12th Old Friends Reunion @ Dubai [Singularity: AI x Crypto Convergence] Event Recap

Hooray, the 12th Old Friends Reunion @Dubai has come to an end.

This event’s topic is AI x Crypto. We are so happy and honored that we had some of the Top-tier projects, Founders, Core members, and Researchers within the AI track, with their presence, the whole event was elevated to another level and became one of the best Side Events during the Dubai Token2049 Week.

Despite the challenges posed by yesterday’s event and the preceding day’s heavy rainfall, we are deeply grateful to all the speakers and attendees who showed unwavering commitment and resilience by still participating. Your dedication and support in the face of adversity are truly inspiring, and they contributed to the success of our event.

Our event had 3409 registrations, and 500 people showed up. 2 Fireside Chat, 3 Keynotes, and 3 Panels which brought us numerous insightful ideas. What’s more, all the limited edition merch was taken by Old Frens & New Frens. Thank you for having us and we hope we served you well.

Huge shout out to NEAR, EigenLayer, Polygon, Gensyn, io.net, Render Network, Worldcoin, ChainML, Aethir, FirstBatch, Pocket Network, Ritual, Upshot, Sahara AI, Bagel, Brevis, Lagrange, Herodutus, IoTeX, Marlin, Alterscope, AltLayer.

We are extremely grateful to have our portfolio and other projects join us, without your support, the show would not be this successful.

So now let’s take a cup of coffee, rewind these awesome Keynotes and Panels, and learn how AI empowers the entire Blockchain industry.

Opening Remark: AI x Crypto Investment Philosophy
🎙️Gokhan Er, Managing Director of IOSG Ventures

During this Keynote, Gokhan provided an insightful overview of the investment thesis and philosophy driving IOSG Ventures. He emphasized the venture capital firm’s commitment to supporting projects at the forefront of innovation within the blockchain and decentralized technology space. Gokhan highlighted IOSG Ventures’ strategic focus on backing startups that are not only pioneering advancements in core infrastructure, data layers, and application layers but also demonstrating a clear understanding of the challenges and opportunities inherent in these domains. Additionally, he underscored the importance of fostering a collaborative ecosystem where entrepreneurs, developers, and researchers can synergize to drive meaningful progress and adoption. Overall, Gokhan’s presentation showcased IOSG Ventures’ dedication to identifying and nurturing high-potential projects that are poised to shape the future of decentralized technologies and AI integration within the crypto industry.

Keynote | Why AI Needs to Be Open
🎙️Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR

Illia discussed his AI background and the evolution of language models, focusing on the transformative impact of transformers. He highlighted the accelerating pace of AI innovation, addressing both its potential and associated risks. Introducing the concept of user-owned AI, he also presented the Web3 AI Stack, envisioning a future where users have greater control over their AI experiences. Overall, the keynote provided insights into the past, present, and future of AI, emphasizing its evolving dynamics and societal implications.

Fireside Chat: Enabling AI Function in the Last Generation Blockchain
🎙️Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR
🎙️​Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder of Polygon
🎙️​Momir Amidzic, Senior Director of IOSG Ventures (MC)

Thank you, Illia & Sandeep, also Momir for allowing us to learn about how both of our panelists perceive the intersection of AI x Crypto.

During this Fireside Chat, Illia explained the concept of sovereign and user-owned AI and the interaction changing in the future with AI technologies while Sandeep, outlined Polygon’s strategy concerning AI, and how Polygon sees ZK technology as adding value in the realm of AI.

Later on, they delve into the intersection of Core Infrastructure, Data Layers, and Application Layers in the context of AI and decentralized systems. Topics include optimizing compute resources for training versus inference, balancing transparency and security in AI models, methods for secure and verifiable inference, strategies for ensuring data quality and mitigating biases in decentralized ecosystems, techniques for maintaining data privacy, the future role of specialized agents versus versatile models, and potential applications of AI within the crypto industry.

Panel | Data & AI Model
🎙️Ben Fielding, Co-founder of Gensyn
🎙️Sean Ren, Co-founder & CEO of Sahara AI
🎙️Marvin Tong, Founder of PhalaNetwork
🎙️Mohit Pandit, Investment of IOSG Ventures (MC)

AI has cemented itself as a paradigm-changing technology over the last couple of years, primarily now since normal users are getting access to the capabilities of AI mainly through LLMs. Just like Google Search worked like a gateway to the internet for most of the world, LLMs are doing the same thing for AI. It is a paradigm shift as extremely complex technology components coupled with extremely powerful capabilities are being packaged for users in a simple, easy way.

In this panel, we delved into the state of data, AI memory, the significance of RAG, vector embeddings and databases, and the market dynamics of compute supply. It explored why decentralized compute models are superior, the emergence of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs), and the critical role of blockchains and tokens in these networks. Then, it delved into supply and demand aspects, including GPU sourcing, incentivization, use cases within and outside AI, and the obstacles facing decentralized compute networks. Finally, it discussed the strengths and areas for improvement in the Layer 1 blockchains underlying these endeavors.

