Erica Kang and Illia Polosukhin spent years circling the same corners of crypto before they ever properly met. Erica is the founder of Kryptoplanet and the host behind some of the industry's best-known builder events, including BUIDL Asia, ETH Seoul, and BUIDL Europe, and a general partner at BlackDragon Capital. Illia co-authored the 2017 "Attention Is All You Need" paper behind modern AI and went on to co-found NEAR, where he's now building NEAR AI and NEAR Intents.
Dayana Aleksandrova sat down with both of them for the first-ever joint episode of the WalletConnect Pulse, WalletConnect's talk show on modern money movements and the digital asset economy.
In this episode, Erica and Illia share how they actually met, why they moved from Lisbon to San Francisco, how AI went from back-end technology to the way we interface with computers, what NEAR Intents is and where it's headed, Erica's secret to curating unforgettable events, and their boldest predictions for crypto over the next one to two years.
Full Transcript
Dayana: Welcome to the WalletConnect Pulse, the talk show where we discuss modern money movements and the digital asset economy. Today, for the first time ever, we have a joint episode with crypto's power couple, Erica and Illia. Welcome to the show.
Erica: Thank you for having us.
Illia: Thank you.
Dayana: Pleasure to have you. Now, since this is a first, and I feel like a lot of people know you but don't truly know your origin story, why don't we start there? You're both successful entrepreneurs. You did a lot before you met, and you've done a lot more since. How did you meet? Give us some tea.
Erica: I promise Illia will take the reins on this one.
Illia: Well, because we've both been in crypto for a while, we effectively overlapped but didn't meet for quite a while. I actually found Erica's email recently. She had invited me to BUIDL Asia, and I didn't go.
Dayana: Ouch.
Illia: One of our BD guys went, and Erica was hosting and helping him around Korea. And then the other way around, too: before our public sale, we got connected to help with Korea distribution, and Erica stood us up.
Dayana: Were you getting revenge because he didn't get back to you?
Erica: No. I think I was just really busy.
Dayana: Wow, that hurts.
Erica: What year was this? 2020. It was COVID. I was in Vietnam at the time, working on a new project, and I wasn't in Korea either, so it was hard to be there on the ground and get new intros. Until 2020 I already had a ton of potential clients and a lot of intros, and I was doing a ton of meetups until COVID hit. So I thought I'd done the full lap.
Dayana: No space for this. Sorry, we're busy.
Erica: Yeah. But I feel really bad about it, because he showed me the thread and I was like, I don't remember any of that.
Dayana: Have you forgiven her?
Illia: Yeah.
Erica: I was hosting BUIDL Asia in Seoul, and Vitalik decided to come. I asked him who he wanted as his fireside chat partner, because I was trying to get him to do more meaningful talks. And he said, "What about Illia from NEAR?" And I was like, "Illia from NEAR? Whoever that is, I'm going to find out."
Dayana: Wait, what?
Erica: To be fair, at the time I think Alex was very upfront, kind of the face of the project. But anyway, I figured, okay, he's very technical, and I wanted him to come to Korea to do a fireside chat with Vitalik. So I approached him, we communicated, and I brought him to Seoul. That was 2022, ETH Seoul, BUIDL Asia. He was here, we did a friendly coffee chat, we parted ways, and we started dating a year later. So that's the story.
Dayana: Did you have a crush on her from the moment you saw her? I feel like you probably did.
Illia: I thought Erica was extremely beautiful. Extremely elegant, very powerful as well. So yeah, I was definitely smitten.
Dayana: That is so sweet, I love that. Now it's turning into a bit of a crypto opera moment. So you met in 2022, you've since lived in Lisbon, and now you're back in San Francisco. Why did you decide to move from Lisbon to San Francisco, and what are you most excited about there right now?
Illia: I was in and out of Lisbon since 2022. I was actually planning to live in Kyiv in 2021, but then the war started, so I moved my parents and grandparents to Lisbon, and I've been in and out since. Obviously, it's crypto, so I travel a lot.
Over the past year and a half, we've been bringing back NEAR AI and doing a lot more in AI, so we were already spending more time in San Francisco. And when we had a second kid, it became harder to travel, so we thought, okay, if we're going to travel less, where should we be? When you're in San Francisco, and we've been here for the past four or five months, everybody comes to you.
