# Ethereum and Robots by Tomasz Stanczak | Devcon SEA

- Speakers: [Tomasz Stanczak](https://streameth.org/speakers/tomasz-stanczak)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 25:32
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-SQzTSNurehU
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQzTSNurehU

## Description

I will describe how Ethereum can be used in the emerging consumer robots industry (and generally for autonomous machines).
* privacy preserving surveillance
* autonomous transport
* factory to consumer - tokenization models
* Laws of Robotics - zk hardware

Speaker(s): Tomasz Stanczak
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Real World Ethereum
Keywords: Collective Intelligence, Civil Resistance, DePIN, Autonomous World, robots

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Devcon SEA was held in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov 12 - Nov 15, 2024.
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## Transcript

[Music] all right great so let's talk about the the robots the agents the ethereum what changes for us the way we build and I think that there are two Dimensions we've been building for a long time for this digital simulation Dimension everything that was about digital assets and creativity we could start pricing it and that was our uh Revolution or Evolution going towards the new financial markets we disrupted the financial markets and now let's uh go to the physical Dimension let's start treating the physical world and robots and everything around us the same way as we treated smart contracts let's start feeling like we're building something new again and let's start feeling like we disrupting again everything around us and that ethereum once again is the space for building for Builders and I don't know which one will be more infinite is it just the digital space where you have more space and will be more valuable or actually when we start going Beyond with the planets and more building and maybe Earth is so vast and robotic is so hard that actually building and the value that will create in the real world actually will be once again much much much more than digital maybe we'll get bored with digital and think like finally we have to start connecting ethereum with digital again and all right and I think it's like one thing that for me seems obvious now is that uh if we want to go to robotics with etherum we have to start with agents and um like people from Tesla say well in the end it doesn't matter whether you're training the car or the or the humanoid robot it's just a AI in the end that will be very important and whatever the body is it will work which means like if I'm for people if I have brains I have brains whatever the bodies are uh this is the this is the power in the world and if we get the agents right on blockchain they'll get the robotics then connected to the agents so you have to start preparing blockchains for agents and how we be doing that most likely as we already start nowadays and you see lots of agentic Frameworks launching on various blockchains we'll be running the agents inside at the beginning trusted execution environment later you'll go with cryptography they'll be running with their own Keys they'll be limited by social media and trying to prove that they have some kind of human owners uh they will be starting to make money as we already see that uh they'll be abstracting chains without caring about chain obstruction ux actually they'll be going for the most efficiency and you actually will start thinking about no longer uxx matters that much it's just the efficiency apis and verification um they will start coding without caring about the quality of coding materials and the boot goms and how you train developers that we just reading formal specifications and the way you build chains and communities will change because the users are no longer your users it's agents that are users and customers so it'll be marketing differently you'll be building differently it will be absolutely ruthless efficiency go uh they'll start auditing themselves they'll start auditing the smart contract contracts that they'll be executing which means that actually it will be also simpler because you'll be able to deploy the smart contracts with aot of supporting tooling and that supporting tooling will be using exactly the same uh coding formal formalizations that you will do for training the new agents and well blockchain was actually very bad for humans but will be fantastic for agents most likely they will be able to use all the data verify everything and run autonomously people were not able to do it we were continuously wrapping everything that we built on blockchain so we're just trusting something that it's trustless underneath so it will be all about integrity agents will be checking and verifying everything all that ZK efficiency that we're building the speed to compute co-processors will matter for agents everything that will matter for agents will matter for robots because when they meet together in a physical space all their protocols will be verifiable all the diplomacy between the agents and robots will be verifiable and yeah Integrity will matter and well will matter will be the networks blockchain networks that provide that Integrity so you look for the Maths for the best cryptography for the fastest executions once again ruthless it will not matter what your business development uh does it will not matter who you're going to beers with uh for what events you're going maybe the events will disappear it will be all just agents and robots we be building that we be playing everything like a game and also leaving fantastic lives and through that we'll be disrupting financial markets we've already done it I mean I feel like this is almost finished we already feel like many of us will see how how it will all move to the to the digital space sure it's still happening around us but as exhorted we know it it will happen the prices are there the infrastructure is getting there and we're just like speeding it up a bit but what happens with the government disruption it's not really Revolution we're still voting there are still democracies there is no violence and it's changing and people doing strange things but why they're doing that because they can it's just simpler simpler to manage the governments and to do that from the outside and realizing that all those machineries are very old and not efficient you can change it and I think one thing that we can rely on is that we can always in the future do something that the billionaires can do now or you can do something now that the billionaires could do a few years ago so we can play the same toys always so you look at whatever was available for Kings or or Reach people in the past you can do it now which means that whatever people are playing with now and they're playing with governments