ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, James Kurz from the Filecoin Foundation argues that in the generational AI buildout, the moat is where your data lives, and storage is the underappreciated part of the story. He opens with a history lesson: 10 to 20 years ago compute was cheap and you simply put hard drives where the people were, in Northern Virginia or the Bay Area. Today compute dominates the conversation, but the coming five years will see an explosion of data collection about the physical world for AI training and inference, driven by robotics, neurotech, and self-driving cars, capturing far more than the tiny fraction humanity has stored over the past 30 to 40 years. This demands vastly more storage capacity. James explains the core shift: historically compute went to the data because data was heavy, but now compute is being dragged to wherever cheap power exists, places like Wyoming, northern Norway, Finland, and Ohio that were never the interconnection points of the internet. This creates storage deserts, where major GPU clusters are being built far from where storage lives. When data sits far from GPUs, you hit the laws of physics (fiber optic speed and node hops) that hardware cannot solve, plus the steep economic cost of data egress from providers like AWS, and vendor lock-in where moving data into one cloud traps you there. He stresses that keeping data physically close to compute is really about the cost of iteration: whoever can run more tests and checkpoints faster outpaces competitors, and jurisdictional compliance adds another reason to have distributed storage near the clusters. He argues incumbents will not solve this since hyperscalers work at massive scale and focus on GPU buildouts, creating an opportunity for local and colocated storage operators to be the fast, close data layer without buying their own GPUs. He positions Filecoin as already being this global network, built over five or six years with almost 2 exabytes of capacity and cryptoeconomics that flex capacity up, letting users leverage existing capex rather than spending billions, while tapping underutilized storage devices amid hard drive order books extending beyond 2027. He closes by introducing two ways to try Filecoin in 2026: FilecoinWarm Storage as an S3 compatible endpoint (live in the EU, coming to North America and Asia) and Filecoin onchain cloud for developers wanting programmatic smart contract storage. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Have You Tried Fable 5 and Filecoin 00:50 A History Lesson: When Compute Was Cheap 01:10 Why Storage Is the Underappreciated Story 01:30 The Coming Explosion of AI Data 01:53 How Little Data We've Captured So Far 02:11 Why We Need Much More Storage 02:30 Bringing Compute to Where the Power Is 02:53 Why Storage Deserts Are Emerging 03:14 Storage Deserts Are Happening Now 03:48 Why Distance to GPUs Hits the Laws of Physics 04:22 The Steep Cost of Data Egress 04:41 How Egress Fees Create Vendor Lock-In 05:09 Why Close Data Wins the Iteration Cycle 05:54 Why Incumbents Won't Solve This 06:27 The Opportunity for Local Storage Operators 07:01 The Jurisdiction and Compliance Angle 07:52 Why Filecoin Already Is This Network 08:13 Leveraging Billions in Existing Capex 08:51 Why an Agnostic Cloud Matters 09:32 Why You Need to Move Data Quickly 09:52 Filecoin's 2 Exabytes of Global Capacity 10:37 Activating Underutilized Storage Everywhere 11:05 Two Ways to Try Filecoin in 2026 11:24 FilecoinWarm Storage as an S3 Swap 11:47 Filecoin Onchain Cloud for Developers 12:26 Why Data Is the Key to the AI Buildout 13:10 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Kartik Talwar

