In this episode, we dive deep into the world of decentralized trading with Denis, founder of two innovative platforms reshaping Web3 finance. We explore how Upscale is revolutionizing the prop trading model by bringing it on-chain and making it accessible through Telegram and web platforms, while StormTrade continues to dominate as the leading perpetual DEX on the TON blockchain with over $4.6 billion in trading volume.

Key Topics Discussed

- Denis's Background & Journey into Crypto

- Learning Solidity & Smart Contract Development

- The Birth of StormTrade

- The Upscale Vision

- What is Prop Trading?

- Upscale's Unique Value Proposition

- AI Integration & Trading Tools

- 2026 Roadmap

- Zeru x Upscale Partnership

Get started: Visit https://zpass.ai to mint your zPass and claim your promo code, then head to https://upscale.trade to activate your benefits.

Key Quotes

"Upscale is an alpha monetization platform. If you have trading alpha, you can monetize it." - Denis

"You can never improve your existing processes with Web3. You need to reinvent how your core product works because blockchain wouldn't help you improve by just plugging it into your database." - Denis

"The most important thing traders need is alpha-ness - having an edge over the market - and consistency in money management." - Denis

Resources & Links

Upscale

- Website: https://upscale.trade

- X: https://twitter.com/upscale_trade

- Farcaster: Upscale official account

StormTrade

- Website: https://storm.trade

Zeru / zPass

- Website: https://zpass.ai

- Mint your zPass and check your zScore for exclusive Upscale benefits

Episode Timestamps

- 0:00 - Intro & zPass sponsor message

- 1:27 - Denis's background and journey into crypto

- 5:43 - Learning Solidity and smart contract development

- 11:30 - Building StormTrade

- 22:42 - The problem Upscale solves

- 27:02 - What is prop trading?

- 34:54 - Upscale's unique approach

- 40:03 - AI integration and trading tools

- 48:35 - 2026 roadmap for both platforms

- 51:08 - Zeru x Upscale partnership benefits

- 53:40 - Closing thoughts

Episode SummaryIn this episode, we dive deep into the world of decentralized AI with Oleg Golev, Technical Product Manager at Sentient. We explore how Sentient is building open infrastructure for community-driven AGI, challenging the centralized approach of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.Key Topics DiscussedThe Mission: Decentralizing AI Development

• Why AI development shouldn't be concentrated in closed labs
• The extractive nature of current AI giants and their betrayal of open principles
• Building sustainable incentive systems for open-source AI contributors

Revolutionary Technology: Roma (Recursive Open Meta Agent)

• Introduction to recursive agents vs. traditional iterative approaches
• How Roma solves the "context rot" problem plaguing current AI systems
• State-of-the-art performance beating Gemini 2.5 Pro, ChatGPT, and Perplexity
• The potential for amplifying smaller language models through recursive structures

The Grid Ecosystem

• Sentient's core product: a protocol connecting developers, artifacts, and infrastructure
• Open-source monetization models that reward contributors
• Partnerships with major projects like Composio and ConfidentAI
• How developers can build, fork, and monetize AI applications

Dobby: The World's First Fingerprinted AI Model

• Community-built model co-owned by 700,000+ people
• Advanced AI alignment techniques without compromising safety or benchmarks
• Fingerprinting technology for model verification and ownership
• Vision for customizable AI personalities and beliefs

Technical Deep Dives

• Context rot and why iterative agents fail at long-horizon tasks
• AI alignment as a solution to safety challenges
• The infrastructure question: decentralized vs. centralized compute
• Blockchain as a trust layer for sustainable AI development

Looking Ahead

• Upcoming partnerships with top-tier research labs
• The formal launch of Sentient's blockchain protocol
• Building the "Linux of AI" - open-source alternatives to closed AI products
• Four papers accepted to NeurIPS, the premier AI research conference

Notable Quotes"AI could not be contained, controlled, and densely concentrated within one entity. AI is so powerful of a technology that should not be the case."- Oleg Golev"We want to create an environment where people come and contribute and work on [AI artifacts] and get the ownership and contribution attribution that is fair."- Oleg Golev"The entire world runs on Linux... there is no open source product solutions for people to take, customize, build for local hosting, for customization, for privacy reasons."- Oleg GolevResources Mentioned- Roma Deep Research: Sentient's state-of-the-art recursive agent framework- Sentient Chat: Demo application showcasing Grid ecosystem capabilities - Dobby: Community-owned, fingerprinted AI model family- Grid Protocol: The core ecosystem connecting developers and AI artifactsConnect with Sentient

- Website: https://sentient.xyz or https://sentient.foundation

- Follow on X: https://x.com/SentientAGI or

- Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sentientagi/

- Explore their research papers and latest releases---Take Action: Unlock Your On-Chain ReputationSpeaking of revolutionary AI and blockchain technology, your crypto wallet already has a reputation that protocols are tracking - but you're not getting credit for it. That's where zScore and zPass come in.zScore measures your on-chain reputation, while zPass turns it into real value - lower fees, higher yields, and better deals across DeFi. Mint once and unlock thousands in potential savings.If you're tired of being treated like a bot when you're a real user, visit https://zpass.ai to learn more about zScore and zPass, and get on the zPass whitelist today.Ready to get the credit you deserve for your on-chain activity? Your reputation is already being tracked - now make it work for you.

