This week, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov appeared on Bloomberg Crypto with hosts Kailey Leinz and Matt Miller to discuss prominent web3 topics including blockchain technology’s potential to fortify global finance against the misuse or misalignment of AI.
Nazarov explained how blockchain’s fundamental security feature – decentralization – is resistant to all adversaries, including AI, because it exponentially increases the points of failure needed to breach an entire system.
Alongside society’s growing distrust in AI, Nazarov believes ongoing crises of faith in traditional finance will expedite the adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) as an alternative financial system that can better withstand the threat of adversarial AI as well as problems like data manipulation and overleveraging that have long plagued traditional finance.
As the web3 industry’s leading decentralized oracle network, Chainlink has facilitated more than $7 trillion in transaction value and powers the vast majority of DeFi by providing critical real-world financial data and essential services such as Proof of Reserve, which creates a new standard of transparency for financial products and institutions.
On Bloomberg, Nazarov explained Chainlink’s goal to build all of the infrastructure needed to power decentralized financial products and applications that combine the full utility of traditional finance with the advantages of cryptographically guaranteed terms and transparency.
He distilled the difference between traditional finance and decentralized finance as the difference between trust in brands and trust in cryptography.
“I think the world right now is run by a number of brands,” he said. “The U.S. dollar is one of those brands, various banks are brands, insurance companies are brands. And those brands make promises which are only backed by the decisions of people. And, in many cases, those decisions will not result in what the consumer believes they will result in.”
He said that, if given the choice, most if not all people would put their trust in cryptography.
“I think, at the end of the day, we’ll arrive at a world where everything is cryptographically guaranteed including currencies, banks, insurance companies – everything. Because if you ask a person where they want to put their faith – in another person who can control the outcome of their financial life or if they would rather put their faith in a system that can’t deviate and can only act in very specific ways – then I think that second option is the far superior option.”
Watch Sergey Nazarov’s full interview on Bloomberg Crypto.