ETHGlobal · Oct 9, 2025

Join Kartik Talwar and Erik Voorhees, founder of Venice AI (and formerly of ShapeShift), in this fireside chat at the Agentic Ethereum 2025 Summit. Explore how private AI works, why uncensored AI is essential for user freedom, and how principles from crypto and decentralization drive Venice’s mission. Discover how Venice AI preserves privacy by never storing conversations, integrates token-based payments for AI agents, and offers freedom from the censorship and data-collection practices of centralized providers. If you’re curious about secure GPU provisioning, crypto-based subscriptions, and the future of autonomous AI applications, don’t miss Erik’s insights on building a truly private and free-speech AI ecosystem. Like, share, and subscribe for more in-depth discussions on agentic governance, decentralized tech, and the evolution of AI in a Web3 world! 00:00 Introduction: Erik Voorhees & Venice AI 00:45 Origins of Private AI and Venice's Mission 02:00 Concerns Over Centralized AI and Censorship 03:49 Why Privacy and User Freedom Matter 05:25 Removing Data Collection and Storing No Chats 06:34 Venice vs. Other AI Providers 08:08 ChatGPT’s Limitations & Guardrails 09:59 Balancing Uncensored AI with User Responsibility 11:05 Philosophical View on Speech & Actions 15:20 Comparing Venice With Other Emerging AI Solutions 18:21 The Importance of Crypto Payments & GPU Decentralization 21:09 Venice Token Launch & API for AI Agents 24:17 Characters and Agentic AI in Venice 27:02 Future Roadmap: Moving Toward Autonomous Agents 28:39 Closing Thoughts and Next Steps for Venice AI _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🤖 *Agentic Ethereum 2025 Summit* Join the official Agentic Ethereum 2025 Summit for an in-depth look at AI agents, smart contracts, and how they converge to power the next era of decentralized intelligence. This is more than just a summit—it's a gathering of the brightest minds in our ecosystem, and we're honored to have Andrew Miller, Anna Kazlauskas, Davide Crapis, dcbuilder, Ed Felten, Erik Voorhees, Illia Polosukhin, Jasper Zhang, Karl Floersch, Ken Ng, Kevin Owocki, Linda Xie, Shaw, Tomasz Stanczak, Chase Allred and Vitalik Buterin and on stage for this virtual summit focused around AI Agents and Blockchain! Watch the full Agentic Ethereum 2025 Summit Playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh6DrYO4ORk8wzQ5wCZDs0mW&si=ARqB9gaXAqehWH1_ 🤖 *Agentic Ethereum 2025* Agentic Ethereum is an online, async hackathon that runs from Jan. 31 to Feb. 12, 2025. With over $175,000 USD in prizes, Agentic Ethereum is a great way to dive into the world of autonomous AI agents and explore how they can revolutionize projects on Ethereum. Start the year with groundbreaking innovation! Watch the full playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7jxP_flgRf5nZ_WDgFpBy3&si=RZozbd9C5KrG6Bf3 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Erik Voohrees X: https://x.com/ErikVoorhees ✅ Follow Venice AI Website: https://venice.ai ✅ 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

EthCC · Aug 9, 2024

The core idea is to maintain compacted, flattened, and fine-grained (i.e., transaction-level) historical states by flattening the minimum state changes of each transaction required for the world state. The video features a talk by Andy, the CEO of BlockSec and a professor at Zhejiang University, discussing their research on optimizing Ethereum archive nodes. The research is a collaborative effort between BlockSec, students, and other partners. Andy emphasizes the importance of building real systems with tangible impacts and outlines BlockSec's role in enhancing blockchain security through various products and solutions. Andy explains that blockchain optimization can be achieved at different layers, including consensus mechanisms, execution layers, and storage engines. Their work focuses on optimizing the storage engine to improve efficiency and reduce costs by modifying the state model within Ethereum's archive nodes. He provides an overview of Ethereum's storage layer, explaining that it operates as a state machine driven by transactions that change states. The state is an account-based model with each account having its own storage referenced by a storage root. All states are encoded in a Merkle Patricia Tree (MPT) for quick data authentication. Different types of Ethereum nodes exist with varying capabilities regarding historical data storage. Full nodes only maintain the latest world state for reorganization tolerance while archive nodes preserve all historical states but require significant disk space due to saving all intermediate MPTs at each block. Archive nodes are essential for detecting transaction attacks and smart contract vulnerabilities through historical transaction analysis. They also help

Swarm · Jun 20, 2024

We will delve into the roles and interactions of node operators within the Swarm network, focusing on their dual role as storage providers and stakeholders in the ecosystem. The video features a speaker named Cserteh Linn who introduces a panel discussion with Yuriy Barabak and Kalom, focusing on topics relevant to node operators within a decentralized storage network. The agenda includes an overview of the node operators' role in the ecosystem and a discussion on upcoming changes that could impact their operations. They explain how storage providers, who are full nodes with staking capabilities, offer storage space to data providers in exchange for payment. Data users also pay for bandwidth when downloading data. While there is an indirect connection between data providers and users outside of the Swarm network, node operators have costs such as running hardware, bandwidth, electricity, personnel, and staking. The panel addresses recent updates that affect node operators' profitability by discussing the concept of "freezing" nodes in the storage incentives lottery. Freezing occurs when a node's cryptographic hash doesn't match the chosen "oracle of truth," leading to temporary exclusion from the game. To mitigate harsh penalties for honest nodes due to imperfect system syncing, they've implemented "stochastic freezing," which only gives a 20% chance of being frozen if a mismatch occurs. The discussion includes technical details about the probability of freezing before and after updates, noting improvements from 30% down to below 5%. This

