. He highlights the diverse team at Kalman's Forge and the value of bringing together individuals with different backgrounds and expertise. Lastly, Shai explores the integration of AI and crypto, envisioning a future where these technologies work together to create innovative solutions. The conversation explores the intersection of blockchain and AI, focusing on ownership, machine learning, generative AI, and decentralized compute. The future of decentralization and the role of the younger generation are also examined. The conversation concludes with excitement for the Strain Chain project and the vision of building a foundation for a decentralized world.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/redcandleclub
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Dan Kazenoff: @DanKazenoff
Lawrence: @crypto_sieve

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Hosts and guests may hold some of the assets discussed on the show.

Transcript

Shai: 0:00

So the goal is really to incubate, to create a home. And a place where it's, it's safe to make mistakes, ? And your, your, your goal is to enable people to make mistakes in a very safe and comfortable environment, because that's where the best ideas come from.

Lawrence: 0:26

Hello, welcome to an episode of the Red Candle Club. Today we have Shai Perednik from Kalman's Forge. Here interviewing and so so let's get started. So, so shy, I guess we, you know, every podcast starts off with this is what is your crypto origin story? How did, how did you get into crypto and what led you to to start Calvin's Forge?

Shai: 0:45

How long is the show again? Make sure I keep this truncated. So let me, let me, let me start it this way. I've, I've, I, I have the story of the guy that built the Bitcoin miner in 2010 played around with it for a bit and then overrode it with some kids movies and then put it in the storage while it still had some Bitcoin on there. Cause I didn't think it was worth anything cause we were only dealing with pizza and forum stuff back then. So you know, I started very early on in those days in 2010. If I go back a little bit before that, my background beforehand was in distributed compute, distributed storage, distributed networking and I had a very keen interest in cryptography. So when the paper came about, , it really spiked my interest of like how the, the Satoshi or whatever the team was, whatever the composition was and put everything together. And then I went built that minor, ? And then because I had lost it, I didn't care about the financial side of it anyways. So for me, it was just about the technology. And so I had spent really between 2010 and 2017 building my normal it career as a solution architect, doing digital transformation, being on the bleeding edge of tech and, and going to every conference and every education session I can go to. To try to understand why would, would I, would myself, my team, my company, my CTOs, my CIOs,? The business side, why they would They don't care about the money side of it, ? Why would they care about the blockchain side? So the, that was always my interest. And in 2017, we had the ICO boom was starting then, ? Things were starting to change then. And so I got a lot of insight into the, the financial side of the crypto world,? And got a lot of insight through customers I was working with. I had a really good fortune through AWS that I got exposure to a lot of fortune 50. Credit card and financial providers. And so during that time, , the, the discussions were all about the financial side of Bitcoin and Ethereum was then on the round round as well. And all the other ICOs around at that time. And so I learned a lot about the financial side of it as well. And then in 2020 had built the, the AWS crypto cohort into the community there and started growing and digging even further into my career. So the. My origin really kind of goes back to the technology side,? I love the tech. And from the very beginning, my belief was always there's something here. It's just not quite ready yet. And I had the same conviction with, with cloud, ? With no sequel. I always laugh because the hype around Bitcoin and crypto sometimes reminds me of the hype around the no sequel world back in like 2011, 2012. And so it's just a matter of the tech being quite ready. And, and I had the opportunity in, in July. To, to start building a common forge.. And that was because I had that conviction. I had felt that technology was there as a founder, I could go build real world products that we're using. Blockchain Web three. Now, for clarity, ? My thesis is that Web three is really a combination of blockchain machine learning. The eye. It's the data layer, the interpretation layer in the presentation layer. If we talk about a truly decentralized future, that's what it is. And I'm happy to get to that later. But the, the foundation of Kalman's Forge was, was really my, my belief in my, my, the, the antithesis moment, if you will, of, Hey, the tech is all ready to go. I have this opportunity to go out there and start building something. I'm, I'm going to go take this opportunity and go do it. You see the myriad of options that we have to use today and we have real world architectures that we can go point back and say, Hey, this should work because it works in other architectures. We've seen this work before. So it's, it's taken a long time to get there. It just takes time for the tech to mature for sure. There's a lot of really cool stuff going on and it's just about focusing and making sure that I'm getting the things done. And that's the, that's the biggest challenge of being a founder, I think is, is just having that focus.

Lawrence: 4:31

Excellent. Yeah. So let's get a little more into Kalman's Forge. So, so what exactly is Kalman's Forge and what's your, you know, what's, what's the, the aim of the company? What are you guys trying to do?

Shai: 4:42

So CommonsForge, the way I think of it, it's a Web3 Venture Studio. What a Venture Studio does is it's a startup that builds other startups. And so what, what we specifically do is we build startups that are, that are Creating real world products, bring together blockchain machine learning and AI, ? At the core of the, of the parts we build, the goal is to demonstrate how these technologies work together. So one of the first parts that we were, we launched and I'm excited to share, we launched on my birthday on December 4th. We were part of the Tsunami IO Ventureathon just a week before that. And we went into that event. With a light paper just an idea of, of the, of, of the intersection of cannabis, blockchain, machine learning, AI,? And, and how these three technologies And it came from some research I had done earlier this year. So. We went into this event, ? We, we, in a week, myself, the couple of members I have on my team some of the advisors we have, we knocked out the, the business stack,? Everything that we need for actually go towards investment. And that all took place in a week. We have demo code, ? We've demo demo application that we built and mocked up as well. So it was really fortunate to be in such an event. And, and the part that we launched, I, I, I set it up to too soon there is a supply chain track and trace solution. And tokenization solutions specifically for the cannabis industry. So there's a lot of opportunities when it comes to challenges that are in the industry today around regulation. And specifically our medical cannabis, when it comes to the cultivators and the growers in connecting with the users. And so our goal is to build a platform that we call strain chain that has multiple components to it. One of those is the tokenization one, ? It helps growers tokenize their, their cannabis strains. It helps growers connect with their users,? And then we have other modules that we're building that enable other use cases, like an AI pharmacist, as an example,? We have a very much a passion particularly large language models. And I'm particularly keen on proving that you need a combination of models together, , in a sort of orchestrated orchestrate working together in an orchestrated way, very much like this is an interview in order to have a proper long form chat conversation or have a a real life simulated real life doctor, for example, that can guide you through medical use cases and stuff. So it's, it's a great opportunity, I think, to bring together a, an AI component and machine learning component around, not just analytics, but really a, a unique use case, really unique, unique experience for the user. And on the backend, a unique experience for the growers that allows them to it, it, it accelerate their products to market. That they have been able to do before and the other part is that as the regulations change and shift around the world Because of the multi chain architecture that we're building on and we're not building our own chain But because of that multi chain architecture, we will be able to meet regulatory requirements even down to the state level and still be able to have a In theory, it should work a public blockchain network. So the, the, the awesome part is that we have a great opportunity to build a really unique solution that while I'm talking here about medical cannabis, , that's, that's what it's for. It's medical pharmaceutical cannabis. It, in the end, it is a, a plant matter and specifically organic plant matter tracking solution. So if we take the cannabis side out of it and we replace it with wheat, barley, , anything else, oats, rice, anything we can call it grain chain. If we replace it with salmon and bass, we can call it fish chain. So in the end, , the, the part that we're building, because it's so focused on, on the origin of what that product is and what that thing is and creating an ecosystem around that it's adaptable to many different use cases. I'm just very passionate for, for many personal use case. Personal reasons about the medical medical and pharmaceutical cannabis industry. And so I want to tackle that first. But I'm, I'm, I'm seeing a lot of opportunities, particularly, like, for example, in the media region and Dubai. Russell Kima the Saudi Arabia,? There's a lot of opportunities there when and better, better tracking of grain. So that might turn out to be something that we go down in the next year or two. And that's, that's the awesome part of building a venture studio and why I set out to build the venture studio first, before we went down the part of building the products is because as these opportunities rise of, of, Hey, we're, we're building a supply chain and tokenization solution. We have an AI pharmacist. That's part of it. Can we do other things with with the foundational tech, the venture studio enables. That kind of that kind of acceleration, if we want to change strain chain to grain chain or fish chain, whatever the venture studio again, has the structure needed to go and build those products. So I'm very fortunate to, I'm very, very excited really to, to go down this path. And, and it's, I, I'm, it's just as a founder, it's exciting because it's like every. Month is sort of bringing new opportunities.. And that's, that's what I love. I love that there's new opportunities. My, my team gets new opportunities. The partners we build get new opportunities and, and in the end, , the, the, the, the goal and the ultimate core of what Colemans Forge is, is it's a, a collaborative community environment that is about creating those opportunities. The name Kalman is my father's Hebrew name. My father had always wanted. His name on a building again and wanted to have that honor because he hadn't had his business before and he very much believed in creating opportunities. And so I very much wanted to share that honor with him. And so the Commons Forge is really about giving and creating those opportunities.

Lawrence: 10:31

Oh, that's great, man. So there's so much I want to ask about Strain Chain, but I feel like we could do a whole another episode just on that. So I'm going to stick with Kalman's Forge Kalman's Forge. I'm gonna stick with CommonsForge. So when you, when you, like, how do you guys ideate these products,? Like, how did you, how did you ideate have like a process for ideation, ideating more projects or, or how does that, how does that work?

