Resources / 17 articles
Problems worth solving, and how we would.
Each article takes one real problem in AI or Web3, sets out the evidence, and proposes the architecture we would build. Some come from our own open-source work; all of them cite their sources.
- 01
Found in the field
Problems from Solana and Ethereum documentation and research, security post-mortems, regulator texts, industry discussion and our own repositories.
- 02
Evidence first
Every article cites its sources, dated, so you can check the claim before you trust the proposal.
- 03
A design, not a pitch
Each one ends with an architecture we would build and where to start, whether or not you work with us.
[ 01 ]Artificial Intelligence
Problems in AI, and how we would solve them.
- AI agents3 min read
Why AI agent pilots stall before production
ProblemAgent pilots impress in demos and stall before production because nobody can show they work, limit what they can do, see what they did, or overrule them.ProposalDraw a hard decision boundary: the model scores and drafts, deterministic code decides and acts, every step is logged with its reasoning, and a person can overturn any decision in one click.Read the proposal - AI security3 min read
Prompt injection is an architecture problem
ProblemAny agent that reads untrusted content and can act can be steered by instructions hidden in that content, and no prompt or filter reliably separates data from commands.ProposalAssume injection will happen and limit what it can achieve: keep untrusted content away from privileged decisions, give tools least privilege, put consequential actions behind code-level checks, and break the path to exfiltration.Read the proposal - AI security3 min read
MCP servers are your new supply chain
ProblemAgents trust tool descriptions and outputs from MCP servers they install like packages, so a poisoned description, a compromised server or an over-privileged token can steer or rob them.ProposalPut an MCP gateway between agents and servers: pinned and reviewed tool manifests, per-user scoped tokens, sandboxed local servers, output sanitising, egress allowlists and a full audit log.Read the proposal - Retrieval3 min read
RAG still hallucinates. Grounding takes more than retrieval
ProblemRetrieval-augmented systems still invent facts, cite passages that do not support the claim, miss the decisive document and agree with false premises.ProposalTreat grounding as a pipeline with checks: structure-aware chunking, hybrid retrieval and reranking, citations at passage level that are verified after generation, abstention when evidence is missing, and evaluation of retrieval and answers separately.Read the proposal - Cost3 min read
Your AI bill is a routing problem
ProblemAI applications send every request to a frontier model with a long prompt, so cost and latency grow with usage while most requests never needed that capability.ProposalRoute each request to the cheapest model that passes your evaluation for that kind of request, cache shared prompt prefixes, batch what can wait, and distil a small model for the highest-volume task.Read the proposal - Models3 min read
Fine-tune, retrieve or prompt? A decision guide
ProblemTeams pick fine-tuning, RAG or custom training by reputation rather than by what the problem needs, and spend months on the wrong one.ProposalDecide by what must change: prompts for instructions, retrieval for knowledge that changes or must be cited, fine-tuning for behaviour, format and cost, and custom models only where the task or data is truly unusual; always prove it on an evaluation set.Read the proposal - Governance3 min read
The EU AI Act deadlines moved. Build the evidence trail anyway
ProblemTeams read the AI Act delay as a reprieve, while the evidence the Act requires, from risk management to logging and human oversight, takes longer to build than to document.ProposalGenerate compliance evidence as a by-product of engineering: versioned data and models, evaluation in CI, request-level logs, documented human oversight and incident handling, mapped once to the Act, NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001.Read the proposal - Media integrity3 min read
Proving a photo is real when anyone can edit one
ProblemGenerative editing makes convincing image manipulation cheap, and morphed ID photos can let two people pass as one, while detectors alone lose ground with every new model.ProposalCombine provenance and detection: fingerprint originals at capture or registration, anchor the fingerprint and its owner in a tamper-evident registry, attach Content Credentials, and run region-level tamper detection on anything without provenance.Read the proposal
[ 02 ]Web3 & Blockchain
Problems onchain, and how we would solve them.
