Years before AI became the dominant narrative in tech, NEAR was already positioning itself as "the AI blockchain." Camila Russo sits down with NEAR co-founder Ilya Polosukhin — co-author of the seminal "Attention Is All You Need" paper — to discuss whether this moment feels like vindication, and where NEAR fits into the AI landscape now that everyone else has caught up. Topics covered: Why decentralized AI and blockchain need each other, and how NEAR uses secure enclaves to deliver verifiable, low-cost inference The case for decentralized AI as "freedom technology," and Ilya's take on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 export-control shutdown and AI censorship more broadly NEAR's standout token performance this year, reduced inflation, and the new fee-generating model behind NEAR Intents How NEAR Intents work as a cross-chain matching layer, and the rise of confidential balances and private transactions Why Ilya believes blockchains will increasingly be used by AI agents rather than humans — and what that means for NEAR's roadmap NEAR's evolving agent marketplace and vision for AI-driven commerce beyond simple stablecoin payments Guest: Ilya Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR Protocol Host: Camila Russo, The Defiant

Last week Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5 — and within 48 hours it became one of the messiest releases in frontier AI. A buried line in the model's system card revealed Fable would silently degrade its own answers for anyone it suspected of building competing AI systems, with no warning. Researchers called it silent sabotage. Anthropic apologized and reversed course. Add a 30-day data-retention requirement that got the model banned inside Microsoft, and you have a live referendum on the question crypto has been asking for years: should any single company hold this much control over frontier AI?

Bitcoin does not have native yield. But that has not stopped institutions, treasury companies, miners, whales, ETFs, and crypto-native desks from looking for ways to generate returns on top of BTC. In this episode of Converge by The Defiant, David Lawant, Head of Research at Anchorage Digital, joins the show to unpack the rise of Bitcoin options, synthetic yield, covered call strategies, and the growing intersection between TradFi and crypto-native market structure.

Morpho just closed the largest funding round in DeFi history: $175 million at a $2 billion valuation, led by Paradigm, a16z, and Ribbit Capital. In this conversation, Camila Russo sits down with Morpho co-founder Merlin Egalite to unpack the raise and what's next for the protocol. Topics covered: Why Morpho chose a pure token structure over equity, and what it means for long-term alignment How the Morpho Association funds itself, and responses to criticism around transparency and decentralization Midnight, Morpho's next major upgrade — an intent-based, fixed-rate lending model Vault risk and curator accountability, including lessons from the Stream Finance event How Morpho differentiates from Aave despite trailing in TVL The growing wave of institutional interest — from asset managers to neobanks and fintechs Morpho's long-term ambition: capturing a share of the $200 trillion global credit market Guest: Merlin Egalite, Co-founder of Morpho Host: Camila Russo, The Defiant

How close did DeFi come to a real systemic collapse? In this episode, Camila Russo sits down with Mike Silagadze, co-founder and CEO of Ether.fi, to break down the Kelp exploit, the DeFi United rescue effort, and why Mike believes the default path could have been far worse if nobody had stepped in. He explains why the bigger lesson is not just smart contract risk, but operational security, app-layer responsibility, and the need to move past "decentralization theater."

What if the blockchain token you hold doesn't actually give you ownership of the underlying asset? Dennis O'Connell of the ERC-3643 Association joins Converge to expose the hidden differences between tokenization standards — and why knowing which one you're buying matters more than most people realize.

Crypto is entering a new phase — and institutions, not retail, are driving it. As regulatory clarity arrives, the largest institutions in the world are moving from the sidelines into the market. The thesis from our guest: sentiment is poor, but fundamentals are improving; a coiled spring.

Top Ethereum talent is leaving. The Ethereum Foundation is shrinking. And one question now hangs over the entire ecosystem: what happens to ETH if the EF steps back?

DeFi is approaching a breaking point. After a wave of hacks and growing concerns around smart contract risk, liquidity risk, and hidden dependencies, the biggest question in crypto is no longer just how much yield you can earn, but whether that yield is actually worth the risk.

Explosive debate: after one of DeFi's biggest attacks left Aave facing bad debt, DeFi United raised more than $300M to stop the contagion. But did the ecosystem prove its strength - or expose hidden trust assumptions, opaque risk, and the need for a real DeFi backstop?