The Conversation That Called the AI Coding Revolution Before It Happened
In July 2024, Jordan Last laid out exactly how AI would reshape blockchain development. 20 months later, it's all happening.
In July 2024, I sat down with Jordan Last, founder of Demergent Labs and one of the most technically grounded builders in the ICP ecosystem, to talk about coding languages, AI, and where blockchain development is actually headed. At the time, a lot of what he said felt forward-looking. Now, about 20 months later, it reads more like a blueprint. Press play and judge for yourself.
For Those Who Want the Highlights
The core argument: When blockchain ecosystems force developers into new languages like Solidity or Motoko, they’re leaving behind decades of documentation, community expertise, and tooling. Jordan’s company, Demergent Labs, is building open-source developer tooling that brings TypeScript, JavaScript, and Python to ICP, opening the door to an estimated 30 to 50 million developers who could build on-chain using what they already know.
The tech shift making it possible: WebAssembly and RISC-V are emerging as universal compilation targets, especially across Layer 2s. Since L2s aren’t locked into their Layer 1’s virtual machine, developers can bring whatever language they’re fluent in and still inherit base-layer security. Jordan sees this as the trend that eventually unseats Solidity’s dominance.
The honest AI take: Jordan uses LLMs daily but sees zero chance they replace senior developers anytime soon. His prediction is that source code becomes “the new assembly,” where AI writes most of it and humans step in surgically when things break.
Editor’s note: This was filmed in July 2024, about 20 months ago, and it’s kind of wild how much has shifted since. At the time, most developers were still copy-pasting ChatGPT output and debating whether AI coding tools were even worth the friction. Now Cursor, Claude Code, and full agentic workflows are standard parts of the stack. Jordan’s “source code as the new assembly” prediction is playing out faster than either of us expected. That said, his core point still holds. The developers who understand what the AI is writing are the ones building things that actually work.
Bitcoin’s second act: We traced how Ordinals reignited Bitcoin development after years of stagnation, how Ethereum’s innovations (NFTs, rollups, fraud proofs) are now flowing back into Bitcoin’s ecosystem, and the realistic security tradeoffs between ckBTC and Lightning.
The real first killer app: Jordan thinks stablecoins and payments will be the first truly world-changing crypto use case, and that it won’t feel revolutionary at all. The bigger paradigm shifts come 5 to 10 years after that.
Whether you’re a developer navigating AI-assisted workflows or you’re trying to understand where this space is realistically headed, this conversation hit different in 2024 and it hits even harder now. Watch the full thing above and let us know which prediction surprised you most.
Subscribe to stay plugged into the conversations happening at the edge of Web3, AI, and decentralized infrastructure.