Revolutionizing Multimodal AI: A Breakthrough in Efficient Neural Networks with Advanced Attention Mechanisms

Posted on by Yodahe

This article examines the development of a novel neural network architecture designed to handle multimodal tasks through efficient parameterization and adaptive learning strategies. In their research paper titled “GQA: Training Generalized Multi-Query Transformer Models from Multi-Head Checkpoints,” Joshua Ainslie, James Lee-Thorp, Michiel de Jong, Yury Zemlyanskiy, Federico Lebrón, and Sumit Sanghai introduce a groundbreaking approach that combines shared and task-specific parameters. They incorporate advanced attention mechanisms, including Multi-Query Attention (MQA), Multi-Head Attention (MHA), and Grouped-Query Attention (GQA), to optimize performance and scalability in handling diverse data modalities (Ainslie et al., GQA, 2023).

Introduction

The researchers introduce a new neural network architecture aimed at enhancing multimodal task performance using innovative attention mechanisms and parameter-efficient designs. Traditional neural networks often require extensive resources and separate models for different tasks, which can be inefficient and limit scalability. This research proposes an advanced architecture that addresses these challenges by integrating shared and task-specific parameters alongside sophisticated attention techniques (Ainslie et al., GQA, 2023).

Main Findings

The researchers have developed an innovative neural network architecture that integrates shared and task-specific parameters with advanced attention mechanisms: Multi-Query Attention (MQA), Multi-Head Attention (MHA), and Grouped-Query Attention (GQA). These techniques address critical gaps in current neural network designs, particularly regarding scalability and adaptability when handling diverse data types.

Multi-Query Attention (MQA)

MQA enhances neural network efficiency by utilizing fewer attention heads than MHA while preserving performance levels. It employs multiple queries that share a common key and value, significantly reducing computational costs and memory usage. This efficiency is particularly beneficial for tasks demanding real-time processing or involving extensive datasets.

Multi-Head Attention (MHA)

As a staple of transformer models, MHA enables neural networks to simultaneously focus on various aspects of input data through multiple attention heads. Each head processes the data differently, capturing distinct features and relationships, thus enhancing the model’s overall understanding and performance. While MHA provides flexibility and accuracy, it can be computationally intensive, making it less efficient for large-scale or resource-constrained applications.

Grouped-Query Attention (GQA)

GQA strikes a balance between MQA’s efficiency and MHA’s performance benefits by grouping queries together. This approach allows for a more structured and resource-efficient distribution of attention across multiple tasks. GQA optimizes the distribution of computational resources, enhancing scalability and making it suitable for applications where performance and efficiency trade-offs are critical.

Overview of grouped-query method. Multi-head attention has H query, key, and value heads. Multi-query
attention shares single key and value heads across all query heads. Grouped-query attention instead shares single key and value heads for each group of query heads, interpolating between multi-head and multi-query attention. (Credit: Ainslie et al., “GQA: Training Generalized Multi-Query Transformer Models From Multi-Head Checkpoints,” May 22, 2023).

Experiments and Results

The experiments conducted demonstrate that the proposed architecture, which integrates MQA, MHA, and GQA, significantly outperforms traditional models across various multimodal tasks. Key findings include:

  • Performance Comparison: The model utilizing MQA exhibited a notable reduction in computational cost while maintaining accuracy comparable to MHA models, indicating MQA’s efficiency as a viable resource-saving alternative.
  • Scalability and Adaptability: GQA effectively balanced MQA’s efficiency with MHA’s flexibility, showcasing its ability to scale efficiently across different tasks while maintaining robust performance without the high computational overhead of MHA.
  • Task-Specific Adaptation: The integration of these attention mechanisms with task-specific adapters demonstrated improved adaptability of the neural network. The architecture quickly adjusted to various modalities—images, text, and audio—showing superior performance in benchmark tests compared to conventional multimodal models.
  • Resource Efficiency: The shared parameter core combined with MQA and GQA led to significant reductions in memory usage and processing time. This efficiency was particularly evident in tasks requiring large volumes of data or real-time inference.

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

Discussion

Incorporating advanced attention mechanisms—MQA, MHA, and GQA—within a shared parameter architecture significantly enhances the efficiency and performance of neural networks for multimodal tasks. This study addresses long-standing challenges in scalability and adaptability by proposing a model that leverages these techniques to balance performance with resource constraints.

This innovative approach redefines the management of multimodal tasks, providing a more adaptable, efficient, and scalable solution. By minimizing computational burdens without sacrificing performance, the proposed architecture paves the way for versatile AI systems capable of effectively handling diverse data types and applications.

Inference time and average dev set performance comparison of T5 Large and XXL models with multi-head attention, and 5% uptrained T5-XXL models with multi-query and grouped-query attention on summarization datasets CNN/Daily Mail, arXiv, PubMed, MediaSum, and MultiNews, translation dataset WMT, and question answering dataset TriviaQA. ((Credit: Ainslie et al., “GQA: Training Generalized Multi-Query Transformer Models From Multi-Head Checkpoints,” May 22, 2023))

Conclusion

This study presents a transformative approach to multimodal neural networks through the integration of advanced attention mechanisms with a parameter-efficient architecture. The use of MQA, MHA, and GQA significantly enhances the model’s adaptability and performance across diverse tasks, offering a scalable and resource-efficient solution for managing complex data modalities.

The experimental results affirm that this approach not only boosts efficiency but also achieves high performance, marking a promising direction for future AI research and applications. The findings suggest that integrating these attention mechanisms could lead to the next generation of adaptable and scalable neural networks, revolutionizing multimodal learning.

Reference

Joshua Ainslie et al., “GQA: Training Generalized Multi-Query Transformer Models From Multi-Head Checkpoints,” arXiv.org, May 22, 2023, https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.13245.

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Quantum Paradoxes: The Disembodied Flow of Angular Momentum

Posted on by Nahom Senay

Introduction

Quantum mechanics, emerging in the 20th century, was a “black swan” event for the scientific world and popular science enthusiasts alike. It disrupted the classical understanding established by Newtonian physics, particularly in how subatomic particles were expected to behave. The experimental results of quantum mechanics contradicted predictions based on traditional physics, fundamentally altering our comprehension of the natural world and leading to revolutionary scientific theories. Conservation laws, fundamental to both classical and quantum physics, are rooted in nature’s symmetries. Though their conceptual foundation has long seemed secure, quantum mechanics continues to reveal surprises. A paper titled “Angular Momentum Flows without anything carrying it” by Yakir Aharonov, Daniel Collins, and Sandu Popescu explores how conserved quantities, like angular momentum, can be exchanged between systems at distant locations. Remarkably, the study demonstrates that these exchanges can occur even across regions where the probability of particles or fields being present is nearly zero.

They explain a strange concept whereby angular momentum flows through space without anything carrying it which is counter intuitive for the mind to fathom. In simpler terms, it’s like a mysterious force moving from one place to another without any obvious carrier—no particles, no fields, just a “disembodied” transfer.

What is the classical way of understanding conservation laws?

Conservation laws form the foundation of our understanding of physics, and many of the formulas you learned in high school rely on them. These include the conservation of energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum. These principles apply to closed systems and arise from the symmetries of nature. You’ve likely encountered them in everyday situations. For instance, when spinning on a chair and pulling your arms in, you spin faster due to the conservation of angular momentum.

Physicists have long believed that conserved quantities, like momentum or energy, must be transferred locally—from one region to the next, with particles acting as carriers. Imagine throwing a ball: the ball carries momentum, and as it moves, it transfers that momentum to whatever it hits.

The Quantum Cheshire Cat Effect

In a 2013 quantum mechanics experiment, a phenomenon known as the “Quantum Cheshire Cat” was observed. The name comes from the disappearing Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, and parallels have been drawn between the cat’s behavior and that of a particle in the experiment. Researchers found that in certain quantum scenarios, a particle and one of its properties—such as angular momentum—can be separated. To picture it, imagine the smile of the Cheshire Cat lingering even when the cat itself is gone. In the quantum realm, properties like angular momentum can “detach” from the particle and appear to exist independently in different locations.

So, what does this experiment have to do with angular momentum? Extending these findings, the researchers (Aharonov, Collins, and Popescu, “Angular Momentum Flow Without Anything Carrying It.”) demonstrated that angular momentum can be transferred across space without the need for a physical carrier. Traditionally, it was believed that angular momentum would be transferred by spinning particles, but the experiment showed the opposite: angular momentum can be exchanged between two regions of space without any particles or fields (the usual carriers) present in the intervening space.

The Experiment

In a quantum mechanics experiment detailed in the above paper, a fascinating effect was discovered involving a quantum system with a particle inside a box. The box was divided into two regions: one reflective and the other interacting with the particle’s spin. As the particle moved, its spin—carrying angular momentum—began to act independently, transferring to different positions even though the particle itself remained confined to a single location. This phenomenon is referred to as the dynamic Cheshire Cat effect.

This finding challenges long-held views on conservation laws. In classical physics, momentum or energy is always expected to be tied to a physical object, something tangible like a ball, planet, or particle. However, in the quantum realm, properties such as angular momentum can behave in ways that defy classical intuition, showing that things aren’t always as they seem. 

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

What is the Significance of This Experiment

Beyond intellectual curiosity, this experiment could reshape how we view the world and lead to technological advancements. For example, this type of quantum behavior might one day be harnessed for new forms of communication, where information or energy is transferred in unconventional ways. Such developments could pave the way for breakthroughs in quantum computing and cryptography, where the ability to manipulate quantum properties like angular momentum in non-traditional ways could revolutionize how data is processed and secured.

Conclusion

The flow of angular momentum without a physical carrier is yet another reminder of the counterintuitive nature of the quantum world. It highlights how quantum mechanics diverges from the deterministic behavior of classical Newtonian physics. Additionally, this phenomenon holds potential for technological advancements in areas like cryptography and quantum computing, where such non-traditional quantum behavior could be leveraged for more secure communication and advanced computational capabilities.

Reference

Yakir Aharonov, Daniel Collins, and Sandu Popescu, “Angular Momentum Flow Without Anything Carrying It,” Physical Review. A/Physical Review, A 110, no. 3 (September 5, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.110.l030201.

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In memory of Ralph Abraham, mathemagician extraordinaire

Posted on by Giulio Prisco

A few days ago, browsing my X feed, I found out that my friend Ralph Abraham had passed away.

This post from a Robert Anton Wilson fan site collects some X posts about Ralph’s departure.

An Instagram post by Ross School, a school that Abraham co-architected, honors his memory with this biographical sketch:

“Abraham served as a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz for many years, focusing his work on applied and computational mathematics, with an emphasis on the theories of dynamical systems, chaos, and bifurcations. He was a prolific author and consultant on the application of chaos theory across numerous fields from ecology to psychotherapy. Abraham maintained an interdisciplinary perspective and deep belief that systems theory could bridge the gap between science and the humanities…”

Ralph Abraham in Santa Cruz, 2018 (Credit: Giulio Prisco).
Ralph Abraham in Santa Cruz, 2018 (Credit: Giulio Prisco)

More about Ralph

Lookout Santa Cruz has a good story dedicated to the memory of Ralph, “a seminal figure in the 1960s counterculture.”

Ralph was a frequent contributor to the legendary Mondo 2000 magazine that covered and popularized cyberculture in the 1980s and 1990s, a pioneer of consciousness studies, and an enlightened spiritual teacher. Ralph co-authored the cult books “Trialogues on the Edge of the West” (1992) and “The Evolutionary Mind” (1997) with Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake.

I haven’t seen yet any obituaries from UC Santa Cruz or from UC Berkeley, Columbia, and Princeton. I’m sure those obituaries will appear in the next few days or weeks. But this makes me sad, because Ralph was a giant. I think more people should know about him. This post is my modest contribution and my tribute to Ralph.

I first met Ralph in person on September 29 (my birthday!), 2018, in Santa Cruz.

Ralph Abraham , Giulio Prisco, Ray Gwyn Smith in Santa Cruz, 2018 (Credit: Giulio Prisco).
Ralph Abraham , Giulio Prisco, Ray Gwyn Smith in Santa Cruz, 2018 (Credit: Giulio Prisco)

Before meeting Ralph, I had been corresponding with him for some time. We started exchanging emails and video-chatting when I stumbled upon a book that Ralph had written with Indian physicist Sisir Roy, titled Demystifying the Akasha: Consciousness and the Quantum Vacuum (2010). We discussed the book at length.

The book covers a huge territory including Western and Eastern philosophies and religions, the foundations of quantum physics, recent advances in quantum gravity research, and the digital physics of discrete spacetimes. A version of the book is available online as a free download. The following short description is excerpted and adapted from my book Tales of the Turing Church (2020).

Akashic physics

The Akasha is a Sanskrit word for ether or space. We can think of the Akashic field as a cosmic memory field that stores permanent records of everything that ever happens in the universe.

The proposed mathematical model for the Akashic field is a dynamical cellular network dubbed QX. This is a graph with a huge number of nodes and internal dynamics similar to cellular automata. QX exists beyond space and time, and generates them.

Stephen Wolfram had similar ideas, which he is now developing in the Wolfram Physics Project on the foundations of digital physics.

The graph “contains all times” and fluctuates in an internal time-like dimension, not to be confused with ordinary time. Space, time, matter, energy, and consciousness emerge from the dynamical cellular network through a process of condensation:

“Thus, spacetime is squeezed from the dynamical cellular network, QX, as toothpaste from a tube… The microscopic system, QX, sparkles with activity on the scale of Planck space and time, while macroscopic spacetime unrolls essentially continuously. The past and present become known, while the future remains yet a mystery… the mind/body connections are completed in a circuit outside ordinary consensual reality in a submicroscopic atomic realm beyond our senses, but revealed by the progress of modern physics… This provides a background for psi phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance, but also leaves a window of opportunity for free will.”

The Indian connection

In “Demystifying the Akasha,” Ralph also told the story of his long involvement with India and its spiritual tradition.

In 2016 I was trying to organize a conference at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture (RMIC) in Kolkata, India, a place dear to Ralph’s heart, so I invited Ralph to join other speakers including Ben Goertzel and Frank Tipler in Kolkata. When we ran into funding problems bringing all speakers to Kolkata, we pivoted to an online conference. Ralph contributed a video talk titled The Quantum Akasha and a paper titled Theosophy and the Arts, and participated in a video discussion with me and Sisir Roy.

Eventually the RMIC conference took place in a very reduced format: I gave a talk on Physics and the Indian Spiritual Tradition at RMIC in 2018. In this video I tried to capture the spiritual vibrations at the RMIC campus, which captivated Ralph.

We need another miracle

In 2017 I wrote a post about Ralph titled Mathemagician Ralph Abraham: We Need Another Miracle for the revived online edition of Mondo 2000, reporting a snippet of conversation with Ralph:

“By 1990 I had essentially given up on the fate of the biosphere and noosphere. We had all done our best, nothing seemed to work. Then, in 1994, I became aware of the innovation of the World Wide Web. This seemed to give us new hope, as the connectivity of the noosphere was getting this major bump. I poured all my creative energy into cyberspace. My optimism lasted a decade or so, until it seemed the forces of evil were once again pulling ahead. Now it seems we need another miracle.”

Cyberspace is what we called the online world in the miraculous decade of the 1990s. But now, in the 2020s, we are living through another miraculous decade. Cyberspace started as a decentralized frontierland, then it was re-centralized by the forces of evil. But now we are decentralizing it again, hopefully for good. We are going back to the Moon, hopefully for good, and then onward to Mars and the rest of the solar system. And the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to be the biggest miracle of them all.

In one of his last writings, titled Consciousness and AI (2023) Ralph briefly reviewed the history of AI and the latest development up to GPT-4, and established parallels with his Akashic physics. He concluded that AI and the prospect of machine consciousness “are currently being discussed with some urgency on the frontiers of science and philosophy, as the underlying science and engineering are evolving at terrifying speed.”

Ralph was a great scientist and a visionary thinker. But even more importantly, he was a kind, warm-hearted person, and I’m honored that he called me a friend. Good bye Ralph, rest in peace in the cosmic memory field.

Mindplex editor-in-chief Ben Goertzel adds –

I knew Ralph slightly on a social level, though I was close to his younger brother Fred with whom I was intensively involved in the early days of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology in the early 1990s.

Fred introduced me to Ralph’s books and papers which were highly influential on me early in my career – both by highlighting how nonlinear dynamics was applicable to highly complex living systems like human minds and bodies (which is well known now but was still cutting-edge in the early 90s, and of course even more so in the early 70s when Ralph got started with it!), and by exploring the connections between Eastern philosophy and Western science with a dynamical-systems flavor.

The theme of self-organizing pattern emergence in dynamical networks that one sees in Ralph’s work plays a major role in my current work on AGI systems like OpenCog Hyperon, even though the specific mathematics of these systems is quite different from the precise systems Ralph studied.

What an amazing, creative, always-way-ahead-of-his time mind Ralph Abraham was! It is a shame to lose him from this dimension, but one of the lessons one takes from his work is that he will still be with us in some sense, resonating nonlinearly in the Akashic field, which his fascinating math helps describe!

Ben Goertzel

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TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024 Review

Posted on by Werner

TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024, held on September 18-19 at the iconic Marina Bay Sands, was the flagship event of last month’s Singapore Blockchain Week, which culminated in the iconic F1 race on the Sunday through the streets of the city-state. 

Other events included the developer-focused Solana Breakpoint, the controversial Network State conference, and more lighthearted one-day stuff like Memecon, targeted at as you can guess, meme coins. 

Back to Token2049 though. Previously held in Hong Kong until Singapore wrested it away a couple years back, the two-day conference once again cemented its status as the world’s largest crypto event, where East and West meet on all matters blockchain. The two-day festival brought together over 20,000 attendees from 7,000+ companies, featuring 300+ speakers and 400+ exhibitors, with more than 70% being C-level executives.

The event featured lavish free-flowing food, coffee, and live DJ sets, and crypto mindsharing and degeneracy in its most unbridled form, with projects splurging millions on free side event parties hoping to entice attendees to support them. 

It was an unparalleled experience for attendees, which included the likes of Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana), Charles Hoskinson (Cardano) and several new chain founders like Monad’s Keone Won and Mo Shaikh of Aptos. 

TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024 arrived at a pivotal time for the crypto industry, with several significant developments taking place this year, including the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs, increasing involvement of major TradFi players such as BlackRock and Fidelity, and the heating up of the arm wrestling between global crypto innovation and appropriate regulation. 

Key Highlights and Takeaways

1. Crypto Becomes a Political Football

It’s an election year in the United States of America, and the stakes are especially high for crypto. The 2024 presidential election in the USA was a hot topic at TOKEN2049. Many speculated that the election could impact the industry’s prospects. The huge crypto vote in the USA in swing states (20% of voters potentially in the game) could play kingmaker/queenmaker in a month’s time. With Donald Trump, crypto has found an unlikely ally, while Kamala Harris’ motives remain unknown, but will be decidedly less friendly, if her ties to Operation Chokepoint 2.0 serve as an indicator. 

However, both candidates have made overtures to the digital assets sector, and both of course now accept donations in crypto – how convenient!

While it’s unclear whether recent political endorsements of crypto are genuine or politically motivated, the industry may see the USA adopt more favorable crypto policies from 2025, regardless of the election. It’s just too big a voting bloc to ignore. 

2. Spot ETFs Take Crypto Mainstream

The approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in 2024 was a significant milestone, helping to bring crypto to a wider audience. This financial vehicle has been widely seen as an endorsement and validation of crypto by authorities outside the industry, while a few dissenting crypto purists have raised concerns about centralization of asset ownership.

3. TradFi Turns to Crypto

TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024 saw the increasing involvement of traditional titans, such as JP Morgan, Grayscale, and Goldman Sachs. They continue to stake their claims to Web3 territory. This shows that crypto is actively being adopted by future-facing traditional finance. Others, like PayPal, Visa and Franklin Templeton made announcements during the week that they were making specific forays into crypto payment. 

4. Web3 Continues to Multiply

Despite the bear market, there was still a significant focus on Web3 projects and technologies at TOKEN2049. However, the ostentatious booths and side events were worrying to me personally. I found a huge gap between founders with excess capital trying to spend that to buy crypto clout, and those with strong products and communities. It’s likely that the majority of the projects at display in Singapore won’t be around after the next bear market. 

5. Crypto Regulation Takes Shape Globally

With the first measures of the MiCA regulation in Europe going live in June 2024, Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority helping position the emirate as a crypto hub, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore supporting the nation’s crypto growth, the vital piece of industry infrastructure continues to strengthen.

SingularityNET Founder Takes Token2049 Stage

Ben Goertzel, AI pioneer and co-founder of SingularityNET (AGIX, now merged with FET into ASI), joined by humanoid robots Sophia and Desdemona, discussed the latest advances in artificial intelligence in a keynote speech. Goertzel outlined three AI revolutions: 

  • the current era of narrow AI applications, 
  • the emerging transition to artificial general intelligence (AGI)
  • the future potential of artificial superintelligence (ASI)

ASI Heads Talk AI in Singapore

An expert panel discussion at Token2049’s AI Day featured representatives from Live Peer, Render Network and the founders of SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol, Dr. Ben Goertzel and Bruce Pon respectively. They explored token economics, the balance between centralization and decentralization in AI development, and the potential future of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Key topics included innovative token distribution methods, project collaborations, and the urgency of decentralized AI development. I will delve deeper on these talks in a future article. 

Attendee Experiences and Observations

Attendees shared their experiences and observations from TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024:

  • The gap between founders who have money (either through selling tokens or raising money) and those with strong products and communities could not be wider. Many firms with excess capital (like certain centralized exchanges and NFT marketplaces) were engaging in weird and absurd marketing tactics, while battle-hardened founders were feeling the pinch of the bear market.
  • There was a noticeable shift in the talent base, with many people switching to AI or going to traditional roles. Those remaining were either exceptionally smart and saw a wedge in the market or were good at taking on risk with hard problems.
  • It was good to finally touch base with the teams from newish chains like EigenLayer, Sui, Aptos, Monad and more. Their founders were available for interviews to address some of the negativity they had this year due to underwhelming airdrops and the controversial low-float-high-FDV tactics they used to help early VC investors recoup their investments faster. 

Networking and Side Events

TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024 certainly offers unparalleled networking opportunities, with attendees from the global Web3 industry, including entrepreneurs, investors, developers, industry insiders, and global media. 

The event also featured over 500 side events, making it the world’s largest Web3 event. It was seriously overwhelming, with swarms of attendees spread across the vast corners of the Marina Bay Sands from one event to the other, to take over the city’s biggest clubs like Marquee (Sui and Magic Eden) and Ce La Vie (Aptos) with free food and booze on the menu. 

Of course, this didn’t make it a cheap week out by any means. As usual the 7-day celebration of crypto coincided with the prelude to the Singapore F1 race, resulting in exorbitant prices for flights and hotels.

Conclusion

Anyone that’s ever been to Singapore can attest to its futuristic energy and landscapes: the perfect stage to showcase the money of the future, cryptocurrency, in all its variant forms. 

As the crypto space continues to mature, this decentralized financial revolution requires real world meetups to chart the course ahead, TOKEN2049 remains a crucial event for the industry to gather, network, and plan for the future. With the next edition scheduled for April-May 2025 in Dubai, which also played host to the conference last year (and flooded!), the crypto community eagerly awaits the next chapter of this premier event.

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Crypto Prediction Markets: The Future of Forecasting?

Posted on by Werner

Decentralized prediction markets are one of the hottest crypto narratives in late 2024, thanks to an increasingly heated US presidential election and its ability as a powerful tool for harnessing collective intelligence and getting gamblers fired up. These platforms allow users to use crypto and bet on the outcomes of future events without intermediaries, using blockchain and smart contracts seamlessly to operate autonomously.

In fact, they’re so popular right now that some US politicians have called for them to be banned as they might sway the election in some way!

How Decentralized Prediction Markets Work

Decentralized prediction markets rely on blockchain technology and smart contracts on chains like Ethereum, Polygon and Solana. The blockchain provides an immutable ledger of all market activities, ensuring transparency and security. Smart contracts, self-executing programs on the blockchain, automate market operations without human intervention.

Tokens on the blockchain serve multiple functions in prediction markets: they act as betting currency, provide liquidity, and in some cases enable governance through voting on protocol changes.

The lifecycle of a prediction market follows a set process:

  1. Market Creation: A user proposes a new market for a specific event.
  2. Liquidity Provision: Participants add funds to enable trading.
  3. Trading Period: Users buy and sell outcome shares.
  4. Oracle Reporting: When outcome data becomes available, trusted sources feed it into the system.
  5. Settlement: Smart contracts automatically distribute winnings.

This automated process ensures fairness and eliminates the need for centralized management.

Key Players in the Ecosystem

Several entities need to contribute to the functioning of decentralized prediction markets:

Market Creators: Propose and set up new prediction events.
Traders:Buy and sell outcome shares based on their predictions.
Liquidity Providers:Supply funds to markets, earning fees in return.
Oracles:Provide external data to determine market outcomes.
Token Holders:Own platform-specific tokens and participate in governance

Oracles come in various types to cater to different prediction scenarios. Centralized oracles rely on a single trusted source, while decentralized oracles like Chainlink and Pyth aggregate data from multiple sources. Human-based oracles crowdsource information for subjective outcomes, and machine-based oracles use algorithms and artificial intelligence to collect data on things like stock prices or weather conditions.

What are the Most Popular Crypto Prediction Markets? 

Several platforms now fight over market share in the booming decentralized prediction market space. These platforms differ in their underlying technology, market creation processes, fee structures, and reward mechanisms, catering to various user preferences. Here are the most well-known:

  1. Polymarket

Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market operating on the Polygon network, allowing users to bet on real-world event outcomes using stablecoins. It features a binary outcome model where users buy shares representing the probability of an event occurring, with successful predictions yielding $1 per share. The platform has gained traction, particularly for betting on the U.S. elections, and utilizes smart contracts for secure transactions. Polymarket emphasizes user privacy and accessibility by eliminating KYC requirements.

  1. Drift Protocol

Drift Protocol has launched a prediction market feature called B.E.T on the Solana blockchain, enabling users to bet on real-world events like elections. This platform distinguishes itself by allowing trades in over 30 tokens, including yield-generating assets, rather than just USDC. Users can earn yield on their positions and create hedged bets, enhancing capital efficiency. The feature could attract significant liquidity and participation in the near future.

  1. Augur

An Ethereum-based platform that enables user-created markets, Augur features low fees and allows market creators to earn from trading activity.

  1. TotemFi

Utilizes a unique staking system where users don’t lose funds on incorrect predictions. It offers rewards in Bitcoin and its native TOTM token.

  1. Hedgehog Markets

Built on Solana, Hedgehog Markets offers both peer-to-peer and automated market maker (AMM) functionality. It allows users to stake predictions and earn passive yield.

Advantages and Challenges of Blockchain Prediction Markets

Decentralized prediction markets have several key advantages over traditional counterparts. 

Their distributed nature makes them resistant to censorship and difficult to shut down or control. They provide global accessibility, allowing anyone with internet access to participate regardless of location. 

The absence of intermediaries leads to reduced fees and increased cost-efficiency. Their 24/7 operation and global participation can cause deeper liquidity. The blockchain’s inherent transparency ensures all market activities are recorded and auditable, while the immutability of placed bets enhances trust in the system.

However, these markets also face significant challenges. 

  • Regulatory uncertainty looms large, with many jurisdictions having unclear or unfavorable regulations. 
  • Ensuring accurate and timely real-world data remains a challenge. Some markets resolve in an ambiguous way: an example being the recent Venezuelan election, whose outcome was disputed. The potential that wealthy users could corrupt decentralized oracles is a concern. 
  • The technical complexity of these platforms may deter adoption, and blockchain limitations can lead to high fees during peak usage

Addressing these challenges is crucial for the long-term viability and growth of decentralized prediction markets.

How Can Prediction Markets Be Applied in the Real World?

Decentralized prediction markets find applications across various domains, including financial forecasting, political predictions, sports betting, corporate decision-making, health predictions, and technology adoption forecasting. As these markets evolve, we can expect to see even more diverse and specialized use cases emerge.

However, it is already forcing innovation in traditional platforms, causing some centralized platforms to adopt more open practices in response, and to lower their fees to compete.

Moreover, decentralized prediction markets are contributing to overall market efficiency:

  1. Enhanced Liquidity: Global participation increases available trading funds.
  2. Improved Price Discovery: Aggregated insights lead to more accurate predictions.
  3. Fast Information Integration: Prices update rapidly in response to new information.
  4. Reduced Manipulation: Decentralized nature makes it harder for individuals to sway markets.

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

What’s the Future of Crypto Prediction Markets? 

The future of decentralized prediction markets looks promising, with several trends on the horizon:

  1. Technological Advancements: Improvements in blockchain scalability and smart contract functionality will enhance market performance.
  2. AI and Machine Learning Integration: Advanced algorithms will help users make more informed predictions.
  3. Cross-Chain Interoperability: Markets will operate across multiple blockchains, increasing liquidity and user base.
  4. Regulatory Clarity: As the space matures, clearer regulations will likely emerge, potentially leading to wider adoption.
  5. Integration with DeFi Ecosystem: Prediction markets will increasingly interact with other decentralized finance tools, creating new financial products and services.

Conclusion

Decentralized prediction markets are a significant evolution in forecasting and decision-making, and are reshaping the way markets operate. By leveraging blockchain technology and collective intelligence, these platforms offer a more transparent, accessible, and efficient way to predict future outcomes. 

As they continue to develop and overcome their current challenges, decentralized prediction markets have the potential to revolutionize how we approach forecasting across various industries and domains. Their growth and integration with other emerging technologies will play a role in shaping the future of finance, governance, and decision-making.

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Bitcoin’s By Month: Is Redtember and Uptober For Real?

Posted on by Werner

Bitcoin’s price movements have always been a subject of intense tea-leaf reading and speculation, and over the years, various trading adages have emerged, attempting to capture patterns in Bitcoin’s monthly performance. From wisdoms like “Sell in May and Go Away”, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, to Redtember and Uptober, crypto investors are skeptical about certain months. Is this pure superstition?  

Let’s dig into historical data to examine the validity of these popular sayings and provide insights into Bitcoin’s monthly price trends. Remember that historical performance is not equal to future performance.

Examining Bitcoin’s Monthly Returns

Let’s analyze the comprehensive table of Bitcoin’s monthly returns from 2013 to 2024. 

Credit: Coinglass

Month-by-Month Breakdown

  1. January: New Year Here and Chinese New Year incoming

With an average return of 3.35%, January usually shows moderate growth. Notable years include 2013 with a 44% gain and 2015 with a -33.05% loss. Since 2020 we’ve seen more green, as institutions enter with quarterly budgets, looking to start allocating earlier on in the year. 

  1. February: Usually quiet, but with outliers

Historically strong, February boasts the second-highest average return of 15.66%. The standout year was 2013, with an impressive 61.77% increase.

  1. March: Upwards

Another solid performer, March had an average 13.42% return from 2013-24. March of 2013 was exceptional, with a staggering 172.76% gain.

  1. April: Fools’ Gold? 

Consistent growth was seen in April, averaging 12.98%. Both 2013 and 2019 saw gains exceeding 50%. Not so fast though: it dropped in April of this year. 

  1. May: Go away!

While it has a positive mean return of 7.94%, May showed significant fluctuations over the years 2013 to 2024. Many crypto investors believe it’s the best time to temporarily pack your toys away and wait till Q4 before allocating again, hence the saying “Sell in May and Go Away”. In 2024, at least, they were right. 

  1. June: The summer doldrums start

The first month with a negative mean return, although a small one of -0.35%.

  1. July: Fireworks

This one’s a surprise. As the summer holidays peak, there’s a surprising return to positive territory with a 7.56% average, showing steady but unspectacular performance. 

  1. August: No-man’s land

Barely positive at a 1.75% mean return, August has historically been unremarkable.

  1. September: Redtember? 

Notorious for negative performance, with a mean return of -4.92%. This month has earned the moniker “Redtember” in crypto circles. It’s usually a slow month, as the summer holidays hangover means everyone is slow to get to serious business in financial circles. 

  1. October: Uptober

Aha, Uptober! The start of Q4 and the end of the year is coming into sight. Budget remainders can be allocated with greater freedom, and all systems are firing. October was historically surprisingly strong, with an average return of 22.90%, challenging the negative sentiment often associated with autumn months.

  1. November: The best month on average

The best-performing month on average, with an impressive 46.81% return. 2013 saw an extraordinary 449.35% gain.

  1. December: Holiday season bring mixed gifts

Closes the year with a respectable 5.45% average gain.

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

Evaluating Popular Trading Adages

Now, let’s examine some well-known trading sayings in the context of Bitcoin’s historical performance.

“Sell in May and Go Away”

This adage, borrowed from traditional stock markets, suggests divesting in May and reinvesting in November. For Bitcoin:

  • May itself averages a 7.94% gain, contradicting the “sell” advice.
  • The subsequent months show mixed results:
    • June: Slightly negative (-0.35%)
    • July: Positive (+7.56%)
    • August: Marginally positive (+1.75%)
    • September: Negative (-4.92%)
    • October: Strongly positive (+22.90%)

The data indicates that strictly adhering to this adage for Bitcoin would have resulted in missed opportunities, particularly in July and October. However, it would also have avoided September’s typical downturn.

“Redtember”

September’s reputation for poor performance is well-supported by the data:

  • Average return: -4.92%
  • Median return: -6.04%
  • Negative years: 9 out of 12
  • Worst performances: 2014 (-19.01%), 2019 (-13.38%), 2020 (-7.51%)

While there have been exceptions (2015: +2.35%, 2016: +6.04%, 2023: +3.91%), the trend clearly leans negative, lending credibility to the “Redtember” moniker.

“Uptober”

October’s strong performance supports the “Uptober” nickname:

  • Average return: 22.90%
  • Median return: 27.70%
  • Positive years: 8 out of 12
  • Standout years: 2013 (+60.79%), 2017 (+47.81%), 2021 (+39.93%)

Despite some negative years (2014: -12.95%, 2018: -3.83%), October generally shows strong positive performance, validating the “Uptober” concept.

Broader Trends: Quarterly Analysis

Expanding our view to quarterly performance reveals interesting patterns:

  • Q1 (Jan-Mar): Strongest quarter, averaging 56.47% returns.
  • Q2 (Apr-Jun): Positive but cooler, with 26.89% average returns.
  • Q3 (Jul-Sep): The weakest quarter, averaging just 4.95%.
  • Q4 (Oct-Dec): Very strong, with an 88.84% average return.

These quarterly trends suggest a general pattern of strength in the latter part of the year and early months, with a lull during the summer. This lull in summer may be the meaning of ‘sell in May and go away’.

Bitcoin and Ethereum by Quarter

Credit: Coinglass

What is maybe a bit more clear in this historical data, is that Q2 and Q4 were opportune times for Bitcoin’s price to move, and Q3 was a time to HODL after the Q2 growth. Every year is different, and news like a recession, a Bitcoin spot ETF approval, or a halving event can have a dramatic effect on the price of all crypto assets. 

Ethereum, on the other hand, has so far been a coin for all seasons. ETH’s Q2 performance has been incredible, with only two red blips in 2022 and 2024. This can be attributed to technological events like the Merge and specific upgrades like EIP-1559 and proto-danksharding. 

Implications for Investors

While these patterns are intriguing, it’s crucial to approach them with caution:

  1. Historical Trends vs. Future Performance: Past patterns don’t guarantee future results. Two things known for their unpredictability are the cryptocurrency market and the future.
  2. Market Evolution: As the crypto market matures, it may behave differently to an earlier version of itself, and historical patterns may become irrelevant.
  3. External Factors: Global economic conditions, regulatory changes, and technological developments can override historical patterns.
  4. Volatility Considerations: Bitcoin’s high volatility means significant deviations from averages are common.
  5. Long-Term Perspective: Short-term trading based solely on monthly patterns can be risky. A long-term investment strategy might be more suitable for many investors.

Conclusion

The analysis of Bitcoin’s monthly performance reveals some consistent patterns, particularly the challenges of September and the strengths of October and November. However, it’s important to view these trends as part of a larger picture rather than definitive trading signals.

Things in Cryptoland are always green or red but rarely black and white. There’s a lot of nuance and macro-economic factors at play – or is it lunar horoscope influence?

Investors should consider multiple factors when making decisions:

  • Conduct thorough research on market fundamentals.
  • Stay informed about regulatory developments and technological advancements.
  • Consider the broader economic context.
  • Diversify investments to manage risk.
  • Align trading or investing strategies with personal financial goals and risk tolerance.

While historical data are interesting, the cryptocurrency market’s dynamic nature means that adaptability and comprehensive analysis remain key to navigating this exciting but volatile space.

Therefore, you have two options: zoom out completely to an annual view, or take it day by day. 

Oh, and of course invest in projects that you’ve properly researched and believe in!

Let us know your thoughts! Sign up for a Mindplex account now, join our Telegram, or follow us on Twitter. 

Psychedelics and the Coming Singularity: A Conversation with David Jay Brown about his book

Posted on by RU Sirius

It used to be a bit of a secret in tech circles. But given the recent rise in the social and even political acceptance of psychedelic drug and plant use in the USA and elsewhere, now it can be told. Psychedelics and extreme technological change go together like peanut butter and jelly.

This new book of interviews by David Jay Brown casts a wide net. It chases after what the various interview subjects think about the Singularity, but beyond that, as Brown says in my conversation with him, he asks them about, “Simulation Theory… DMT entities… psychedelics and ecological awareness, God, and death.”

A diverse cast of characters are on the receiving end of Brown’s inquiries, and almost every one of them remarks that Brown really asks the big questions. My personal favorite interviewees include the great trippy graphic novelist/comic book writer and bon vivant Grant Morrison, the writer Erik Davis whose recent book High Weirdness looks at far out psychedelic, sci-fi, techno-visions of the 1970s through the lens of the works of Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson and Terence McKenna, and the almost indescribable Bruce Damer who seems to be engaged in projects related to almost everything –including space science, virtual reality and the origin of life, just to name a few. Damer also curates the DigiBarn in Santa Cruz, which holds libraries and archives of Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna. These are among the many wildly brilliant interview subjects.

I met David Jay Brown in the mid-1980s, back when I was publishing High Frontiers, a predecessor to Mondo 2000 (as Mindplex is its descendent). Since then I’ve been consistently impressed by his output as a writer and interviewer. He has written for Scientific American, Wired and other periodicals. Books include ‘Mavericks of the Mind’, ‘Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse’, ‘The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality’ and ‘Women of Visionary Art’.

RU Sirius: What made you decide to combine the themes of psychedelics and the Singularity, and how did you choose the people you would interview?

David Jay Brown: I think the rise in Artificial Intelligence and the psychedelic renaissance are two of the most important forces driving the future evolution of consciousness right now, and that they dovetail in a way that mutually compliments one another. Psychedelics have inspired the development of computer technology and software development from the beginning, and the ecological awareness, personal boundary dissolution, creativity, and spiritual elevation that psychedelics often bring provide an essential balance to the foundational development of AI, its integration into the world, and may assist in reducing the possible dangers that it could bring. 

As with all my interview collections, the people that I chose to interview are simply the people whose work are inspiring me, whose books I’ve been reading, and I let it organically grow as I proceed with the project. 

Another major theme in the book is about exploring the extended state DMT research and the possibility of non-human entity contact, which I think will also be major factor influencing the future evolution of consciousness, and a number of the people in the collection – such as Andrew Gallimore, David Luke, and Carl Hayden Smith – were chosen for the role that they’re playing in this research and exploration. In addition to contemplating the symbiotic relationship between AI and psychedelics, I see both as catalysts for expanding human potential and pushing the boundaries of what it means to be conscious in the 21st century. AI has the potential to radically transform our cognitive processes, but it needs the human element – the kind of insight that psychedelics offer – to help guide its ethical development and avoid purely mechanistic outcomes. By engaging with these two powerful forces, we’re not only enhancing our technological abilities but also deepening our relationship with the natural world, the cosmos, and the unknown realms of consciousness. 

The interviewees were chosen not just for their expertise, but also because they represent a wide spectrum of perspectives – scientific, philosophical, spiritual – on these issues. They are the thought leaders pushing the envelope in their respective fields, and I wanted their diverse voices to reflect the complexity of the Singularity and the transformative role that psychedelics may play in shaping it.

RU: There’s not a lot of Kurzweilian hard-science singularitarianism in the book. How would you respond to that? It’s a very expansive view of the theme (which I like). What versions of singularities do you find most compelling?

DJB: I was corresponding with Ben Goertzel, and he was supposed to be in the collection, but he got too busy as my deadline was approaching and so, unfortunately, he didn’t make it into this book. I interviewed Ray Kurzweil for two of my previous collections, and corresponded with him as I was doing this book as well, but exploring the notion of the Singularity was really only one of the themes in the book, and the title was chosen by my publisher after the book was completed. The notion of the technological Singularity, that Kurzweil and others have popularized, as a reference to the future time when digital electronic minds become more intelligent than all human minds combined – which is a poetic application of the term borrowed from astrophysics, describing the point where the known laws of physics break down, like the center of a Black Hole or whatever state of the universe existed before the Big Bang, and future predictions can’t be made – was a good question to stimulate the imagination of my interviewees.

Other questions that were explored for the same reason had to do with Simulation Theory, the possible reality of the DMT entities, the relationship between psychedelics and ecological awareness, thoughts on the concept of God, and what happens to consciousness after death.

The notion of the Singularity is similar to Terence McKenna’s idea of an attractor or transcendental object at the end of time where novelty becomes infinite, and Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the Omega Point, the final evolutionary point of unification between God and humanity. It’s a great concept to stimulate our thinking about what could be, during a future time where reality blurs with the imagination. The Singularity, as Kurzweil and others have framed it, often focuses on technological advancements leading to a superintelligence that reshapes our reality, but my approach intentionally opens the door to more speculative, expansive interpretations of this transformative moment. I find versions of the Singularity compelling when they incorporate a sense of mystery, where not just technology but consciousness itself becomes the focal point of evolution. This includes models like McKenna’s timewave theory, where consciousness reaches a crescendo, or de Chardin’s Omega Point, suggesting an inevitable spiritual awakening or divine integration. In these frameworks, the Singularity isn’t just a technological event – it’s a spiritual and philosophical one, where the boundaries between human, machine, and the universe dissolve. The potential for contact with non-human intelligences, whether through DMT or other means, might also play a role in how we conceptualize future consciousness expansion. For me, the most compelling version of the Singularity is one that embraces not only the scientific possibilities but also the profound unknowns of existence.

RU: You wrote “the kind of insight that psychedelics offer – to help guide its ethical development and avoid purely mechanistic outcomes.” I myself have a line in my memoir that psychedelics may be necessary to lubricate an otherwise brittle and mechanistic tech future. But a lot of the high end techies that are into psychedelics like Musk or Thiel seem to develop superman or supremacist ideas and attitudes. When I interviewed Martin Lee about ‘Acid Dreams’ for High Frontiers back in 1987 he said psychedelics can be “exaggerants” that bring out whatever potential is inside a person in an outsized fashion. What do you think about the lessons learned about the unreliability of psychedelic use in turning out enlightened or compassionate humans?

DJB: Yes, “exaggerants” is a good term, and I understand your concern. As Stan Grof points out, psychedelics are non-specific brain amplifiers, and they don’t inherently bring out the positive attributes of people. They amplify what’s already there. I recall hearing stories about Pentagon officials doing acid and dreaming up new mass-killing technologies, and we all know what happened with Charles Manson and his followers. There are many people with sociopathic personalities in positions of great power, and according to Tim Ferriss all of the billionaires that he knows, without exception, are using psychedelics. 

But sociopaths only make up 1 to 4 percent of the population. More than 96 percent of human beings, I think, have good intentions, and this gives me great hope as psychedelics awaken the masses. I think that as critical thresholds of positive psychedelic awareness are reached, this will drive compassionate action, ecological awareness, and enlightened conscious evolution. Also, people are complex, and often it’s not black and white as to what’s dark and what’s light, especially as consequences unfold in often unexpected and surprising ways, and I do trust that a higher intelligence inherent in the natural world is helping to guide us in ways that may not be obvious to our rational minds. While psychedelics can certainly amplify darker tendencies in some individuals, particularly those in positions of power or with pre-existing sociopathic traits, I believe the broader cultural awakening that psychedelics foster will lean toward a more compassionate and interconnected world. The key lies in set and setting, as well as in education and integration practices. With responsible use and proper guidance, psychedelics have the potential to help individuals confront their shadows, fostering deep healing and growth. But you’re right – it’s unreliable to assume that psychedelics alone will result in enlightened or compassionate humans.

Transformation requires intention, community support, and ethical frameworks to truly guide individuals toward positive change. In this way, psychedelics are tools, not cures – they provide the potential for insight, but the outcome depends on how that insight is applied.

RU: I loved McKenna and his vision. Back in the High Frontiers days in the mid-1980s, he told us that the interior of the human was going to be externalized, and what we imagine will simply come to be and this was years before everyone was talking about VR. Still, Timewave Zero predicted a massive transformation culminating in December of 2012. Believers will say that the transformation happened under the surface and it’s just not visible, which is what all religionists and cultists say when a prophecy fails. But the Black Mirror reality of today is not something Terence would like. (Terence himself didn’t take the predictions as seriously as others who adapted it) 

So the question here is whether you think faith can be excessive and – just as the hyper-rationalists could use some influence from the visionary or spiritual – a lot of psychedelicists could use a dose of rationality.

DJB: I certainly agree that balancing faith and rationality is a good idea, and that too much of either can be excessive. I always viewed Terence as more of a storyteller and a poet than a scientist, and as much as I think many of insights are quite compelling, I take much of what he said with a grain of salt, and you’re right, I don’t think that Terence even took his own predictions that seriously. He actually changed the date for the end of his novelty-accelerating Timewave model a number of times, and December 21st of 2012 was chosen to align with the end of the Mayan calendar, so I see the endpoint that he predicted as more of poetic interpretation of where human evolution is headed – that seems to resonate with what Kurzweil describes as the Singularity, what de Chardin means by the Omega Point, and what Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson mean by the actualization of the 8th brain circuit, which also seem more poetic than scientific. 

As for the idea that we are living in ‘Black Mirror’ reality today, I think that this perspective is open to interpretation. Most certainly the dark aspects of the world have been amplified. Those in power have sought greater and greater methods of controlling the human herd, and they now have access to technologies that can seemingly enslave much of humanity. But this tension between enslavement and liberation isn’t really new, it’s just been greatly amplified. We live in a dualistic universe, and I think that there will always be a Yin-Yang balance of dark and light forces. It seems that our species is wobbling on the edge of either planetary suicide or divinity status, and this growing tension has continued to escalate and intensify. But I think it has always seemed this way. In Tim Rayborn’s book ‘A History of the End of the World’, he makes it clear that this inclination toward apocalyptic thinking has been present throughout human history, as has the notion that humanity is on the verge of a Golden Age of Enlightenment. Are we headed toward an environmental apocalypse and global mass extinction, or will our wayward species overcome the immense challenges that currently face us, and become all-powerful and immortal superhuman masters of space and time? These teetering polarized possibilities have now become so extreme that it seems like our species is facing an evolve-or-die intelligence test, but I suspect that it has always seemed this way and will always seem this way in our dualistic universe. I know that many people think that the world has gotten too dark to be optimistic, however, I suggest that we consider that two things may have influenced this perspective regarding optimism and excitement about future possibilities: the acceleration and intensification of both positive and negative forces, as I’ve described, as well as the aging process. Young people seem more optimistic than the older generations. I don’t think the world has just gotten worse; I think it’s gotten both better and worse at the same time, and the aging process tends to decrease neophilia and increase neophobia. This happens in all animal species and humans are no exception. I see all the dystopian possibilities that everyone else my age sees – the division in our country, the climate crisis, the rise of racism, the threat of nuclear war, etc. – but I also see enormous positive potential as well – the psychedelic revolution raising ecological awareness, AI evolution promising advances in medicine and virtually every field of human endeavor, incredible scientific advances, astonishing new technologies, and young people seeing through the corruption in our two-party political system. I suspect that this Yin-Yang nature of world will continue to accelerate and intensify, but that utopia or dystopia will never fully arrive. It will always be some weird mix of the two, with infinite evidence to suggest that either light or dark perspectives will prevail. 

I also think that part of the appeal of Terence’s ideas, and the broader psychedelic movement, is the invitation to engage with uncertainty and paradox. The poetic, visionary nature of his predictions encouraged people to look beyond rigid frameworks of understanding, allowing them to imagine and co-create potential futures. But as with all visionary insights, it’s essential to temper them with discernment. Faith can become excessive when it blinds us to reality, just as rationality can become constricting when it limits our capacity for awe and wonder. Psychedelicists, like everyone else, benefit from balancing intuition with logic, especially as the stakes grow higher. In today’s world, where technologies like AI and VR blur the line between imagination and reality, it’s more important than ever to remain grounded while exploring new possibilities. As the collective tension increases, so too does the responsibility on each of us to use our tools – whether technological or visionary – wisely. 

In a sense, our challenge is to prevent the ‘Black Mirror’ reality from consuming us, while still allowing space for the unprecedented opportunities of this evolutionary moment. After all, if we can harmonize the rational and the visionary, perhaps we can transcend the dualistic cycles of history and consciously shape a more balanced, compassionate future.

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

RU: Why DMT? In other words, of all the psychedelics, and there are many of these chemical and plant wonders, what is it about DMT that fascinates us in this accelerating time? What are your thoughts?

DJB: There are several reasons why DMT is special and unique in the world of psychedelics, as well as profoundly relevant to our accelerating time of information overload. Let me first provide a little background on DMT. DMT is endogenous to the human body, it’s found in all mammalian species, and throughout the plant world. It’s ubiquitous throughout nature, and no biochemist can tell you what function it serves in any of these places. It seems to be both a neurotransmitter and a hormone in the human body, but no one really has a clue as to why it’s there. It’s a very simple molecule, derived from the essential amino acid tryptophan, and its place in the natural world is a profound mystery. 

In studies with rodents, we know that DMT levels escalate in their brains after cardiac arrest, which lends credence to the popular idea that it mediates the near-death experience in human beings. When ingested in sufficient quantities, DMT experiences generally become an order of magnitude more intense than that of any of the other psychedelics, and it quite literally transports one to another world, which is commonly referred to as “hyperspace” by the psychonauts who have traveled there. One becomes completely immersed in a multi-dimensional reality that completely replaces our three-dimensional world, and it is often reported as seeming “more real than real”. It doesn’t appear to be a hallucination; it seems completely real and one remains fully lucid during the experience. And most profoundly, this new world appears to be populated by hyper-intelligent, non-human entities that seem to take great interest in communicating with us in various ways.

Surprisingly, there is an incredible amount of similarity among the reports from psychonauts as to what these beings look like and how they act towards us. This phenomenon provides the basis for my latest book, ‘The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities’, which is an attempt to create a taxonomy of these beings, and was just published by Inner Traditions. 

In the book I describe 25 of the commonly encountered DMT entities – such as gray aliens, jesters, reptilians, octopoid beings, and “the self-transforming machine elves,” that McKenna famously refers to – and Sara Phinn Huntley, Alex Grey, Luke Brown, Harry Pack, and other brilliant artists illustrate them. 

This phenomenon is being taken seriously by a number of prestigious scientists – such as Rick Strassman, Andrew Gallimore, and David Luke – who have organized studies at Imperial College in London and elsewhere to put people into extended-state DMT sessions. This is being done with the intention of sending DMT voyagers into longer periods where they can access hyperspace and communicate with these strange entities, to see if there truly is an objective reality to them, and what can be learned from them. In my book ‘Psychedelics and the Coming Singularity’, I interview Gallimore and Luke at length about this phenomenon, as well as Carl Hayden Smith, who is one of the brave subjects in the Imperial College extended-state DMT studies that are currently underway. I think this is some of the most exciting scientific research in human history, as we appear to be building technologies that allow us to consistently and reliably communicate with more advanced species – like the contact with alien beings that has been long-anticipated in our science fiction stories – and this is eerily resonant with the recently leaked Pentagon footage of UAPs, and the reports of secret government programs that some military insiders claim exist with the goal of reverse-engineering the technology of crashed alien vehicles.

But what I’m describing is largely from a Western perspective, as many indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin, who have been using a DMT-based jungle brew known as ayahuasca since prehistory, have long reported contact with powerful spirits and advanced beings during their shamanic journeys. To them, this isn’t news at all, but we’re discovering this at a new technological level, which may provide a more sophisticated medium for communication with these advanced beings. Remember, it was McKenna who first began popularizing DMT back in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was basically an obscure drug at the time. We were just talking about how McKenna predicted that novelty would accelerate with his Timewave model as we evolved – well, he accurately predicted the explosion of interest in DMT that resonates with the explosion of information and novelty that we are presently experiencing. 

Another aspect that makes DMT so compelling is its potential to challenge our understanding of reality itself. The fact that so many people report similar experiences, with recurring motifs and entities, raises the question of whether DMT provides access to a shared, objective dimension that exists independently of our usual perception. This idea blurs the line between the subjective and the objective, and it forces us to reconsider the nature of consciousness. Is DMT merely unlocking hidden aspects of our minds, or is it truly opening a doorway to other worlds? These are questions that challenge the core of our scientific and philosophical paradigms. Additionally, in the context of our rapidly accelerating technological world, where we are exploring artificial intelligence and virtual realities, the DMT experience stands out as a reminder that there may be even more advanced, mysterious layers to existence than we can currently fathom. It’s as if DMT serves as a bridge between the ancient wisdom of indigenous practices and the cutting-edge frontiers of modern science.

RU: Is there anything you would like to tell the Mindplex readers about what they might learn or gain in perspective from reading this book?

DJB: We’re currently facing a unique juncture in our evolutionary journey, where the human adventure can branch into a multitude of new directions. It’s an extraordinary time that’s filled with great peril and much promise. Never before in human history have so many human minds been interconnected at the speed of light, thanks to the Internet and other evolving electronic communication technologies. All of human knowledge is now available to everyone nearly instantly, and our collective intelligence has been elevated substantially – yet our collective stupidity paradoxically threatens our very existence. I suspect that this ability and interconnection is greatly amplifying human potential and this gives me enormous hope, but there is also much at stake and we could be on the verge of our own extinction. 

In my book I bring together the perspectives and ideas from some of the most brilliant minds and far-sighted visionaries on the planet to help us navigate through these difficult times and offer out-of-the-box solutions to some of our most pressing problems. These genius luminaries not only offer hope for our wayward world, but also an excitement about the future that rekindles the optimistic enthusiasm that many of us had back in the 1990s, when ‘Mondo 2000’ magazine saw its heyday, and the future seemed bright and filled with great promise – when the internet, transhumanism, virtual reality, brain technologies, and psychedelics were viewed as fantastic agents of liberation, mind expansion, and evolutionary catalysts, instead of as dark tools of oppression, consumerism, slavery, and control. 

By reading ‘Psychedelics and the Coming Singularity’, I hope that people will gain not only a deeper understanding of these transformative forces but also a renewed sense of agency and responsibility. The world may feel chaotic and uncertain, but within this turbulence lies the potential for radical positive change. Through the wisdom and insights of the great thinkers featured in this book, I believe readers will come to see that we are not passive participants in this unfolding story. Rather, we have the power to consciously shape the future and co-create a reality that aligns with our highest aspirations.

Ultimately, this book invites readers to embrace both the mysteries and challenges of this pivotal moment, and to step boldly into the unknown with curiosity, courage, and a sense of hope for what’s to come.

Let us know your thoughts! Sign up for a Mindplex account now, join our Telegram, or follow us on Twitter. 

Ten Explosive Web3 Trends For 2025

Posted on by Werner

As we hurtle towards the final quarter of 2024, Web3 continues to reshape industries and redefine our digital interactions, while attention remains on the yo-yo prices of cryptocurrencies. Look closer and there’s a lot happening.

From the rise of AI-powered decentralized applications to the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), the trends emerging in the Web3 space are not just technological advancements, but paradigm shifts that promise to revolutionize the way we interact with the digital world. Let’s delve into the top ten Web3 trends that are making waves in 2024 and are set to shape the landscape in 2025.

1. AI-Web3 Symbiosis: Intelligent Decentralized Systems Are Coming

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Web3 technologies in 2024 is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in decentralized applications (dApps) and distributed ledger technologies.

Oracle networks 

One notable AI-powered smart contract platform is the oracle network Chainlink, which has seen a 300% increase in adoption rates since the beginning of 2024. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Chainlink has dramatically improved the efficiency and accuracy of oracle networks, reducing transaction times by up to 75% and enhancing the reliability of data feeds.

Decentralized Healthcare Records

The collaboration between AI and Web3 is also revolutionizing data management and content verification. 

In the healthcare sector, encumbered by convoluted data practices that inhibit the sharing of vital medical information across different parties, companies like MedicalChain are using AI algorithms within Web3 frameworks to enable secure, decentralized management of medical records. Techniques such as secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption and federated learning allow AI models to analyze sensitive data ‘in a black box’, preserving individual privacy. Medical information remains encrypted and inaccessible to unauthorized parties, yet the AI analysis can still glean insights from it.

2. The RWA Tokenization Revolution

The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) has gained significant traction in 2024, spearheaded by traditional finance giants like BlackRock. The total market cap of tokenized real-world assets hit $5 trillion in the middle of the year. This trend is making traditionally illiquid assets more accessible and tradable.

Real estate protocols have tokenized over $1 billion worth of properties by Q2 2024. This has allowed fractional ownership of prime real estate, easing access to a market that was previously out of reach for many investors.

In the art world, platforms like Maecenas have tokenized masterpieces like Picassos worth over $500 million, allowing art enthusiasts to own fractions of world-renowned artworks. This trend is changing investment paradigms and reshaping how we perceive ownership in the digital age.

3. Sustainable Blockchain: Crypto Goes Green

Environmental concerns have been a significant hurdle for blockchain adoption, but 2024 has seen a decisive shift from the very energy-hungry Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. The Ethereum network’s transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) in late 2022 blazed a trail, and now we’re seeing the fruits of this green revolution.

Cardano, another proof-of-stake blockchain, reported a 99.9% reduction in energy consumption compared to traditional Proof-of-Work systems. This approach has attracted environmentally-conscious investors and developers, with Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem growing 200% in the first half of 2024.

Carbon-neutral blockchains are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Algorand, which achieved carbon negativity in 2021, has offset over 10 million tons of carbon emissions through its sustainability program by mid-2024.

4. DeFi 2.0: The Next Generation of Decentralized Finance

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a new creature in 2024, finally addressing many of the challenges that plagued its early incarnations. DeFi 2.0 platforms are focusing on improved security, scalability, and user experience.

Aave, a leading DeFi protocol, has introduced AI-powered risk assessment tools, reducing the instances of bad debt by 80% compared to the previous year. This has instilled greater confidence in the DeFi ecosystem, attracting institutional investors who were previously wary of the risks associated with decentralized lending and borrowing.

Another milestone in the DeFi space is the rise of cross-chain interoperability. Polkadot’s parachains have facilitated seamless asset transfers across different blockchain networks, with over $50 billion in cross-chain transactions recorded in the first quarter of 2024.

5. The Metaverse Economy: Virtual Worlds, Real Value

The metaverse has gained traction in 2024, with major tech companies and startups alike building immersive digital worlds. These virtual realms are not just for gaming and socializing; they’re becoming hubs of economic activity.

Decentraland, a leading metaverse platform, has seen its virtual real estate market cap surpass $2 billion in 2024. Major brands like Nike and Gucci have established virtual stores in Decentraland, with Nike reporting that 15% of its digital sales now come from its metaverse presence.

The rise of the metaverse has also fueled the growth of virtual economies. Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity have created new income streams for players, particularly in developing countries. In the Philippines, over 100,000 people now earn a living wage purely from play-to-earn games, marking a significant milestone in the gaming industry.

6. Decentralized Social Media: Taking Back Control

2024 has seen a surge in decentralized social media platforms, as users seek alternatives to centralized platforms plagued by data privacy concerns and algorithmic manipulation.

Mastodon, a decentralized social network, has grown its user base to over 50 million by mid-2024, a tenfold increase from the previous year. This growth has been fueled by its commitment to user privacy and its resistance to censorship, contrasted with growing discontent with centralized platforms.

Another notable player in this space is Mirror, a decentralized publishing platform that allows writers to tokenize their content. By the end of 2024, Mirror had facilitated over $100 million in direct reader-to-writer payments, revolutionizing the economics of online content creation.

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

7. NFTs Beyond Art: Utility Tokens in the Real World

The NFT art market has cooled since its 2021 peak, but 2024 has seen a resurgence of NFTs in practical applications. Utility NFTs, which provide real-world benefits to holders, have gained significant traction.

Ticketing giant LiveNation has partnered with blockchain platform Flow to issue NFT tickets for concerts and events. These NFT tickets prevent fraud and allow artists to engage with fans long after the event, creating new revenue streams through digital memorabilia and exclusive content.

In education, blockchain-based platforms like Learning Economy Foundation have issued over 1 million verifiable credential NFTs as of mid-2024. These NFTs serve as tamper-proof records of academic achievements and professional certifications.

8. DAOs: The Future of Organizational Governance

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have come of age in 2024, moving beyond crypto-native applications to disrupt traditional organizational structures.

MakerDAO, one of the oldest and largest DAOs, has expanded its reach beyond the crypto world. In a groundbreaking move, it acquired a chartered bank in the USA, bridging the gap between DeFi and traditional finance. This milestone marks the first time a DAO has owned a regulated financial institution.

The DAO model has also gained traction in the nonprofit sector. The Ocean Cleanup DAO, launched in early 2024, has raised over $100 million for ocean conservation efforts, demonstrating the power of decentralized governance in addressing global challenges.

9. Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Privacy in a Transparent World

As concerns about data privacy continue to grow, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) have emerged as a critical technology in the Web3 ecosystem. ZKPs can verify information without revealing the information itself, striking a balance between transparency and privacy.

Zcash, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that utilizes ZKPs, has seen its adoption rate increase by 500% in 2024. Major financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, have begun integrating Zcash’s technology into their blockchain solutions, signaling a shift towards privacy-preserving finance.

In the field of identity verification, Microsoft’s ION project, which uses ZKPs for decentralized identifiers, has over 100 million users by the end of 2024, marking a significant step towards self-sovereign identity.

10. Prediction Markets: Data-Driven Forecasting

Crypto-based prediction markets are all the rage now, particularly in the context of political events like the 2024 U.S. election. Platforms such as Polymarket process hundreds of millions of dollars weekly, offering real-time insights into public sentiment on various outcomes, such as the presidential election in the USA, which recently became their first market with $1 billion in betting volume.

Prediction markets use blockchain technology in the backend to ensure transparency and efficiency, attracting both casual users and respected forecasters. Prediction markets are not limited to political outcomes. They’re increasingly used in fields such as:

  • Economic forecasting
  • Sports betting
  • Entertainment industry predictions
  • Scientific research outcomes

By providing financial incentives for accurate predictions, these markets aggregate knowledge from sources around the world and from every sector of society, outperforming traditional polling and forecasting methods.

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Cooperative Learning: How Videos and Text Are Helping AI Understand the World

Posted on by Nathan

The field of artificial intelligence has made remarkable strides in recent years, but one persistent challenge remains: teaching machines to understand complex information from multiple sources. Researchers from Sakana AI recently explored this issue in their paper, “Cooperative Learning of Disentangled Representations from Video and Text.” They introduce a new approach that enables AI systems to learn by combining visual and textual data, offering new potential for improving how machines comprehend and process the world around them.

The Problem with Single-Source Learning

In most machine learning models today, AI systems are trained to recognize patterns using either video data or text data—but rarely both at the same time. While this method has led to great advances in image recognition and natural language processing, it has its limitations. When AI only learns from one source, it lacks the rich context that human perception naturally incorporates. For example, a machine might recognize a scene in a video, but it might not fully grasp the meaning without understanding the accompanying text or spoken language.

Disentangled Representations: A New Approach

Merging Models in the Data Flow Space (Layers) (Credit: Sakana.ai)

To overcome these limitations, the researchers propose a method called disentangled representation learning, where the AI system separates important factors from both videos and text. These factors might include objects in a scene, actions being performed, or the relationship between words and visuals. By disentangling these elements, the model can learn more effectively from both sources, capturing a more complete understanding of the world.

Specifically, disentangled representation learning helps in several ways:

  1. Separation of Key Factors: By isolating different elements such as objects in a scene, actions being performed, and the relationships between words and visuals, the AI can more clearly distinguish and analyze each component. This separation allows the model to focus on specific aspects of the data, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of each source.
  2. Enhanced Contextual Understanding: The method combines the visual and textual data in a way that integrates context. For example, understanding a video of a cooking process becomes more accurate when the AI also processes the recipe text, linking the ingredients and steps with the visual cues. This results in a richer and more nuanced representation of the information.
  3. Improved Learning Efficiency: By disentangling these elements, the AI can learn more efficiently from both sources. It avoids the confusion that may arise from treating the data as a monolithic whole, allowing for better alignment and interpretation of visual and textual information.
  4. Real-World Applicability: This approach enables the AI to better handle real-world scenarios where data is inherently multimodal. For instance, in autonomous driving, disentangled learning helps in correlating visual inputs (like road signs) with textual instructions (like speed limits), thus improving decision-making.

The novelty of this approach lies in how the system learns cooperatively. Rather than treating video and text as independent sources of information, the model uses both in tandem, allowing the text to provide context for the visuals and vice versa. This cooperative learning leads to richer representations, where the AI understands more than just the surface-level features of the video or the literal meaning of the text.

Training AI to Learn Like Humans

This cooperative learning approach mirrors the way humans process information. When we watch a video, we don’t just see the images on the screen—we also use language to explain what’s happening, drawing connections between our senses. For instance, in a documentary, we understand the visuals of animals in their habitat through the narrator’s explanation, which adds layers of meaning to what we see.

Examples of an answer by EvoVLM-JP (Credit: Sakana.ai)

In the same way, this method allows AI to combine video and textual data, learning richer, disentangled representations of the real world. The model is trained to align video clips with textual descriptions, helping it to better understand how specific scenes in a video correspond to the descriptions in text. This multimodal learning opens up new possibilities for AI systems to handle tasks that require deep understanding across different types of data.

Potential Applications of Cooperative Learning

The implications of this research are vast. One potential application is in autonomous systems, such as self-driving cars, which must constantly analyse visual and verbal information to make decisions. By disentangling the visual and textual components, an AI-powered car could better understand road signs, traffic signals, or verbal instructions from passengers.

Another area where this could have a significant impact is content recommendation systems. With a deeper understanding of both videos and textual content, systems like YouTube or Netflix could offer more personalised recommendations, matching videos to users based on a nuanced understanding of both the video content and the textual descriptions or subtitles.

Challenges and Future Directions

While this cooperative learning model shows great promise, it also comes with challenges. For one, aligning text with videos in a meaningful way requires high-quality data and well-labelled examples. Moreover, disentangling representations in a way that consistently improves performance remains a difficult task, especially in diverse real-world scenarios.

The researchers also acknowledge that more work is needed to explore how this model performs across different types of videos and texts, as well as how it might be extended to other modalities, like audio or sensor data.

Credit: Tesfu Assefa

Conclusion

The paper “Cooperative Learning of Disentangled Representations from Video and Text” offers a new perspective on how artificial intelligence can learn more effectively from multiple data sources. By allowing AI to learn cooperatively from both video and text, the researchers are helping push the boundaries of machine perception. This approach holds the potential to revolutionize fields from autonomous systems to content recommendation, paving the way for AI that can understand the world with a level of depth and context that’s more human than ever before.

Reference

Sakana.AI. “Evolving New Foundation Models: Unleashing the Power of Automating Model Development,” March 21, 2024. https://sakana.ai/evolutionary-model-merge/.

Wang, Qiang, Yanhao Zhang, Yun Zheng, Pan Pan, and Xian-Sheng Hua. “Disentangled Representation Learning for Text-Video Retrieval.” arXiv.org, March 14, 2022. https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07111.

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