The Brave Technologist

Peter Gray, BD Manager at Origin Protocol, shares what it looks like to build and maintain trust in a DeFi protocol that has been running yield-bearing products since before most of the space understood what that meant. He explains how the Automated Redemption Manager creates yield opportunities; why the Origin Protocol simplified its stablecoin architecture; and why idle liquidity is the problem Origin aims to solve.

Key Takeaways:

• What the Automated Redemption Manager does

• Why the Origin Dollar simplified from three backing stablecoins to one

• What yield forwarding unlocks, including new market structures

• How the Origin Protocol thinks about due diligence when integrating with other protocols

• A prediction on how idle liquidity will effectively cease to exist within five years

Guest Bio:

Peter Gray is BD Manager at Origin Protocol, a decentralized finance protocol founded in 2017. Over his four-plus years with Origin, he has focused on integrating Origin's products across platforms and finding ways for users to maximize the yield they earn. He has also authored over 100 DAO proposals during his time at Origin, making him one of the more prolific governance contributors in the space. Outside of work, he's a musician, hockey player, and avid skier based in Nashville, TN.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Cisco Aguilar, Nevada's Secretary of State, shares what it's like to run a government office with the discipline of a technology company, and discusses how that mindset led Nevada to overhaul both its statewide voter registration system and its business filing infrastructure at the same time. He explains how the state survived one of the largest cyberattacks in US history without its systems being touched, and why he refused to hand over Nevada voters' personal data to the federal government.

Key Takeaways:

• How Nevada survived a major cyberattack by turning to the private sector rather than waiting for federal support

• Why Cisco refused a federal request for Nevada voters' Social Security numbers, birthdays, and driver's license numbers

• How Nevada consolidated 17 separate county voter systems into one statewide platform in just 14 months

• What happened when Nevada's old business filing system went down for an entire month and what the Orion system is designed to prevent

• Why centralized systems can actually protect privacy (rather than threaten it)

Guest Bio:

Cisco Aguilar serves as Nevada's Secretary of State. As Secretary, he is focused on three major principles: modernization, innovation, and transparency. With an understanding of the office as a technology company, he has spearheaded two major projects to overhaul the state's business licensing and elections systems.

As an entrepreneur, he understands that time spent navigating red tape and complicated systems means less time invested in your business. Leveraging emerging technologies, he seeks to make Nevada the best place in the country to do business.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Margi Sheth, Head of AI Governance & Enablement at Novo Nordisk, shares what it takes to build AI governance inside one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world. She explains how pharma's long history of bioethics gives organizations a strong compass for navigating AI decisions; why governance that feels like a checkbox will always get bypassed; and why the field of AI ethics needs people from every background.

Key Takeaways:

• How pharmaceutical companies balance the ethical obligation to accelerate medicine with the obligation not to compromise patient safety

• What other industries can learn from pharma's method of adopting AI across multiple global jurisdictions with different regulatory requirements

• Why the stakes of AI governance in healthcare go beyond fines, and how that shapes the way Novo Nordisk approaches regulatory preparedness

• Why having people from diverse backgrounds (not just technical expertise) in the room is essential when AI governance decisions get made

Guest Bio:

Margi Sheth is the Head of AI Governance & Enablement at Novo Nordisk. She's an AI ethics champion within the pharmaceutical industry, previously serving as Senior Director of Data Policy and AI Governance at AstraZeneca. She specializes in building operational governance frameworks for large global organizations, navigating the practical and ethical complexities of AI adoption.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Cody Carbone, CEO of The Digital Chamber, shares what the digital asset industry has been fighting for in Washington, and explains why clear, durable legislation is the only thing that can give builders, developers, and investors the confidence to operate in the United States long-term. He breaks down what the CLARITY Act does for builders who have been operating without legal certainty; how the stablecoin market responded when the GENIUS Act passed; and why the current regulatory environment is insufficient.