Shai: 10:59

Yeah, so the, the, we're in the very early stage of about, you know, we've been around for about six or seven months or so. The, the pipeline that we built are ideas that I came to the table with. So these are, these are things that I had seen. Either in the industry or the ecosystem or just in adjacent industries that I saw that there's an opportunity to go build something for that. So one of those was the cannabis industry. Another one is the HR industry. Another one is down the road, some gaming solutions that are in our pipeline that we're, we're, we have sort of in the back burner and it's intentional. And so the way that we incubate the ideas, , the, the. The whole thing about a venture studio that's different than an accelerator, an accelerator, an incubator. We don't go out there and say, Hey, come bring us your ideas, ? We're here to listen to your pitches. And we're here to do these things,? I do love doing that. Don't get me wrong. I love when people reach out on LinkedIn and they want to say, Hey, you know, I want to talk to you and share things with you, but they're not, it's not a pitch session, ? We're talking about the tech and we're digging into the architectures and what chains they should use.. So. I want to keep doing that thing and I want to keep doing that at scale. So the, the goal of the Venture Studio and then why I call it a very much a collaborative environment, I have very much a theme of like medieval and I talk about blacksmithing and building swords and stuff like that is because the way that we incubate ideas is by creating a home of ideas,? When you walk in. And, and, and, you know, again theorize with me for a little bit, cause we're talking about, you know, virtual headquarters. Eventually we'll have a real headquarters, but you can imagine,? You walk in and it's a space. You know, somewhat like mine here that there's drones, there's printers, there's all these things, but they're not these physical things,? They're, they're, they're products. And there's things that we built in the past that showcase the technology and that trigger that idea of like, okay, this is how we build it, ? This is what we can do, ? And you look at the tech that we have and you think of new ways to use the tech that we have. So the goal is really to incubate, to create a home. And a place where it's, it's safe to make mistakes, ? And your, your, your goal is to enable people to make mistakes in a very safe and comfortable environment, because that's where the best ideas come from.? When people are, are just like, Hey, let me try this. Let me try that. And, and, and they can do it in a very fast and innovative way. Then we get really quality products,? And that's, that's the goal is you have to build a machine around those products and those ideas to make sure that it has that quality and rigor. So the, the, the goal is going to be over time. To scale up our pipeline, . And so I scale up more of our funnel, . And, and, and not have it be so much of a funnel, create more open source tooling,. Public tooling, things that we can share that somebody has a great idea. They can kind of come into that virtual environment and they can bake up that idea,. And I don't know, maybe that'll be with. You know, a game like environment with like NPC characters walking around. You know, I have the part of what we're building is a, is the ability to hold a long form conversation. So we're, we're gonna build, you know, chatbots that you can talk to about this idea that you have in your head. And you're gonna be able to have a really long form conversation about this whimsical idea that you have. And it's not gonna tell you that it's BS. And try to break your idea. What it's going to try to do is understand your idea and try to get more out of your head. So that's going to be our goal is to really hone in on the process of ideation and build that into a programmatic way. And programmatic doesn't mean that it's, it's always code. It just means that it's codified. So we're not doing something unique every time we're, we're, we're consistently doing the same thing. And because we're consistently doing the same thing at the end, that thing is always better.? And that's why I go back to the blacksmithing metaphor, because a blacksmith shop in general, we go back to the 1200s and 1300s. It's not like the Walmart of swords. You can go in there and there was like three or four swords. There was some alien, there was some chain mail, ? There was some very basic things that they could do. And they were all related to each other, ? The, the chain mail was you, was the recycling or leftover metals from the swords. The mace balls were the, the unusable. Metals from the swords and stuff like that. So that was the, the goal, ? Is it's a, it's a place where everything can be reused and done together. And so we're trying to do the same thing on the, the software architecture and software engineering and really product building side of things.

Lawrence: 15:14

Yeah, I actually really like that analogy. Like using you know, taking things from one project and using them in another, recycling them so that you, you don't have to start from scratch again. So these when you guys like create these ideas and you let people explore these ideas, how exactly does the, like, how does the funding structure work?? Because these projects, if, if they do get traction a little bit, they have to get funded so that they can get to new building.? So. Do you also do that? Or is there another piece where they get funded elsewhere? How does

Shai: 15:44

that work? So we're, we're getting there, ? So in a, in a, and if things will fall into place, , I'm confident that we're going in the direction,? We will not be the funding, ? We will we will help do is with a little bit of capital, be very scrappy and, and do really dirty prototyping, ? Really quick UX design, really quick validation of the tech, ? It would, you know, build out very specific code just to test something and prove something out,? So that's the idea is to be very And because of that, we don't need a lot of capital, ? The other part is because our team is very lean and, and, and, and not lean to mean, but like lean and hungry, ? Like we want it. We have a team that really wants to build and we're going to continue growing. There's an apprenticeship program I'm trying to launch in a couple of months. So we're going to keep growing this environment of people that are hungry,? They want to get into the space. We want to build in this space. And so. What will, what will happen as we, we, we go down that path is the, the VCs, the accelerators that we work with today, the, the, the other venture studios that we would collaborate with today, like Tsunami for is a great example the other incubators that we collaborate with,. And just general VCs and high net worth we are going to build our network with.. And again, we already have some of that network, but as we continue to build that up.. We will open the doors to, to our projects in our, our peers, projects that come in.. So when, when somebody brings an I, I, it's a very natural way, ? Kind of, it's an idea of bubbles up in this environment, ? So it could be somebody comes in, it could be just through conversations, but when there's that idea. And, and we, as the, as the comments forge team, the, the, the, I would say the leadership, but the, the, the validation team, if you will, I call them like the overlay team of pioneers as our team of pioneers has gone through and looked at the technology and ensure that the idea and what you're trying to do is actually a sound idea. We're not trying to necessarily make sure that you have the best idea, but just, does it make sense? Is it something that's reasonable? Is it something that we foresee the need for it?. And does it align with, with our overall pipeline, which is all about identifying the identity and who we are. And so if it does align with, with this definition that we're, we're, we're building, then we're happy to, to help get that into the system.. And, and what will happen is our, our, our VCs and our network. We'll understand that the things that are coming through our pipeline are things that we've already molded and meshed, ? We validated them. We, we took the project through the rigor, ? We took the idea through the rigor and we've, we've, you know, we've encouraged the pivot where it needs to be,? You don't force the, the Your goal is to help deliver their idea to the market. And so if, if, if the market is, let's say two, it's insignificant or doesn't bring enough ROI, that's not worth going down that path, then the idea is, okay, again, not change the vision, but, but how do you expand on it? Maybe how do you broaden a little bit, look a little wider across the horizons. And then all of a sudden you realize, wait. I can still do what I want to do if I do this, ? I've, I've already had that, ? The, this concept of interviewing for me comes very much from a passion of like doing this,? I love this idea of interviewing and, and, and getting to the bottom of why somebody is doing something. And it comes from my, my, My, the stories my dad would tell me and being able to dig into those stories so that the, the, the goal is to say, okay, well, I have this vision. I have this idea, but where does it make sense in the market?? Is, is, is a human resources app potentially more than, than this, you know, sort of interviewing tool that I have. That's for some other use case, probably.. And I can, I can go build that. While at the same time going that idea,? So that's the goal is to help our building with us know that there's a path, ? And then once they've settled on that path and they're happy, again, we've gone through that pioneering path and we've validated those ideas and our receipts are coming in. You're generally looking at a hundred. So you can kick off an idea and start building with, with anywhere from, from let's say 15 to 20, 000 all the way to 500, 000. So the challenge is always really how much money do you need to build, ? And if we're not talking about salaries, and we're not talking about, you know, because you're in that pre seed, pre product, pre revenue, everything,? You're just adding in an idea. So there's no need to spend a ton on marketing. You don't have really any operational overhead. You don't need a ton of developers,? Because what are they going to develop? You don't have the idea fleshed out yet. So that's, so that's the idea, ? Is, is, is you, you, you hone in on that idea, ? You bring those things together, you bring that team together and you, you, you clean up and flush that idea at a, at a very, you know, it's not just about being cost effective. It's about being engineering effective,? Not wasting cycles, building because you haven't validated. So for example, , why write code if you don't have the screens and the UX design that you could take in front of a customer or user and say, Hey, does this make sense to you? At least as a visual? Does this make sense? And then you go start building it. So that's our goal is to make the process very efficient. And making sure that we're building the things that need to be shown.. And that's, that's hard to know what is that thing.. And that's, I think the unique value that I bring that the team brings,. Is that I've been in 19 I've been a part of the web one to web two, now the web three transformation. I've been on the bleeding edge through all of it. The people on my team have through 30 or 10 year, 10 year, 10 year, and have been. Part of these digital transformations. So the, the, the, the awesome environment that we're going to have is going to allow these ideas to incubate and percolate all these things and then eventually get funding and, and get the kind of funding.. And then that way, when somebody says, Hey, I need salary. Cause I'm going to go build this idea and, and I'm going to go dedicate my time to it. I'm gonna quit my job. They don't. A year or two later, end up with, you know, Hey, I, I wasn't able to roll it out because I couldn't, my, my idea never got flushed out. I never found the market for it. I kept ideating. I kept pivoting. I can't do this, . It's more of, you know, they, they leave that role with confidence, knowing that their idea is going to go get baked and that they already have a. A pipeline of investors, of customers, of builders, of other people with them that are looking out for them for the next 18 months or 24 months, because there's a mutual shared interest to deliver on that product,? And so that's the, that's that to market is you're not going at it alone. You're going at it with with a cohort of partners and builders along with you, ? And that's what I want to build and deliver.