Swarm · Jun 20, 2024

What is Swarm? An open source web3 project, a decentralised and distributed network for data storage, ready to power the next generation with censorship-resistant, unstoppable, serverless dapps. An exciting year has passed that has brought Swarm to the next page with even more secure data, on a stronger network, and even more exciting features to come! This video features Nikki, the product owner of a core development team, discussing the decentralized data storage solution called Swarm. She explains that Swarm is an open-source project within the Ethereum ecosystem, utilizing Gnosis chain smart contracts and powered by a specific token for economic sustainability. Users can store private and secure files, operate nodes, or build decentralized apps on Swarm. Nikki details the network's structure, including its peer-to-peer protocol with libp2p library, data storage and retrieval systems, and application layers for development. She describes how nodes operate in neighborhoods to ensure redundancy and what happens when a node's storage capacity is exceeded. The presentation covers how files are stored in chunks across the network and retrieved using hashes. It also highlights incentive mechanisms for storage and bandwidth contributions to the network. Looking back at the previous year, Nikki shares advancements such as Erasure Codes for data security, improvements in storage incentives to prevent cheating, adjustments in token supply through community governance, and increased community engagement with new proposals for features being discussed transparently. Future updates include Access Control Trees for more secure file permissions, Neighborhood Hopping for better reward chances, improved staking mechanisms allowing movement of increased value stakes to other nodes, optimized node resources for better rewards management, multi-chain support to pay with native tokens

Nader Dabit

ETHGlobal · Oct 9, 2023

Join Nader Dabit at Pragma Lisbon 2023 for an in-depth demo of Momoka, the scalability solution powering Lens Protocol’s next-generation Web3 social experience. Learn how Lens leverages Arweave, Bundlr, and Polygon to create a hybrid decentralized storage architecture that dramatically reduces cost and latency while preserving immutability, sovereignty, and user ownership. Nader explains why traditional blockchains aren't optimized for high-throughput social content and introduces Momoka's gasless, signless UX — delivering Web2-level performance with Web3 guarantees. Watch a live verifier demo, explore Lens’s open-source infrastructure, and see how 64,000+ transactions were processed for just $26. 00:00 Intro to Lens and Web3 UX challenges 00:42 Balancing ownership with user experience 01:48 Why everything doesn’t need to be on-chain 02:56 Twitter as a scalability benchmark 03:59 Limitations of blockchain data storage 05:08 Arweave and proof-of-access explained 06:17 What is Momoka? Hybrid architecture overview 06:47 How Momoka uses Arweave + Polygon simulation 07:54 Gasless, signless UX with Bundlr Network 08:24 64,000 transactions for $26 demo result 09:40 Shoutout to Lens engineering team 10:14 Open-source Momoka verifier and explorer 11:17 Running a verifier with one CLI command 12:36 MidJourney image generation example 13:42 Verifier starts listening to Momoka posts 14:58 Trust and verifiability on Arweave 16:39 Addressing decentralization questions 17:05 Where to learn more: blog + GitHub _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇵🇹 *Pragma Lisbon* Pragma Lisbon 2023 took place at Casa do Alentejo on May 11, 2023, and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. 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. Watch the full Pragma Lisbon 2023 playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7nuyBq4GojkgAhqoRtsi9K&si=pYS-TR5BOQSZ3YGi ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Ever since we first introduced our new event series, Pragma, in Tokyo in the spring of 2023, we have been fostering a curated, global community of individuals who deeply care about web3. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Nader Dabit* X: https://x.com/dabit3 ✅ *Follow Lens Protocol* X: https://x.com/LensProtocol ✅ *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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _