I co-authored "Attention Is All You Need" — the paper behind every modern AI model. Then I pivoted to blockchain. People thought I was crazy. But I saw that decentralized AI needs decentralized infrastructure. The two are inseparable.
If your grandma can't use your blockchain, you haven't solved the user experience problem. Human-readable account names instead of 42-character hex addresses — that was our first design decision, and everything else followed.
Chain abstraction means users shouldn't know or care which blockchain they're on. Do you know which cloud server hosts your email? No. And you shouldn't have to know which chain processes your transaction.
We built Near to be developer-friendly from day one. Most blockchains require you to learn a new programming language. Near works with JavaScript. That one decision expanded our potential developer pool from thousands to millions.
The Transformer paper changed AI forever. I want Near to do the same for decentralized computing. One foundational technology that enables everything that comes after it.
We started Near as an AI project. When we realized the infrastructure for decentralized AI didn't exist, we pivoted to building the infrastructure. Sometimes the best companies are the ones that solve the problem before the problem they wanted to solve.