Lawrence: 22:39

So you mentioned that, you know, your, your, your team and yourself, like you guys, you know, look at these projects and you, you help them build the idea up. So. When it comes to your team how did you, how did you form the team at Commons Forge and where, where did you meet most of them and how do they, how do they have experience with the virtual space?

Shai: 23:00

So many, many of them came and I, I am going to be a bit careful here because I do want to respect that some of the people on my team do want to remain, remain anonymous. And, and I do very much believe in me as, as the leadership being, being doxed. So you know who, who Commons Forge is. But we're going to be a very safe place where, where our team and people that want to come to build with us eventually can be entirely anonymous. If somebody can write good code, I don't necessarily need to know exactly who they are. I just need to know they can write good code or do, you know, product design, whatever, without stealing information or other things.. So. The goal is to create that kind of environment. And so the team that I have today that I brought along is, is a team of some of our tenured Amazonians that were with me before. Other ones have come from other big, big companies like Samsung, as an example. Other ones have a legacy in, in traditional operations and managing traditional physical goods and operations and movement of physical goods around in the supply chain. We're building a supply chain product. We need to understand how the physical environment works. So we need those kinds of people, ? We have, we have product designers have been part of leaders on our team that understand the rigor required when it comes to a physical product. Now, why is that important?? We're building a software product for the same reason that some of my people on my team are very new to the Web3 blockchain world,? They see it, ? They believe in the vision. They believe they understand that AI is part of it. They see that there's an interconnection between the two, even though they don't have the depth that I do. But They, they, they're still still fairly new to the space, but that's intentional because I, I did not want an, an echo chamber. I, I wanted to be in an environment that would force me to be on my toes, that I, I'd have to explain things sometimes at a higher level and sometimes at a much more detailed technical level. And I'd have people that, that come from outside the industry and bring that tenure from product manufacturing of, of toys and physical goods or. Machines that need to be moved around the world, ? They have that tenure and that expertise or IOT as an example, ? And they can, they can bring that, that world of expertise and that tenure to the Web3 blockchain space, ? And that's the, that's the goal, ? Is when you can build that diverse team, you have a good environment of challenges and communication and, and, and sometimes just back and forth and battling, which, which yields a better product. And so, , that's, that's the team that I built and I put together the, the product that we're focusing on together is all on, on strain chain. And, and we have a couple of other ones that, that, again, some of them aren't stealth and some of them are out there, like human digital registries, one of them and then another one that will be released in a couple of months. Our goal is not to, to take on more than like two or three this year. We are very much focused on, on three key products that are really working together and enabling each other. And there's a lot of mutual synergies between those parts. However, there's also three very, very distinct markets for those three products, but they share a lot of the commonalities in tech. So what we're building is, and the team that I have is this, these pioneers of industry that have been around for a very long time. And they've helped me forge a strong foundation, ? And that's why we're Kalman's Forge. It's all about building that very strong foundation, ? And so each of these people you know, there's there's, you know, sometimes there's long stories of how we met and things like that,? Some people on my team, I've, I've worked with them for like eight to 10 years. I've been in their circle with them for eight to 10 years, ? I've been their friend and worked with them for five to six years. So some of them I have that long tenure with. And other ones I've, I've known for about five or six months,? And, and through mutual relationships, And, and, and what I always believe is that you can't surround yourself with, with people that you know for a long time, ? If, if they know everything about you, Then, then it's not keeping you on your toes, ? Because they know how to deal with you. They know how to work with you, ? They already know how to do things, ? And so by having again, people that are, are somewhat new to my circle as well, and I'm still learning them. It's again, it's forcing me to, to always be adaptive and be on my toes. And that's really what I want, ? I, I enjoy the environment that, that I, I stay on my toes and I'm, I'm constantly thinking and adapting and I want to create that environment too.

Lawrence: 27:25

Yeah. I mean, that's probably why you became a founder, ? I mean, that's. There's nothing more challenging and ambiguous and you know, constantly thinking on your feet than that.. I mean, that's, that's the most you can get.

Shai: 27:36

Yeah, and it came from where everyone's memorialization, . That, that when you're working in internal it, I encourage people to listen to your, your podcast,. That if you're in an internal it, You are in a sense, sometimes a corporate entrepreneur, you're just a founder for somebody else. But, you know, if you're taking business requirements. And you're going then delivering a product or building out that product. That's what i'm doing. That's what my peers in the tsunami ventureathon are doing ? We're but but the difference is We've gone out there and we've gone found those business requirements We validated those business requirements and we're kind of taking it all the way through So just get yourself more exposure to the business world,? Understand why things were done entrepreneur through your career. And at some point that opportunity will be just like it was for me to say, Hey, now is the time for me. Now's the time for the industry and go build. So I encourage everybody to think about that mindset.

Lawrence: 28:35

That's excellent. And you know, I actually have a fair amount to chew on myself there too, because Like, I feel like I'm, you know, getting more of these skills, you know, from seeing different companies and how they're built, like I'm going to start up now, I'm actually at a VC company myself, so I'm seeing how smaller companies are. Being started, how they get funded, what works, what doesn't, what the challenges are. So yeah, it's really, it's really interesting to see that path for you and to see how you like grew into this. Cause you, you definitely weren't like one of those 20 year old, you know, entrepreneurs, like you went out, you quit, dropped out of college and started a company,? You, you, you've been building So that, that's kind of like. Yeah, it's different. It's different than what you normally see in the crypto world, which is like graduate college, start a company, or just go to a hackathon and start a company, you know, and there's something like that.

Shai: 29:22

Yeah. It's I I'm, I'm building something that I'm very passionate on, on my savings, ? I bootstrapped the company. I'm living off my savings until the day that I get the, the amount of funding to draw a salary. And I'm okay with that because I'm passionate about what I'm building. I know that we can deliver. And that's, that's the exciting part,? Is, is that when you have the, the fuel and the heart, eventually things line up, ? You just keep, keep your head on, keep your head focused and keep working on the things that you're passionate about.

Lawrence: 29:51

What I really like about this is that you guys are bringing a, an an experienced approach to this space. And you're saying, Hey, we have a lot of experience from building past products and we want to build, bring that to crypto products. And I think that this is something that space needs to be honest. I feel like there's a lot of I wouldn't say bad ideas, just ideas that just aren't. I will say that,

Shai: 30:13

I will say that there's a lot of bad and crappy ideas. Though there's, there's some awful ideas out there. The problem is that there's also a lot of really good ideas, but when, when you can use, you know, any of the GPT, you know, chat, GPT bar and any of those AI tools for usually free to create some sort of like meme token or some sort of site or, or some sort of project out there and you can go find a grant and get fun in that way, it's just. Very easy to create a lot of crap. The nice thing is, and I think that the better part is , that since we've had this bear cycle for the last year and a half ish or so, and I would argue we're still a bit in it, that the people that are building are people like me, I think, that have a lot of conviction,? That they really believe that eventually in a couple of years or. Many years, this tech will be the commonplace, ? And what we're building is the foundational pieces of that. And it may be here in 15 years from now. And in a very, very, very well may not be here in 15 years. A lot of the things that we're going to build, even the good things are going to die in a short amount of time because of just other things being built on top of everything else. And eventually there's not a need for that. And, and so the, the goal is not so much to focus on. You know, trying to build something for. Or 20 years, the goal is to focus on how you build something with that rigor, ? You don't just want to rush to market, but when you get there, you, you come there with the things, ? You come there with the tools, ? That's the, the goal is that you don't show up empty handed. To the market with a product that's half baked because, because a lot of times, ? Like again, I, I, I happily say there's a lot of, there's a lot of bad projects and products in the crypto space. A lot of times though, the reason they're bad is because they just haven't ID'd enough. And their vision is still there. They're still trying to bake it. They're still trying to come up with it. They're trying to figure things out, but they're also trying to get people to buy the token. They're also trying to get investors on board, trying to do these things. So the website of what it, the vision is supposed to be starts to take on language like it is there today. And people look at it and say, Hey, this is supposed to be this great metaverse that has all these different things. This is supposed to be this great DAO solution that has soulbound tokens built into it and corporate governance tools built into it. And none of it's there, so it's a bad tool. Well, yes, it could be a bad tool today. It could also be just the team hasn't gotten there, ? And they're sort of hyping up the tool too much. And that's, that's bad as well.. And that's, that's why we see a lot of projects die. So my goal, . It's like what you said is to bring the rigor, not the, the Cowboys in the space, . And it's to welcome the Cowboys, but to say, Hey, you know what? Let's show a little bit, let's, let's figure out what is exactly here and how do we build this in a, a, a strong methodical foundational way.

