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The Block Runner is your final source for cryptocurrency technology, explanations and news.

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January 8, 2026

Summary

First episode of 2026 and we’re setting the frame for what matters this year: AI is hitting escape velocity, “creation” is getting commoditized, and that changes everything from business models to the metaverse thesis.

We talk through the cultural shift (the 2025 existential turn), why low-sentiment periods are when you should be paying the most attention, and how social media incentives reward overreaction. Then we zoom out to the macro: metals ripping, Bitcoin lag dynamics, and what a “real” 2026 setup could look like.

On the crypto side, we dig into the creator coin debate and why the fan-to-investor switch breaks expectations, using the Nick Shirley Zora post as a live case study. Finally, we share our north star: a world where CoinGecko has an “NAT” tab, non-arbitrary tokens become a real market category, and miners distributing NAT becomes the moment the market can’t ignore.

145

Summary

We interview Suman Kanuganti of Personal.ai about the future of artificial intelligence and how users of his platform are able to generate A.I. versions of themselves by curating information and feeding it to their own personal AI. This technology unlocks a whole world of possibilities and can transform the way humans interact in the digital age. We also talk about how these personal AIs can exist in the metaverse and also how an open platform can enable developers to spin up whole new use cases. Also, how does web3 play into the personal.ai ecosystem. How can AI generators and contributors monetize through the platform, and how does blockchain preserve security and ownership of user data.

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144

Summary

We discovered a new web3 ecosystem that has developed a protocol for NFT owners to merge A.I. personality to their assets. This process fuses the two NFTs together into a new smart contract which generates an iNFT that carries intelligence properties information on-chain. This is exciting for the future of the metaverse which will host living, speaking, and engaging NFTs that are A.I. enabled to provide services to the end users. A.I. enabled characters will then earn ALI tokens. Will this be the next big primitive or just a fad? Also, we deep dive on A.I. philosophy on how to make A.I. valued on the same level of humanity. Also, what is going on with Bitcoin ordinals? Why are inscriptions going through the roof?!

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143

Summary

As we have been anticipating, there has been a surge in A.I. crypto tokens over the last 7 days. Most coins in that sector are up by 200% on average. This was predictable considering the massive amount of attention the Artificial Intelligence applications have been getting from the mainstream. The sector is small with only a handful of viable projects, but nonetheless, the application of leveraging blockchain to create distributed AI learning networks to produce consumer facing AI products is enticing to say the least. Also we speak on the overall market sentiment improving, how AI will continue to develop even outside of web3, and a major update to the Decentraland Worlds progress (ENS enabled).

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142

Summary

We interview Travis who is the head of product at Quadrata, a web3 identity solutions protocol bringing digital passports to the blockchain applications ecosystem. We’ve always known on-chain identity was a missing component to realizing the true potential behind DeFi and other blockchain innovations, we finally found a project who is working on delivering exactly that. Quadrata enables dApps to leverage digital passports as on-chain identity verification tools to determine relevant information about its users. What will this do to the progress of DeFi and the metaverse? Also, we get into an A.I. philosophical discussion.

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141

Summary

Decentraland has announced that DCL Worlds will no longer be constrained to a 4 parcel experience, rather it will allow DCL world owners to build without land limitation so long as they overall content experience being hosted doesn’t exceed 100MB. This move changes the game for Decentralands chances of gaining mass adoption due to lowering the barrier of entry and giving anyone the access to create value from within the metaverse. How does this affect the value of original land parcels in genesis city? Is it better to ignore the speculative risks to OG land if it means DCL worlds will bring in many more users and overall increasing the DCL ecosystem value? Also, how does AI play into all of this?

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