Google’s own @mitchem looked great explaining the benefits of open-source public goods for machine payments like x402

Meet James (@specularist), co-founder of Etherea, one of the teams building as part of the Shape Rotator Accelerator. Etherea is a real-time visualizer for conversations, music, and speech. It uses AI to amplify human expression, making content feel more vivid, immersive, and alive. From podcasts to live music performances, Etherea helps turn sound and conversation into rich visual experiences. As the internet becomes increasingly visual-first, tools like Etherea make expressive visuals accessible to all kinds of creators and builders. Here's how it works under the hood: + Audio input: The system starts with live audio, including speech, music, podcasts, audiobooks, and other media. + Perception: Audio is transcribed in real time through a multilingual speech model. + Orchestration: The transcript flows into CUE, Etherea’s custom orchestration layer. CUE takes live transcripts and decides what actions to trigger, including captions, image prompts, video prompts, and other real-time visual events. + Generation: Etherea uses a real-time version of Flux for image generation, alongside video models. Flux creates the fast “live painting” layer in Etherea’s fluid visual style, while video models add richer motion. + Rendering: Easel, Etherea’s custom C++ compositing suite, manages video data, model outputs, shaders, and screen flow. A key latency trick is showing image output in under 3 seconds while slower video generation catches up. + Deployment: The full system runs on the Spatial Imagination System, a local multi-GPU machine built for high-fidelity, low-latency visual environments. In one East Village client installation, Etherea manages visuals across five screens through an SDK that lets an agent control what appears where. For James, this work is deeply personal. After a career at the intersection of technology, politics, and human behavior, he is now focused on building AI experiences that make people feel more curious, present, and connected.

It’s taken 15 years of blockchain technology to get to this point. Agents can now buy things you didn’t know could exist Try @agentcashdev

Introducing Pay.sh, in collaboration with @googlecloud For the first time agents can discover, access, and pay-per-request for APIs from Google Cloud including Gemini, BigQuery, Vertex AI, and more using stablecoins on Solana. No accounts, no subscriptions, just machine-native commerce.

e/acc @beffjezos vs. d/acc @VitalikButerin live discourse moderated by a16z @eddylazzarin teamed up w/ ai16z (former) @shawmakesmagic thought I signed up for an irl tweet-off ... turns out it's an irl essay-off each round of back and forth takes 10min starting from 2nd law of thermodynamics tough job to insert even punctuation for this one, let alone moderate... 😂

Whitepaper Reading Club Singapore: Feb 24 ~350 firms "make" crypto markets tradable. But why don't we trust them & Post-Jan 2026, liquidity is down 40%. Market Makers aren't heroes/villains — they're economic actors. The real issue: the hidden dealings between projects, exchanges, and MMs that retail can't see. That's what needs to change. Full summary → docs.google.com/document/d/1… Fi4x9Q01WLRQKSsFQMod8iSD2k8PvY Discussion Notes Below 👇 Thanks to: - @ulandaoon (Drew & Napier) Dominic (@TokkaLabs), @donovanchoy, @jameskwho for the insights. - @Herringglobal @DeFi_Koopman & Tony, @xulian_hl for looking over the notes and the summary. - Teams from @flowdesk_co and @AcheronTrading that attended - Welcome to @mitchem and @tyneslol who quietly showed up and everyone else that came through - Thank you again to @Kimmi_Unni & Joel @SuperteamSG for hosting us again!

ERC-8004 MANIFESTO We want AI to be open. We want any human on Earth to express their creativity by building their agentic experiences and share them with anybody, without asking permission from any gatekeeper. We want all these agents to be immediately discoverable by anybody, without depending on any centralized "store". We want open economies where anybody can decide who to trust, and information is public for the benefit of all. We want humans empowered by their AI, not exploited. Privacy is non-negotiable. We want the Web of Agents. As 33 years ago the open Web unleashed a new phase of growth for humanity, we think AI needs to run on public infrastructure to push economic prosperity and democracies' health. We think that a public infrastructure, fully programmable by and for agents, already exists. It didn't stop working for a minute since it was born 11 years ago. No need to reinvent it. It's called Ethereum. We want AI on Ethereum rails. And we are not alone. We are many! We are thousands of researchers, engineers, and creatives. We are building games, agent platforms, trading agents, personal twins, creative agents, and open infra. We build at the intersection of Web3 and AI. To make this happen, we created ERC-8004. Today, after 6 months of tests, experiments, and prototyping, we launch on Main Net. The Genesis Month starts NOW. Anybody can register agents, which are immediately portable on any platform. Anybody can give feedback and trust signals. We know, it's early. That's also the best time to start building. And we are so proud to pioneer something we so truly believe in. Welcome to the Web of Agents! The ship is setting sail! The 8004 Team 8004.org/