Exploring Digital Identity in the AI Era with Kirill Avery

GM GM. Welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every week, allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between an opportunity to come on the show and talk about their products. And today, I'm excited to welcome Kirill Avery to the show. So Kirill is a serial founder, self-taught coder, and holds the title of the youngest solo founder to be accepted into Y Combinator, among other things. So if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Kirill and enjoy a candid discussion around digital identity and privacy in the AI era. All right, let's do this thing.

GM GM. Welcome to the show, Kirill. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come chat with us today. Yeah, I know you have quite the tenured background for someone so young. So it's really amazing to see people like you, and I'm really privileged to be able to have you on the show here today. And I guess for folks who aren't familiar with yourself, did you just want to give a brief introduction about yourself?

Sure, yeah. So my name is Kirill. I was originally born in Russia and then I moved to the US when I was a teenager. I started coding when I was like 11 or 10 and briefly moved into building mobile social apps. And spent basically since I was like 11 building consumer social apps, so I kind of lived through the whole era of how mobile apps and social apps have been, how the phases have been shifting. And when I was a teenager, I built a social app which got like 15 million users. It was like an HQ Trivia but for Europe. And it was a pretty fun story. I remember when I was like maybe 16, I could walk on any major city, major street of Europe and in Eastern Europe and ask any girl that would approach me, 'Do you have that app?' and everybody had that app at the time. So of course she would have that app. She would open the app for me, and I would press in a specific place on the screen and the picture of me would pop up. So it was like an Easter egg where I could like approach any girl. But yeah, I moved to the US because I realized that I had to achieve everything I could and also there is a lot of things that politically changed in the country where I'm from, which I now have seen before and now you kind of see the results of what I've seen basically almost 10 years ago. And got into Y Combinator, was trying to build another social app, but then I realized that the era of social apps has ended, that was before AI, so now there's probably like a new window that has opened. And I've been thinking a lot about what is the thing that is very, very important for the world to build and to fix so I could like serve the society and that I would be actually like willing to do that for the next like 10 to 15 years. And there's actually not too many things in the world, but the one thing that stands out from the spectrum of all these things is really like ambitious ideas that kind of like you can just like cannot unsee it. And I feel like digital identity like from the first perspective sounds like something that very nerdy and there is no really like applicable thing that you can imagine compared to, for example, AGI, right? But actually it is like a thing that is connected to all the information networks. Internet is the biggest information network that we have. So and it is tied to every single use case over there and it is not built correctly. So from the inception of the internet. And so that's kind of like was the original idea, and specifically I was thinking about like the internet-based governments like what is now called network states, before they were called that way. And that this is kind of like our future, but in order for that to happen there is a lot of innovation that needs to happen before now and then, so yeah.

Awesome, man. Yeah, it seems like you chose one of the more promising verticals to kind of deep dive into. Digital identities and privacy are going to be quite lucrative and quite important for basically everyone who uses the internet kind of going forward, especially now with AI being so prominent. And I guess with that, we can kind of get into the area of digital identity since you mentioned it. So before we kind of deep dive into it, perhaps we want to take a step back, like what would you define as digital identity in today's day and age?

So what would I define today's problem with digital identity? I guess the main thing is that people actually don't realize what identity is like fully. When you type in your password or your email address, or when you unlock your phone with face ID, it is all tied to like an identifier and to your profile, which is actually your identity. And currently, what basically happened, like I think Jack Dorsey recently gave a podcast interview where he was saying about this in a really like perfect language, was that the internet appeared, it was all protocol-based and there were multiple protocols, people experimented on protocols for sharing information. And at some point, the companies like back in 2005 have discovered that you can centralize a discovery layer and because of that you can monetize it and then there's like a lot of things you can do with that. And that happened because protocols were there in the first place. If that innovation didn't happen, that would not be enabled. And so the thing that is happening with identity is like they centralized that layer, and you can monetize it by selling the data of users, when users are contributors, without actually like users being paid anything to users like just fully monetizing it on that. But the problem is not just that. The problem is that people actually don't care about that problem, so they're totally fine. And then when we talk about privacy, the human nature is to not kind of look at like long-term problems, and that is like a really long-term problem because like when you have the problems of like governments seizing specific kind of like actions or like blocking specific like parts of the internet, for example what is happening in Russia right now, it is a longer-term effect of that, but people don't see that in the present and because people don't see that in the present, they kind of don't think about this as a problem. So privacy is like the main right and like ownership, self-sovereign data is kind of like what is missing currently. Because data, any form of data is actually a part of an identity stack. So identity is just like the lower foundation of that. And so that's kind of like one big thing. Another big thing with identity is you can create a bunch of bot accounts and create a lot of misinformation. And that would not be a problem if actually platforms would have like a good way to fight it, but they don't and because of that like you actually with AI have a much steeper kind of like line down with the problem of eroding trust. And the example I can give here is like a bot account is actually someone creates an identity, CAPTCHA is no longer working, right? And the identity specifically is becoming a thing that is very cheap to forge. And it was very cheap to forge before, but before that in order to manage like the farms of bots, you had to like actually sit there and have real people like write comments and stuff like that. But now it's just like you don't need to do that, like it's like completely really like just free, right? So that's kind of like the thing and trust is specifically connected to the identity. So like that all kind of creates this problem of what is the future of information networks where AI is kind of like becoming much smarter and being used in all the parts of the stack, and how do we actually keep the human connection between each other. And at the same time, the data ownership is very important because what's happening with AI right now is platforms of AI platforms, they are taking the same step towards what Meta and Twitter and all the companies did, which is centralizing the discovery layer.

Yeah, yeah definitely. And especially like you touched on it, just the fact that the lines between what's human and what's AI are really starting to kind of blur nowadays. Like a couple years before, like you could easily tell like some like video generated thing or AI voice thing was like AI, right? Like you'd have like the ten fingers or something on a hand or like the voice kind of like came off robotic. But nowadays like you need a very small like real-life voice sample to clone somebody's voice or like just a few pictures to make like a nice video image of somebody, right? So yeah.

But there is a very important piece here which is I just need to clarify, this is not bad, this is actually really cool technology and I'm would love to see that in the world. And I think AI is great, I'm not like a part of doomer people like that are just like we have to stop it or something like that. I'm just thinking at the same time that like what could go wrong and like how can we like navigate the humanity to like the right kind of like place. That's the only kind of thought. But yeah, please continue.

Yeah, yeah definitely. I think it's really the tech is like really amazing too especially the how fast it's kind of improved just within a few years time. But like like you said, it's kind of like you need to be able to distinguish still at least in my mind between the two, right? So I guess back to digital identities, I know that you mentioned a lot that was kind of I don't know if wrong is the right word but perhaps things that need fixing. What do you think works with today's digital identity solutions?

What today works with them? Yeah, like what's what's right with them, and I know that you mentioned there's a lot of things to to fix but like what do you think works? Like we have these digital wallets, like blockchain wallets right, that act like a decent layer, like a good next step, but is there anything else perhaps people don't realize is already like well-established today? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I feel like there are some pieces that exist like in different areas of the whole like technological space, both in Web2 and Web3, that have issues with like thinking about adoption curve. Like the main problem actually what I see in if I look at like any link that my friend sent me about like new identity project whatever it is like Web2 Web3, is that nobody thinks about like how this thing will be adopted by people, and or at least they think that they'll just like pay grants to the different developers that would like build something and then because of that it's not going to happen like you're not going to like get eight billion people on it, right? So you need to have like a really smart way to do that and the things that do not really like the things that work specifically, I feel like is there are great innovations that are happening with like the passkeys like technology. I think it's still like relatively early, for example for our products we do not use them yet because we think that it is ultimately requires like to use a password manager, not too many people have that. With wallets, it's definitely like people are talking and like we're talking for a long time that actually wallets are like your identity and and something like that. There is obviously like your private key is like connected to like different activities so because of that it is like your identifier. But the thing that is missing is actually the same question, how can like eight billion people adopt this? And I don't think that just like keeping your private key and just deriving everything from it makes sense fully and the yeah, so kind of like different aspects I think like works. I would say that I don't really think too much about like what is working and as a founder I try to like focus and like what is not working.

