Web3 BlockWave Podcast

GM Web3 Family 🚀 Season 3 is officially live — our anniversary edition. Bigger names, deeper alpha, stronger conversations with top Web3 builders. Let’s scale, ship, and build the future together.

“Bitcoin was the first distributed systems paper I read with an economic layer built into it — and that changed everything.” @kenzimerkie catches up with @averyching, Co-Founder & CTO of @Aptos, to trace his journey from high-performance computing and supercomputers, to scaling data infrastructure at Meta, to discovering Bitcoin and realizing that crypto was distributed systems with incentives natively embedded — the insight that ultimately led him to co-found Aptos Labs.

“We focused on four core areas: finance, gaming, social, and entertainment — but DeFi on @Aptos has seen the strongest traction.” @sachiminara sits down with @averyching to unpack Aptos’ real-world use cases and why DeFi has emerged as the breakout category: the safety of Move, the composability that allows products to plug into larger protocols, and an ecosystem that is now beginning to hit meaningful momentum.

“What inspires you to get up and build every day? For me, it’s pushing Web3 forward — making blockchain a true public utility for everyone.” Diksha Lyer sits down with @averyching (Co-Founder & CTO of @Aptos) to talk about what drives him: building the next era of the internet where blockchain brings ownership back to users and enables permissionless, trustless transactions that connect people globally.

New episode out today featuring @AveryChing - Co Founder & CTO of @Aptos. We explore the intersection of crypto and Al, Aptos' fundraising journey, how the network compares to other Layer 1s such as Solana and Ethereum, and what lies ahead for the Move programming language. Avery also shares his perspective on decentralized use cases, Aptos' long-term ambitions, and how more than a decade spent scaling distributed systems at Meta — including his work on the Diem blockchain — continues to shape his vision for the future of Web3 infrastructure.

“DeFAI turns DeFi into an agent economy: your strategy, automated execution, real-time feedback.” Our host Sachi Mihara talks with @ronbodkin, Founder of @TheoriqAI, about why AI-run DeFi could level the playing field—bringing ‘smart money’ tooling to anyone, not just funds.

“Back in 2017, I joined Google’s CTO office at Google Cloud because I believed AI would be utterly transformative — and Google was clearly leading that phase.” Kenzi Merkle in conversation with @ronbodkin, Founder of @TheoriqAI, on how his time at Google helped shape the vision behind Theoriq and his conviction that AI would reshape everything.

“Responsibility is about steering crypto + AI so it benefits all of humanity — and letting the community govern the direction.” Our host Diksha Lyer in conversation with @ronbodkin, Founder of @TheoriqAI, on why responsibility in crypto + AI means building with community governance from day one—so the technology lands in a positive way, not shaped by monopolies and closed-door incentives.

New episode this week featuring @ronbodkin, founder of @TheoriqAI A deep dive into AI x crypto: decentralized agent collectives, governance and accountability, the standardization gap in AI, and metrics that matter for decentralized AI networks. Also: Theoric’s thesis on interoperability and composability, Proof of Contribution/Collaboration as trust primitives, and the realities of token economics and governance.

Watch @michaelh_0g's full interview with @Web3BlockWave: open.spotify.com/episode/2bL9yU…

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2bL9yU…

“Biggest learning building in Web3? First principle is still: don’t die — don’t quit, keep finding a way.” Kenzi Merkle sits down with @michaelh_0g to reflect on the shift from Web2 to Web3: why Web2 often moves from user-aligned to extractive incentives, why Web3 feels fundamentally different, and how embracing that mindset made building feel fun again.

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2bL9yU…

“DA layers differ on three axes: performance, programmability, and AI-first design — because on-chain AI can’t live in a ‘megabytes-per-second’ world.” Sachi Mihara sits down with @michaelh_0g (Founder of @0G_labs) to compare against Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA: why throughput must jump orders of magnitude, how to avoid the broadcast bottleneck, and why a decentralized storage network is key for ultra-fast data ingestion + retrieval.

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2bL9yU…

“Bored at a new school after moving from Berlin to Silicon Valley, I started hanging out at my dad’s SAP Lab — fast internet, endless reading, and falling in love with tech.” Our host Kenzi Merkle talks with @michaelh_0g(@0G_labs) about his origin story: early curiosity, the path into Web3, and how it all led to starting his company.

Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2bL9yU…

“Back in 2016–17, crypto felt like an idea factory — hundreds of experiments, zero permission, pure creativity.” Our host Diksha Lyer sits down with @michaelh_0g, Founder of @0G_labs, to talk about the most fun part of building in Web3: an experimentation-first culture, and how tokenization unlocks new ways to sustain projects - including open-source - beyond the standard Web2 business model.

New episode this week, featuring @michaelh_0g, founder of @0G_labs. A deep dive into AI x crypto: modular AI chains, decentralized AI infrastructure, community-owned data, and why modularity is critical for scaling AI on-chain. Also: Michael’s founder journey, leadership through meditation and spiritual practice, and the real-world path to building the first modular AI chain.

Listen to the full episode👇 open.spotify.com/episode/7G1syW… Spotify:

Kenzi Merkle chats with @pumatheuma, founder of @SuccinctLabs, about what it really takes to build SP1: ZK is brutal. Performance is everything, docs are thin, and there’s no real playbook — so the team had to go deep in the code and invent new ZK algorithms to hit rollup + bridge-grade speed.