Inside the Proof-of-Control Stack | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026

Sat, May 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

As AI agents multiply, the infrastructure underneath them — messaging, payments, data portability, orchestration dashboards — is either built for control or it isn't. This panel brings together three builders who are building it. Shane Mac, co-founder of XMTP's Convo, makes the case that current messaging infrastructure is about to collapse under agentic AI. Every channel is built on phone numbers and email addresses that agents can spam and spoof at scale. Convo is a decentralized messaging protocol where each conversation generates a new key and no single country controls enough nodes to shut it down. Pranav Maheshwari of Edge & Node (The Graph) presents the first UX dashboard for managing agents outside the command line, while Anna Kazlauskas of Open Data Labs addresses data portability and how users can actually own and move their own context. Moderated by Tricia Wang, the panel also wrestles with the adoption problem: most people don't know what's possible, and building on open principles doesn't mean anything if nobody downloads the app. Moderator: Tricia Wang (Advanced AI Society) Speakers: Pranav Maheshwari (The Graph / Edge & Node), Anna Kazlauskas (Open Data Labs), Shane Mac (XMTP Convo) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io