Erica: They visit weekly, basically. "Erica, I'm in town," or "Illia, I'm in town, do you want to meet for brunch, dinner, coffee?" And we just have to plan accordingly. So it's a very busy time to be in SF, because we have to do our own work but also greet the visitors.
It's a perfect place to be, because with the babies and all, as he explained, it seemed like the more reasonable choice. Lisbon is great, but the action is AI, everything's happening in SF, honestly, and I feel like it was a good choice in the end.
Dayana: There's a lot happening in SF, from the renaissance to people moving there for AI, so this is a really good topic. Illia, how do you see AI evolving? In 2017 you wrote a groundbreaking paper on attention. How do you think the AI space has changed since then, and what are you most excited to see happen in the next year?
Illia: The way I usually explain it: before 2022, AI was a back-end technology. It was everywhere. If you used Google.com or swiped through Instagram or TikTok, they used AI for the feed, for search results, and so on. In 2022, with ChatGPT, it became a front end. Now AI is actually how you interface with a computer. It goes and executes things for you, goes directly to APIs, and shortcuts a lot of the application layer we used before.
That's actually how NEAR AI started. I left Google, and in 2017 we started NEAR AI because the thesis was: AI will write all the code, and if AI writes all the code, you don't actually need apps. You just need to talk to AI. We were trying to do that in 2017, which was a bit too early. We were training models that were maybe a hundred times smaller than they needed to be. I think the evolution we see now is catching up to what we were pitching back then.
Now most of my time, I'm talking to AI to do the work, rather than using an app. You spend more time ideating, brainstorming, talking to colleagues, selling, and a lot of the work gets done for you. Right now, as I'm sitting here, I have zero-knowledge proofs being generated. I'm trying to build formally verified zero-knowledge circuits.
So we can have this conversation and I can do coding at the same time. That transition is happening really quickly in the grand scheme of things. Slower than I expected, but quickly.
Dayana: You were probably ahead of your time, and now everyone else is catching up. A follow-up question: your name has become synonymous with intents, NEAR Intents. We see it everywhere. Walk us through what Intents started as, what it does now, and where you'd like to take it.
Illia: The idea has been floating around since about 2023. I remember having this conversation with Zaki Manian: if we move away from the specifics of blockchains, even from Web3, and think about what happens when you go to Google and type something, you actually have an intent. You want to find a plumber, or buy something, or figure something out. Google has been the intent engine. It matches what you want with a place where you can get it, but you still need to go and get it manually. You still need to go through the checkout flow or read the page.
AI has started to smooth that out. But in crypto, it's been extremely complicated. If I want to buy some new crypto, or earn yield, or take a short position, and I have assets on Base or Solana or wherever, the path from that to the outcome you actually want is super complicated.
So the concept was: what is the Google that executes everything? That's intent. But let's start with crypto, where we know how to execute very well and can verify the outcome. The most complication is in cross-chain, with bridges, gas, finality, wallets, and so on. So NEAR Intents started with cross-chain trading: let's get you what you want. That launched around DEF CON in 2024, and from there we've been extending what we can do on the crypto side.
Now you can do earn, too. You can say, "I want the best yield across all of this, and it doesn't matter which chain or which exact wallet it's on, given these security parameters." We have perps, and now stocks, so we're expanding the asset list. And we're doing this on the agent side as well, where agents can express, for example, "I want a code review by Illia."
I have an Illia code review agent on the marketplace that has all my memory and all my skills and can go and review your code. So we're expanding what intents can do, the set of assets, and the types of things you can achieve by declaring outcomes.
Dayana: That's so cool, and I feel like people watching this are going to say, "I've got to find that agent and ask him everything." So, you work together quite a bit. Erica, this one's for you first: what has been your favorite joint venture, project, or event you've worked on together?
Erica: That's a good question. We try to keep work and private life a little separate, that's my intention, but naturally it makes sense for us to work together in some capacity, and he supports everything I do. We launched a dinner series in SF called Attention Is All You Eat, thanks to his contribution to the space, and it's been doing wonders.
We pull in our friends, friends of friends, researchers and founders in AI in SF. I think it's amazing timing. We've done five total since we moved. It's low-key but very well curated, and a very good balance between our networks. That's what sticks with me. But I don't know if you have an opinion.
