In this episode of Blocklayer Podcast, Kenzi Takahashi, Sachi Shiokava, and Diksha Desai sit down with Anna Kazlauskas, CEO and Co-Founder of Vana, to unpack one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI: data ownership and incentives.

Anna shares her path from traditional finance into decentralized AI, and what it’s like building Vana — a platform designed to let people own their data and contribute it to AI models on their terms. We dig into why tokenomics matters in this model (and where it can go wrong), plus the hard parts of starting a Web3 company: hiring mission-aligned teams, staying focused through noise, and designing systems that can survive contact with real users.

The conversation goes deep on the AI data shortage and how Vana approaches it through decentralized data ownership and data DAOs. Anna breaks down the difference between data DAOs, trusts, and unions, why private data is uniquely valuable, and what the ecosystem has learned from experiments like the Reddit Data DAO concept.

If you’re interested in the future of AI, data rights, and crypto-native coordination, this one is packed.

This episode was supported by Diksha Desai and Sachi Shiokava.