Lawrence: 33:19

I want to elaborate a little bit on the AI piece. Cause you, you seem to be, you seem to emphasize that quite a bit. How, how did you see the AI and crypto world interacting? And, you know, how do you, cause I got a lot of people, I feel like think it's a kind of a joke still like, Oh, AI and crypto, like we're just going to slap key, you know, buzzwords on. And, and, you know, it's like a marketing thing. They think it's just like a marketing gimmick versus like things, something actually real happening. So. How do you see the crypto and AI worlds emerging and what products I guess what products are, you know, you guys working on or would want to work on in that area?

Shai: 33:57

So the, the way I see it now, and I think it's, it's important that we, we, we sort of revisit what I was talking before,? That, that when we look at the web three layer, , and we, we talk about this decentralized internet of the future and people have rewrite ownership control, we, we, we, we've not done a good job really defining what that ownership really means. It's this hypothetical sort of theory and say, and we generally fall back to and say, well, it's the ownership of data. Okay, fine. Well, if I own the key, and my data is sitting in a centralized server somewhere, and I have the key to that data, Does that mean I own it, ? If the key is sharded and I share that key with somebody else or a different provider, does that mean that we jointly own it? So, there's, there's such loose definition around this concept of ownership that what, what I read, what I, the way that I look into the thesis that I, that I built is around this concept of that the blockchain is the underlying data layer. And on top of that, we have the machine learning layer, the interpretation layer to make sense of all that stuff.. I had a very awesome colleagues at AWS that I was very fortunate to work with really awesome industry leaders in my, in my last few roles. That explained in a very simple way. The machine learning layer, , or machine learning, the intention is to make sense of data, ? It's to gather all the information and then understand what is there and turn that into something that can be done,? So take something and output The AI part of it on top, , is about the the prediction. It's about looking at that data and trying to predict and say, this is what it could be. So, the, the goal is, is not to To spend so much time on AI being this evil overlord that's going to take over and everything. It's to really understand where is, where is AI and what is actually AI that we're talking about, ? And AI is a very broad field, ? It's just like we say cloud computing or we say blockchain, ? Or we say databases, ? It's a very broad field. And what I focus on primarily is, is the either the language models or the vision models,? The, the ability for a, a program in these machine learning models are. And the AI models that we have, and these language models, ? Ultimately, they're, they're in a sense of program. So it's the ability for a program to make sense of something. And then be able to generate output or something based on what it makes sense of,? And that's what generative AI is. I don't like using that term or throwing that term around a lot because it is, you know, a hype word, it is a buzz word. But it is what it is, ? The thing is, it's not new. I mean, there was that movie like With Haley Joel Osmond from like 20 something years ago called AI. So we've had this concept of artificial intelligence for a long time from Isaac Asimov and, you know, books in the 1800s and stuff. So it's not new. It's just the, the, the new technologies that we're seeing and the way that they're, they're rolling out AI in a way that is actually usable for everybody else,? With a, a chat based Chatbots before we had these things in AWS services and other solutions that were built on top of AWS, built another cloud providers. So these these chatbot in these sort of smart. Bots have existed. It's just the reasoning ability and the capabilities haven't been like what we see now. And so that's the, the really difference is that the accessibility, the the the things that you can do with the tools at, at, at a very novel novice user, ? My mom uses tragedy sometimes. So the, the fact that it's that usable. I, I think that's what causes a lot of the fear because the fear is if something is so easy for a kid or, or of any, you know, a young child to any old age can pick up and take over, then what does this mean for people that really understand the tech? And then what are they doing with it that we don't know?? And so. If we go, if we go back to, you know, the, the sort of the three layers, the, the idea is to put them all together, ? And blockchain isn't only decentralized storage. A big part of it is about decentralized compute. And if we can run computation. On a decentralized network, ? Then we have another level of decentralization.? Then we can say that model that we're running that we're generating that text from or generating that image from that is running on decentralized server somewhere. And it's being displayed on decentralized node somewhere as well. And so. The goal is to eventually get to that fully decentralized world, ? Which really comes down to that the underlying hardware, the underlying system that it runs on, ? Whether it's Windows, Linux, doesn't matter, some flavor in between. That, that isn't owned by one entity. That one entity can't go in there and do something with it. And that if they did, there's enough geographical dispersion of that data that it doesn't matter. And so the The goal is to bring those layers together, ? Is to take the, the decentralized compute part of blockchain and the decentralized storage run models. And we'll call it at the edge,? As a, as a buzzword there, ? Run them see where there's other opportunities.. For example, in, in strain chain, one of the things that I'm particularly excited about. Is when you look at, in theory, all the data that we would have, ? And the data that users own, we want users to continue to be able to own that data,? If they're using our platform to share the platform to share their IOT data, they should always own that data, ? They should be with their keys and there should be any centralized nodes and blah, blah, blah. So the, the, the goal of that is how do you start bringing AI into the environment? How do you start allowing people to. Analyze the data that they have in a decentralized way. And that's the exciting part of the decentralized compute is because you can take the data that somebody might have. You could, you can put it in a decentralized node that, that is a secure enclave. Oh, data can only get in and out versus one direction. It's everything's encrypted. You can then decrypt that data in a secure enclave. You have that model also running in that secure enclave. And again, this is on decentralized node and everything. So when, when the model is then analyzing that data and outputting the result, the result, sometimes the, the, there's the answer is only needed,? The yes or no, if it's a researcher people that are using this particular strain have this kind of an effect, they only need to know the number back. They don't need to know all the underlying data. So by by analyzing all that data in the decentralized node in in a secure enclave and returning the answer and only the answer that's needed and then discarding and destroying all the underlying data. That, that we would have in an enclave, ? It ensures that now we're able to do all the AI and ML analytics that we've been talking about for like 2015 ish, so like eight years. And, and do that in a secure way, ? Using zero knowledge proofs that now the researchers are trying to get this information can't find out the underlying data. It doesn't exist.. Or it, or there's a hash that verifies that data in the actual raw data still sits with the grower and their systems and private systems that they own. So that's the, the goal is when you start bringing these technologies together, you start illustrating a real world use case like a supply chain environment that, that can know where supply is that when you talk to an AI bot, you're not saying, you know, I need this. You know whatever. I need this white circle thing,? In the case of cannabis, for example, medical cannabis, you're talking about your ailments and your pains and your challenges. And she knows about your medical history. I call her AI pharmacist Taylor. So Taylor knows about your background and your history and all these things. And you own all that data. And because the platform has the permissions to the grower's data, it also knows where the stock is. And those were the inventories available for you to purchase the things that you need. So, when, when the, the, the chatbot or the AI behind it helps deduce that you, you should take these particular medical strains to help with your back inflammation pains. And making a recommendation that you need something with the calf lean, because that's best for information. The, the stock is also being shown to you, the availability and inventory is also being shown to you in real time because of the underlying blend of the, of the data on the blockchain network and being able to analyze it using the AI machine learning models. So that's, I think we're just starting though. I mean, we'll continue to build these use cases over time.

