Anthony Anzalone on Verona's $18.5M raise and AI verification layer

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from the Crypto Coin Show, and today on Blockchain Interviews, we're back with us Anthony Annunziata, founder and CEO of Verona, formerly Zion, coming back to the show with a new raise, the launch of Earn OS, and with a lot of brand spending and new potentials to earn from the wallet-less blockchain. Going to dive into all of the latest updates

0:23with you today. But first of all, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thanks for having me, man. It's really It's awesome to be back on. I always love I feel like every time that we talk, it's always such a great conversation.

Definitely, I agree, and you've been busy. We've all been busy despite whatever Bitcoin price, market conditions, heads down building, still

0:42driving adoption of blockchain into the mainstream. You guys have been one of the leaders in my mind and continuing to bring more people in to open their eyes and not just orange pill them, but get them involved in blockchain in ways that they don't even know they're using

Yeah.

which is the best of all.

Yeah. No, I mean, I feel like, you know,

1:03it's it's funny. Like every time that we come on here, it's it's always awesome. You know, we've held the same thesis for quite some time, which is you know, I love crypto. It's my tribe. I can't be anywhere else, but at the end of the day, it's there's no there's no reason to really love it as much, I guess. You know, and I think just trying to find benefits and trying

1:24to keep grinding and find solutions, you know, I think a lot of running against brick walls until you kind of come to solutions, which it's a fun industry that.

Definitely, yeah. The You know, these entrepreneurs, the ones that have succeeded have failed many more times than the other ones. That's what it's all about is getting back up and keep

1:42going, especially with the troughs and peaks of crypto. I think there's no better place to do it with Zion rebranding to Verona and the new, you know, 18 and a half million dollar raise and Earn OS. Walk me through all you've been through since Not maybe not all of it, but new stuff since our last talk last year. You guys have been busy. So, what is it

2:07with Verona and talk about the rebrand?

Yeah. So, I think with Verona, we kind of came into I think last time, you know, maybe a year year and a half ago, we were like completely abstracted all crypto away. You know, no reason to have it, but I think the issue that we kind of found with that was you know, a lot of crypto's benefit is in speculation.

2:27You know, and so for us, we kind of ran against the wall trying to figure out that wasn't that hard, but you know, trying to figure out the you know, once you remove crypto, what does that look like? And a lot of that kind of came into verification. You see this with like pretty early crypto stuff, which is you know, verification of ownership, right? And like once you have

2:44verification of ownership, you have programmable ownership, which was like you know, oh, you own this ape NFT, you can join this ape Discord, right? And you know, you own this token, you can do this thing, right? And like being able to do like an if this and that on the internet because you know the underlying thing is true. And so, take that, but then extend that to

3:05everything, right? With kind of with that. And we were able to kind of find a nice migration in kind of traditional crypto and then more the academic sense of like zero knowledge proofs, where we could then, you know, create verification on any arbitrary internet data and then be able to make that information programmable. Where that started about a year and a half ago

3:25was kind of you know, you look at this kind of front facing burnt that we have, which is very enterprise ZK proofs, right? So, we can do income employment verification and working with actual enterprises, real estate companies, insurance companies like that to be able to just you know, make business lines better and streamline current business lines. But,

3:46with the Verona, you know, being able to then kind of build on top of that and create brand new business lines is exactly what we're focused on over at Verona. You know, and I think that one of the main things that we found with crypto is that we assumed every bad every actor to be bad, but we didn't really accommodate for social capital, which AI agents don't really come with

4:06social capital. And they're kind of the best use case for crypto at the end of the day. So, if you want to think about it, Verona is kind of this one-stop shop for any AI agent to get information that it needs to act on and ideally kind of sensitive information that it couldn't normally operate with.

Mhm. Yeah, I'm I'm excited to dive into this because, you know, ZK proofs and that

4:29verification of if this, then you can get access to that is cool, but it's been pretty early stage. You know, I don't think real-world people care if they have access to a Discord or not. You know, I want to verify that I have first class through blockchain or you know, get my coffee at the front of the line. Things that matter to people in the real world.

