Exponential: A Nexus Podcast

In episode 13 of Exponential, Nexus founder and CEO Daniel Marin outlines near-term roadmap and long-term ambitions. With Testnet III reaching more than three million participants, Nexus is preparing for its most significant milestone yet: mainnet launch in Q1 2026.

Itai Turbahn, co-founder and CEO of Dynamic, shares his vision for a future where crypto seamlessly integrates into everyday apps. He discusses how Dynamic's wallet infrastructure aims to eliminate crypto's complexity for users, making it as simple as logging into any app. Itai predicts that the next billion users will adopt crypto without even realizing it. He also emphasizes the importance of adaptability in supporting diverse applications, from games to fintech, and forecasts that half of all mobile apps will have embedded wallets within five years.

In a digital world saturated with manipulated media and synthetic imagery, trust is no longer a given. Photojournalist David Butow has spent his career documenting real events — from the war in Iraq to protests in Washington — and he’s now at the forefront of a growing movement: making digital images verifiable at the source.In episode 11 of Exponential, we explore the promise and friction of C2PA, an emerging standard for content provenance that embeds cryptographic proof directly into digital files.

Dennis Yap, founder and CEO of AI Seer, and Shahruj Rashid, CTO, dive deep into the critical fight against misinformation. They share the motivation behind AI Seer, highlighting personal experiences with deception. Discover how their tool, Facticity, breaks down claims using trusted sources. They also discuss innovative uses in the crypto space and introduce an interactive Twitter bot for fact-checking. Plus, learn about their vision for integrating fact-checking directly into browsers to combat misinformation at its source.

In Episode 9 of Exponential, Jim Nasr, CEO of Acoer, joins us to tackle one of the most broken but vital systems in modern life: healthcare data. His story starts where many do — with a personal experience that revealed just how fragmented and opaque medical data really is. But unlike most, he decided to build something better.Acoer is a software company rethinking health infrastructure from the ground up, using cryptography, blockchain, and user-centric design to make data more connected, more trustworthy, and more usable.Find out more about this episode at blog.nexus.xyz

Zack Seward and Joon Ian Wong, co-founders of Use Case, dive deep into the world of crypto journalism through their unique print magazine. They discuss why a physical publication is essential, emphasizing the importance of documenting real-world crypto applications. The duo explores evolving narratives from meme coins to stablecoins, touching on the complexities of institutional adoption and privacy concerns. They share insights on emerging trends in the industry and the magazine's vision to provide thoughtful, credible reporting in a fast-paced digital landscape.

Grigore Roșu, a professor and computer scientist, dives into the future of web3 with insights from his work at Pi Squared. He argues that traditional blockchains are just the beginning. Roșu discusses the revolutionary FastSet protocol for decentralized applications and the importance of formal verification for scalability. He envisions a system where transaction validation is flexible and transparent, unlocking new possibilities in digital trust. With a focus on zero-knowledge proofs, he sheds light on how these innovations could reshape our interaction with technology.

In Episode 6 of Exponential, Dylan Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Pond, joins us to unpack a fast-emerging frontier: helping early-stage AI startups launch, scale, and find product-market fit through a new kind of internet-native capital platform.At a time when AI tooling is accelerating and the barriers to launching new products are dropping, Pond is building infrastructure for what comes next — connecting early-stage founders with capital, distribution, and feedback loops in real time.“Pond is an early-stage AI startup marketplace,” Dylan explained. “We help AI projects scale and get funded. Everything else—DevOps, infra, go-to-market—follows from that.”

As the Web3 space matures, projects are rethinking how to grow and sustain communities. In Episode 5 of Exponential, Zach Heerwagen, co-founder and CEO of Snag, joined us to explore how “questing” is emerging as a powerful mechanism for aligning users, incentives, and long-term network health.Zach defines questing as Web3’s take on loyalty. In traditional business models, loyalty is mostly transactional — based on how much a customer spends. In contrast, Web3 broadens the definition of meaningful engagement.“Questing is really Web3’s term for loyalty,” Zach explained. “There are three core contribution types: financial, social, and time-based.” That means rewards can be tied not just to token purchases or NFT mints, but also to social engagement or participation in network activities like compute contribution — something Nexus is actively building toward.

In the fourth episode of Exponential, Samuel Judson — head of zkVM engineering at Nexus — joins the show to unpack the science, strategy, and systems thinking behind zero-knowledge cryptography. Sam brings a rare combination of perspectives: part mathematician, part systems engineer, and deeply attuned to the social and regulatory dimensions of cryptographic technology. This primer-style episode traces the evolution of zero-knowledge proofs, the motivation for building the Nexus zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM), and why ZK is becoming foundational to how trust is engineered into software systems.