“Data in robotics versus data in LLMs has a very different alpha decay problem.” — @tarunchitra, Managing Partner @robotventures Much of what LLMs learn can carry across contexts. Robotics data is far more conditional: what works depends heavily on the robot, the objects, and the environment. As robots move into more complex, real-world settings, previously collected data can become less relevant much faster. For builders and investors, that shifts the question from “How much data do you have” to “How quickly can you close the loop between deployment, new data, and adaptation”. From The Convergence: Bhutan by YZi Labs.

GM ☀️ Fresh opportunities across the YZi Labs portfolio: @FinTax_Official - Finance System Implementation Consultant, Senior ERP Developer / ERP Technical Lead, etc. @4Dlabs_Official - Community Moderator View all openings and submit your application→

“At a certain point you get enough liquidity, there’s an event, there’s enough ease of access, and then everything comes together.” — @tomhschmidt, General Partner @DragonflyVC DeFi breakthroughs rarely happen linearly. Ideas can simmer for years before the right combination of liquidity, access, and a catalyst pushes them past a tipping point. Prediction markets and perps followed that pattern. RWAs may be going through it now. Tom sees capital formation, credit, and bonds as possible next frontiers — massive markets where years of incremental experimentation could suddenly translate into widespread onchain adoption.

“Today, U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins still dominate. But we’re seeing regional, local currency-backed stablecoins emerge and grow.” At the UN Digital Cooperation Day, @ellazhang516 shared that YZi Labs has been investing in and incubating stablecoin infrastructure for years. Today, we’re seeing more founders across India, Africa and LATAM build payment rails around local currencies and local demand. The tokenization of money will be one of the most important drivers of mass blockchain adoption.

GM ☀️ Fresh opportunities are available across the YZi Labs portfolio this week: @De1_ai — Growth Manager @CournotProtocol — BD Manager, Senior Protocol Engineer @perena — Frontend Engineer @Paimon_Finance — Director of Operation and Compliance View all openings and submit your application →

“The old flywheel-driven growth approach is probably a lot harder to replicate going forward... We want to see applications where, despite market conditions, users still want to pay to use them.” — @arthur0x, CEO & CIO of @DeFianceCapital When crypto application revenue is overly dependent on market activity, it becomes difficult to separate durable demand from market beta. Arthur’s thesis is that the next generation of applications needs a demand floor — users who keep paying even when the cycle turns. The shift from cycle-driven activity to more persistent demand makes crypto applications easier to forecast and underwrite — ultimately broadening the investable market for them.

“We want to make sure smaller LLMs can work for smaller regions as well.” @flock_io’s @0x7SUN sees a major gap in the sovereign AI conversation: many countries want AI infrastructure of their own, but lack the compute, talent and data needed to build it. And global frontier models don’t necessarily prioritize their languages or local context. In Sarawak, Malaysia, Jiahao's team worked on decentralized inference for regional dialects — using smaller, locally adapted models for language use cases that might otherwise be overlooked. For Jiahao, the future of AI isn’t only about making models more powerful; it’s also about making them relevant to more people.

Will AI data centers become more consolidated — or more distributed? @0x7SUN, Founder of @flock_io, sees inference pushing compute outward. Unlike large-scale training, many inference workloads don’t require massive, tightly connected clusters. That could make smaller sites with underused power viable as “mini data centers.” @mynameisdesmond, Co-founder & CEO of @workstream_us, sees consolidation happening at a different layer. AI remains an intensely capital- and resource-heavy game, requiring talent, funding, chips and infrastructure at scale. In his view, those advantages compound — meaning the biggest players may only get bigger.

“Before you sell your product to users, you have to sell it to the sales.” — @thecryptoskanda, co-founder of @Hertzflow_xyz, on why mechanism design alone isn’t enough to find PMF in crypto. He argues that in finance, the mechanism is often the product — the rules that determine how value, risk and incentives are distributed. But even the best-designed mechanism still needs distribution. If the people distributing it don’t see the value, they won’t sell it — and the product may never reach its end users. So the design principle is two-sided: 1) A mechanism that works for users 2) An incentive structure that works for distribution “This is the lifelong challenge for everyone building in crypto.” From The Convergence: Bhutan by YZi Labs.

GM ☀️ Open roles across YZi Labs portfolio companies this week: @Frontrunpro — Fullstack Engineer @SmartXTerminal — UI/UX Designer, Social Media & Brand Manager, Growth Manager, Growth Lead @xhunt_ai — Marketing & Operations Manager Explore the roles and apply 👉