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Sead Fadilpašić
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Sead Fadilpašić
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Why Trust Cryptonews
In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews Podcast, J.D. Seraphine, the co-founder of Raiinmaker, a Web3-powered app designed for the social creator economy, discussed the team’s effort to harness the power of community via blockchain to empower each individual human.
He talked about Raiinmaker’s focus on AI and ‘lightweight’ DePIN, and how the entire humanity will benefit from the novel technologies working in the background.
The entertainment industry veteran explained how AI changes the way value is created and distributed, the need to find ‘creative ways’ to support developing AI infrastructure, and how AI, crypto, blockchain, and Web3 at large can benefit from each other.
Lastly, Seraphine touched on Raiinmaker’s upcoming announcements.
Empowering the Individual Human
Upon realizing the potential of blockchain, crypto, and Web3 in general, Seraphine co-founded Raiinmaker. The goal was to harness the power of the community and remove the middleman.
Over the past six year, Raiinmaker has evolved. However, the core thesis remained the same. The team moved to explore the value of the human connection in the digital world.
Up until just a few years ago, Seraphine explained, the prevailing idea was that only the very few, largest centralized technology giants would monopolize and monetize the interactions within the digital world for their own gains.
And while Seraphine doesn’t mind tech giant – as they created valuable products – there is an opportunity now to empower individual human beings, instead of leaving all that power in the hands of the few.
Raiinmaker works on this by examining the value of human interactions within the digital sphere.
Previously, the team launched the Raiinmaker Network Protocol. The testnet launched a year ago, and the mainnet went live in late June.
Seraphine said the protocol was a success, recording over 200,000 validators on the network, in addition to the millions of transactions.
The team is now working on the next versions of “every aspect of the ecosystem.”
The network is focused on the quantifiable value of human contribution to AI models, AI infrastructure, and AI future, Seraphine said.
Focusing on Lightweight Applications of DePIN
One of Raiimaker’s core focus points – which is intertwined with its AI goals and the exploration of human interaction – is DePIN.
But not any DePIN, Seraphine stressed.
The team is interested in “lightweight applications [that] can run on even mobile devices.” These applications are focused on human contributions, data labeling, training, and the like.
Their app already offers a simple way for users to become validators without needing any tech knowledge or skill. Users can also use the app to train an AI.
Everything is happening in the background, so “anyone on the planet with a mobile device connected to the Internet can run a DePIN validator on Raiinmaker. Really that simple,” said the co-founder.
Noting that the Bitcoin network is “the most powerful DePIN on the planet in terms of compute power,” Seraphine emphasized that this technology is still “super early” and “very experimental.”
There are many areas to explore and things “nobody’s ever done before.”
It’s all very exciting, Seraphine added.
AI Changing the Way Value is Created and Distributed
The team started the project with a focus on social media and creator economy. Subsequently, they developed an algorithm called proof-of-influence.
Then, about three years ago, the long-present AI technology jumped to unprecedented heights.
The “exponential explosion” led the team to conclude that, just like crypto and blockchain, AI is going to change the way value is created and distributed.
“AI is going to transform the capability of what we can create as individual humans,” Seraphine said.
It will give the ability to “an individual human to create anything they want.”
Therefore, the team pivoted, focusing on two things primarily: AI, and how they can bring it into their product and tech stacks.
The project aims to facilitate the relationship between humanity and AI.
“I really think it’s fundamental and important to the future of not only AI, but of the human race,” Seraphine argued.
“AI is meant to be an enabler and empowering force for humanity. [It has] a potential to be a Renaissance moment where we can see humanity reach potential that we never could. 10X level up.”
Furthermore, projects will need to find “creative ways” to support the evolving demands of the AI infrastructure from computational and data standpoints.
Finally, we’ll also discover the “real organic” and mutually beneficial relationship between AI and crypto/blockchain/Web3.
More Announcements Incoming
Seraphine noted that there is still plenty in the works. “A lot of stuff [is] coming quickly,” he said.
Much of it revolves around the idea of being a scalable infrastructure to facilitate the next generation of AI innovation on the network.
Additionally, “we are coming up towards the release of our utility token in the next few months,” the co-founder said.
Meanwhile, the team recently completed an NFT mint on Magic Eden. Seraphine described the mint as a “super successful” “awesome milestone,” recording 300,000 mints.
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That’s not all.
In this interview, Seraphine also discussed:
- empowering everyone to train AI models;
- democratizing data creation and collection;
- enabling a more ‘decentralized’ KYC approach;
- importance of destroying personal data after verification;
- working in the US entertainment industry;
- stories from his time creating films and TV shows and learning about the massive power of the digital world and blockchain;
- his ultimate goal: contributing to help humanity make an evolutionary leap;
- acquiring the rights for Atari from Paramount in 2017 – a story about Nolan Bushnell, the godfather of the video game industry and digital technology revolution (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked at Atari before creating Apple).
You can watch the full podcast episode here.
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About J.D. Seraphine
J.D. Seraphine co-founded Raiinmaker, a Web3-powered app designed for the social creator economy.
He also founded Vision Tree, aiming for cultural transformation through Media and Technology.
With over 16 years of experience in the entertainment industry, his work in television began with the production of the hit show 24.
Seraphine went on to finance and produce a number of notable projects. Among others, he directed the documentary series Open Source Money, which discussed the rise of Disney-incubated blockchain company Dragonchain and the global evolution of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
The series premiered on Discovery Science Channel in July 2020 and reached 1 million viewers in the US.