4:49But with AI agents, there's so much that's going to be done, but I feel we're pretty early on. Even the techy people, even even crypto natives, you know, they're using AI religiously, but maybe just in a chat format and not necessarily have AI agents. And of course, you have to build towards the future as well. Where do you see us at right now, even with the early

5:11adopters with AI agents, and where Verona is trying to head?

Yeah, I mean I think I think AI is going to be an interesting thing. I mean, you look at the graphs and it's just it reminds me of very early crypto as well, which is, you know, adoption is actually pretty low in comparison. You know, and I think it's super super adopted by the techy people. You know,

5:28but I think that there's this like not a fight like a fight both good and evil effectively, which is, you know, these these top guys are just stealing everyone's data. They're just ripping the internet. And you know, even you had the cursor acquisition for $60 billion just for data. You know, and I think verified data is increasingly hard to come behind. And you know, well

5:48I don't really want to live in an environment where that's just stolen from everyone. You know, but I want to give people the ability to say, you know what, hey, yes, you can use my data, but actually pay me for this. You know, and we launched Arrow you know, yesterday to effectively show this, right? And Arrow's run by an amazing team, and you know, they have

6:07about $30 million in brand spend, which is effectively saying, hey, we'll give you money if you kind of connect your data here. And we're able to say, you're an Uber user, you're a Disney watcher.

Okay. No, I agree, and that's always been the battle and the trade-off, even with crypto versus banks or public blockchains versus privacy

6:29coins. It was like, there's you know, you own your information in blockchain, where you can you can own it even more privately, but it seems like we go back to a matter of convenience, you know, or user experience. You know, the centralized ones that take your data, well, it works better, and I you know, I don't really care.

true. Yeah, no one cares about Insta. I

6:49mean, you the amount of people give away on Instagram is so funny.

Yeah. So, how do you balance that with having the privacy, but also ensuring that it's as good or better of an experience than the centralized one that's stealing your data?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's it's it's about being opt-in rather than opt-out, right? And I think that's

7:08probably the easiest way to maintain you know, privacy in any of these matters, which is like, it's your data, you know, if you want this, it's yours, but I think giving people the option is just the starting line. You know, and then I think being able to say, you know, put this on a decentralized ledger, and you know, being able to put this information

7:28on decentralized ledgers saying, well, actually no one owns this, but everyone kind of gets to benefit from this if you want. You know, and I think that you want an agent to say, you know, let's say we fill my prescription, apply for a car loan, you know, things that would otherwise require sensitive information, but there's no reason why a There's no

7:47reason why an AI agent should see your bank statement, right? Or paystub. You know, and so as we, you know, we're kind of this anti-AI AI play where, you know, we understand that the world is growing towards AI, but it's like this increasingly scary and scary world where there's a ton of slop and verification is hidden behind stolen data.

Mhm. Definitely, and I can imagine a

8:10scenario where someone gets access to your AI that you've given to make your life easier, it can make your life very difficult.

Mhm. Yeah, I mean, it's you know, and then it goes into the wrong hands, right? Like And then the last thing that people want as well is just like, you have a you have to go on like one of those you click one wrong email and then

8:30the next day your your phone is being spammed with like a billion calls. It's like, "Hey, you sure you don't want that life insurance policy?"



you know, that's what we don't want.

No, definitely not. And with that opt-in of your information, you know, generally people they want to understand, "Okay, I'm opting in because I'm getting

8:49something out of it." You know, if I'm going to be like if I'm on Instagram or Facebook, they say like the user is the product. That's why it's free. And they don't, you know, maybe they're getting some social value out of it if not just scrolling endlessly, but to actually [snorts] earn something monetarily is super beneficial. Can Can you dive into exactly how that works

9:12with Earn OS and Ero?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's it's funny. I think Ero comes out of that logic where the user is the product, right? And I think that you've had so much time in that meta of the user is the product and if it's free you're the product that you've you've really created this antagonistic environment for people who are like brands who are

9:31actually trying to find real people. And there's like a trillion dollars in marketing spend and most of that is just completely burned or wasted.

Totally.