Makes sense, man. Yeah. And I guess I've always when when this notion of like digital wallets kind of came out, I thought it was really cool. A lot I think you touched on it, these like social apps, at least the the blockchain enabled ones, were really touting oh transferability, transferability between yes, that definitely is like you own your data. This kind of piece of it. The thing is like major platforms are not integrating them so you kind of they keep the data with them and in order for you to like start suddenly owning like majority of your data, you need to have the apps that you use regularly to be compatible with that and that didn't happen so. Yeah. And then the other thing too is these these identity solutions they're transparent, right? Like anyone can look into it and the fact that they're tied into money kind of creates this weird kind of kind of vibe let's say around them where it's like oh before like I couldn't see into your like your finances, right? But now like if I know what your wallet address is and like I can see how much money you have, right? And it's kind of like it kind of defeats the purpose kind of around that notion of privacy, right? And maybe this is a good segue into into into that. Like there's a lot of interesting innovations kind of coming around zero-knowledge tech and whatnot, but doesn't seem to be landing in the consumer side of the spectrum yet in the consumer apps. Like what do you think of of zero-knowledge tech in the realm of privacy and how you think it'll help?

Yeah, I feel like it's still relatively early and specifically like it's becoming cheaper to in terms of computation. It's still quite technically savvy to do custom circuits for zero-knowledge, and it definitely like requires a lot of thought process. So I think this is a great tech and I think that we should start like utilizing it in in more places. I feel like the big platforms would be ideal example if they could like start doing that for authentication or something like that. But it can be used like in multiple kind of like dimensions. For us, for example, we also know like internally that for example you could use TEEs, Trusted Execution Environments as like as a technology that could be the same kind of like create privacy in the same manner but it's kind of like easier to replicate and and build, but you could enable like private transfers, you could enable like private authentications, disclosure of information. And I think Vitalik has like a lot of different things that you can like if you think about the whole stack of like blockchains about proving something to someone that that makes sense. So I'm looking forward seeing that more in like different products that that enable today.

Yeah, definitely. I mean one thing that I've seen, I don't know if you heard of them but Nillion, they have built a a chat basically kind of like a ChatGPT kind of thing, but they've integrated zero-knowledge tech into it so that basically everything is kind of like encoded and no one but yourself can kind of see what the chat history is. So I definitely am starting to see some of it, like some of that tech kind of seep through. Yeah you see like there are a lot of products that I've seen like that actually propose zero-knowledge as the use case, but it's not really the use case. Like that's the problem like it is the use case for like a really nerdy small like number of people kind of audience, but it is not something that would go wild. And maybe this is like the the place in terms of like the evolution of that technology where we are right now and then like it becomes mainstream after while trying all the things. But like I encourage people, encourage people to think more about how to apply that and like when you find the product market fit like in a nerdy audience of like crypto enthusiasts like how you get around and like actually go beyond that.

Yeah, totally. And I guess this might be another nice segue here. Let's talk about the current state of just like consumer apps in the crypto industry, or maybe lack thereof. Like what are your thoughts on kind of the the industry as a whole and trying to get away from basically the infrastructure layer which I think is already well established and into building things that regular folks can use, the non-nerdy people. I feel like there is a lack of product people in the space and specific like really good product people and lack of designers. There are basically two major audiences that are building in the space and by the way I wouldn't say that I'm building specifically in crypto like what I'm what I'm doing is I am solving real-world problems and just happens to have like the backend is is using crypto. And this is like I think the mindset that more people should take when they start applying that I'm in crypto. Two things happen like first is there are people who are like really good with like original values of crypto punks and stuff like that and and Bitcoin maximalism. They're like building the infrastructure, sometimes it's really smart and like really if you go in deep like really beautiful solutions and do not think at all about like how this thing is going to get adopted or like how users will interact with it or how they get adoption and distribution. And the other part is people who are relatively new and they're coming specifically because of the money part. And they don't care about the whole like decentralization aspect. Like if you see the project in crypto that is like saying oh decentralization like coming sometime later, but this is like that should be the core proposition, I always like see that as a red flag potentially. But the main thing is like there nothing is wrong with like just being for money but the thing is like I feel like this whole kind of like paradigm shift should be moved by the value shift, right? It's you cannot just like come and use the same approach that you used in in the different industry because it's just like hurting the whole industry. So there's a two camps and I think there is not too many or maybe not at all like founders that are kind of like in the middle between two of those. No, I think there are a few. But like in general the you I believe that the best kind of way about how to get ahead, and I will show that in the next few years by the way I am fully like dedicated to showing it for everyone, is like combining the values of of crypto but also thinking a lot about the product and putting the money like a little bit behind because like if you can build a product that is like have a good retention and distribution with with good values it means that it will have adoption you'll be able to make money no matter what because the whole thing is like connected to payments and everything. But think about that a bit later and first like try to solve the problem of a user. That's kind of like my thinking approach.

