David Johnston of Morpheus on Why Owning Your AI Agent Could Change Everything
March 26, 2026
David Johnston, OSS code maintainer at Morpheus, joins The Smart Economy Podcast to discuss the convergence of AI agents, crypto infrastructure, and open-source intelligence. Johnston explains why owning your own AI agent may become essential in the coming wave of automation, how decentralized infrastructure could prevent Big Tech from dominating AI, and why networks like Morpheus aim to provide the rails for open and permissionless AI access.
In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski sits down with David Johnston, OSS code maintainer at Morpheus, a peer-to-peer network designed to power decentralized smart agents and open access to AI infrastructure.
Johnston shares his journey from early internet startups and energy ventures into Bitcoin and eventually decentralized AI infrastructure, and what he believes is the next major technological shift: personal AI agents that individuals own and control.
What you’ll learn:
- Why owning your own AI agent may become as important as owning your smartphone
- How decentralized AI infrastructure could challenge Big Tech’s control of AI
- Why Johnston believes “everything that can be decentralized will be decentralized”
- How crypto networks may enable open access to AI models and computation
- Why AI agents may soon perform most on-chain transactions
- How early Bitcoin lessons shaped Johnston’s thinking about AI ownership
- Why personal AI agents could dramatically change productivity and work
David Johnston is the OSS code maintainer at Morpheus, a decentralized network focused on enabling open-source AI agents. Johnston previously helped launch BitAngels, one of the earliest decentralized angel investment groups in crypto, and has spent more than a decade building companies across technology, energy, and decentralized infrastructure.
Did you enjoy this episode? Check out these other great guests:
- Tomasz Stańczak - Ethereum Foundation
- David Hoffman - Bankless
- Fisher Yu - Babylon Labs
- Alexei Zamyatin - BOB
- Sid Powell - Maple Finance
And many others!
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