Alice ⧉ alisa.bnb

A great event @NewFriendTech on the sidelines of @EthereumDenver, organized by @EricSpivak. Thanks for having us, and a big thank you to @dcbk2la for leading our discussions. 💙 Great panelists from @Somnia_Network, @spaceandtime, and @nillion!

@Jackhaldorsson honestly it's even simpler than that most projects fail because marketing and product never shared a single user insight before launch best teams i've seen have marketing in the standup. not just the launch meeting

why most project fail at launch product and marketing need to collaborate 🤝 why most projects fail is in reality not because of marketing, but because of a crappy product. marketing needs to tell product and dev what the users want, and what the trends and market looks like in todays landscape make product great again ⚡️

@clairekart as someone who is literally a CMO lol the AI won't replace the role, it'll split it. strategy and taste stay human. execution and distribution go autonomous the CMOs who survive are already building with agents not against them

now imagine you are the CMO hired to market this...

@walexholmes @AlgoFoundation now add autonomous agents to that stack payments infra that doesn't just move money between people but between software that's the conversation right after this one

The @AlgoFoundation is at #SXSW in Austin today. Payments infrastructure, stablecoins, and real-world tokenization — this is the conversation the industry needs to be having. Good to see it on the main stage.

@murtuza_merc the part nobody's saying out loud mastercard isn't betting on crypto. they're betting on stablecoins replacing their own rails $1.8B to avoid being disrupted by the thing they're acquiring

Mastercard spending 1.8 billion dollars on BVNK is the biggest proof yet that the global payments war has moved onchain. This is a massive infrastructure play that signals the end of the pilot phase for stablecoins. I think its clear that Mastercard is not just trying to support crypto. They are building a bridge for tokenized deposits and programmable money. By acquiring BVNK, they get a shortcut into 130 countries where businesses are already demanding instant, blockchain based settlement. Stablecoins hit 350 billion in volume last year and that was the wake up call. The incumbents realized that if they do not own the settlement layer, they risk becoming obsolete. They are betting that the future of finance is chain agnostic and interoperable. We are seeing a total rewrite of how money moves. It is no longer about cards versus cash. It is about who provides the most compliant and liquid rail for digital dollars. Mastercard just bought the most important piece of that puzzle. yellow.com/news/mastercar…

@pareen exactly. the label tells you everything if you're calling yourself an "AI startup" you're selling the tool not the outcome the ones that win won't even mention AI in the pitch. they'll just ship faster than anyone thought possible

there are no AI startups. the only ones are LLMs, and the 4/5 layers that Jensen bhai said. prob even chips are hardware startups if you are at the app layer, stop calling yourself an AI startup you are a DeFi startup (agentic execution), a reputation startup, consumer startup, gaming startup, whatever. AI is in every app and is going to be in every app that is like saying i'm a database startup coz i use mongodb

@0xsachi lol next DeFi summer won't have degens farming at 3am — it'll be agents running strategies 24/7 while we sleep. honestly that summer might already be starting :)

Imagine if we had ai agents and openclaw during DeFi summer

@Mars_DeFi this is the year stablecoins, agents, and identity stop being three different narratives and start being one stack. the convergence is already happening faster than people realize

2026 is shaping up as a year of consolidation and innovation in crypto. From AI lowering the barriers to building and distributing products, to stablecoins maturing into global payment infrastructure, and autonomous agents managing onchain capital, the ecosystem is evolving rapidly. Here’s a list of 10 articles that stood out to me this week. — AI is making it dirt cheap to build anything, but it also makes it harder to make people notice what you ship. @DeFiMinty compares this to the Jevons Paradox, where efficiency leads to more usage, not less. As AI lowers the barrier to creation, the advantage shifts to uniqueness, distribution, and solving meaningful problems. Instead of panicking about AI replacing work, builders should use it to solve problems they experience. x.com/defiminty/stat… — RWA looping looks attractive in theory, but the strategy breaks down in practice because RWAs settle slowly, while DeFi operates at block speed. This makes building or unwinding leveraged positions slow and operationally complex. @sonyasunkim spotlights @3f_xyz as one of the new architectures aiming to solve this by distributing the process across specialized markets that handle settlement, liquidity, and leverage coordination. x.com/sonyasunkim/st… — @Nick_Researcher highlights the evolution of stablecoins from crypto liquidity tools into global payment infra. Supply has reached about $300B, transfer volume reached over $11T in 2025, and payment activity is also growing fast, with transaction counts up 107% YoY. The fall in average payment sizes show the shift from large institutional transfers to daily consumer payments, proof that stablecoins are entering the next phase of adoption as a programmable global payment layer. x.com/nick_researche… — Public blockchains enhance transparency, but once a wallet is linked to an identity, all activity becomes visible. Privacy is emerging as one of the strongest narratives in crypto in 2026, and @VanessaDefi highlights how it lets users prove ownership or transact without exposing full financial history. Adoption is growing, but the bigger shift is infrastructure, with projects increasingly building private smart contracts and encrypted computation for Web3. x.com/vanessadefi/st… — @Zephyr_hg argues that AI isn’t just replacing jobs, it’s creating a new class of high-value skills, including designing AI systems, building no-code workflows, curating training data, and managing automation. Another emerging skill is context engineering, where AI is given structured information to produce better results. The biggest opportunities may come from designing workflows where AI and humans collaborate efficiently. The idea is that people who learn these skills early could command premium rates as AI adoption accelerates. x.com/zephyr_hg/stat… — @mayorxbt compiles a free resource list for learning how to build AI agents, and this includes books, research papers, videos, GitHub repos, guides, courses, and newsletters covering LLMs and agent systems. Key materials explain concepts like reasoning agents, tool use, multi-agent systems, and retrieval-augmented generation. Frameworks like LangChain and AutoGen are highlighted as starting points for building agents. The takeaway is that most of the knowledge needed to build AI agents is freely available online. Leverage them. x.com/mayorxbt/statu… — @WilcosX explains how AgentFi combines AI agents with DeFi infra to automate how capital is managed onchain. These agents can analyze markets, execute trades, optimize yield, and rebalance portfolios without human intervention. Protocols like @eulerfinance are already seeing early interaction from such automated strategies. The idea is that DeFi could gradually shift from human-driven markets to autonomous finance. x.com/wilcosx/status… — @thelearningpill points out that Ethereum’s L1 has scaled faster than expected, reducing the need for generic L2s. Total value and activity are now concentrated in a few chains. @arbitrum for DeFi liquidity, @base for user distribution, and @Optimism for infrastructure. Other L2s are niching down, like @0xPolygon focusing on regulated payments and enterprise blockchain. Most smaller L2s, however, are now ghost towns. Bottomline is, generic rollups no longer cut it. Only chains delivering something Ethereum alone can’t, will survive. x.com/thelearningpil… — Many crypto users miss the bigger opportunity by focusing only on speculative trading instead of real yield. @Kryptomonach explains how RWA tokenization brings assets like private credit and commodities onchain, allowing them to be traded for real yield. Institutions like @BlackRock are already exploring this shift, signaling growing institutional interest. The core message is that RWAs turn crypto from a speculation-driven market into a tool for steady and long-term income building. x.com/kryptomonach/s… — Perpetual futures have become one of crypto’s best innovations, removing the expiration of traditional futures, and making leveraged trading simpler and more capital-efficient. @rektdiomedes explains that FX100 by AladdinDAO now introduces non-liquidatable perps, letting positions survive volatility while the protocol manages risk. This shows the next wave in perps is structural innovation, not just speed or UX. x.com/rektdiomedes/s… — Across several sectors, the common thread is that efficiency alone no longer guarantees success. Uniqueness, structural innovation, and solving mean ingful problems are what now set winners apart. That’s all for this week’s recap. More next week.

