# The Human Layer: Trust Beyond Tokens *The following is a supporting essay derived from [[Episode 2-- From Token to Trust-Aya]] and run through our Narrative Intelligence Protocol and edited by the co-hosts. We were honored to be joined by [Eric Annan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/visionarybuilder/) and [Michael Lawal](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lawal-62141024/) from the [Aya team](https://www.ayahq.com/). >The crypto industry is experiencing an energy crisis. Not of electricity, but of purpose. Walking the floor at ETH Denver this year, as Eric from Aya observed, "I don't see the energy, as I saw last year... people are getting to feel like it's the same thing we hear every year and it's nothing new." This sentiment resonates deeply with those of us who've watched blockchain evolve from revolutionary technology to, too often, just another casino. But what if the real revolution was happening elsewhere? What if, as Michael suggested, **"For the world to actually see the beauty of blockchain technology, beyond the buzzwords... it's actually showing that this technology solves problems by simple tools—savings, able to move money around, able to solve data identity,"** we needed to look beyond the global North? Our conversation with Eric and Michael from Aya revealed a profound inversion of crypto's typical trajectory—**one that starts with human needs rather than speculative assets, with community infrastructure rather than tokenomics, with trust as the fundamental currency rather than artificial scarcity.** ### The Human First: Rediscovering Our Programming "Every human, including myself, is programmable," Michael explained in a moment of striking clarity. This wasn't about manipulation, but recognition of our fundamental nature: "All humans in this planet, including myself... can take anything out of your mind and put anything there." The implication for technology development is profound—**when we forget our humanity, we create systems that program us rather than serve us.** At crypto conferences, Michael's simple introduction —"I'm just Michael"—causes "two minutes of brain freeze" as attendees struggle to define themselves outside their projects. "People go into two minutes of brain freeze, people literally staring at you for two minutes and say nothing... If that's me literally saying who are you? And to that guy he's like no, I'm the Coinbase I'm building, I'm the Arbitrum I'm building, I'm the Ethereum I'm building. They totally completely forget who they are." >**Research Context:** Psychologist Sherry Turkle's research on identity in digital spaces reveals how technology can create what she calls "tethered selves"—identities so entangled with digital artifacts that they lose connection to embodied experience. The crypto space has accelerated this phenomenon, with developers and community members defining themselves through their technological associations rather than fundamental human qualities. **When communities build technology without this awareness, the consequences reach beyond personal identity into the systemic.** As blockchain technology accelerates into AI integration, this disconnection becomes increasingly dangerous—we are programming systems that will program us back. ### Building Trust Infrastructure BEFORE Technology Infrastructure "Trust is a currency," Eric explained, highlighting the fundamental inversion Aya brings to blockchain development. While Western projects typically begin with tokens and hope to build community, Aya starts with community infrastructure and builds technology to serve it. The insight came through hard-won experience: "We shaped our approach and then we got Coinbase to give us our first grant... We trained over 200 people. We had over 10,000 people apply to want to get the skill. But fast forward, okay, the training is great... Now let's actually work on getting more young people to solve problems using technology." **This shift from education to implementation required physical space—the Aya Builder Hub where "random conversations happen and the world, most of the magic that has happened in this world is through random conversations, conversations that you don't plan."** Within seven months, this physical infrastructure had launched seven projects, demonstrating that blockchain technology requires human infrastructure to thrive. >**Research Context:** Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom's work on commons governance demonstrates that successful common-pool resource management depends on "nested enterprises"—physical gathering spaces where community members can build trust through face-to-face interaction. Her research shows that purely digital governance without physical anchoring points tends to fail, precisely because trust formation requires embodied interaction. This mirrors Aya's discovery that virtual-only training wasn't enough—they needed physical hubs where "you just get your laptop and you're doing something." The results speak volumes: **"In seven months we've seen over seven projects built in the Aya Hub... That approach has yielded measurable results."** ### From Casino Economics to Human Flourishing Perhaps the most striking insight from our conversation was Michael's garden metaphor: **"What we've created now? We've created a jungle instead of a garden... We need a place where we all cross-pollinate and coexist as a collective of humans."** The metaphor isn't just poetic—it's diagnostic. **Web3 has created predatory systems where extraction dominates regeneration, where community has become "their marketing tool" rather than their foundation. As Michael observed: "Straight away they go into oh, this is time for me to dump my ego... Wake up, bros, crypto bros. You gotta wake up, because this is Michael and I'm telling you there are new set of builders here. We don't really give a shit about your ego."** This clarity cuts through crypto's promotional veneer to the uncomfortable truth—much of what we call "community building" is actually extraction. **The alternative? "Our garden is a place where those bees who want to be here for longer... because we have no bullshit conversation, we have hard conversations.** We have human-rooted conversation that is rooted in conviction and philosophy and love and acceptance." >**Research Context:** Economist Kate Raworth's "Doughnut Economics" model offers a framework for understanding this transition from extractive to regenerative systems. Her research demonstrates how economic systems that prioritize extraction eventually undermine the foundations they depend on—precisely the pattern we're seeing in speculative crypto economies. When Aya focuses on building practical solutions like stablecoins that help small businesses "convert their local currencies, which has lost about 60% in the last three years" to protect their income, they're creating regenerative value rather than extractive speculation. ### Cross-Pollination: Real Impact Beyond Speculation The concrete impact of this approach is already evident. **Eric shared: "One of our companies, has over 80,000 users today. They just raised $100,000. Imagine such a project in Silicon Valley with 100,000 users. They would have raised $10 million today."** The project, Soccerism, demonstrates how blockchain technology can address real-world needs when developed from the ground up. What's striking is how this approach inverts typical Web3 development patterns. As Taylor observed: "The majority of projects that come through Web3, that doesn't—that's not how it starts. It's the virtual first. It's the meme coin, it's the network and eventually, hopefully, yeah, okay, now I can point to that thing that changed." **Aya's approach is the opposite: "You guys started with the atoms and you realize that the bits are important and the digital is important, but because you're grounded in a deep mission and hope and that being the foundational layer that you've tied to humans and letting that be the foundation."** This grounding in human needs rather than speculative assets creates technology that serves rather than extracts—precisely what blockchain promised but too rarely delivers. >**Research Context:** Innovation researcher Clayton Christensen's concept of "jobs to be done" provides a framework for understanding why Aya's approach succeeds where others fail. His research demonstrates that successful innovations address specific functional, social, and emotional "jobs" that people need to accomplish. By starting with community needs rather than technological possibilities, Aya ensures their solutions address real jobs to be done. The results speak for themselves—practical applications like stablecoins providing inflation protection in high-inflation environments demonstrate blockchain's utility in ways that speculation never could. ### Beyond Ego: Building the Future We Need The path forward isn't mysterious, but it requires confronting uncomfortable truths. As Michael noted, **"I'm personally done trying to validate someone's kind of low ego... Come to Africa, let me give you $10,000, run an SME, and if you're still standing after three years, then I know you're smart."** This challenge reveals the fundamental disconnect between blockchain's promise and its practice—**a technology supposedly designed for global financial inclusion has primarily benefited the already privileged. The alternative, as Eric explained, requires a fundamental shift: "The goal for Aya was how do you build trust for African talents to enable them to be able to connect with you without asking them where you're from? Because I believe that blockchain does not ask you where you're from. It's about value.** How do you bring that idea of the technology into real human form?" ### This is why the human layer matters—not as marketing copy, but as fundamental infrastructure. The technology itself won't solve human problems without human values embedded within it. As Eric powerfully stated: "The human layer is not just about human people. No, it's about the fact that this technology is a need in the part of the world I come from. Now we want to show you that it's not just saying that. It's a need that people are actually using this technology to solve real problems." > As builders at this critical juncture, we face a choice: continue building elegant machinery for extraction, or create technology that serves genuine human flourishing. The soft hypocrisies in our ecosystem won't self-correct—they must be named directly and addressed systematically. This is why we need to "say the quiet parts out loud"—not to tear things down, but to create space for more authentic building. When we show courage to identify patterns of extraction masquerading as community, we're not just engaging in criticism—we're building essential infrastructure for whatever comes next. ### The future we're building toward doesn't require certainty about what comes next. It requires only that we refuse to be passive participants in our own exploitation. We build because human flourishing matters more than token prices. We build because someone has to lay the foundations of what comes after. ### Listen to the Episode here: [[Episode 2-- From Token to Trust-Aya]] _The Human Layer podcast explores the intersection of emerging technology and human systems through unfiltered conversations. This essay synthesizes insights from our conversation with Eric and Michael from Aya, who are building blockchain infrastructure centered on human flourishing across Africa._