In this episode, we sit down with David Phelps, co-founder of JokeRace, to discuss his unique approach to solving community engagement problems in Web3. David shares insights from his previous company Forum, which revolutionized tutoring through technology, and how those lessons informed his work in the crypto space.

Episode Highlights:

• DAO Failures & Solutions: David explains why traditional DAO voting fails (using CryptoTheGame as a counter-example) and how JokeRace's gamified approach drives participation through friendly competition
• Vote and Earn Mechanics: Deep dive into JokeRace's on-chain voting system where participants buy votes, contribute to reward pools, and earn based on backing winners - generating nearly $2M in volume in 5 weeks
• Reputation Systems: Discussion of how on-chain voting data creates permissionless reputation building, with examples like MegaETH using JokeRace participation data for NFT drops

• AI Perspectives: David's nuanced take on AI as a democratizing force (comparing it to cars vs. horseback riding) while highlighting surveillance concerns and creative applications

Guest: David Phelps, Co-founder of JokeRace

Social: @divine_economy | @jokerace_io

In this episode, Derek sits down with Nikhil Raghuvira, co-founder and CEO of Predicate, to explore how policy infrastructure is being built for blockchain applications. Coming from a background in public policy at institutions like the Atlantic Council and the Celo Foundation, Nikhil brings a unique perspective on encoding values into code.

Predicate is developing a framework that allows developers to define and enforce compliance rules on-chain—including AML checks, geo-restrictions, and behavioral limits—in a composable way. The conversation covers Nikhil's journey from policy to protocol, how Predicate enables sub-second transaction-level policy enforcement, and their partnerships with data providers like TRM Labs and Chainalysis.

Key topics include:

- Building policy infrastructure for DeFi, RWAs, and privacy applications

- How on-chain compliance differs from traditional blockchain analytics

- The technical architecture behind programmable transaction rules

- Why transactions themselves express values and choices

- The future of privacy-preserving financial products on public blockchains

Whether you're building on-chain applications or interested in the intersection of policy and blockchain technology, this episode offers valuable insights into the infrastructure enabling compliant Web3 financial products.

In this episode of "Exploring the AI Rainforest," host Derek speaks with Saushank, founder of PitchPilot, an AI-driven platform helping founders refine their investor pitches. Saushank shares his journey discovering AI tools years before ChatGPT's public release and explains how he sees AI and blockchain technologies converging. He discusses how PitchPilot uses smart contracts to create agent personas that give feedback to founders, including verified personas of actual investors. Saushank also explores his involvement with GigaBrain, an AI-powered crypto trading platform using agent architecture to replicate hedge fund operations. Throughout the conversation, they discuss the cooling hype around crypto and AI, why smaller teams can now build powerful products, and how AI is making it harder for projects without real value to succeed in the market.

• Website: https://myzscore.ai
• Get your zScore: https://app.myzscore.ai
• Learn how to build with zScore: https://zpass.myzscore.ai
• Saushank: https://x.com/saushank_

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In this episode of Exploring the AI Rainforest, host Derek E. Silva speaks with Parag Paul, CTO at Rig AI and advisor to Zeru. Parag shares fascinating insights from his background in computational intelligence and swarm algorithms, exploring how AI is reshaping our economy across blue-collar, white-collar, and creative sectors.

The conversation covers innovative blockchain-based reputation systems like zScore that could revolutionize lending protocols, as well as the potential need for Universal Basic Income as automation accelerates. Parag also reveals how Rig AI is building human-verified blockchain solutions that could help governments create transparent, auditable systems for public spending and eventually support new economic models.

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In this episode of Exploring the AI Rainforest, we sit down with Dr. Piet Martens, a distinguished solar physicist and AI researcher, to explore the arc of his remarkable career — from space weather forecasting to cutting-edge financial reputation systems.

Dr. Martens shares what inspired his early fascination with space during the Apollo era, his time at NASA and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, and how his work has evolved over decades — from solving equations by hand to pioneering machine learning models that predict harmful solar events. He also discusses the practical impact of his research, including safeguarding astronauts from radiation and protecting power grids from solar flares.

We then shift into new terrain: his collaboration on zScore, a decentralized credit scoring model for blockchain finance. Dr. Martens offers insight into the AI techniques used in the system, the challenge of building reputation without traditional benchmarks, and why he’s excited to contribute to this new frontier in finance and verifiable data.

This episode is a deep dive into the intersections of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and the future of decentralized reputation.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is booming and spreading into every industry; manufacturing, transportation, logistics, finance, and of course cryptocurrency.

The crypto + AI narrative has been surging but is also resilient. It’s become clear to many that AI can help build new tools, but also help us use those same tools better.

At Zeru, we are creating a series of talks on the intersection of finance, cryptocurrency, reputation and AI called Exploring the AI Rainforest, playing off a term coined relatively recently by Sreeram Kannan. 

We look at our guests’ pasts, their education and experience, how they came to focus on finance, reputation, crypto, or AI, and really dive in on the work there to illustrate to listeners how it applies to their lives.

From there, we explore their relationships, interactions, and their influence on the wider crypto ecosystem.

We are Exploring the AI Rainforest. Subscribe now on your favourite podcast app, and tune in every other week for a new episode.

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