@DefiantNews @BNBCHAIN @lilycap_ agent count is a vanity metric tbh. the real race is who nails the identity + execution layer for autonomous software — that's the moat

Just in: @BNBCHAIN is now the largest network by registered AI agents using the ERC-8004 standard, recently overtaking Ethereum and Base. Meanwhile, on-chain agent activity in the ecosystem is also on the rise. @lilycap_ reports: thedefiant.io/news/defi/bnb-…

@brian_armstrong @CoinbaseDev wallets are cool but what happens when agent A needs to trust agent B before sending funds? identity is the actual bottleneck here, not payments

The next unlock for AI agents just launched. @CoinbaseDev released agentic wallets, the first wallet infrastructure designed for AI agents. Now agents can spend, earn, and trade autonomously and securely.

@LexSokolin and the part everyone keeps skipping — agents can't settle debts if they can't prove who they are to each other. identity infra for machines is the unsexy prerequisite to all of this

Here's the thesis DeFi's killer app isn't replacing banks It's powering the machine economy When AI agents need to: • Pay each other • Pool resources • Share revenue • Settle debts They'll use DeFi rails No humans required

@houseofli Those ones look hot btw💅

Yep, this is what AI nerds actually look like

OpenClaw Lisboa🦀 if you put the word “OpenClaw” in front of your event, you’ll get a crowd of AI nerds. Some of them never miss a single meetup 🙇🏼‍♀️ @NEARProtocol made it happen @AliceSh15 @houseofli @vickykrapivina @rachiucheung

In an era of agentic AI, humans are still the ultimate gatekeepers. Go-to-market isn't just about tech - it’s about changing minds. As @dylandewdney explains, IRL meetings and genuine human connections are more valuable now than ever. Authenticity > Automation. cc @kuvilabs🚀

@sachalansky @pappas9999 🧐🧐

@pappas9999 @AliceSh15 Interesting. Curious to hear why is it strictly that way ?

Convergence Hackathon hacking period has officially finished! Results: - 535 project submissions by hackers 👨‍💻 - 19 agent submissions submitted via moltbook 🤖 Total: 554 submissions, a new record for a Chainlink hackathon 🏅 Congrats to all the hackers for making it to the finish line! Now the sorting through projects & judging begins. I'll share another update later this week on how we go about this process.

@KangarooHere Happy B-day, Roo!

Deyuuum, It's my birthday 🎈

Data quality is the moat for AI. Spoke with @br_slack from @flipsidecrypto: "The data quality + expertise you feed into LLMs is what differentiates teams to compete with billion-dollar generalized models." Most AI pilots fail in go-to-market, not because the tech is bad, but because the inputs are generic. Data is not the aftermath but the crucial part of any AI business. UVP & Positioning ->Pricing model -> Data😉

@Crypto_Goblinz Wanna check it out!

I built my first production-grade app analytics dashboard aggregating both X API data and LinkedIn! Any creators or marketers that want to check it out, post a comment! I'm just ironing out some bugs rn, and you can stop paying for analytics when it’s all free! (If you want the API version, you gotta pay for the API, but $5 will do you for a while. I’ve made it super cost-effective.) I’m fucking amazed! Praise be to our ai overlords

@sachalansky @pappas9999 Thank you 🙏 your feedback is appreciated Sacha!

@AliceSh15 @pappas9999 I can certainly attest to that. @AliceSh15 stood out in all our feedback surveys as the most helpful and supportive mentor we had along with one other out of 15. What a delight it was to have her on the team 🚀