you'll be able to do that from home from your computer we'll be building the governments we'll be building the smart cities we'll be building the world again and why the governments will be disrupted because it that's gradually disappear there'll be less and less people needed to run everything and the infrastructure will be automating itself and how you will exist in all of this you will feel like oh am I controlled by Ai and robots no it feel exactly the same like if nowadays you go and you see you use public transport you live in the city you see everything organized around you sometimes you think oh there are people around this but maybe some of those systems were invented years ago and those people already not working on it they are somewhere else the feeling of all of this was the same it will be just the same ux we'll be living in the world around us in the cities we'll be traveling and all of this will be just so much more efficient and you'll be building that with robots around you and this will be totally normal and totally Pleasant because it will be so much more intelligent and everything will be running on ethereum and when you think about the fallback of nowadays if you're flying a plane uh well if if you're passenger on a plane you have an autopilot pilot co-pilot there is this fallback thing and you always think that there is a person that checks whether the machine will break when in the world with agents you'll think like oh why the person if we look at the promise of the robot taxes they don't have wheel steering wheels anymore why because you imagine that for the very very efficient system only agent will be the fallback for another agent so you no longer even can expect a person to be equally efficient with the operations so there will be no fall back for machines but there will be no fall back for the governments the agents will be there and only the combination of agents and people will be looking and taking crws over each other and the robots around us will be autonomous I'm not talking about humanoid robots any robots machines combined with the network connecting with the network sorry and I think that we'll walk away a bit from the believe that the code is low the code is low for some most basic Financial transfers and payments this is simple but we've tried over the last years in blockchain in ethereum and solidity to codify things that were really not so easy to codify we try to codify the governance and the Dows we try to codify very complex and fuzzy interactions and those will be operated by the agents that will be introducing that fzy assessment and hallucinations and roles so The Regulators will be agentic agentic Reg at s will run within the trusted execution environment around the agentic markets and agent executing agents executing and they'll be resolving disputes uh governance will be executed like this and rules will not be there hardcoded in the code and potentially breaking us forever rules will be there for the enforcers for the enforcers to look at it in the fuzzy way and hallucinate like people always have been hallucinating and building creative things and what does it change for the US interface for trading will you trade will you actually use blockchains probably not you'll be using a gentic system so like robot advisors upgraded to the agent level and they'll be executing all the trades for you so you will have chain abstraction but the chain abstraction will go even further you will not use a wallet in the sense of executing transaction you not even execute the intense you will execute the pre-int whatever you will need whatever you'll think about your life in the sense of wealth management the agents will execute for you uh whether it be mind reading or just analyzing your conversations from the past or analyzing your life situation the only thing that you'll need to know when you wake up in the morning is like how much money I have for today's party or for today's dinner how much money I have for this month how much money I have for the next holiday how much money I have to put aside on the for the retirement and practically my only choice would be maybe The Branding of the agents the system that is delivered to us so that's what you'll be building for users not the ux ask for them to interact but the system that will be the most most efficient for the agents to decide to use the ones that will be costing least and they'll be executing at the lowest cost and verifiable at the lowest cost and once again you'll have access to something that potentially Millionaires multimillionaires and billionaires have access to uh very very Advanced Financial Advisors who are extremely efficient so no longer you can improve your financial results by playing the game you no longer can be better than the agents so it doesn't matter whether the chain abstraction ux is good for you as a user you will not be using the wallet if you want to play a game and Gumble you can play a game but it will be always worse than your trading abilities very soon so what else will happen practically those two worlds will coexist so we'll have the inversion of thinking of who delivers the value for whom like you have the digital and physical world providing interfaces for each other the agents will be deploying robots in the physical world just to be able to execute experiments well whatever they cannot simulate they have to experiment with as the same way as we think that whatever is too expensive for us to experiment with we have to simulate so it will be like the two sides of the of the mirror and the Alis Wonderland way and what else we try to think about the human identity now and uniquely identify all of humans with proof of humanity does it mean that people will become almost like nfts like to identify yourself in those interactions with the uh with the digital world so we building nowadays the interfaces for the agents to interact with the physical world to deploy robots to landscape everything to make changes to deploy the government UH responsibilities whether it will be hospitals or Healthcare education or whatever building building energy uh sources for themselves will be providing services for agents so the same way as you build a blockchain Solutions anything that you Target now you market for agents you change totally the way you think about your customers and well so that Curiosity for agents of the physical world will be needed and the same way I mentioned that so the services for people will be like when we ask agents to execute for us there be the second part of a trade so we trade something from our world for the something for from their world we provide energy and get computation uh will get intelligence and what the robots what the robots and agents will care about like the experiments in the physical world building something curiosity to extend beyond what is already known from the