Key Takeaways:

• What the CLARITY Act does for developers and token issuers

• How personnel changes at the SEC and CFTC shifted the regulatory environment for digital assets

• What the passage of the GENIUS Act demonstrated about the relationship between regulatory clarity and market growth

• Why durable progress in digital assets requires legislation that can withstand changes in administration, not just favorable appointments

Guest Bio:

Cody Carbone is the CEO of The Digital Chamber, the world's largest digital asset and blockchain trade association, representing the industry in Washington with the White House, Regulators, and Capitol Hill.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Mark Henderson, Engineering Manager at Shielded Labs, shares what it looks like to build privacy infrastructure on a hundred-year time horizon. He also breaks down two of Shielded Labs' most significant technical bets: the Network Sustainability Mechanism, and Crosslink. Mark makes the case that financial privacy and surveillance-based business models are structurally incompatible—true privacy means building systems where the choice not to look is enforced by the protocol, rather than a company promise.

Key Takeaways:

• How Zcash is planning for long-term sustainability beyond its fixed 21 million coin supply

• What Crosslink could bring to Zcash by combining proof-of-work with a proof-of-stake finality mechanism

• Why Zcash's renewed momentum reflects growing demand for privacy-focused technology

• Why financial data is behavioral data, and how it can be used for profiling and influence

• Why truly private systems need privacy built into the protocol rather than relying on companies to protect user data

Guest Bio: Mark Henderson is the Engineering Manager at Shielded Labs, where he obsesses over permanence. He works on the privacy infrastructure meant to keep Zcash secure for a zillion years: the Network Sustainability Mechanism, the dynamic fee market, and the Crosslink consensus upgrade. All are designed to protect invariants on the Zcash blockchain (such as the hard 21-million supply cap). Mark is also a polymath who runs a 4,000-piece art catalog powered by AI visual search, and he treats privacy, art, and AI as the same puzzle in different clothes.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Howard Wu, CEO of Provable and Shield Wallet, makes the case that full, on-chain transparency was never a design principle—it was a limitation that mainstream finance cannot build on. He draws a direct line from the internet's switch from HTTP to HTTPS to where crypto needs to go next, and argues that the biggest obstacle to private stablecoins isn't the technology. Instead, it's the assumption that compliance and privacy are fundamentally at odds.

Key Takeaways:

• Why on-chain transparency creates broken user journeys for everyday payments, payroll, and institutional trading

• How zero-knowledge proofs enable compliance without risk of traditional KYC data collection

• What distinguishes the Shield Wallet's approach to privacy from that of a standard crypto wallet

• What Howard predicts will be mainstream by 2030 that almost no one in the industry is building for today

Guest Bio:

Howard Wu is the CEO of Provable and Shield Wallet. He's also a founder of the Layer-1 blockchain, Aleo. His contributions to zero-knowledge proofs and elliptic-curve cryptography have been adopted across the industry, including by protocols such as Ethereum and Zcash. Howard graduated from UC Berkeley with a research background in cryptography, computer security, and verifiable computing.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Juan Leon, Senior Investment Strategist at Bitwise Asset Management, returns to the show to share how much the convergence of traditional finance and on-chain infrastructure has accelerated since our last conversation—and what the data behind that shift actually shows. He breaks down why vaults represent the next evolution in fund wrappers beyond ETFs; what distinguishes sustainable on-chain yield from the opacity that drove past cycle failures; and where AI agents fit into the future of institutional asset management on blockchain rails.

Key Takeaways

• Why vaults are emerging as the next evolution in fund structures and how they compare to ETFs

• What separates sustainable on-chain yield from the products that failed in previous cycles

• How AI agents and blockchains are symbiotic, and what guardrails need to exist before institutions delegate real financial decisions to these agent/blockchain pairings

• Why the distribution opportunity in tokenization is being underestimated

Guest Bio: Juan Leon is the Senior Investment Strategist at Bitwise Asset Management, where he helps lead research, product and strategy development, and fund and index management, and also supports sales and client relationships. Prior to Bitwise, he was a Portfolio Manager at U.S. Global Investors, managing equity and fixed-income funds, and designing quantitative investment strategies. Before that, Juan was a Financial Analyst at Rackspace Technology where he contributed to financial planning and analysis. He is a graduate of Trinity University, double majoring in Political Science and Economics. Juan also earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation from the CFA Institute.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Danit Nativ Navon, Senior Software Engineering Manager at Meta, unpacks how the company became the first major tech firm to build AI-enabled coding interviews. She breaks down the process of rethinking what engineering interviews actually measure (now that AI can write the code itself), and explains why the leadership qualities that matter most now look nothing like the skills these interviews were originally built to test. Key Takeaways:

• How to tell the difference between a candidate who's simply good at prompting from a genuine AI-native engineer

• What a viral interview-cheating tool revealed about a much deeper flaw in traditional coding tests

• Why leadership qualities are becoming more valuable to engineers in the AI era

• How company culture ends up being the real safeguard for privacy and safety

Guest Bio:

Danit Nativ Navon is a Senior Engineering Manager in Meta's Applied AI division, with two decades of experience and an academic background in Computer Science and Neuroscience.

At Meta, she pioneered AI-enabled coding interviews, making it the first major tech company to adopt AI-native evaluation for engineering talent. She also coaches leaders through AI-driven change and helps new hires to integrate AI skills into Meta's engineering environment.

A self-described late adopter who chose to evolve rather than fall behind, Danit now helps others step confidently into the AI era. Her global journey across Israel, Singapore, Mexico, and London informs her practical, people-first approach to engineering leadership.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

Andrew Pelekis (CEO of HEEBOO) and Nicholas Cabana (Co-Founder of Claynosaurz and Chief Creative Officer at HEEBOO), break down how a Solana-based digital collectibles brand and a small team of Hollywood animators grew into an entertainment franchise now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. They unpack the decision to give 15% of company equity back to collectors; how selling products funds content production; and why treating fans as co-owners (not just customers) became their unlikely path to overcoming Web3's biggest adoption hurdle.

Key Takeaways:

• Why short-form content became the deliberate first move for Claynosaurz, long before the existence of any long-form series

• How giving equity away to early collectors solved a problem most brands don't realize they have

• What it takes to get kids excited about digital collectibles without ever mentioning crypto

• Why obsessing over token price charts can undermine a community's long-term value

• How pairing streaming with digital collectibles could turn passive viewing into something interactive

Guest Bio:

Andrew Pelekis is the CEO of HEEBOO, the studio behind the Claynosaurz entertainment IP. He leads the company's efforts to turn Claynosaurz from an internet-native community and digital collectible project into a broader entertainment franchise, including its recent expansion onto Amazon Prime Video.

Nic Cabana is the Co-Founder of Claynosaurz and Chief Creative Officer at HEEBOO, where he leads the creative vision behind the Claynosaurz universe. He's focused on building an entertainment IP that brings together storytelling, community, and emerging technology in new ways.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte

David Kinitsky, Chief Corporate Development Officer at Everstake, shares what distinguishes this cycle of enterprise crypto adoption from every previous one, and why the shift matters. He explains why staking is a foundational infrastructure play, not just a yield product; what institutional due diligence on staking looks like in practice; and why the prevailing narrative around tokenization misidentifies the real unlock. He also lays out a longer-term thesis: that AI agents will eventually manage personalized financial portfolios for everyday people at the level currently reserved for the most sophisticated wealth management clients.

Key Takeaways:

• What's different about this cycle of enterprise crypto adoption

• Why staking matters beyond yield, and the role validators play

• What institutions require before allocating significant capital to staking

• Why tokenization's most important unlock is programmability and composability

• How AI agents could extend institutional-grade portfolio management to everyday users

Guest Bio:

David Kinitsky is a seasoned executive with 15+ years of experience in the financial and technology sectors, including 12+ years in crypto. He is currently the Chief Corporate Development Officer at Everstake, after previously helping to launch a streak of industry innovations and business successes at Kraken, Circle, Fidelity, Grayscale, and SecondMarket.

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About this Show:

The Brave Technologist is here to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of emerging tech. To make it digestible, less scary, and more approachable for all!

Join us as we embark on a mission to demystify artificial intelligence, challenge the status quo, and empower everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a curious mind, or an industry professional, this podcast invites you to join the conversation and explore the future of AI together.

The Brave Technologist Podcast is hosted by Luke Mulks, VP Business Operations at Brave Software—makers of the privacy-respecting Brave browser and Search engine, and now powering AI everywhere with the Brave Search API.

Music by: Ari Dvorin

Produced by: Sam Laliberte