Fireside Chat | The Role of AI Agent in Crypto
🎙️Marvin Tong, Founder of PhalaNetwork
🎙️Michael P O’Rourke, Co-founder & CEO of Pocket Network (Grove）
🎙️Roshan Raghupathy, Researcher, Marlin Protocol (MC)

This Fireside Chat explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Web3, delving into the importance of this convergence for both fields. Guests discuss the symbiotic relationship that the convergence of AI and decentralized technology has with each other. They looked at the current utilization of AI agents in Web3 applications, balancing hype with realistic expectations of their actual impact in the short to medium term. In addition, the discussion touched on the adoption of specific technologies, including large-scale language models (LLMs) versus traditional machine learning approaches. Guests debated the industry’s readiness to embrace non-deterministic models (e.g., LLMs), the trade-off between interpretive power and performance, and the importance of verifiability in AI systems, considering a variety of approaches such as Consensus, TeeML, ZKML, and OPML.

Keynote | Delving Into Gensyn
🎙️Ben Fielding, Co-founder of Gensyn

Ben’s keynote articulates the profound convergence of AI and crypto within the Web3 ecosystem, advocating for deep integration as the best path forward. He acknowledges the historical divergence between AI and blockchain communities, emphasizing the need to bridge the gap for meaningful collaboration. Ben highlighted the benefits of decentralizing AI from both Web3 and AI research perspectives, including fostering competition, resistance to censorship, and democratizing AI development. He identifies technical challenges, the importance of community engagement, and evolving regulatory landscapes as crucial considerations, and envisions a future where AI adoption at scale is driven by utility, accessibility, and composability, with Web3-enabled AI agents transforming both developer and user experiences. He emphasizes inclusivity, collaboration, and building together towards a future where decentralized AI, fueled by crypto incentives and blockchain immutability, catalyzes progress and democratization, ensuring technology is built for everyone.

Panel | ZKML: Applications & Challenges
🎙️​Mo Dong, Co-founder of Brevis
🎙️​Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, Founder of Lagrange
🎙️​dcbuilder.eth, Accelerating Worldcoin
🎙️​Marijo Radman, Co-founder of Alterscope
🎙️​​​Gokhan Er, Managing Director of IOSG Ventures (MC)

This panel was a comprehensive discussion on Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (ZKML), exploring its potential, adoption challenges, and future directions. The conversation delved into the confidence surrounding ZKML’s potential, highlighting pivotal moments for its widespread adoption and envisioning its trajectory over the next five years. Panelists also addressed critical features urgently needed in ZKML solutions and potential convergence with Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machines (ZKVM) in the distant future. Furthermore, they discussed the maturation of zero-knowledge proof systems and the need for more specialized proof systems tailored for ZKML, emphasizing key improvements required for ZKML proof systems to advance further.

Panel | GPU Networks
🎙️Ben Fielding, Co-founder of Gensyn
🎙️Trevor Harries-Jones, COO of OTOY (Render Network)
🎙️​Tory Green, Co-founder & COO of io.net
🎙️Raullen Chai, Co-founder & CEO of IoTeX (MC)

Over the past few years, AI has emerged as a powerful new technology that’s impacting nearly every facet of our lives. Most importantly for this panel, AI represents a massive demand vector for computing, which many have termed “the New Oil” or “Spice” from the Dune movies to signify just how valuable it is as a resource. Today we’re joined by four incredible founders who have created marketplaces that supply computing to serve AI and other interesting use cases, but in a decentralized and crypto-native way.

This panel explored decentralized compute networks and their advantages over centralized models. It started with an overview of centralized computing and then discussed the benefits of decentralization, such as cost-effectiveness, lower latency, and democratization. DePINs, decentralized physical infrastructure networks, were highlighted for breaking monopolies and improving user experience using public blockchains and tokens. The discussion covered supply and demand dynamics, including GPU sourcing and novel proof-of-mechanisms. Specific AI use cases driving demand were also examined. Challenges to decentralized computing, like regulation and latency, were acknowledged, along with strategies to address them. Finally, the strengths and areas for improvement in Layer 1 blockchains were discussed.

About Old Friends Reunion

​​Over the past 6 years, we’ve successfully held a series of Old Friend Reunion events, with more than 2500 attendees and 150+ industry experts, 15+ top-tier media coverage, and over 7000 views via live streaming on Youtube, bringing together all the founders and leaders for profound discussions. Following the success of

• OFR Denver — 2024 — Restaking Summit
• OFR Istanbul — 2023 — Autonomous Arcade & Mass Adoption
• OFR Singapore — 2023 — LSD & ZK Modular
• OFR Denver — 2023 — Security day
• OFR Paris — 2022 — Dataverse day
• OFR Lisbon — 2022 — Sovereign Individual & ZK Odyssey
• OFR Shenzhen — 2021 — Scaling Summit and Metaverse Carnival

About IOSG Ventures

Established in 2017, we have carved out a niche as a venture firm that is both community-oriented and driven by in-depth research in the dynamic Web3 and blockchain arena.

​Over these seven years, IOSG Ventures has developed a diverse and robust portfolio, covering key sectors such as Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions (Polkadot, NEAR, Arbitrum, StarkWare), Staking and Restaking projects (EigenLayer, Renzo, etherFi, Swell, Babylon), DeFi projects (including 1inch, 0x, UMA), Gaming( Bigtime, Illuvium), and SocialFi (Galxe, CyberConnect). MEV (Flashbots, Blocknative), ZKRU (Scroll, StarkWare, Arbitrum, zkSync), Security Auditing(Runtime Verification, Hexens). Our portfolio reflects our commitment to supporting crypto-native builders and long-term holders, focusing on early-stage developers and founders.