238: The AI-Agent Economy: Matt Wright from Gaia on Open-Source Intelligence

In this episode, recorded live from New York during the Digital Asset Summit, Sam sits down with Matt Wright — founder of Gaia and partner at EVM Capital. Matt has been building at the frontier of developer ecosystems, decentralized tech, and now AI agents. He walks us through his journey from organizing global hackathons to JP Morgan and ConsenSys, and finally to Gaia — a decentralized inference network for AI agents. We discuss how AI agents are about to become the dominant users of the internet, why the current stack is overly reliant on centralized providers like OpenAI, and how Gaia empowers developers to run their own sovereign LLMs with zero data leakage. Matt also breaks down Gaia’s unique domain system, monetizing knowledge bases, and how Web3 primitives (like tokens, wallets, and identity) make agent coordination actually work. If you're curious about the intersection of AI and blockchain, and what the future of work might look like in an agent-native world, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. Key Timestamps [00:00:00] Introduction: Sam introduces the episode, live from New York at the Digital Asset Summit, featuring Matt Wright from Gaia. [00:01:00] Matt’s Background: From AngelHack to JP Morgan to ConsenSys, Matt shares how his journey led to building Gaia. [00:02:00] Developer Culture: Matt contrasts how developers in Asia and the West ship products—and how Gaia merges both. [00:05:00] Enter Gaia: The idea behind Gaia, born at the intersection of decentralized AI and blockchain. [00:08:00] AI Agents: Why the future of apps is agentic, and what most people don’t yet understand about AI agents [00:11:00] Gaia Nodes: How Gaia enables anyone to own, host, and serve AI models without relying on centralized APIs. [00:14:00] Enterprise Data: Why 80% of the world’s useful data lives off-chain—and how Gaia helps unlock it. [00:17:00] Current Use Cases: Matt shares examples from DeFi, Fitch Ratings, and other niche knowledge bases powered by Gaia. [00:20:00] Monetizing Knowledge: Gaia’s domain system and how developers can turn knowledge into APIs for agents to query. [00:22:00] Challenges with Agents: The three major problems—hallucination, agentic complexity, and trust—and how Web3 solves them. [00:25:00] Web3 + AI Synergy: Why reputation, wallets, and governance unlock a new kind of agent-native internet. [00:28:00] Future of Agents: Speculating on where agent economies are heading—citizenship, sovereignty, and governance. [00:31:00] Day 1 of the AI Internet: Why agents will dominate the internet before they ever walk like humans. [00:34:00] Gaia’s Ask: Gaia is live and open-source. Matt shares how developers can deploy nodes, build on top, and collaborate. [00:36:00] Wrap-Up: Sam closes the conversation and shares where listeners can connect and get involved with Gaia. Connect https://www.gaianet.ai/ https://x.com/Gaianet_AI https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewdavidwright/ https://x.com/mateo_ventures Disclaimer Nothing mentioned in this podcast is investment advice and please do your own research. Finally, it would mean a lot if you can leave a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this podcast with a friend. Be a guest on the podcast or contact us - https://www.web3pod.xyz/