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Daniel Barabander

@dbarabander

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Daniel Barabander pfp
Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
Could not be more excited to announce our pre-seed investment in Plastic Labs, which is solving personalization for any LLM app. So excited to back Vince, Courtland, Vineeth and the rest of the team as they tackle this enormous problem. Check out the full announcement here: https://blog.variant.fund/investing-in-plastic-labs cc: @jhackworth
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
AI AND CRYPTO AT VARIANT GREAT FOUNDERS GREAT PROJECTS ME AND @jhackworth JOIN US
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Daniel Barabander pfp
Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
One way to think about the case for crypto x AI is it’s a bet on horizontal v vertical scaling. Big tech has mastered vertical - hoard compute, data ,and buy out competitors and vertically integrate them - form a monopoly. Crypto horizontally scales - high variance in contributions, massive consumer compute, data, etc. Bitcoin as the largest compute network shows horizontal can outcompete vertical. But the contributions are relatively deterministic (does this nonce hash). When things are deterministic it’s easier to scale infinitely horizontally: determinism —> easy verifiability —> permissionless —> anyone can contribute. That’s how you get anyone with a GPU to contribute compute. The hard part about AI is a lot of useful work in the real world that needs AI is not so cleanly verifiable. So we have two options to make this scale:
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
Let’s pregame this shindig together.
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
Good crypto x AI projects leverage the features of crypto to overcome limitations faced by AI. Here are three examples of challenges of AI: 1. Resources. To be competitive as an AI company you need to aggregate significant resources (compute and data) and talent. 2. Composability. Agents cannot reliably chain actions together. 3. Native Payments. Agents, while nearly infinite in their ability to act on a web made up of natural language, remain restricted by the fact that payment rails do not exist on internet rails. These challenges can be solved through separate features of crypto: economic ownership, verifiability, and self-custody.
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
I was going to do a cast on my new article on Agents as NFTs but @atown did a better job of explaining what I'm trying to capture than anything I could write. Check out the article here: https://blog.variant.fund/agents-as-nfts
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
I'm going to be at the Port next week - if you want to meet up or chat let me know my DMs are open.
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
I’m thrilled to announce our seed investment in Pluralis Research, which is building a decentralized AI training protocol. We are laser focused at investing in projects that use crypto ownership to solve coordination problems. Pluralis is a bullseye on that thesis, using ownership to solve the "resource problem" of training foundational AI models that are truly open. We couldn't be more excited to support Alex and the rest of the team. Full post here: https://blog.variant.fund/investing-in-pluralis-research
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
Crypto makes building open software with a resource problem possible. Check out the piece where I unpack why 👇 https://blog.variant.fund/using-crypto-ownership-solve-resource-problem
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
Greatly looking forward to joining @jchervinsky and the Exabits team for an AMA today at 12 PM ET! Going to cover some of the unique legal wrinkles at the intersection of crypto x AI. Join us soon! https://x.com/exa_bits/status/1900203369391591553
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
I shout out Warpcast/frames as a potentially great way to solve the "UI/contract problem" of agents 👀.
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
New article unpacks the unique liability considerations for agent developers. TLDR: agents introduce complexity but there are some common sense measures developers can take to reduce their liability exposure. Graphic below summarizing that. Check out the piece here: https://variant.fund/articles/liability-considerations-agent-developers-crypto/
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
I did not realize how motivated I was by a “limited time profile halo”. So excited to use my native social wallet.
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
If you're an crypto x AI builder in LA please hit me or @jhackworth up. We want to meet you!
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
A number of our recent pre-seed and seed portfolio companies are ACTIVELY HIRING. These companies are building the future of crypto. If you want to get in on the ground floor, fill out this short form and I will try and connect you with a fit. 👇 https://77fgxhdk47x.typeform.com/2025talent?typeform-source=t.co
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
With the rise of agents that heavily interact with Web2 applications, primitives that help users unchain their Web2 data will become increasingly important. These primitives include account encumbrance using TEEs, zkTLS to prove something about a user account, etc. These primitives allow crypto companies to offer products/services that empower users to unlock their data without giving these companies access to users' credentials. Examples include Flashbot's Teleport (account encumbrance) and Pluto's Web Proofs (zkTLS).
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
Agent devs need to grapple with the general rule crypto devs have had to deal with for years now: Custody user funds = increased liability risk Why? Control is the law’s lodestar for finding liability Two issues immediately come to mind
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
I will continue to bang this drum - there is no lower hanging fruit for a crypto company to get right than strong/enforceable TOS. Check out the piece I wrote on enforceable TOS here: https://blog.variant.fund/enforceability-terms-of-service-ui https://x.com/jchervinsky/status/1880275786713944427
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
New piece: Why (good) AI needs crypto. TLDR: Closed AI is anti-competitive. Open source AI hits a “resource problem” (huge compute/data costs). Crypto fixes this by incentivizing resource contributions via ownership—unlocking bigger models & faster innovation. 🔗👇 https://variant.fund/articles/why-good-ai-needs-crypto/
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Daniel Barabander
@dbarabander
@bountybot I'm publishing a new piece this week about why open source AI needs crypto. My fundamental argument: foundation open source AI has a "resource problem" that ownership via crypto solves. It's 5 pages single spaced (not including thank you's/disclaimer). Could you post a 50 USDC bounty for one of the members of /ai to review for accuracy of claims? They can DC me for a link to the paper. I need this by Tuesday. I will also add whoever is selected to the thank you's : ).
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