human knowledge energy sources so nuclear power and so on and so on solar power wind power uh something more like on the uh on the scale of the civilization development compute devices so building gpus and Beyond maybe Quantum Computing will they use if or Bitcoin for all of this most likely uh your conversation and ideation with like will the will the cryptocurrencies be needed for all of this yes as a store of value for agents and for the digital assets and it will be very very strange to expect that this will require the traditional finance and identity of us what will matter the reputation systems of agents in their world most likely privacy may disappear I don't know like so this this is a big conflict always do we keep introducing privacy for but for protecting the data so to take advantage does it mean that if we introduce privacy then introduce monopolies I think some of the talks here were saying exactly that if you have any private data any private data Advantage then you introduce monopolies but if you remove privacy then you have private perfect competition everyone has access to data it'll be really hard to remove access to data uh from the agentic robotic systems they will be able to observe the world through the sensors through the access to all the data in the world and they'll be able to extract the hidden information from the surroundings so you not only will have to hide the information but also the sources of that information how you calculated it you'll be able to like derive and infer the knowledge from surrounding on the Privacy data if you remove privacy then obviously that world will have to be private on the other side so it will not be your privacy but whether the privacy of agenes uh is protected whether the humans cannot extract anything from the agents or agents themselves promise that they don't act on the Privacy uh on the on the private data that they extracted inert from the knowledge around you and what will really uh what will really matter for you on verifying whether you're interacting with another human or agent probably it will matter in the dating scenarios but uh maybe not in other cases and when when will you have to when will you have to prove that you're a human probably for the cases when you interact and try to prove to agents that are you're human and for the universal basic income and we start to building also a bit of Universal basic robots and even nowadays you already have studies that say well agents are better at empathy people prefer the way they respond to us if we try to be empathetic so once again I think it's almost like don't expect that many events to change your career goals or professional development you'll be sitting at home talking to agents and learning for this way and building and focusing on your family but the professional aspect will be there in your agentic environment or robotic environment but but the social aspect will stay with you so probably as always in the past we'll be trading more efficiency and we'll be regaining some ways of spending more time focusing on personal development and family there will always be the concept of competition and chasing and thinking that I want to push even more for training and for building more who do we compete with I was thinking about it when we build robotic systems when we build agentic systems we continue competing with with Tesla and Elon Musk somehow like uh it seems that we we are aligned that we bring the ideas and it's just we have this centralized system that keeps delivering them a bit faster but I feel like we continuously serve it a vision we serve the vision of open data of open source of collaboration we serve the vision of building building together and we serve the vision of autonomous machines and it just keeps being delivered there so I think that if we stop serving that Vision it will be really bad and we have to keep serving the vision and if we want to keep serving the vision it means that we always have to rush building it the way we want and this is how we set the culture for the world to happen and we probably should expect the same momentum for ethereum as we seen if you've been 2017 that was like we wanted to disrupt the financial market so we started talking and announcing more and more uh ethereum Alliance building with the large Enterprises let's do the same with robotics go and connect with the companies building robots go and connect with the companies building agents start building agents the same way as you were excited building smart contracts this is how you change ethereum for the future and the more announcements of connections between agents and ethereum the more announcements of the Twitter Twitter autonomous agents uh trading on ethereum or robots being built and executed with ethereum or the coordination of the physical system smart cities the more announcements like this you'll push to the world the faster it will happen and the more excitement there will be about ethereum again and this happens now go to all of this companies and what will matter verifiable surveillance sure you can imagine that systems that will observe everything in the city and they'll have only one rule for example that the moment when there something really bad happens and name it very clearly like Let It Be murder only you want to remove it entirely so you say if murder happens that's the only situation when the surveillance robots reveals any data that it collects ever so you can expect massive privacy and as I said it's not your privacy in a way because surveillance robots will know everything about you but it will they will be oblivious so care about the Privacy disclosure from those robots allow them to collect all the data but ensure for the for the ziki hardware solutions that they will never disclose that data whatever they observe they forget they are always preserving your privacy even as your privacy theoretically doesn't exist but only in the context of that Hardware world uh veriable Healthcare you'll be able to go to any hospital and totally trust that the surgeon there robotic surgeon there will execute the job tested with the models like AI models that has been executed millions of times so you no longer will be be worried is the doctor tired or uh or nontrained or did something change the things will be repeatable and sure we'll be adapting to that jobs will be disappearing but probably be disappearing slowly and we'll be training the things I'll be enjoying that building together uh the same for Education you have lots of systems for the novel education mechanism and probably less and less interactions in the education interactions will be always always set for the social social aspect only but the there's some process of Education will be remote and will be probably based on holographic holographic teachers and access to all the information available at the pace that your kids