The Cosmos ecosystem seems to have been quiet again since Celestia. The new chain Berachain has not yet been launched, and old projects such as bad kids are receiving less and less attention. In this slightly low-key period, the announcement of Kava AI is just in time.
As the mainnet continues to upgrade, Kava is also actively laying out the industry's latest narrative. At the just-concluded Token2049 conference, Kava announced Kava AI and launched its first AI chatbot.
In this regard, BlockBeats talked with Scott Stuart, co-founder of Kava Labs, who also shared his views on AI + Crypto, as well as new ideas for combining native USDT with WBTC and AI on Kava.
Kava Current Status
BlockBeats: Kava is already a very familiar public chain in the market. Can you briefly summarize Kavaâs main progress this year?
Scott Stuart: KAVA launched Kava AI on Token2049. Kava AI is a decentralized AI developed based on the Kava network, driving the cross-chain AI market.
Kava AI unlocks the industryâs best AI tools for the existing massive DeFi ecosystem, and this ecosystem is connected to all mainstream EVMs, Cosmos ecosystem projects, native USDT, WBTC, Binance, etc.
Many emerging AI projects face the cold start problem because they donât have an existing ecosystem. Kava has been building an ecosystem for over 5 years and has established connections with every major network and centralized player. Kava can leverage this ecosystem and its connections to quickly promote and use its AI technology throughout the ecosystem.
The first product we launched at Token 2049 was an AI chatbot that made it very simple for users to launch meme coins on Kava.
BlockBeats: Kava has now upgraded to the Kava 16 mainnet. Can you tell us what major upgrades Kava 16 has made compared to the previous ones?
Scott Stuart: All current major features are designed to expand the capabilities of Kava AI and integrate USDT exclusive cooperation. Kava will attract more users to join the network by investing in innovative technologies such as AI and BTC staking. USDT is an important cooperation that will drive more Kava adoption and increase the liquidity of native tokens on Kava (such as USDT and WBTC), and cooperate with Binance, Coinbase, Fireblocks and Bitgo to export to the Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems.
Advantages of Kava AI
BlockBeats: Some time ago, Coinbase CEO announced that the first "AI to AI" Crypto transaction was completed on the Base network. This event has attracted a lot of attention and is regarded as the beginning of the Agent Economy era. What do you think will be the future development of the combination of Crypto and AI?
Scott Stuart: Kava believes in the future of AI and has made a huge bet on this track. Unlike many "pure" AI crypto projects, Kava has an existing user base that will grow as AI tools develop. Kava is investing significant resources to build the best decentralized AI to benefit the crypto community.
There will be more big announcements coming soon regarding Kava AI.
BlockBeats: What is the original intention of Kava AI? What role do you hope it will play in the Kava ecosystem?
Scott Stuart: Kava AI will inject strong momentum into the existing DeFi ecosystem on Kava and drive rapid growth. Kava AI has just been released on Token 2049, but it has already attracted a large number of users to deploy meme coins. AI is the future and will cover every industry. Kava is actively planning to become the most widely used decentralized AI.
Crucially, Kava already has massive partnerships with all major crypto projects and has a thriving DeFi ecosystem. Thatâs why weâre seeing significant immediate adoption of Kava AI, as developers and users can use Kava AI today, with the potential to attract even more users in the future. We will also work closely with Tether to promote Kava AI to attract more USDT users and liquidity into Kava.
BlockBeats: Kava AI supports advanced reasoning, code generation, language processing and other functions across models. What are the biggest technical challenges you encountered in implementing these functions? How did you overcome them?
Scott Stuart: We have 7 years of industry experience in building more secure blockchain features and have considerable funds for research and development. It takes a lot of time, energy and talent to launch new innovative features. After years of hard work and accumulation, Kava is ready to bring these new products to market. Later, we will have a brand upgrade and will announce it together with Binance, hoping to promote these new AI features to a wider user base.
BlockBeats: Compared with other similar decentralized chatbots, what are the unique advantages and innovations of Kava AI?
Scott Stuart: The biggest advantage is the existing DeFi ecosystem. Unlike many projects that have no users or only provide third-party services, Kava AI is directly integrated into the Kava DeFi ecosystem. Users can directly access chat.kava.io to deploy meme coins and other projects on Kava. More tools will be launched in the future to make it easier for developers and users to participate in Kava's Web3 ecosystem.
Kava Lend 2.0 Upgrade
BlockBeats: The new version of Kava Lend 2.0 supports EVM compatibility and RWA asset lending, etc. What market demands and business considerations are the basis for the introduction of these new features?
Scott Stuart: Kava Lend is the most popular lending market in the Cosmos ecosystem. Kava is bringing years of security and usage experience to the EVM stage, and working with Tether and Bitgo to provide secure and liquid native assets (such as USDT and WBTC) directly to users, bringing real benefits. This is an important milestone for the HARD community.
BlockBeats: What are your expectations and goals for the future development of Kava Lend 2.0? For example, in terms of market share, number of users, etc.
Scott Stuart: Native assets with real-world yields like USDT and WBTC are the future of online lending and can continue to bring traffic. Tether chose Kava to import USDT into the Cosmos ecosystem. Bitgo chose Kava to import WBTC into Cosmos. Kava Lend benefits from this exclusive partnership, and Kava is one of the three blockchains with both native USDT and WBTC.
Moreover, Kavaâs cooperation with Binance makes Kava one of the only two chains with native USDT and WBTC on the Binance platform. This will have a huge impact in the upcoming Kava Lend V2.
Track future
BlockBeats: Ethereum has been criticized a lot recently, mainly because of the weakening of ETH's value capture ability. Coupled with the strength of SOL, people have more ideas about the future of public chains. How do you view the current competitive landscape of the public chain market? How does Kava stand out from the competition?
Scott Stuart: The market wants to see significant progress, and small improvements are far from enough. Therefore, Kava is investing heavily in AI and BTC staking. Kava is working closely with Tether and Binance to plan a major upgrade by the end of the year to increase usage of Kava AI products and drive Layer1 growth. There is still plenty of room for good teams to extract value from Ethereum and grow their share of the crypto market overall.
BlockBeats: Will the DeFi ecosystem have a second spring? Currently, it seems that only RWA can support the expectations of DeFi projects. What do you think the future development direction of DeFi should be?
Scott Stuart: Cryptocurrencies need to continue to innovate to drive new uses, and right now use cases like AI and USDT are the main drivers for users, and Kava is going all out in these areas.
