DAOs were a failure in the last era of crypto. But it may have just been the wrong time for them. Two big things are different now: (1) regulatory clarity and (2) AI agents. We spent the last 10 years rediscovering the hard way that direct democracy is a bad idea. Turns out, nobody wakes up in the morning eager to adjudicate risk parameters or protocol updates. It didn't help that it was illegal to experiment with different DAO structures. The vicious hostility of Biden and Gensler toward the space killed all innovation. But it's a new day. It is once again legal to experiment. You could choose to play with forms of representative democracy, or multi-cameral systems, or hybrids of permissioned and permissionless participation. Not to mention, AI agents can now step into many kinds of roles that humans will never want to perform. They may help DAOs live up to their name by making them truly Autonomous. The design space for new DAOs is infinite, for they are just software. What new experiments are people running?

Three barriers have kept institutions from adopting blockchain infrastructure: performance, regulatory clarity, and privacy. Performance and regulatory frameworks have advanced, and Canton was built to address privacy from the start. @Alive_ and @Nlevine19 on why that matters.

Stablecoins lower the barrier to entry building new checking products Vaults lower the barrier entry to offer new savings products DeFi lowers the barrier to new capital market products CAC becomes essential with greater product parity

Aztec Labs has acquired Obsidion, the team behind @ZKPassport. The Obsidion team will continue to develop ZKPassport while also leading new consumer product developments. The ZKPassport protocol will remain open source.

Visa is for vibe coders. Anyone can spin up an app and any API can become a merchant. Starting today we’re onboarding x402 and MPP merchant endpoints into Visa CLI so APIs, LLMs, data products, and dev tools can be discovered and purchased by verified agents with cards on file. If you’re building an x402 or MPP endpoint, or want Visa to help you stand one up, sign up below. We’re also opening Visa CLI to initial users in the US. DM me for an invite.

This is a fantastic time period in which to bring the magic of the American financial system to the entire world Lots of EM banks still require IRL transfers and effect them on paper Much of the world still can't access equities investing There is so much to build

Privacy in crypto will win in two forms: 1. Private money — encrypted assets 2. Private computation — encrypted smart contracts The second category is especially important for institutions because each one of them has its own idiosyncratic requirements—bespoke business logic, compliance rules, etc. For them, providing privacy to their users isn’t as simple as just encrypting everything. They need to be able to encode who can see what and under which conditions. That means privacy cannot just be binary. It must be programmable.

🚨 Ep. 83 of @TokenizedPod: The Headless Merchant Economy @cuysheffield is joined by: 👉 @nlevine19, Partner, @a16zcrypto 👉 @gmoneyNFT 👉 @blauyourmind, CTO, @join_royal To discuss: ✅ AWS, Google, Coinbase enabling AI agent payments 👤 Headless Merchants 🪙 Pay per token model replacing subscriptions for content 🤖 Traders and investors as early agentic payment users 💳 Card on front, stablecoin settlement in hybrid model 💸 Using AI agents to make money trading 📊 AI agents trading stocks with self fulfilling predictions ⛓️ Circle’s Arc blockchain for institutional stablecoin use 📈 Local currency stablecoins for treasury yield in emerging markets *** Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 2:13 AWS, Google, Coinbase enabling AI agent payments 3:51 Headless Merchants 5:59 Pay per token model replacing subscriptions for content 10:04 Traders and investors as early agentic payment users 13:42 Card on front, stablecoin settlement in hybrid model 15:50 Using AI agents to make money trading 21:27 AI agents trading stocks with self fulfilling predictions 35:12 Circle’s Arc blockchain for institutional stablecoin use 41:19 Local currency stablecoins for treasury yield in emerging markets *** 👉𝘚𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩 '𝘛𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘗𝘰𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵' 𝘖𝘯 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘛𝘶𝘣𝘦. 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘦, 𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘺 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘗𝘰𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳! 👈

The CLARITY Act has now passed out of the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan backing and moves to a full Senate vote - a historic moment for crypto entrepreneurs and American consumers. Crypto is not a red or blue issue. It is about whether the next generation of financial and internet infrastructure gets built in the United States. Thank you to @SenatorTimScott and @SenLummis for your leadership on the committee, to @BankingGOP, @Sen_Alsobrooks, and @RubenGallego for their support, and to all of the staff who have worked tirelessly to get to this point. It’s time to pass CLARITY.