Interview with Kava Co-Founder Scott: 'Usability' is the Only Truth of an AI Public Chain

As Bitcoin returned to $100,000, the concept token of AI saw a 24-hour market cap increase of 14.22%, also strongly breaking through the $10 billion mark. The DeAI track's heat continues to rise, becoming the market's core focus. Against this backdrop, BlockBeats recently interviewed Scott Stuart, co-founder of the L1 public chain Kava, which focuses on Crypto+AI construction.

Scott analyzed the logic behind Kava's strategic shift, the technical system and core advantages of DeAI, and innovation practices in key areas such as security and architectural coordination. With his profound background in mathematics, economics, and technology, combined with the strategic thinking accumulated during his years as a professional poker player, Scott vividly outlined how Kava evolved from a DeFi pioneer to an explorer and leader in the DeAI track.

Facing the pain points of high user thresholds and complex operations in the DeFi field, Kava keenly captured the enormous potential of AI technology. By seamlessly integrating AI into blockchain operations, Kava aims to significantly simplify the way users interact with decentralized networks, automate complex blockchain operations, and truly lower the entry barrier for DeFi, benefiting a wider range of users.

Empowering DeFi with AI, Kava is committed to building a more inclusive, efficient, and secure decentralized digital economy future. This interview will take you deep into Kava's strategic layout in the DeAI field, technological innovation, and future vision, giving you a glimpse of how this former DeFi powerhouse is riding the waves in a new track, creating a new paradigm of DeFi and AI integration development.

From DeFi to DeAI: Kava's Strategic Shift

BlockBeats: Please briefly introduce your background. What led you to enter the crypto industry and establish Kava?

Scott: My journey began with studying mathematics and economics, followed by years working as a professional poker player, during which strategic thinking, probability assessment, and rapid decision-making skills were crucial. After leaving my poker career, I founded AppEase, gaining valuable experience in expanding technology-driven ventures.

Around 2016, my interest in blockchain grew, attracted by its potential in empowering decentralized finance. We recognized the transformative power of Ethereum and Cosmos, so in 2017, we founded Kava Labs, dedicated to democratizing financial services to achieve transparency, fairness, and global accessibility.

BlockBeats: Kava was originally positioned as a DeFi platform. Why did you decide to shift your core strategy to decentralized AI? Could you introduce the overall architecture of Kava and key milestones?

Scott: We evolved from initially focusing on DeFi to centering on decentralized AI to address the complexity of DeFi, a common deterrent for mainstream users.

Introducing AI was a natural progression, as it automates complex blockchain operations, significantly streamlining user interactions. Today, Kava's architecture has seamlessly integrated a decentralized AI system into blockchain operations. Recent significant developments include the launch of a decentralized AI model based on DeepSeek R1, rapidly achieving over 100,000 independent user interactions, demonstrating a strong market demand for an intuitive, decentralized AI solution.

Kava AI Technical Framework and Core Advantages

BlockBeats: In February of this year, Kava launched a native decentralized AI model powered by DeepSeek R1, surpassing OpenAI and DeepSeek itself in Web3 benchmarks. What core capabilities does this model possess? What is the strategic significance of its release for Kava?

Scott: Kava AI strategically leverages various powerful AI architectures like Llama and Qwen, optimized for the DeFi landscape. Our AI can perform a range of blockchain-specific operations, including wallet interactions, cross-chain compatibility, smart contract invocations, and executing DeFi transactions via natural language. Its outstanding performance in various benchmarks validates its reliability and efficiency in the decentralized finance sector, establishing Kava as an innovative leader in practical, executable AI blockchain solutions.

BlockBeats: Many AI projects claiming to be “decentralized” still rely on centralized APIs and private models. In terms of architecture, what do you believe is the fundamental difference between Kava and these projects?

Scott: Unlike many AI solutions that rely on centralized APIs or proprietary models, Kava adheres to a true decentralized philosophy by running AI inference tasks on decentralized infrastructure networks like Akash.