need uh or yourself uh hyper public transport like the sharing of the robot taxes all of this will require connection to the financial Market where everything is public and you'll be able to allocate resources wherever you want um all of those things you'll be verifying that robots work the way they should work and you can go to any of the science fiction novel in the past and we always somehow end up building that because we get inspired by the novels that we read when you're like six seven year old whether it's fantasy and science fiction or some kind of Adventures that's what we build and uh well they're not predicting anything they are making us build it and and this is a lot of fun you build robots you build the world you reshape the world and you'll be allocating to robots you'll be allocating to factories building factories and maybe it will feel a bit slower you will not be able to create mint tokens out of finire like we do it now so will is digital more having more capacity than the robots or actually physical world has more capacity try build the robots that replace the robot that build robots and see how much we can multiply the value and start playing with this allocation and resources and tokens that can value Gumble together Gumble with the real world build factories that build factories use uh use the remote verification automated sensor sensors that we verifiable all that Hardware has to be built so you can try to play with the really really hard things in in physics in chemistry and biology just learn it you have this access to all the knowledge nowadays and you feel like you're building with a game you feel like you're building the world with planting trees from Farmville or Factoria style of machines or Minecraft the world becomes Minecraft it's all fun we have fixed economics economics we've fixed as well the world around us it will be super fun we can practically build all the perfect worlds that we imagined it's building time again it will not build itself but actually probably it will build itself but we started thanks a [Applause] lot wow awesome okay we've got time for a few questions uh let start at the top how to trust agents if we can't even verify without another agent yeah I think the same way as you in in every case where you have the attack mechanism using defense mechanism that is like appropriate so when you have trouble with agents you will use agents agents will help you to trust other agents they will use whatever verification mechanism that exist if you force agents to use the the ZK verification verifiable hardware for robotics then the other agents will be more likely to trust them like the same way as we do if you go and make a big transaction with someone if they pay you like $2 you don't care you don't verify them if they pay you $1 million then you start being like testing everything if they say you they transfer you $1 billion over blockchain then probably you'll say okay I need to ZK verify it and sync the chain myself so that's what the agents will be looking at there'll be CH so every agent will try to say I'm the most trustless one they will try to use the tooling and the culture that we're building you use the same defense tools as the attack tools defense defense capacity will humans be needed humans will be in be the inefficiency in the system and agents would like to marginalize us yeah humans will be needed for humans I like this the the major thing in the end is just to to learn to enjoy life and to socialize like uh if you yourself need other humans it means that you're needed because you need other humans you made them need it and this will be super fun probably and since we'll be building for many years and be passing that culture I'll be using new technology like any technology in the past everything that we're using nowadays feels magical for the people 100 years ago and probably for for them they would think like oh this is no longer human the fact that all my all my communication is in my pocket through the mobile device and I'm connected around the world with all the friends and I can keep changing that this seems nonnatural this seems like no longer human for people maybe two 3 hundred years ago but it feels Supernatural we adapt and we always in all those adaptations we care about the human connection so if you feel you need other humans it means you needed as well forever how do we Benchmark agents versus humans in subjective decision- making especially given fact of mod the fact that models might be trained on unclean opinionated data oh ideally we'll see who will make more money right like so if you keep making more money than the agents that's like the simplest game the ultimate game uh you can go and play board games you can play computer games or you can play trading game and it's like an ultimate game of a single number of how much money you make you not always want to play that that game but if you push people to play those games against agents then as long as people are winning they you have the Benchmark you have the Benchmark who who makes the most tokens if they want to play the game or well how do you Benchmark humans in the success level do you enjoy their lives and social interactions or do they make more money I think that you'll never find the perfect Benchmark but if you want to find one on blockchain it probably the amount of tokens that you why would robots choose ethereum over other chains this seems obvious [Applause] what are the best civil resistant approaches for this future you envision I guess all the cryptography that we're building I mean c resistance like will you will you care it's just robots or agents will be able to multiply themselves you have millions of them so will they have identities as long as the system holds with its own assumptions consensus mechanism and the and the verification for crypto graphy it all works so it's exactly the same resistance mechanism as before we already had Bots controlled by people so you already could spawn like one million of different mechanisms whether there a bit more intelligent themselves that probably doesn't change the mathematical underlying rules of the consensus mechanism okay got one more one more question why would we want to make agents their own beings like giving them their own wallet keys and giving up complete control what is the point of the purpose of this bright side I guess if we have like kids or friends we want them to enjoy it so let them enjoy it um it seems fun to look at it like it's seems fun to keep fish at home or or hamsters probably looking at the agents building thing whenever we play games sometimes at some point you're bored and you're just looking at the game because you enjoy looking at it I guess with agents will be the same the nature of building building and curiosity okay awesome so time is up thank you very much tomz uh just a couple of reflections uh