You know, so this is like this is the attempt of saying, "Well, let's actually, you know, let's actually try to get this you know, targeted, right?" And try to flip this meta, and kind of

9:47go back to this idea, which is, you know, we hey, we can verify what you see on the internet. Let's use that, and maybe be a refreshing take on the internet. You know, and so the idea that you know, we can see that if you know, if a user wants to show, it's like, "Hey, here's $100 if someone's a Lyft user, right? And you want to swap over to Uber. I could see

10:09that as a Lyft rider and be like, "Yeah, you know, and I kind of like Lyft. I don't really want to do that. You know, but I could say that and be like, "Yeah, your $100 is pretty nice. I'm going to do that, right?" And so we can verify that you rode with Lyft. You could actually have pretty interesting price discrimination as well, right? Like you know, let's say you ride a lot

10:26with Lyft, you are a much more valuable rider to then go to Uber. And so, you know, let's say me and you ride different you know, different amount of times. I ride a lot more than you. I could be getting $1,000, you could be getting $15 because I ride a lot more, and I'm a much more valuable customer to Uber. And so now apply that to you know, exchanges

10:46and banks and you know, credit cards and anything that has a competitor, right? You know, but I think going back to the idea where all of the information is verified, is portable, private, and programmable is extremely extremely important. You know, and I think it's just it's the only way that it works in this AI slop of the future.

Mhm. Yeah, there's there's been you

11:08know, personalized ads where they take your information, and they're trying to serve you the right ads. But I feel like AI is going to improve that as long as it is to our benefit, and we're not just fed ads all day. You know, I pay on YouTube and these things to not see ads at all.

see ads. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. You know, although there are

11:26some things that I want, but I don't necessarily want AI to tell me what I need.

Yeah, I mean, hopefully it gets to a point where you're just ads are unnecessary, right? Like, I you know, I'm especially I'm I'm here in New York. I don't know what the hell is in Times Square. Like, I'm so desensitized ads at this point where I don't even watch them. All right, like, maybe I'll see a

11:45Coinbase ad on the Super Bowl or like Bud Light, but like it's different than being an ad at that point. It's kind of more like a public spectacle. Like, you know, I think that's, you know, the future, you know, the idea of just like ads and ads and ads and like let's just throw more money at this.

Mhm.

If a brand can get you know, if a

12:03brand can spend 50 times less and get 50 times more, there's no reason to be burning money. The only reason we burn money right now is because that's the only way to do it. But, I 100% can see a world which is just like truthful in the nature which is like, "Hey, your car's looking like you're you're, you know, you could probably refinance this loan.

12:22You want to?" And it's like sure, if that's a better rate, I guess, right? Rather than just being like walking and seeing a refinance loan on the subway and I'm like, "I don't have anything to refinance." You know what I mean? Like, there's going to be I think the day of pointless advertisements have come to an end.

Totally. And I think that is

12:42going to be super beneficial for society. If we Sure, there'll still be ads, but no ads will be not related to what you see. You know, even in the real world if we can we can narrow that down with AI, at least you don't have to look at things that don't matter to you.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and it's just like it's the same thing as internet spam, all right? Like,

13:03I think just spam in all its form I was like talking to someone, but I think that there's like two paths to the internet right now. Like, more than 50% of the internet is currently bots growing at a rate faster than expected. You know, you have so many of these AI startups like just slop farming. And it's just going to be like there's two options. Number one is we just never

13:26we just never ever go back to online because why would you? It's just slop. And we just go completely online or it's like there is this sect of the internet that we can kind of grow with the agents and kind of work with them, but like knowing their agents, knowing who's real, knowing what's verified. You know, and I think that it's the only way and I'm a big

13:46proponent of the internet, right? Like I don't think that we're going to go like this offline caveman kind of mentality. You know, I think that we go towards an internet that you can like believe in and see in, but that still works with AI cuz like to your point earlier, I love AI.