Our platform combines open-source application layer transparency with flexible model integration capabilities—whether open-source or proprietary models—to ensure the system's performance and reliability. Additionally, Kava drives platform development and decision-making through a community governance mechanism.

BlockBeats: As the first decentralized intelligent system that can understand natural language and directly execute on-chain operations, how does Oros play a key role in Kava's AI infrastructure? How does it break through the limitations of traditional AI assistants or DeFi interfaces in terms of automation and execution?

Scott: Oros is a core component of our effort to create an intuitive blockchain interaction experience. It can understand natural language commands and directly execute on-chain transactions. By automating complex processes such as token swaps, staking, and yield strategies, Oros significantly lowers the barrier to entry for traditional DeFi interfaces, providing users with a more seamless and user-friendly operational experience.

BlockBeats: As an ecosystem that has always focused on DeFi, Kava has used AI to lower the barrier for ordinary people to participate in DeFi. Is this the ideal direction for the development of DeFi and AI?

Scott: Integrating AI into DeFi not only simplifies user interaction processes but also makes financial strategies that were previously only mastered by experts accessible to everyone. This integration promotes financial inclusion, reduces entry barriers, and enables ordinary users to easily participate. This aligns well with the core values of decentralized finance, which seeks fairness and openness, and it points to a highly promising direction for future AI-driven DeFi solutions.

Kava's Security, Architecture, and Collaboration

BlockBeats: Fund security has always been the bottom line in the DeFi field. How does Kava's decentralized AI model ensure the security and traceability of user assets during transaction execution?

Scott: Security and transparency are the cornerstones of Kava AI. All transactions executed by AI are completed on-chain, achieving full traceability and auditability to ensure the trustworthiness of operations. Our decentralized infrastructure ensures the robustness of the system, while community governance through Kava DAO ensures that all system updates are transparent, auditable, and secure, building a trustworthy environment for users.

BlockBeats: Is AI reliable for key management?

Scott: We always adhere to strict security standards and will never let the AI system directly control users' private keys. Instead, we adopt a secure and decentralized custody approach to ensure that users always have full control over their private keys, with AI serving only as an auxiliary tool for transaction execution and decision-making.

BlockBeats: Besides the AI model itself, how is the "high-performance computing network" that Kava AI relies on built? How does it collaborate with Layer1 public chains like Ethereum?

Scott: Kava AI leverages a globally distributed node network to build a decentralized high-performance computing infrastructure, enhancing the system's scalability and redundancy. This infrastructure can seamlessly integrate with Ethereum and other Layer1 blockchains, ensuring that blockchain AI tasks achieve optimal performance in terms of cross-chain interoperability and execution efficiency.

The Future of Kava

BlockBeats: You have pointed out that many AI projects have taken a meme-like path towards NFTs, while Kava emphasizes pragmatism and structural innovation. In your view, what is the "core value" of decentralized AI?

Scott: The core value proposition of decentralized AI lies in transparency, user empowerment, and community governance. Unlike those operating in closed, privately controlled centralized AI systems, decentralized AI achieves verifiable operations, auditable governance mechanisms, and user-driven ongoing evolution. This is highly aligned with the principles advocated by blockchain, establishing a mode of AI that prioritizes serving user interests rather than corporate or centralized interests.

BlockBeats: Next, what are the notable new moves or expansion plans for Kava AI?

Scott: Our future plans include further advancing our AI-based blockchain execution layer, enhancing the AI Launchpad for a more intuitive user experience, and expanding cross-chain integrations with major blockchain ecosystems. Additionally, we will innovate in fully decentralized AI model training to promote transparency, system robustness, and community collaboration.

BlockBeats: Where do you hope Kava will be in ten years? What do you most want to see accomplished?

Scott: In ten years, I hope Kava will become a cornerstone of global infrastructure, empowering billions of people to seamlessly interact with decentralized services. My vision is for Kava to be the backbone of an inclusive and transparent digital economy, reshaping global financial interactions through an intuitive, user-friendly, AI-driven approach, advancing decentralized finance and service adoption, fostering innovation, and ensuring extensive decentralized governance.