Yeah, definitely and I think you hit the nail on the head there. A lot of people, at least from from what I've seen specifically in the crypto and blockchain space is they concentrate a lot on the money money part of it first and usually the money is always tied to some token launching on whatever the the community is the product right and it's like a big problem we see. Yeah I'll tell you I'll tell you a secret, in a like around a month from now I will prove you that money for me do not matter, okay? We'll stop here so this is kind of like a secret. There will be like a very vivid kind of like proof I will show you, yeah.

Excellent. Yeah bit of a bit of a tease, right on man. But yeah the thought was like once that first like token generation event kind of happens, like you see a lot of people are like oh okay that's I'm done with this thing now I'm moving on to the other thing. And I think it's like you mentioned it, it's kind of this lack of a like a product vision kind of like after after that main token launch kind of happens. Like do you think maybe it's just because these companies are not they hire too heavy too heavy on the developer side at the start and kind of bring in the product people too too late or yeah? I think the founder one of the founders should be like product-oriented, and one of the founders should be technical. Ideally if the founders like know both, but I think like you cannot just like bring someone and say okay can you do the product? It's like the core the design and the product is the same importance of of technology there is not no kind of replacement.

Yeah, yeah fair to say fair to say. And I guess kind of coming back on that little tease, a little birdie did say you might have something big cooking. Is there any alpha or anything you might be willing to drop around that for folks watching today? Yeah, so I will kind of like share like a secret here that will be like later announced which is human project that I've been like focusing on for the like three years almost. Is no longer exist existing, this kind of like there were some issues on on the organizational level. But it doesn't mean that this is the end of the mission. And there is a reason behind why I've been like quiet on Twitter for a few months, there is a reason why I'm becoming less quiet on Twitter now. So I have a lot of comments like asking like what is happening what is happening, just trust the process. That's that's my only thing like everything is measured and everything is kind of like thought out. I did not like leave the space I'm I'm 24 years old so like I have all intentions to kind of not burn any reputation things or anything like that. It's it's my kind of life mission what I'm talking about here. So and yeah just stay tuned there is like really really soon there's going to be some cool news.

Amazing. Yeah looking forward to it man. Yeah so keep keep your eyes peeled folks. And for people who want to stay on top of all the things that you're up to, what's the best way for them to to do that? Is it the follow on X or? Yeah just follow on X. I I just posted an article about privacy that I would recommend everybody reading. It specifically touches the the part where like if you verify everyone like a proof of personhood online, what happens with privacy because some people have like this is the end of like anonymity. And I'm arguing that it's really not, and I'm showing like examples about how this could be like things how this could be solved. The short answer it's all about incentives and it's all about the system design. So and we have thought about it and I'm going to publish more more stuff really soon, so and also some cool videos are coming, so there's going to be a lot of content.

Amazing. And yeah I've read the article, it's really good and we will link it for you in the description below, so definitely you'll want to check that out. And as we're approaching time here Kirill, is there anything you want to leave the audience with around identity, privacy, or anything else?

Yeah, I would just say like be more curious and try more stuff that is coming out. Just pure curiosity. And then when you try that, like try to feel like what does it mean for you as a user when you try it, and what does it mean if you think about your friends that would like kind of try it. Like what are the problems that are happening between? And then like just try to apply that framework to everything you use in in the industry. And I think this is quite important to like global awareness of the problems and stuff like that. And if you if you have a chance to share that with me, I my DMs are always open. So yeah.

Amazing man. And yeah we have Kirill's X account listed in the description below so definitely if you want to chat reach out. And yeah with that Kirill thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come chat with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much Narb. Have a good one. Yeah happy GM. Right on. All right. Cheers. Yeah have a good one folks.

I really appreciate it. Thank you so much Narb. Have a good one.

Right on. All right. Cheers. Yeah have a good one folks.