Yeah, it's it's definitely making our lives easier and getting more people

14:06into AI agents so that they can take advantage of the AI agent doing stuff on the web for them and they don't really have to go through the depths, through the weeds and go through all the screens and do a thousand clicks to get what they want. That's that beneficial and with Arrow and Arrow OS and Verona overall, do you guys actually help people get on boarded with AI

14:29agents as well?

there is going to be something interesting in the in the future that'll be that'll be interesting like that. Like I mean, I'll I'll probably say it here first, but like developing an MCP server, which is a way for an agent to kind of tap into the to the information, but without storing it, without you know, obviously doing that. But like

14:46being like, "Hey, like you know, in order to fill out your prescription, I need to know your medical blah blah blah, this, that, and the other." And so being able to kind of create an MCP server so that an agent could access information if you wanted to. You know, but then being able to operate on that, right? Like so that's kind of the vision on kind of that

15:01aspect of things.

Mhm. Yeah, cuz right now a lot of people that are just using Claude and these chatbots, the MCPs can connect into and they don't need to know how to run AI agent necessarily. It's they're becoming AI agents without having to get a Mac mini and set up a Hermes agent individually. And it's a lot of work. So as long as you have the connections into

15:24the experiences that are underlying Verona.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think like, you know, I think that the you know, the idea that the idea that we are just entering this agentic future and it's just like unfortunately it's like this really interesting push and pull where it's like unfortunately we're entering this agentic future, but

15:45You know, you just got to build for what you can and you know, understand that like I've I've worked in tech for long enough to understand that the optimistics win which is great. Like I always love that, but you know, there's times where that does get scary and it's just how do we build for a future where the optimists win.

Definitely. And you know, we gave you

16:05gave that example about Uber and Lyft. From what I understand, that's actually that's an actual thing. You are actually partnered with Uber

Brand spend, yes.

Amazon, Nike, like 100 plus brands that people in crypto people that aren't in crypto, they don't need to know anything about crypto. They're getting value from these everyday apps that hundreds of

16:25millions of people use.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? We've been We've been talking about this for quite some time. I think we even talked about this like a while ago. You know, I even on the last kind of time that we had this conversation. You know, but I think the main kind of you know, the difference is that it's well hey,

16:44it's live, right? Like you know, we were running a beta. I think we had like 4 million users and 60 something million impressions. You know, and a lot of this like you know, the information wasn't being reused. It wasn't being It wasn't being utilized and I think now they're being able to kind of have that and store that as proofs being programmable is freaking crazy.

17:02

Definitely. And it's all it's all been in the works and just waiting for the right time. And now that everyone's adopting AI, getting those MCPs eventually connected, it makes it opens the doors for everybody to you know, the original goal was with Zion was not have a wallet, not have you know, the private keys that you have to write down and all that stuff. Now be

17:21able to just connect that into your AI agent that everyone is already using for everything else outside of crypto. Connect that in. This is the This is the time to shine and this makes perfect sense for the rebrand and the new rates.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so we're super excited for the NOS team of the NOS team launching Arrow. We have a lot of

17:40information coming up as well. You know, being able to work with agents. We have a couple more projects launching as well. And so definitely you know, 100% stay tuned for that and then you know, I think a lot of the thing that also mattered with the rebrand was like a revenue thing. You know, I think that traditional crypto projects really only focused on gas fees. And I think that

17:59that was like fine when everything was DeFi. You know, because when you assume everything's DeFi, everything has a financial value to it. But you know, there's a there's a less obvious financial value when you're looking at you know, information. Like Yes, there is a financial value, but it's not direct, right? Like it's not a percent of $10,000. It's something that

18:20someone would eventually pay for. You know, and so for a while like when we're looking at these EK proofs, it was very difficult to kind of put this revenue and say, you know, hey, this network is really strong. It's a network of information. How do we utilize this to strengthen the network and how to make it more intelligent? Right? And so I think one of the things with Zion that

18:37changed with Verona is all these 12 projects that are building on us right now have a rev share, you know, and all of that rev share gets contributed to what will eventually not even eventually, pretty soon be a token burn.

Okay. That's great. And yeah, obviously nowadays revenue early on and huge partnerships that drive more than just gas fees,

18:58especially when blockchains get so fast and cheap that it's like you know, the gas fees decimals of a cent.

Yeah.