- Agent payments4 min read
Agent payments settle on promises. They should settle on proof
Problemx402 and payment channels let agents pay for APIs and compute, but settlement is blind to whether the inference ran, on which model, or how many tokens it really used.ProposalSettle only against two signatures: the agent's spending voucher and a usage receipt signed inside the provider's attested enclave, with payments stopping the moment attestation lapses.Read the proposal - Agent reputation3 min read
Half of agent payment volume is fake. Reputation has to start from money that moved
ProblemAnalysts found that roughly half of x402 transactions were wash trading or self-dealing, and star ratings are cheaper still to fake, so neither can safely gate money.ProposalScore agents on net demand: settled stablecoin payments, with self-dealing and circular flows removed and each dollar weighted by the credibility of the wallet that paid it, published as a verifiable onchain account.Read the proposal - DeFi security3 min read
In 2026, DeFi lost more to keys than to code
ProblemMost stolen value now flows through compromised private keys, thin multisigs, single-verifier bridges and governance powers with no delay, which a code audit does not cover.ProposalAssume a key will be stolen: split and timelock admin powers, rate-limit outflows, delay collateral listings, require several independent verifiers, and wire monitoring that can pause before the treasury empties.Read the proposal - Due diligence3 min read
What can this contract do to your money?
ProblemAnswering whether an owner can mint, freeze, change fees or upgrade means reading dozens of files behind a proxy; scanners give unexplained yes or no flags and chatbots lose the context.ProposalIndex the verified source with Solidity-aware chunking, follow proxies to the real implementation, combine deterministic detectors with hybrid retrieval, and answer only with line-level citations.Read the proposal - Wallet security3 min read
One signature, every asset: the EIP-7702 delegation trap
ProblemA single EIP-7702 authorization routes every future call from an account to delegate code; phishing sites disguise it, and early analysis found most mainnet delegations pointed at copy-pasted sweeper contracts.ProposalTreat delegation as the most dangerous signature a wallet asks for: allowlist audited delegate contracts, show the target in plain language, simulate effects, scope permissions with session keys, and make revocation one tap.Read the proposal - Interoperability3 min read
Fifty chains, one user: building across Ethereum's L2s
ProblemLiquidity and users are scattered across more than fifty L2s, each a silo with its own balances, bridges and trust assumptions, and few have reached full decentralisation.ProposalBuild chain-abstracted apps: smart accounts with unified balances, intent-based transfers filled by solvers (ERC-7683), canonical bridges only for large or slow moves, and every route capped by value at risk.Read the proposal - MEV3 min read
Sandwiched on Solana: protecting swaps from MEV
ProblemSandwich bots front-run and back-run user swaps on Solana through private order flow, and most protection today relies on users choosing a tight slippage setting they do not understand.ProposalProtect at the protocol and app layer: oracle-bounded minimum output, sensible default slippage computed per trade, bundled or private submission, and RFQ or batch execution for size.Read the proposal - Tokenization3 min read
Tokenized is not liquid: closing the RWA secondary-market gap
ProblemMost tokenized real-world assets only move through issuer mint and redemption; secondary trading is thin because transfer rules, slow settlement and missing integrations were never designed for it.ProposalDesign for liquidity from day one: portable onchain identity so approved holders can trade with each other, async redemption standards, an instant-redemption buffer, NAV oracles and pre-approved DeFi integrations.Read the proposal - Stablecoins3 min read
The GENIUS Act turns stablecoin compliance into an engineering problem
ProblemStablecoin issuers and payment platforms face new reserve, disclosure, AML, sanctions and freeze obligations, while most stablecoin stacks were built for speed with compliance added by hand.ProposalCompliance by architecture: role-separated freeze and burn powers with audit trails, screening at every edge, travel-rule data in the payment flow, reserve data published on a schedule, and reconciliation that closes daily.Read the proposal
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