About

I'm James Ball. I live and work in Edinburgh.

I studied Geology and Petroleum Geology at the University of Aberdeen, graduating with First Class Honours. I stayed on as a PhD candidate, researching geological modelling from drone-based photogrammetry — before deciding to leave academia for the internet.

Since then I've worked in product and ventures across crypto and DLT — at Monolith, Alongside Finance (now Universal), Copper.co, and Nethermind.

Currently I work with the Asian Development Bank as a consultant on distributed systems and blockchains in their Digital Innovation Sandbox. I'm also an advisor to the Centre of Excellence for Trust.

More recently, I've become interested in governance more broadly — particularly as AI systems become more capable and begin interacting with each other, not just with us. The questions around coordination, trust, and decision-making in multi-agent environments feel important and underexplored.

This blog is a place to think out loud about those things, and whatever else I find interesting.

You can find me on X or GitHub.