Lawrence: 43:04

Yeah, no, for sure. There was a lot there. I mean, I'm, I'm very interested in decentralized compute. I I'm loving the solutions that are coming out now and you're beginning to see the start of a decentralized cloud coming now, you know, you're starting to see the compute, you're starting to see the GPU. There's a lot of innovation around GPU because there's a shortage. So a lot of companies are, are, there's a lot of creative structures, destruction going on there. The storage, you know, there's a lot of like file coin, et cetera. I think Filecoin just did something with, with the government to do like they, they sent data to space and got back, got it back from space. So they were able to, this is very new. The Filecoin I saw an article, Filecoin, I think they have like a foundation or something, but this, I just saw this last week and I was like, well, this is unbelievable. You know? So like, you know, you get in the stores, the GPU, you know, and you're, you're beginning to see like, we're, we're going to get to a decentralized cloud eventually it's going to come. Where you don't really know where your data is, but you're still going to own it, which I think is pretty cool. And I really love the part that you touched on where. Like now, we, when we generate data, we don't really have control over it. And it's going to these companies and they're selling it and making money on it. AIs are being trained on it, et cetera. But what would be really cool is to like, if I had a piece of data that was generated, I can, I can completely lock it down and not have it shared to anyone. Or I could allow it certain companies, you know, certain places and selectively choose where I want my data to be shared. So I do think crypto can give us that. And yeah, we're at the very early stages. I mean, again, AI is like even younger than crypto is really kind of, you know, at least like generative AI.

Shai: 44:47

Yeah. I mean, I would say we, we, we, we had, we had sort of the, the con, the, the challenges that the underlying concepts of machine learning AI and the underlying concepts of blockchain go back to like the seventies. So the reality is that none of this stuff is new. It's the way that we're putting it together and all the other stuff that comes on top, ? That's the thing that I think we need to remember is that we've had cloud services, AWS, Azure, GCP. VMware, ? Thousands of other clouds have come and gone between that have enabled builders to build really fast with different API services. So because you have all those things in layers on top, , it makes it much easier to use these things. And that's what we're seeing now. So I, I, I. I too am seeing that. I just think it's still going to be a couple of years because of the level of accessibility one, and then two, the performance level, you can't beat some of the centralized performances that you're getting today, nor just even the features that you're getting today.? So we still, it's still going to take time before we see that in the centralized world and as builders, we have to accept that, that you can't fully go everything decentralized because then it's just gonna take you forever to launch your product.. There has to be a happy medium that you have to find.. And, and, and the goal, like for me is where is that happy medium that delivers on the, the value that you need to the user so they don't have to understand all the underlying complexity, but you're still using the tech so that you can deliver on, on the, the value that you need to deliver.. For example, in the, the LLM world, the outputs,? It, it's, it's, it's about tracking outputs and, and the mutations that happen to those outputs over time. Well, that sounds a lot like a blockchain and what the blockchain is supposed to be for, ? Just instead of transactions and a token moving over time, we're talking about the output of this interview,? You know, you and I You're going to go generate, let's say, show notes with an AI tool or something. And the mutation of those show notes over time could be tracked on, on chain. No different than an NFT and NFT being traded, ? Or a token being traded. So that's the, that's the level that we're still at,? It's like these little nuanced things And we're starting to stitch them together in a couple of years, none of it will matter because most of the developers and builders will be up here looking at this, at the tooling that just kind of puts all this stuff together for them. And that's fine. That's where we need to be, ? If you and I want this decentralized world, we have to accept that we need that higher level of obfuscation. And with it May come a bit of centralization in a way, ? And if everybody, that's what we have with open Zeppelin in a way, ? Everybody copies a lot of the open Zeppelin contracts and sort of, we, we cross our fingers and hope that none of them have a zero day vulnerability in them when that day is found. Oh crap. Cause there's a whole bunch of contracts that are built on open Zeppelin contracts.

