Decentralization taught me to dream about economic empowerment. AI has forced me to rethink what empowerment means in a world where creation itself can be automated. This is the story of how both technologies reshaped my perspective on building a better future.
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August 18, 2025 at 7:33 PM
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In late 2021, Solana was gaining popularity. After completing one of my first transactions, my inner nerd and limitless optimism lit up. Here is a blockchain that is actually capable of delivering on the promises of decentralization, I thought. Solana felt fast enough, cheap enough, and accessible enough to truly democratize tech—not just for the privileged.
What I saw in blockchain tech is what I still see today: the power to completely revolutionize how we value assets in the physical and digital world. I imagined a Congolese miner being able to see the real market value of the resources he’s selling and transact closer to market rate. I imagined media creators finally earning directly from the virality of their content.
So I did what any passionate engineer does: I got my hands dirty. I built an NFT project with Metaplex, joined Genie.xyz (later acquired by Uniswap), and learned what I could. But I also found disappointment: too many folks chasing quick money, not enough actually building toward that utopian promise.
When I returned to Peloton in 2022 and later moved on to Opto and then Datadog, I kept circling back to the same personal project: this blog. It was supposed to be my playground, but my ego overcomplicated it—Next.js, wallet integration, editor, fancy architecture. Between the demands of full-time roles and my own perfectionism, it sat half-finished.
And then AI entered the picture.
At Opto, I started experimenting with Cursor AI to help me code. At first it felt like cheating—Cursor could finish functions in minutes that might’ve taken me hours. It was exhilarating and unsettling all at once. Later, at Datadog, we were encouraged to lean into AI-assisted development. By that time I already knew the benefits firsthand, so the move struck me as smart and inevitable.
What surprised me wasn’t just that AI could autocomplete code—it was how fast it was improving. “Vibe coding” is actually real now: describing what you want in plain English and watching production-grade software take shape. Tools like Cursor and Claude didn’t just help me finish this blog; they forced me to rethink how software development itself fits into the bigger picture of economic empowerment.
Because here’s the truth: if decentralization promised to distribute ownership, AI promises to distribute creation. The barriers to building are collapsing.
But with that power comes real risk. AI is only as good as the driver behind it. You still need experts—or at least people with enough baseline knowledge—to make the right calls.
We’ve already seen what happens when that’s missing: the Tea app, which went viral overnight, ended up exposing sensitive user data because it wasn’t properly secured. That wasn’t AI’s fault—it was a lack of engineering fundamentals.
That’s what worries me about the next generation of builders. Kids now might never gain subject-matter expertise the way I had to—debugging code line by line, learning frameworks like Next.js or Tailwind the hard way. If AI fills in all the gaps, where will they get the experience to know when the tool is wrong?
AI can be the best teacher if used deliberately, but it can also become a shortcut that robs people of the very foundation they need to grow.
Even with those pitfalls, I can’t shake my optimism. Because for every shortcut that robs, there’s also an opportunity that unlocks. The fact that I finally launched this blog—with the help of Cursor and Claude—proves that these tools can transform ideas into reality faster than ever.
Decentralization taught me to dream about economic empowerment. AI has forced me to rethink what empowerment means in a world where creation itself can be automated.
One thing is clear: we’re entering an era for the builders. The tools are powerful, the barriers are low, and the potential is massive. The question is: will we use them to chase quick wins, or to build the systems that actually change the world?