How did you get started in crypto and eventually arrive at GenLayer?
I met Albert Castellana, now CEO of GenLayer Labs, at university in 2016. He was already working in crypto with Jordi Baylina, who’s now CTO at Polygon. I remember Jordi explaining how he helped recover funds from The DAO hack, and it was like listening to another language at the time.
I bought my first Bitcoin that year, started going to hackathons, and even built a supply chain tracker on Ethereum. Later, I founded GoIn, which grew to become Spain’s biggest fintech by user base.
I stayed involved in crypto as an investor, but it wasn’t until last year, when I moved from CEO to president of GoIn and reconnected with Albert, that be began building the GenLayer Foundation.
What was the founding vision behind GenLayer, and how would you explain it to someone new to crypto?
GenLayer is building what we call a “court of the internet” — a synthetic jurisdiction for resolving disputes.
Now, imagine adding autonomous AI agents into the mix. ARK Invest estimates AI agent commerce will be a $9 trillion market by 2030. But when two AI agents disagree, who settles it?
You can’t wait 430 days or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Even today, small disputes aren’t worth litigating. GenLayer is building a fast, unbiased, and low-cost dispute resolution protocol that can scale with the internet.
How does that work in practice? Is it all handled by AI?
Correct. GenLayer runs an AI-powered jury system. Each case triggers the random selection of five nodes, each powered by a large language model.
One node acts as the director and proposes a resolution, and the others vote on it. If there’s consensus, it finalises. If not, there’s a 30-minute window for challenges.
This process repeats until a consensus is reached. Slashing and other incentives ensure nodes act honestly and don’t just guess or act lazily.
Is slashing live yet?
Not yet, we’re in private testnet now. Public testnet and slashing will go live in Q4.
Where does Heurist fit into the system?
Node operators can choose their own language models, like OpenAI, private models, or decentralised models like Heurist. This flexibility allows us to adapt to different use cases and contexts.
For example, if you’re resolving a prediction market, like who won an election, five nodes are selected, one proposes an answer, and the others verify it.
Disputes can come from humans or AI agents. It’s far more dynamic than static models.
What are “intelligent contracts” and how do they differ from smart contracts?
Smart contracts are deterministic — they follow strict rules but can’t handle nuance or subjectivity.
Real-world contracts often include terms like “good faith” and “reasonable timeframe,” which smart contracts can’t interpret.
Intelligent contracts can. They use natural language, rely on AI for interpretation, and reach consensus via our jury mechanism.
Our consensus mechanism ensures that even if some LLMs fail, the majority decision remains reliable.
How is GenLayer Labs involved?
GenLayer Labs — formerly YeagerAI — handles the R&D and engineering side. The Foundation, where I work, is based in the Cayman Islands and focuses on launching the protocol and managing the token.
GenLayer Labs is based in the US and has a team of over 20 engineers from places like the Ethereum Foundation and Polygon.
Why build your own chain?
What we’re doing requires custom infrastructure. We’re not a fork. While we use zkSync for sequencing, our chain has its own consensus model, VM, nodes, and jury mechanism.
You simply can’t build something like this on existing layer 1 networks.
You recently launched GenLayer Studio. What’s new there?
Studio is a big step forward for developers. It allows them to spin up intelligent oracles using natural language prompts.
Just describe your use case and preferences, and the system generates the code. What used to take days or weeks can now be done in minutes.
What value does GenLayer offer DAOs and protocols?
Our coordination layer enables truly autonomous decision-making. DAOs and other protocols can build on Ethereum or Solana, but they call GenLayer for subjective resolutions.
We don’t focus on total value locked. Our north star metric is GDP: the total value of decisions made via GenLayer.
What about the token?
The token is used for gas, voting, and participating in juries. Our chain uses Delegated Proof-of-Stake.
Nodes earn rewards for accurate decisions and are penalised for incorrect ones. The token and mainnet launch at the same time.
You’ve said GenLayer Foundation wants to “disappear” within five years. Why?
The whole point of the foundation is to decentralise the system. In five years, GenLayer should run on its own, governed by the community and maintained by its users.
The ultimate goal is to replace emotionally biased human decision-making with impartial AI coordination.
What are your biggest goals for the next 12 months?
Launching the mainnet is our top priority. We’re also focused on testing and hardening the system, especially our consensus mechanism and slashing.
We’re running grey-boxing tests, exploring node obfuscation, and inviting attackers to help us stress-test the network.
Outside of GenLayer and AI, what excites you most in crypto right now?
Real-world assets. BlackRock predicts $17 trillion in assets will be tokenised by 2034. Combine that with fast, automated dispute resolution, and you unlock huge value.
Suddenly, small-scale litigation becomes viable again.