Researching DeAI. Former Interim CEO & Head of Engineering & Product @ElectricCoinCo. Former Head of Protocol & Research @worldcoin. @Salesforce & @Cisco alum.

Austin
Joined January 2016
Steven Smith 🛡 retweeted
Zcash is already a "bunker." Largest privacy pool, quantum recoverability, PQ-privacy defenses, and more on the way. But the real reason is that Zcash devs think years ahead, build defenses long before people start panicking about them, and react quickly to new risks (AI etc.)
Do the labs have better algorithms for breaking crypto? Independent of the answer, the most important thing is to have crypto agility. Zcash has proven this, with 3 upgrades happening in 6 months, and Tachyon planned for January. The protocol design has plans for how to turn off features to enable safe protocol upgrades. This is what Quantum Recoverability is, and it applies equally well if there's a non-quantum ECDLP attack. We're equipped on multiple fronts to protect against future bugs. In the next cryptography upgrade, coming January, already slated features are: - PQ transparent - Switching to Tachyon What people don't realize about Tachyon is it switches us to R1CS, and enables far more crypto agility away from elliptic curves. The nullifier derivation no longer depend on elliptic curves. We get far greater SNARK agility and can very quickly move to STARKs when any crisis comes. Today's Zcash transparent UTXO's give a better security guarantee than an ETH address. @ZakuraZcash has solved the privacy and performance problem that were blocking rotating T-Addresses natively in the wallet. This is done using PIR to fetch balances, and its already live in Vizor. So its a short UX leap to get this backup plan. In January, the Transparent pool will be upgraded to support hash based sigs, that can later be STARK aggregated.
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Great to see Nolla Health reach this important regulatory milestone. A practical example of responsible AI in healthcare: autonomous prescriptions paired with strong guardrails and physician oversight. Congratulations @luiswenus and the team at @nollahealth!
Today, Nolla Health became the first organization in the U.S. (and possibly the world) to receive regulatory approval for an AI to issue initial prescriptions. This makes Nolla the first ever actual end-to-end AI doctor.
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Steven Smith 🛡 retweeted
Hi SF! I’d like to reintroduce myself. My name is Amber, and I am NOT a spy for the MSS! A little about me: - graduated from Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Georgia Tech. I have nine doctorates! - worked at Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, OpenAI & Anthropic - totally open to sporadic meetings, CNC parties, or even a date if you look important! - I love matcha! If you want to drink one while we hang out and talk about your secret plans for datacenters, nuclear reactors, or dual use ai technology, I’m your girl! Currently looking for a job as a PM for classified defense startups, AI labs, or working directly for the government ✌️ Can I get a retweet from my ABGs?
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The case for decentralized AI grows stronger by the day. When model access depends on a few companies, or governments that can restrict or shut it down, we create single points of permission for intelligence itself. That is an incredible moral and societal risk. anthropic.com/news/fable-myt…
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Steven Smith 🛡 retweeted
Unlike many investors in crypto, I did not pivot to AI in the last few years. However, since 2020, I built some of the deepest understanding in this industry on the intersection of AI and decentralized networks (crypto, web3). From the start, it was very clear that AI models are a centralizing force and the biggest target for government control. That point became market fact last night, with @AnthropicAI’s export control compliance. As an investor in decentralized AI, I know that d-networks are a counterbalance to this state of affairs. In particular, the starting point of sovereign, open, public, decentralized AI is the seemingly insurmountable compute problem. How are people supposed to source more industrial compute for frontier training than these huge trillion dollar companies? The answer is simple: there is enough commodity GPU compute in the world to compete on the frontier, but to make use of it we need new algorithms for training. That’s what a few companies like @gensynai @PrimeIntellect @bageldotcom @Pluralis @NousResearch @MacrocosmosAI @covenant_ai set out to research, while everyone on the planet told them it was impossible. The result is that it is not only possible, but it can be cheaper and nearly as efficient as the alternative process. The second major problem is economic sustainability. Open source models are great, however, they are not economically viable as they don’t have a business model. So far in decentralized AI, only @Pluralis has an answer — by breaking up the weights of the model among participants, we create a business model for tokenized AI models. This is the moment of truth — will AI become fully centralized and fall under censorship and unilateral government control? Or will the AI world realize the importance of public AI on open decentralized networks?