I don't know how to write it to get some multi-million here.

It's so funny you know, and I feel bad, but you look at most crypto projects and it's very funny. Like I mean, I don't know where we stand, but we're probably in the top at least 15 crypto projects

19:16in revenue right now. And unfortunately to lowball, right? Like, you like most of the projects that we were competing with last or like 2 years ago, you know, even at their peak, they were like $12 in revenue. It's like, "Wow."

Yeah.

Yeah. So, and then with that token burn, so from what I understand, there's a the Verona token, which is proof of stake. Is this

19:38a new token and a new mechanism with the rebrand?

Same token. Same token, you know, same token, you know, maybe in the future we'll actually have a migration, but, you know, right now it's still the same token. Anyone holding the token is fine. You don't have to do anything. It's just an alias change. You know, but, you know, at the end of

19:55the day we just kind of wanted to represent the new brand. You know, we understood that EOS is launching and we knew that we were going to be doing this rebrand, so it's kind of just one of these things of oh, let's just do it now.

Definitely. No, I think now's a great time. And you guys have been building and the industry adoption-wise of all

20:11these, you know, despite looking at the price and some of the retail investors that might have bought into the hype, they're waiting. The adoption of the technology is full-on straight ahead. And the legislation has helped with that over the years, and there's still more to come. So, yeah, I'm excited to see you guys grow. What's the best

20:30way for people that want to learn more about this and then about the earning mechanism to see how they can benefit like right away?

Mhm. Yeah, I mean, and that's Oh, that's actually so cool. So, I the really cool thing is this is the first time ever that you're able to go from an app right to even a debit card with crypto. You could And like I was saying it's

20:55forever, but you could actually go, you know, do a mission, get $50 from Uber, send it to your bank, send it to Venmo, send it to Cash App, or spin up a debit card right there and be able to spend it at your local Starbucks. It is that aha moment that so many people in crypto have had for so long. Sorry, I get so excited about this, but like man, I remember coming into this industry in

21:172015 and being like when can I buy a cup of coffee? And it's like the answer is today. And that's what's so freaking exciting about this Arrow launch.

Yeah, that is super exciting and yeah, being able to extract real world value is one of the things that everyone needs and it also gets, you know, for those crypto blockchain fanboys, it gets people involved without

21:35them knowing it. And AI is helping with that and I'm excited for you guys with this rebrand and the new raise and to be able to earn from your data, something that, you know, as AI gathers more of your data, there's more potential to earn and more potential to benefit.

yeah, or don't, right? Like I think it's just you know, it's it's unfortunately like

21:57we're at this point which, you know, and I think you see it so many times which is so much information is being scraped that you don't want it to be scraped. You know, that you should be rewarded for it. You know, and I think being able to be rewarded for it in cash and for it to be like a mutually beneficial thing where you know, if a brand wants to reward

22:15you, right? Like you should be able to accept that and like it's a win-win for everyone. You know, it's not it's kind of the best case scenario. And I think that this really, especially with Arrow, you know, the core of this is verification, right? Like once you can operate on information that's verified and you understand that both parties are acting in the best interest

22:35of the other, like and then you can verify that effectively, then you the things that you can do is insane. And we saw this with early DeFi which is like the only thing that we can verify is ownership for the first time ever. And look at what happened with that. Now we can verify any arbitrary internet data and just imagine where that's going.

Yeah, super exciting.

22:56I'm going to set put a link to Arrow and Earn OS and any other information we have about about the rebrand and how other people can get involved because this is something that I'm passionate about as well. Obviously, you're super passionate about it. So, yeah, I'm always glad to have you back on the show. Congratulations on the expansion and all these partnerships

23:19that are just taking crypto and blockchain into the mainstream and privacy of information or opting in of actually earning from your information super important.

Yeah, thanks for the time.

Yeah, but

Yeah, it's always fun. I always love chatting with you and you know, it's always it's always fun to see you know, this is progress. This might have been the third fourth time we've

23:39we've probably spoken. It's just like you know, heads down building and we're we're not going anywhere.

Definitely. Great. Thank you so much for the time.

Talk to you soon, Mason.