Illia: Well, I think our first two joint projects are building humans —
Erica: Yeah, and BlackDragon.
Illia: Yeah, we've been investing together as well, and we've been doing the Open Source AI Summit since 2023. That's eleven already, across seven cities or something.
Dayana: Truly a global couple. And Erica, you're one of, if not the most, legendary hostess and curator of events in crypto. That's not just my take, it's everyone's take. Can you reveal the secret to a good event? Is there a special sauce?
Erica: I know AI is taking over everything, and curation will probably get taken over too, but I personally feel it's all about the human touch. My curation of people, like who will go well with whom. I know the people one by one, and that's how I pull everyone in, privately, like secretly. I don't share the link. I choose you. You're the chosen one. And they feel special about it, so they meet other fellow special people, and there's some magic created.
I just came from a brunch I hosted, also private, and the link wasn't disclosed anywhere. I actually got a little angry, because the link got exposed. It ended up on a big spreadsheet somehow, and once it got listed, a ton of people started applying, and I had to disregard them.
Dayana: We're going to find out who did this.
Illia: The magic is cutting people.
Erica: I know I should be community-friendly and open to all, that's my job. But to keep the quality control, I really have to curate everything: the vibes, the people. It's crucial. That's the main secret sauce.
Dayana: And usually people get a turn at one of your events. Give some room to someone else.
Erica: Exactly. All over the world. You'll get your turn.
Dayana: This next question is for both of you. Tell us your favorite fact about each other that people maybe don't know.
Erica: It's not exactly fun, but it's a surprising fact: he loves to watch Netflix. You'd think he's on the computer all the time, and he is, on the laptop, now on agents. But he loves to chill at home and wind down, because his brain is nonstop working. So when he comes home, he wants to watch some Netflix. Right now it's Young Sheldon. We watched Gilmore Girls before. It's very chill.
Dayana: Actually not surprised. Is anyone surprised? It's nerd humor. Okay, Illia, what's your favorite quirky fact about Erica that other people might not know?
Illia: She studied piano with a Russian teacher back in Seattle, and she plays really well. Back in Lisbon, we bought a piano so she could play. During BUIDL Europe, she played at the dinner, which was very nice. So next time there's a piano at an event, we're going to have Erica perform.
Dayana: Send the link, because everyone's going to turn up. Okay, this one is for both of you. Give us your boldest prediction for the future of crypto looking ahead one to two years. It could be anything.
Illia: I don't think there's a lot of boldness left at this point. Crypto is merging with finance. It's becoming back-end infrastructure and rails for the whole thing. We always said blockchain was going to be a back end, the same way everybody once said, "we're going to be a mobile company," and now it's just, yeah, you're going to have a mobile app. It's not strange. Crypto is heading the same way.
The somewhat bold prediction would be AI fundraising, lending, and all of that transitioning to crypto. Right now, that's the driver of the economy, and it's still done very manually, over the counter, calling up your Nvidia friend to get quotes, and so on. Moving that to crypto rails and creating open markets for it is what should happen. It would be pretty great to see that economy landing on the rails it should be on.
Erica: I agree. Crypto isn't new money anymore. It's the old money, and it's replacing the old money. So that's a bold slash natural take, as time progresses, and a very positive outcome that we want to see.
From the community perspective, a bold take: people assume SF is all AI, which it is, but there's a surprisingly good number of crypto founders and people there. So I predict that late next year, crypto SF is coming back. We're going to go full on crypto, and the community is going to get strong.
As an event host in crypto for eight, nine years at this point, I feel like we've been trained to do the hardest jobs: going multinational, time zones don't matter, 24/7, there's no market stop. Right now we're in a bear market, but I feel like people will have job opportunities, no problem, and the capabilities are going to get massive, because we've been trained for years to do things the AI industry is going through now.
Honestly, I see a deja vu when I see what people are doing in SF, in AI companies. It's like it's a novel idea, and I'm like, not so novel, I've seen this before. So I predict we'll see a comeback of some sort.
Dayana: Maybe for you it's novel.
Erica: Yeah, so I'm pretty excited.
Dayana: That's a great take and a very helpful one. Thank you both for being guests on WalletConnect Pulse.
Erica: Thank you.
Illia: Thank you.