Matt Wright, CEO of GaiaNet, on AI Agents Surpassing Number of Humans, Two Camps Within Decentralized AI, and Monetization Tools | Ep. 356

Sead Fadilpašić

Last updated: | 5 min read

In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews Podcast, Matt Wright, the CEO and co-founder of GaiaNet, an AI infrastructure project that aims to decentralize current AI agent software, discussed the increasing institutional recognition and adoption of Ethereum.

He talked about the two camps within the decentralized AI debate, who should and shouldn’t govern these systems, monetizing services on top of an agent, and building tools for AIs instead of humans.

Institutional Recognition of ETH


Wright has been in Ethereum since 2016 and has worked on it while at JP Morgan.

Just recently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the launch of several spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

“It’s crazy that we’re now at a pivotal moment where we’re seeing institutional recognition of the asset class,” enabling their clients to enter the space easily, Wright said. “And obviously, this is going to drive a ton of liquidity into the space.”

The Ethereum community should welcome this attention, he argued, and enable it to bring more focus to developers and building.

This is “a huge moment” as it’s combined with many technical upgrades occurring in the past few years.

Wright started noticing a significant change sometime in 2020. Before that, he argued, you wouldn’t see BTC or ETH in popular finance media conversations.

While it’s more common now, “we forget that it wasn’t a thing a few years ago.”

Crypto will continue to have its challenges, Wright predicted, but it’s not going anywhere.

The space invites regulation and productive conversations, but now that “folks [with] massive skin in the game” are entering the space, “I feel more confident that they are going to build proper rails,” the CEO said.

Decentralized AI Conversation: The Two Camps


GaiaNet is a decentralized autonomous AI agent network. By the time of the interview, it had 12,000 nodes live. Over time, they’ll enable node customization.

“We’re helping folks take their proprietary data, […] living knowledge systems and get them deployed,” Wright said.

Speaking of decentralized AI, there are two camps, Wright argued.

The first prefers controlled software environments.

The second one believes in openness and libertarian ideals.

The CEO places himself in the second camp. “I don’t believe in controlling those systems. I think we should be properly guiding them,” he said. “You can only really provide safety rails and proper conversations.”

The systems shouldn’t be governed by individuals or governments, nor should the technologies be regulated by people who don’t use them.

On the other hand, Web3 and Ethereum enable proper on-chain governance. Tokenized entities govern the systems based on their participation levels and in a more democratic manner.

“I believe in incentivizing folks that are the true participants of these ecosystems,” Wright said.

Therefore, closed technologies make it “hard for humanity to grow.”

Projects building AIs based on their own data and proprietary knowledge bases should be able to define the rules of how they govern those systems, he argued.

GaiaNet agrees with the participating companies that it is open-sourcing their models.

It also has its own open-source developer toolset. “Developers can come in and launch their own AI in under two minutes from the command line,” said the CEO.

Furthermore, the team aims to build tools for creators to easily vectorize their data.

“And we’re making it easy for any company or a creator to become their own AI company or a creator,” Wright stated. “It’s like a YouTube for creators and developers building within the AI space.”

If You Build It, They Will Pay


Speaking of GaiaNet tools, Wright said that the team offers a set of tools that help train AIs.

This allows developers to quickly deploy mass amounts of agents using their own proprietary data. “You no longer have to give your data to a centralized provider,” Wright said.

Furthermore, it allows projects to monetize services on top of an agent. They can charge access to information.

Hence, it helps developers make money.

Those who train models should be compensated for their work as well.

Additionally, members are incentivized to participate in a network and provide data to a community.

“A question I got from a VC a while ago,” said Wright, “was who the hell would pay for this? And at the end of the day, well, you pay for ChatGPT, don’t you?”

People are paying subscriptions to centralized providers. They are also unlikely to move away from ChatGPT.

But “what we’re saying is there’s going to be a world where you have various different AI agents in your life,” Wright argued.

Now We’re Building Tools for Robots Instead of Humans


We are “very close” to an autonomous agent world, Wright remarked. “It could be a year; it could be a little less.”

To enable higher participation in Web3, many of its aspects will be abstracted away and automated via AI.

At Consensys, Wright worked with CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, who would say that at some point in Web3, we will have many more AI agents than humans.

Therefore, said Matt Wright, if AI agents are the largest participants in blockchain ecosystems, projects need to build tools for them.

“We’re no longer building tools for humans. We’re building tools for robots,” Wright stated.

He joked that, in the very near future, a team of AI agents will need to hire a human to understand certain components of entering a market. “You might be a human working on a team of only AIs.”

Some issues still exist, though. These include the misalignment of economics, operational inefficiencies, costs of centralized AI, censorship, and companies not wanting to share API access.

“Having this open-source agent will open up some of those integrations,” Wright stated.

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That’s not all.

In this interview, Matt Wright also discussed:

  • AI agents, artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the long-term outlook for AI;
  • navigating the challenges in decentralized AI implementation;
  • Ethereum ETF: another big win for the industry;
  • becoming an ETH maxi;
  • Ethereum: decentralization over performance;
  • Bitcoin is digital gold, and Ethereum is digital oil: it’s not BTC vs ETH;
  • the belief in a multi-chain world: there are use cases for blockchains of ‘different flavors’.

You can watch the full podcast episode here.

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About Matt Wright

Matt Wright is the CEO and co-founder of GaiaNet, an AI infrastructure project that aims to decentralize current AI agent software.

He previously served as the Director at Consensys, working to contribute to the evolution of Web3 and the Ethereum ecosystem.

While at J.P. Morgan, Wright built a developer community around Quorum, an Ethereum-based, open-source, private/permissioned enterprise blockchain platform.

He established a global Ambassador program, tripled the size of the community, and garnered substantial support from the enterprise Ethereum ecosystem.

Wright organized over 150 hackathons for renowned Fortune 500 companies, including Mastercard, Motorola, ABInBev, RBC, Barclays, the US Chamber of Commerce, and UBS.

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