Lawrence: 47:41

Yeah. I I think what the. Like I think crypto still needs it's chat GPT moment, to be honest, like chat GPT, I think it was so successful because there's so much complicated stuff going on under that app, but they've made it in this really simple interface where you're just asking a question and answers. And it seems like it's not that much, but there really is so much happening. Under there and crypto is, it's getting there. We're getting there, but still not quite there yet.

Shai: 48:11

So I, I agree. And I think that will happen, . But at the cost of centralization, , we will need centralized services in order to make those experiences easier. I believe what will happen over time, . Is, is those experiences will become decentralized, but we're still like 10 to 15 years. And the other part is it'll take a generation. That is demanding that ownership at the power structure at the power level, ? So the, the, the, the younger youth today that is in the, let's say 58 to like 15 range or 16 range when they get to be in 10 to 15 years, ? In that voting age of the thirties or so, then they start having influence and impact on society,? And their expectations Services, ? They own, they own their information. They want to hop from one provider to another one, ? We already see that in young adults that are in their twenties anyways, ? So The, the difference is that the generation after them is going to say, Hey, we, we see what the generation before us did and what they want and the way that it was implemented. We want it this way.. And by the time the generation comes around, I don't think there'll be much of an issue of these concepts of wallets and abstraction, because we'll kind of have it figured out by then in a decentralized world. So I just, I think it's, it takes time.. And we'll see better solutions every year.

Lawrence: 49:29

So let's I guess just to, to have like a concluding thought what are you most excited about? I mean, you've spoke, you've spoken a lot about things you're excited about, but I guess like the most immediate thing that you're working on, is it like a new idea or just something with Kalman's Forge that you guys are trying out or, or maybe it's just like the industry in general or, or technology in general, like what are you most excited about?

Shai: 49:55

So let me, let me, let me, let me put it in two ways. I will say that the immediate one is, is strange, ? I, I, I'm, I'm excited at the traction that we've had. In, in like the month and a half and month and a quarter roughly that we've been around . Since we launched after tsunami. The, the growers that we have on board already that are, that are, are, are keen to see our solution in, in, in production. The, the, the layer one and, and other Web3 partners that we have that we're gonna be announcing stuff in a couple of weeks that we already have on board.. Some of the funding that we've already gotten pre-product even from. Big partners out there. And again, you'll hear that in about a week or two. So I'm really excited for those announcements to go out because that shows, ? That, that the industry believes in what we're building,? Not only the cannabis industry, not only the web three industry. But also some of our traditional web two partners that traditionally don't get into this kind of space,? They barely touch the blockchain the cannabis industry and now they are with us on board . And so to me, that's one of the exciting things. I I I'm Excited about because this started for me as a personal sort of a curiosity of where this intersection lies of my own use of medical cannabis in my own frustrations in the industry for the last six years that I've been using medical cannabis for my, for my celiac and Crohn's. So the, the, the belief I have is that we can clean up this industry, ? And in the fact that the strain chain already has the traction and validation from the partners that we have to me, just. Excites me because it means that that idea that I had, that vision really does make sense, ? That I am really building and stitching things in the somewhat way. I'm going to make mistakes. And I know that the validation is what I'm excited about.. And it's, it's, it's an honor to me to have that validation.. So that'll come in a few weeks. Hopefully a lot of this stuff will come more public and we'll share a lot of that stuff. And then the, the more long term vision,? I think I'll end it The culmination of the, of the foundational belief that I had when I started going down this path, I very firmly believed that I needed a strong foundation behind me, ? Or I'm behind me with me, not just the team, ? But the, the corporate structure, the business structure, the network that we need in order to start building,? And that structure is starting to show digital registry and some other products that we have coming out later in the year. And the exciting part is that when, when I think about this, how do we define the digital identity? How do we define who we are in a future world? How would we define what it means to be human in a world that has no borders between the real and the digital world? That people move freely between the two on a day to day basis. We, we're building the technology in the foundational pieces. And the real world products that will be part of that as experiences in a year from now. I'm not talking about 15, 20 years from now. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm excited about some of the use cases that we're seeing already with these foundational tools in industries like construction. So I, I'm, I, again, I'm, I'm, I'm excited that we're delivering something that the everyday person like my mom and my family understand. And that's exciting to me too.

Lawrence: 53:28

Last but not least, how can people find you and, you know, how do people reach

Shai: 53:32

you? Sure. So the, if you want to look for me and you want to follow my information stuff, you can go to www. shyprednick. com. You can then from there, there's links to my Twitter. I, I tend to post a lot on LinkedIn. There's some stuff on my YouTube. You can find on that on www. shyprednick. com. You want to learn about what Kalman's Forge is building. It's www. kalmansforge. com. K A L M A N S F O R G E. com. And if you want to learn specifically about strain chain, I, I highly recommend going to www. strainchain. app. Again, you can find all this stuff for my LinkedIn. I post a bunch on this stuff and please, anybody feel free to shoot me a message if you want to build with me, if you want to build some of the stuff and you want to become part of our, our, our, our apprenticeship apprenticeship program I would love to, to get people on board and continue building with the industry. So thank you again for having me on board. This has definitely been a, an exciting evening and I appreciate all the questions and discussion. Thank you. Very

Lawrence: 54:30

welcome, man.