Unbound: Pioneering the Future of Blockchain and AI as a Gen Z Innovator

Blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become the backbone of technological innovation. The AI market is expected to reach around $184 billion in 2024 and continue to rapidly expand. Similarly, the global blockchain market, valued at $17.57 billion in 2023, is projected to see substantial growth by the end of the decade. Both technologies are transforming industries and driving future advancements.

Still, for all their potential, these technologies are hindered by complexity and lack of perceived benefits. Many see the blockchain as nothing more than a vehicle for cryptocurrency speculation, with few use cases outside the financial industry. AI adoption faces similar challenges, with claims that many initiatives fail to achieve meaningful business impact.

Julie Shi, a 24-year-old computer scientist, Base Chain Builder, and Consumer App Expert, is working to bridge this gap. As a member of Gen Z, the first true digital natives, Shi brings a fresh perspective to the tech world, fueled by a desire to make complex technologies accessible to all.

Shi's work intersects with the blockchain and AI domains, and she’s trying to make these technologies more accessible to the average user. Her innovations will reshape how we interact with emerging technology, from creating transparent gaming systems to streamlining legal processes with AI. Shi was responsible for the world's first poker game using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), a breakthrough that redefined the foundation of trust in online gaming.

Redefining Trust in the Digital Age

Although online poker has existed for decades, it has always been dogged by suspicions of cheating and rigged games. Some players have claimed they cannot verify that the digital deck is random or that other players aren't colluding, and the resulting lack of trust has kept many potential players away and stunted the growth of online poker.

Blockchain technology presents a potential solution as it offers a decentralized and transparent ledger. However, early blockchain-based games were the same. While all transactions were visible on the blockchain, players' hands could be seen by others, which ruined the game.

Shi attempts to solve these challenges through the Fully Homomorphic Encryption approach. By design, FHE allows computations on encrypted data without first decrypting it. In online poker, the game can shuffle and deal cards, and players can make decisions, all while the underlying data remains encrypted.

In other words, FHE helps prove the game is fair without revealing private information. This way, players can verify that the deck is shuffled correctly and that no one is cheating, but they can't see other players' decks or card orders. While new, this approach could solve online poker's transparency and privacy concerns, paving the way for other secure, verifiable online games.

Shi's Journey From USC to the Top of Blockchain Gaming

Shi's journey to the top of blockchain gaming began at the University of Southern California, where she studied computer science. At 19, she became the first female hire on the algorithm team at Pony.ai, an autonomous driving company.

This experience motivated her to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible in computer science. She was also inspired by her mother, who is a tech entrepreneur back in China, and her achievements, further fueling her respect for innovation and entrepreneurship.

After brief stints at several significant tech giants, Shi found her true calling in blockchain tech. Initially attracted by the technology's promise of improved financial services and cybersecurity to create a more transparent world, Shi soon discovered that many projects were more hype than substance. This prompted her to explore ways of building something with real-world potential, and that's how she landed in gaming.

Beyond Gaming to Reshaping the Digital Infrastructure

While Shi's poker game is her most high-profile project, it is just one of her significant contributions to the blockchain space. Shi has also developed tools for managing subdomains on the blockchain, work that has influenced major players like Coinbase and Uniswap. Subdomains make blockchain addresses more user-friendly and accessible to users, further democratizing this nascent technology.

This focus on accessibility and user experience is a common theme in Shi's work. Whether it's making online games more trustworthy or blockchain addresses more readable, she's consistently working to bring blockchain to a broader audience.

"Blockchain provides everyone fair access to the economy, and that's how we can benefit all human beings and break down the barriers for people to access resources from anywhere," Shi explains. She aims to lead this revolution by developing innovations that fast-track progress.

Overcoming Challenges in A Male-Dominated Field

Shi's rise to the top of her industry hasn’t always been smooth sailing. As a young woman in predominantly male spaces, it's not uncommon for her to be the only female voice in the room. Despite being a builder & leader of multiple projects, she has encountered people who assumed she was just another assistant, but that hasn't fazed her. Shi lets her work speak for itself, proving that when you're building something truly remarkable, gender becomes irrelevant.

Shi's work ethic and perseverance have paid off. Over the years, she has won multiple hackathons, garnered recognition from her peers, and earned prizes at prestigious events such as ETHDenver and ETHGlobal San Francisco.

She was also the Winner of the MIT Ignite GENAI Competition and a speaker at the FHE Summit at ETHCC 2024 in Brussels, where she discussed using cutting-edge cryptography to build card games. She's also one of only five people in the world to receive an ENS DAO Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to the Ethereum Name Service ecosystem.

Shi's Vision for the Future of Blockchain and AI

As the blockchain and AI frontiers continue to grow and evolve, Shi sees enormous potential in combining the two technologies to advance real-life utility. She believes that the blockchain provides the trust layer, while AI can handle the heavy lifting of document processing. Together, the two technologies can make processes faster, cheaper, and more accessible to everyone.

As for the gaming world, Shi believes we're just scratching the surface of what's possible with blockchain and FHE. With new features debuting all the time, Shi predicts that these developments will open up a new world of possibilities.

To other female engineers and aspiring entrepreneurs in this space, Shi encourages "doing it scared." "There is no time that I'm ready for anything. Especially for women, it's always scary, but at the end of the day, that's all about proving we can do it just as well.”

Shi is particularly interested in bridging the gap between complex systems and everyday users, and is pursuing her passion projects in fraud-proof systems, streaming, metaverse, social apps with game theory, and AI agents in consumer apps. Armed with technical expertise and user-centric design, Julie Shi is leading the tech revolution, one innovation at a time.