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Steven Smith 🛡 retweeted
Zcash wouldn't exist without @zooko. He seeded the technical and cultural values of the project that have kept us vigilant in defense of its integrity. Much of Zcash's recent success has been because Zooko plays a less central role in the project, and it has decentralized and grown to transcend him. I think he would agree! But he is still a major spiritual force of the project, and an ally that wants it to succeed. Let's be mindful of the signal we send our next generation of risk takers, by how we treat his legacy. Zcash has a long road ahead of it, and no single one of us can carry it across the finish line. We're all liable to end up in @zooko's shoes one day. You do not want to be on the receiving end of the poetic justice served for the things you said when you were once on the winning team.
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Steven Smith 🛡 retweeted
Replying to @reldev @Zcash
Zcash still hits the cypherpunk nerve fr
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I love Ethereum but let's not forget about @Zcash. Its origins are cypherpunk and it's still true to those ideals.
The cypherpunk dream has nowhere to go, except maybe Ethereum Our CEO @EvgenyGaevoy on why @ethereumfndn is ahead of the curve for the first time, and why @ethereum might be the only blockchain still publicly committing to its cypherpunk origins His opinions with @_choppingblock ↓
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Any opportunity to work with Mårten is a good one!
Obsidian: We are looking for an experienced engineer to grow our small team. Work on an app used and loved by millions of people around the world. All our roles are fully remote. Senior or staff-level only (8 years of experience minimum). Our pay is competitive with SF tech salaries, but you can live anywhere in the world. We do not offer stock options. We don't have investors and we don't expect to sell the company. We do offer full benefits and whichever high-end device you prefer to work on. Benefits are location-dependent. In the US benefits include premium healthcare and 401k matching. airtable.com/appCHyOHfrT8Xoe…
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Nice to see this public now @realDanielShorr, @nayr_oac, and team. Phenomenal work. 👏
Announcing Remainder: World’s GKR prover for machine learning is now open-source Our cryptography and zero-knowledge proof system, now enables users to run ML models on their own device and generate cryptographic proofs for each correct execution. This unlocks powerful use cases, like local World ID upgrades that eliminate Orb revisits, further strengthening privacy, security, and trust.
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Hey @AnthropicAI. Claude Code is a great tool. All the whimsical verb choices like contemplating, philosophizing, tomfoolering, etc are cute. You know what else would be cute? Having a context memory that lasted over a prompt or two. Seems this is a known problem. Any plans to fix it?
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I left @tfh_technology in October 2025 after three years, where I led Protocol & Applied Research, a team I built largely through the acquisition of Modulus Labs. While I can’t speak to every individual experience referenced in the recent Business Insider piece, I can say plainly that it does not reflect the culture I experienced. TFH built a hard-working, mission-driven team tackling extremely difficult research and engineering challenges. I’m proud of what we accomplished. @alexblania is a thoughtful leader and a good friend. I personally saw him demonstrate empathy and integrity many times, and not just toward me, but across the organization. I remain a strong supporter of the team and am excited to see what TFH and @worldnetwork build in the years ahead.
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Steven Smith 🛡 retweeted
This gives me a lot of optimism for Zcash: seeing this post on the Zcash Forum from Taylor Hornby forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/a… and then switching to Twitter and seeing this post from Sacha St Leger: xitter.cf/sacha/status/201286321…
zcash is bigger than zashi the chips will fall where they fall but if we couldn't survive zashi being destroyed/compromised/taken down, we weren't going to succeed anyway as long as we preserve and encourage a culture of integrity and trust, all will be fine. this is, by far, the most important thing ofc this is not easy. it requires making a daily choice in how we choose to treat and talk to others who might disagree with us on issues we hold dear it requires refraining from character attacks and the will to try and understand the other side deeply before jumping to conclusions (as well as giving them the benefit of the doubt if any doubts do present themselves) it requires being extremely open (probably uncomfortably so) and overcoming any fear of public critique or misrepresentation i still have faith that zcashers have it in them to resolve any disagreements in a way that avoids damaging the culture and public trust long term. the rest, imo, is noise
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Not just "some of" but likely the literal best. An amazing team working on one of the most important projects in crypto.
The @ElectricCoinCo is looking for a core engineer to join our team and help build the future of Zcash. Once in a lifetime opportunity to work on what matters, with some of the industry's best cryptographers and engineers. apply.workable.com/electric-…
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If it’s not strategic it’s a distraction
What’s my main job as CEO? Listen to the team and help us all converge on ONE THING that’s important. Then, it’s about reminding everyone of this ONE THING, and saying NO to everything that’s not advancing it. ONE THING for Starknet, now? Expand Bitcoin’s GDP.
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Thanks @ForbesTechCncl! Appreciate the opportunity.
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Thanks @zmanian. Definitely worth a read. "We've spent a decade building increasingly complex financial instruments atop infrastructure that can't handle basic stress scenarios."
Best explanation I’ve seen for what broke in the crypto market
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