brainpower
A Morpheus podcast by Bowen Belmer.
brainpower
Episode 2 - Why Morpheus Matters In 2025
In this episode, Bowen does a voiceover reading of David Johnston's enlightening article, "Why Morpheus Matters in 2025," revealing how Morpheus acts as a pivotal router for AI subnet resources and a theoretically infinite marketplace for smart agents. Ultimately, Morpheus empowers the rise of personal superintelligence by providing the essential building blocks—capital, code, and compute.
Hey everybody, this is Bowen, and you are listening to episode 2 of Brainpower. If you are listening to this, on the day that it was released it is January 16th 2025, and agents should have just went live. What I mean by that is emissions for builder rewards should have just went live, which means that all four pillars of the Morpheus protocol are currently live and active, and people are able to build out build out the ecosystem from each of those different four pillar perspectives that I covered in episode one. In episode two, though, I want to do something a little bit different. I'm going to be doing a voiceover reading of an article that was recently published by David Johnston, who is a very influential and very key developer in Morpheus right now. He published an article a few days ago entitled why Morpheus Matters in 2025. And, quite honestly, I know that a lot of people hate reading and they just don't read. I do like to read, but I know that a lot of people don't, and so I'm going to do a voiceover version of his article so that you can consume it. If you're somebody that maybe hasn't had the time to read the whole thing yet or just, for some reason, didn't want to. It is an excellent piece, so let's dive right into it.
Speaker 1:Why Morpheus Matters in 2025. The year subnets meet agents. What is Morpheus really about? Those who study Morpheus come to realize. At its heart, it's about creating a worldwide web for DAI, with easy creation and discovery of agents, funding of subnets, all executed on a permissionless tech stack. Its purpose is to create personal superintelligence by resolving the technical barriers between each project in the DAI ecosystem. Morpheus is a router of AI subnet resources as well as a universal marketplace for any agent. In other words, morpheus does the heavy coding lifts that enable decentralization of the full tech stack. How does Morpheus achieve this? Tldr? Morpheus is creating personal superintelligence via an aggregation layer to access capital, an aggregation layer to access code, an aggregation layer to access compute all to empower agent builders. This is how human-aligned personal superintelligence is built in 2025. Private, open source rooted in the free will of the individual, by building 100% of the AI tech stack decentralized.
Speaker 1:2025, the agents are here. The agent boom is officially here. A gold rush to the tune of billions of dollars worth of new tokenized agents has roared into the scene over the last six months Between virtuals, ai16z, truth, terminal, theoric, flock, olas and dozens of others. It's now fairly easy to push a button and pop out a simple chat agent. In many cases, the new agent comes with an attached token so anyone can own a part of it. The whole process comes complete with a DeFi trading pool set up to accelerate the new agent into existence. This is what many of us in the Morpheus community have been dreaming of for the past two years. Smart agents using crypto rails would graduate from the whiteboards and white papers of 2023 into something an average person can use and see is very real in 2024. Well, the agents have certainly arrived.
Speaker 1:As 2025 kicks off, what happens next? What are the roles Morpheus will play? Let's start with this. While it has been said before, it bears repeating Morpheus, the protocol, is not building an agent. Rather, morpheus exists to empower all agents with capital, code and compute. Morpheus is building a meta layer for the DAI tech stack that creates demand for agents, benefiting virtuals and AI16Z in 2025, just as it did for Akash and BitTensor in 2024. Just as the Ethereum Foundation builds key infrastructure for all smart contract developers, morpheus is doing the same across DAI and smart agents. The network effect of more agents created, regardless of where they launch, massively benefits Morpheus's own network effect. The four key areas of Morpheus in 2025, capital code, compute and builders.
Speaker 1:One protecting capital providers during the sex, drugs and gambling phase of this new internet of agents. While everyone enjoys the hype and excitement of this boom, let's be frank it is still the very early days in this new internet of agents, best described as the sex, drugs and gambling stage with agents. If you survey the field, most agents today are geared towards triggering human lust. Dopamine and greed responses. Ai girlfriends speculating on funny memes everything from the silly to the absurd is spreading at record speed. This is to be expected and is always the case with every new technological revolution, from the first printed books, most of which were romance novels, to the early days of the internet. The difference this time is the sheer speed and scale. Projects can spread to both billions of dollars and soon billions of people in a matter of days or weeks instead of months or years. Although people are dismissive of these early carnal use cases, they often trailblaze new technologies and bring in more serious players.
Speaker 1:Ethereum had to have its ICO craze and CryptoKitties phase long before DeFi, stablecoin payments or institutional finance showed up to join in the fun. The first value Morpheus can add here to agents is the Mor20 mechanism, which has been battle-tested with over $1 billion worth of STETH or Lido Staked ETH, protecting the principle of those who want to contribute yield to an agent. Extending and simplifying the fair launch smart contracts to an agent format is the logical next step and, beyond the initial launch, morph 20 drives automated recurring revenues for agents to earn rewards from their community of users. Builders are already proposing a fair launch agent pad that will take the Morpheus builder smart contracts and fine-tune them for initial agent offering type use cases. Morpheus builder smart contracts and fine tune them for initial agent offering type use cases. Morpheus has the power to both accelerate this fun phase while doing it in a way that protects users principle from the risky downside of 2017 style ICOs and NFT boom and bust in the past. Two agents are the new websites and Morpheus is the new search engine. This is the second important value Morpheus adds to the code base that weaves together AI and crypto. These are heavy lifts to truly create decentralized infrastructure. This helps every agent builder from base to Solana.
Speaker 1:Morpheus wants to see all these new agent platforms become massively successful. Just as Netscape or Google wanted millions of websites to populate the internet, morpheus welcomes agent proliferation and gives people more to see, do and discover. To continue this analogy, if agents are the new websites for this new version of the internet, then Morpheus has built the new search engine for these agents. As people become overwhelmed, first with thousands and then millions of new agents, the challenge shifts from building and releasing V1 agents to releasing the most useful agents within the vast new world. This is the familiar outcome when things scale globally. Instead of being able to know about every agent, as you could in 2022 or 2023, you end up needing your personal smart agent to search for the best agents. That's where Morpheus comes in.
Speaker 1:What Morpheus has created in the decentralized agent registry and agent router is the aggregation layer required to operate in a world with millions of agents. By considering all agents in existence, morpheus maps agent uses and value to anything a person wants to accomplish. In the process, morpheus ties the person's nuanced intent to value, aligned and network verified agents to get the person's job done. Three Morpheus compute is one inch for agents. The third value Morpheus brings to all these new agents is inference, or in other words, ai compute. This comes in the form of large language models for text and diffusion models, for images, videos, reaching across all the top platforms. What Morpheus has created in the decentralized model registry and compute router is the aggregation layer. A project like 1inch routes trades across many decentralized exchanges and gets the best price for a trader. In the same way, morpheus connects the agent with the cheapest GPU with the smartest intelligence. Agents using Morpheus can access Akash, titan, hyperbolic, seti, fala, genesend, telenex and many other top compute providers, all from a single node or API Using Morpher Compute. The fees that agents pay to route to the cheapest GPU with the best model all aggregate value to Morpheus. So as agents continue to multiply, keep in mind every one of them needs compute, which is why Morpheus is here to provide the infrastructure all agents must access. Morpheus is cross-chain, cross-platform and not beholden to any special interest. Morpheus is for everyone. It exists for any agent builder to use as a credibly neutral platform.
Speaker 1:4. Morpheus Builder Rewards Act as an Ongoing Emissions Mechanism Similar to Aerodrome. Morpheus Builder Rewards go online in January and will continue emitting more for at least the next 256 years. This long-term competition for agent builders to attract more stakers is the most meritocratic way to reward builders selected by the community. A useful comparison here is the way. Uniswap kicked off the DEX revolution with the incentives for liquidity providers, and now Aerodrome is providing 100% of the rewards to their token holders and allowing them to stake to the pools of their choice.
Speaker 1:With DAI, there's a similar trilemma of how to align token holders, agents and subnets. Many projects align only one of these stakeholders in the DAI ecosystem. The unique Morpheus tokenomics properly align the interests of more token holders, subnets and agent builders across all DAI protocols so that each group benefits and strengthens the others. More token holders receive rewards from agents. Subnets earn more emissions from token holder staking. Agents receive code, compute and capital from subnets. With Morpheus, everyone can own a part of the house and win across all of the best players.
Speaker 1:Updated roadmap for Morpheus reaching the Zion era. During 2024, morpheus progressed through the Genesis, frontier and Homestead eras as the project moved from white paper to fair launch, to rewards for capital, code and compute all going live. During 2025, morpheus enters the Metropolis era of rewarding agent builders. This will unleash the creative power of builders and complete the Morpheus flywheel and alignment of DAI projects. Then Morpheus will focus on expanding the frontends and interoperability in the Serenity era, leveraging Layer 0, wormhole and Wire Network to reach new chains and fulfill its chain agnostic vision. After Serenity will come the Zion era, where all the parts of Morpheus will be leveraged to actively and automatically create value for users via their smart agents. As Morpheus progresses through each of these eras, it becomes a connective tissue between agents and a way for the individual to navigate and interact with them, much as the first browsers and search engines did in the early World Wide Web For personal, infinite intelligence for humans and agents. Final thoughts on where this is all going as we enter that long-awaited point in the technological singularity where progress begins to move so fast that, without using AI and crypto, people simply won't be able to keep up with the changes happening around them. By having a personal smart agent, morpheus gives people a way to surf the wave of acceleration without missing the vast opportunities now opening up. As many companies and governments attempt to centralize the power of AI or block open source development, those involved in Morpheus are building something to empower the individual, a strong foundation for the whole DAI ecosystem that will stand the test of time.
Speaker 1:Morpheus is for those people that are driven by the desire for freedom and to choose their own path in life, to quote the inspirational words of Eric Voorhees, founder of Venice AI. Be grateful for every noble challenge you face in your work, for you are alive and your work is important. Stand tall and remember that you are neither slave nor serf. Be the pioneering industrialist and reflect the nobility of that role. Build with intention. Here, in this new land west of the old, we admit only a subservience to moral virtue, to mathematics and to the awesome power of open, composable, immutable code. Aligned with this ethos, morpheus offers a path for AI to be an extension of your mind in a way that honestly aligns with your personal values. Having personal superintelligence that is free, independent and open source for all is worth building towards, fighting for, and by accelerating we will win. In short, free your mind and keep being awesome in 2025.
Speaker 1:Authors David A Johnston, ryan Condren, anon69, rukshuk Talwar, kevin Denman, anon420, scott Berenswig, anton B, kyle Cohen and Anon99. Thank you for listening to episode two of Brain Power. I'll see you next week.