Fireside Chat I Illia Polosukhin & Kartik Talwar I Operating System, Open Web | Pragma Waterloo 2023

Mon, Oct 2, 2023, 12:00 AM

Join Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and co-author of "Attention Is All You Need," in this insightful fireside chat with Kartik Talwar at Pragma Waterloo. Illia walks us through his journey from machine learning at Google to pioneering decentralized infrastructure for the open web. He discusses the technical and philosophical foundations of NEAR, including how it was designed to solve core blockchain usability, scalability, and developer experience challenges. Learn how NEAR’s sharding architecture, account abstraction, and Blockchain Operating System (BOS) are shaping a multi-chain future that is more accessible and developer-friendly. The conversation also explores the intersections of AI and blockchain, cryptographic authenticity, censorship resistance, and the importance of preserving user agency in the age of large-scale language models. Whether you're a developer, founder, or curious builder, this talk offers a compelling vision for a decentralized internet that is inclusive, scalable, and built to last. 00:00 Intro and welcome to Illia Polosukhin 00:38 Illia’s background in AI and Google Research 01:50 Inventing Transformers and “Attention Is All You Need” 04:10 Launching NEAR AI and challenges with global payments 06:31 Early blockchain usability challenges 08:12 Origins of NEAR Protocol 09:21 Designing for simplicity, security, and scalability 10:21 The limits of single-threaded blockchains 13:07 Tackling performance: VM, consensus, and storage 15:11 Building sharding and parallel execution 16:55 From Layer 1 to a Blockchain Operating System 18:04 What BOS enables for developers and users 21:02 Cross-chain discovery, onboarding, and frontends 23:00 Overview of a fully open-source, multi-chain future 25:02 How BOS works with Ethereum and other chains 27:06 Data storage, frontend history, and integrity 30:58 Thoughts on Layer 2s and scalability trade-offs 34:30 Blockchain and AI: data, compute, and models 37:07 Authenticity and cryptographic signatures in AI 41:16 Community governance and decentralized identity 42:49 What decentralization means to Illia 44:29 Closing remarks and BOS adoption _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇨🇦 *Pragma Waterloo* The now third edition of Pragma kicked off with a curated series of high-quality talks that sparked thought and discussion among attendees as they were storming into the Auditorium of the CIGI Building. Pragma Waterloo 2023 was an opportunity discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. Watch the full Pragma Waterloo 2023 playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7i8oFx5vCB9qTdadQqAjF0&si=NS2W71SteTbEs4T8 ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Illia Polosukhin* X: https://x.com/ilblackdragon ✅ *Follow NEAR* X: https://x.com/NEARProtocol ✅ *Follow Kartik Talwar* X: https://x.com/therealkartik Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/kartik ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _