hello and welcome to game of
nodes a weekly podcast from
independent validated teams
rumors of our demise have
been greatly exaggerated
we're here with eric from
zelek and that's not just a
pun I made up that's
actually just factually
correct I've been told no
more puns on the new and
improved game of nodes is
it weekly though
Is it weekly?
It's not a weekly podcast.
We don't even know, right?
Do you know what?
That's muscle memory.
This is, still, remember,
a hundred and forty-three episodes,
although we've now had a
little month off to reset.
I was just ill the entire month.
I was just in pieces.
But a hundred and
forty-three is no surprise
in my muscle memory.
I'm going to keep saying weekly until
forever I don't know yeah I
like that I can't remember
my memory you know whatever
like it's rote learned at
this point like we've done
it so much we've done it
through the good times and
the bad and anyway it's
weekly in our hearts but
for those who want accurate
information it's moving to
fortnightly yes okay so we
should do let's do a tiny
bit of housekeeping and
then we will talk to our
guest this is a new year's
resolution a little bit
late we are going to talk
to our guest before the
halfway point of the podo
But we're now biweekly,
twenty two hundred UTC.
That's one hour later on a Thursday.
One day later.
Not a Wednesday.
So we're moving back one day,
moving back one hour.
Everything else remains the same.
We well, no, we we.
So our mandate,
our core mandate now is to
talk to people.
uh so we will be striving to
have at least somebody show
up every uh every episode
starting with eric of
zealock and um I mean you
know where else would we
start we we will also make
an effort to know what that
person does and is a part
of so jerome did his
homework this time he sent me a duck
We had a pre-meeting to make
some very brief and confusing notes.
And we will make every
effort to include them in
conversation and talk about what they do.
And if we don't, I will quit.
Is he on a prompter?
yeah it feels like it feels
like you know one of those
things when a politician
does something real bad um
you know before trump and
you could just do whatever
you wanted and nobody would
catch you out anyway and
and they have to stand up
on that podium and they've
got their wife and their
kids next to them and
they're really like stock
still and they're just like
I will make every effort to
make up for a bad thing
Whilst not talking about bad
thing and serving the
citizens of this town.
That's, you know, right now.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know if I like your
little demands either.
Like if Schultz doesn't read the notes,
you're going to quit.
Like, is that what you're saying?
Well, Schultz is not reading the notes.
I didn't read the notes.
No.
Fuck me.
I know Eric.
He's a busy guy.
Did you know that Eric's a cat lady?
Yes.
Yeah.
That was like our first topic.
I didn't.
It's true.
You told me you liked bees.
What is this?
I like bees.
I do like bees.
It's true.
Matter of fact,
I've got a Lavender Five tattoo.
That's not true.
It is a bee tattoo.
I gave a shit about that too.
I was like, what the fuck?
Why do you have a bee tattoo?
I was like, where's your rhino tattoo?
He's like, well,
it's not really Schultz-y.
I'm not allowed to discuss
where the rhino tattoo is on the podcast.
They've asked me not to show that one.
I actually live in the wild, right?
Here's a fun game you can play at home.
There are a lot of companies
in the world called Rhino
that do a whole bunch of random ass stuff,
right?
It's true.
If you see out in the wild
Rhino on something like a company,
like a logo, something like that,
take a picture of it at us
on Twitter at gamer nodes.
And it shows what you got, right?
Because this is, I would say,
every couple of months in the group chat,
something you set up against.
So far, I have Bollard manufacturer,
gym equipment.
Bollard is on a post to stop cars.
You know that they put in the road?
Yeah, yeah.
It was just like, manufactured by Rhino.
And I was like, fucking A. Amazing.
But yeah, gym equipment, obviously.
Yeah, so bollards.
And then there was something else.
There's an actual Dex.
There's something else stamped Rhino,
but totally different Rhino.
So I've seen three in the wild.
There is the Rhino rack,
which is like a roof.
There's a Rhino rack.
I have that on my truck.
Yep, yep, yep.
There's a Rhino.
There's a Dex called Rhino.
Listen, it's a popular animal.
Why do the logos always have
the rhino looking right as well?
I know, right?
It looks right.
Is that a thing?
Is that a thing where the
logo has to look right?
Yeah, mine's pointing up and to the right.
Is the Jesus fish pointing left?
That's really where this
business and this market is going.
Where is the Jesus fish pointing?
That is a keen observation.
There's a Jesus fish point
left because then maybe
it's that the rhino is Satan.
Because they're often read as well.
Oh, yes, that's fair.
Yes.
I think it's probably the
like we read left to right with tattoos.
You're supposed to point
something towards the
interior of the body.
I don't know.
Yeah,
you're supposed to point something
towards the middle line of the body.
You don't have something
facing out of the body, typically.
I did find one by searching
Rhino logo that is facing to the left,
but maybe that's just some
sort of beta-like designer
who doesn't understand.
Do you feel like it's a less
trustworthy company than if
the Rhino were facing to the right?
I feel like they're being
aggressive towards me, to be honest.
Was it upside down because
it's in Australia?
Yeah.
He's like, it's upside down.
It's back to front.
I don't know what his right is.
That's the Coriolis effect.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
In the Northern Hemisphere,
they all face to the right.
That's right.
That's exactly what's going on.
uh I did know this podcast
is about yeah what which
direction logos face I'm
subscribed I'm one of your
six subscribers so we're
finding out new things all
the time I love it one of
our six subscribers I'll
let you know eric we have
we have very close to a
thousand subscribers some
of them may be fake I don't
know you know what man
still counts still counts baby
Those bots got to learn from
somebody where to stake
their cryptocurrency.
So let's move on.
Eric.
Yes.
You went to a Denver.
None of us did.
What was the vibe like?
You know what, man?
It was kind of mellow, right?
I think a lot of people have
had different takes on what that means,
right?
I felt like it was chill.
It was relaxed.
You know what was nice?
It was like sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
It was like fifteen,
sixteen degrees Celsius the whole time.
I'm from Minnesota, so it was much warmer.
Got a little bit of sun.
I enjoyed myself while I was out there.
I tend to.
I think Denver is a
perfectly acceptable city.
Although candidly,
the city of Denver's logo
is a little too close to Zellick's logo.
I've written them a letter.
Have you proposed a tourist
board that they put on their sign,
their city sign?
Welcome to Denver.
Perfectly acceptable city.
You know,
it is of the cities of the world.
It is one.
No, I like Denver just fine.
You know, man,
I had a really good time personally.
I think that
with all conferences, right?
I think the real alpha is at
the side events.
And part of that's because I
tend to find that, and I mean,
this is true of the time
that we've spent together, right?
I tend to find that the
face-to-face interactions
with the people that you
really care about and the
people that you're really
interested to work with or
get to know better, et cetera, et cetera,
those things continue to
matter quite a lot,
continue to be really high impact, right?
I think it's fun to have a
lot of side events.
It's cool to have the main
conference itself be this
like nucleation or shelling
point that brings everybody together,
gives people the
opportunity to get on stage,
talk about their thing, have cool panels.
Seemed like there were still
cool panels at the main event, right?
Yeah.
I think the main event is
interesting and it's
attractive for people that
are new to the space,
whether that's retail or
whether that's just folks
that have just joined.
I think that that continues
to be the sort of thing that matters.
Uh, cause it gives them that experience,
right?
I don't find myself spending
a ton of time there other
than to go harass my
friends that are working in
the booths for their various projects.
Um,
and then I get to take their shirts and
call them nerds or whatever.
Um, but no, I, uh,
but I tend to continue to enjoy that.
So I had a great time at Denver.
Um, got to see some people that I, well,
for one,
I got to meet much of the Zalek
team in person for the first time.
You know,
I recently joined that team just
in the middle of January or
something like that.
So we basically had a little offsite,
got to hang out, got to co-work together,
which I, again, really enjoyed.
Wonderful to get to spend
some time with them all in
person and learn more about
each of them and go bowling
and stuff like that together.
So we are between forty and fifty.
The extreme bulk of that is
security researchers.
Right.
So our auditors, you know,
thirty five, forty something in that range,
I believe,
for our auditing team and then
about fifteen people either
in sales or back office.
Yeah, but great to really, again,
spend some time there.
I think the take home message for me,
I had a ton of fun in Denver.
The side events were the key
alpha as always.
It's kind of like make your own schedule,
right?
It's an a la carte menu to
get to spend time and learn
about different things and
talk to people building different things.
I had another point I was
going to make and it has
totally eluded me.
I think uh in my experience
at these uh events like my
primary reason for side
events is to eat because I
can't afford to being
australian so uh you know
you can always get some
good sliders at the side
event and a sneaky beer
just to keep your
sustenance up while you
like secondarily do some bd
Yeah.
Sliders and beer is like,
I think that that's what BD stands for.
You just have to pull
letters out of the middle.
Yeah.
Everyone's fueled by sliders and beer.
Did you find that there were
many... This might sound dumb.
Did you find that there was
much attendance from users
and the public?
Or do you think this year's
primarily attended...
by people in the industry,
devs and that type of stuff, VC?
I think Denver in particular
tends to be one where the
attendees are most likely
to be people that work in
the industry and have
worked in the industry for a while.
That's my experience.
I find that something like
ConsenSys has more folks that are
maybe TradFi that it's
entering the industry or
people that are like
adjacent to crypto and
building something that is
cryptoish or uses crypto.
But I tend to find that
Denver in particular is
primarily people that work
in the industry.
Does that make sense?
I feel like I rarely see just users,
although actually here's a cool thing.
Eigen layer put on this
hackathon that was like
multiple days long and they
brought in teams from
different universities
across the country.
Um, on my flight back home,
I actually had the
opportunity to meet up with the,
or rather met, uh,
the president of the
university of Minnesota blockchain club.
Um,
cause I saw he was wearing an Eigen
layer swag and actually
just had a cup of coffee with him,
you know, about an hour ago.
So I was just,
I caused us to be a hair
tardy cause I was hurrying
back from that.
But so that was cool.
Right.
Um, I think,
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
I've like,
we don't have a huge crypto
scene out here in Minnesota,
which is surely at least
partially my fault.
Even I've worked in the
industry for as long as I
have and have made very
little effort to like get
out there and do things.
Well, I know, I know Ian's out there.
He's a validator.
He's out there in Minnesota as well.
So you all should start a local, like,
you know, meet, meet up.
What team is he with?
PFC.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
You guys should plug me in.
I, um, my man, my man.
Yeah.
Sorry, Ian.
Bad news.
Um, no, that's great.
Bad news bears.
You are now.
Um, yeah, I mean, I'd want to,
I'm going to get together
with them and we'll do a
little presentation for their club.
I've got some friends that, uh,
that work in the industry
that live out here.
It's not a ton of them, but yeah,
so it'd be fun.
It's amazing.
Like you don't think there
are people around and like you,
you may even try to seek
them out and not be able to find any, but
I thought that was true of
Brisbane here in sunny Queensland,
Australia.
And I just got added to an
Oz Buildora's group on
Telegram by someone.
And turns out they are
around and they're building stuff,
they're active chatting.
So I think I might start
trying to do the same here
and just going and joining
some of these meetup groups and...
share with the crowd a bit
like aa I suppose so you
can go you can go find out
about the latest it's a bit
I mean sorry no offense
obviously because alora
previous uh previous
project but where I am it's
literally ethereum l two ai
blockchain and um every time
I go to one of those
meetups like you're like
everybody you know you talk
to they're just like have
you heard a bit of this
thing that's happening in
ethereum and it's like yeah
we primarily work in cosmos
they're like what's that is
it an ai thing you're like it's
you could actually I guess
you could you can use it
for whatever and they're
like but are you doing an
ai thing like no and I'm
not on ethereum as I
mentioned we're not in that
ecosystem really other than
ssv stuff and by that point
they've already died of
boredom and they're in the
ground um yeah yeah
degeneracy needs constant
constant stimulus to stay
alive it's like uh I give
off that anti vibe
my vibe's negative towards
towards that ethereum thing
and then yeah man you start
talking about dvt and then
the lights go out so
exactly I'm just like yeah
I don't think it really
works unless you start
thinking about dv and
there's boom damn they're
down and out you're just
like checking that pulse
it's like yeah get it up um
so eric like you have been involved in
an sdk chain a cosmos sdk
chain um alora and moving
on into like the rest of
crypto with zelic I mean
they aren't born out of um
the cosmos sdk scene uh you
know their roots are in
other uh well their roots are not out of
validating and stuff like
that they're more like
security dev we'll talk
more about that um later
but being a part of that
team like do you find uh
that there is sort of other
more exciting blockchain
stuff that's developing out
there that's not associated
with the sdk is there like
anything that you've seen
at the moment that is like exciting
Not necessarily in like use
case and that type of stuff,
more like on the actual
blockchain technology ecosystems.
Sure.
I think this is a tough one to answer,
right?
I think that one of the
fascinating and fantastic
things about Cosmos in
particular is that like, I mean,
it's tried and true.
It's battle tested, right?
You can essentially build
any type of ecosystem
you would like to on top of it, right?
You can look around and see
like achieving consensus by
leveraging Cosmos and then
having that be the
historical record for something.
I think it makes it super flexible.
I'm trying to think of an
actual answer to your question.
I mean, even within Cosmos,
a lot of teams in recent years
I'm not going to say months
years like in the last
twelve months have pivoted
from actually using just
like the cosmos sdk to just
pulling out and using comet
bft yeah and then building
like evm chains out of it
well I mean hyperlink is a
good example of that right
like um there's there's a
lot of cosmos dna in in
hyperliquid I think if you
look at what the
like the factors around how
you engage with a node on Cosmos, right?
They've leveraged a bunch of
that in building out their
own kind of customized SDK for that.
Yeah, man, I don't know.
I think that
You look at some of the
interoperability stuff like espresso,
not strictly Cosmos,
but does leverage some
version of hot stuff, right?
Which is some type of
offshoot of tendermint in
some way or another.
I don't have an answer for this question,
man.
There's so many of these
networks and these chains
and like constructions that
I'm still learning about, right?
I think one of the problems
with this industry, well,
it's not a problem.
It's a really, it's a good thing now,
right?
Yeah.
rewind six or seven years.
I mean,
I've been in crypto since working
in crypto full time since like,
but I've been in the scene since like,
or whatever, right?
I think it was easy enough
to keep track of like,
what's going on in and then
in this Cambrian explosion happened,
right?
And a lot of this building and this,
this sort of advanced research
happening behind the scenes
and certainly I wasn't
really aware of cosmos at
the time because I was have
long been pretty evm native
um but we get to this place
now where dude if you close
your eyes for a week you're
like what the hell is a pre-confirmation
And why is everybody talking about it now?
Or whatever, right?
You just get to a place
where you can't keep up.
And it's cool, right?
Especially if you're an
autodidact and you have a curious mind.
There's just constantly
something to learn about.
Like, what's MegaEth?
What's Monad?
Like,
I know that these things are not
necessarily strictly new,
but how is Initia different from XYZ,
you know?
it also means that there's a
constant stream of
iteration and also a constant,
like a ever expanding
wasteland of old ideas that are chains,
uh, which, I mean,
some people here know all
too much about that you on
an endless support regime
for things that were a
thing and now they're not.
Um,
so yeah I get what you mean
you blink you miss it
there's like so much new
stuff popping up overnight
I definitely can't keep on
top of it so is that like
primary uh like focus from
the bd side in the kind of
um like the day-to-day like
uh bread and butter I guess
the organization is it like
ethereum or is it more
widely based than that I
mean I assume it's a bit of
everything but like
generally is the bulk of it
sort of like ethereum and that ecosystem
So we are super widely based, right?
One of the things that we
pride ourselves in is the
ability to rapidly like
scale up and ramp up to
in-depth knowledge in like new alt VMs,
right?
We've done a ton of work
obviously in like the EVM DeFi space,
but we've also done a ton
of work with core node
software for things like Cosmos,
a lot of these move L ones,
That's really where we pride
ourselves in is the ability
to be flexible and to be
first to a new network or a
new kind of regime, like you say,
or a new VM.
That's one of the things
that we really pride ourselves in.
And we've borne that out over the years,
right?
We've worked deeply with a
lot of different teams
building on move VMs and
zero knowledge stuff.
And it's, so suffice,
I think the short answer is that
In many ways,
a good portion of the work
that we do is EVM based,
but I think that's more a
function of the market and
people building in the
market than it is what our
appetite is or really even
what our expertise is in.
So does that make sense?
Yeah.
Fair play.
Oh, it's interesting.
You mentioned move as well.
Cause that's,
I guess a relatively very
well in the grand scheme of things, like
It's probably ancient now.
It's been out for two years in production.
But I guess in terms of
high-profile chains,
it's a more recent
high-profile virtual machine, I suppose.
Yeah, I think that's a fair way to put it,
right?
We end up indexing to something, right?
Many of you guys are pretty
heavily indexed to the Cosmos world,
but that doesn't mean
you're not totally capable
in different VMs, right?
And understanding the
intricacies of running those.
But yeah, I think, like I said,
it's one of those things
where you blink and then you're like,
oh shit,
there's like ten new chains and
they're all based on this
kind of core move infrastructure, etc.,
etc.,
I better hurry up and figure that out.
What's your feeling?
Like,
I guess like it'd be interesting to
hear a different perspective on this,
but like, I think when we, um,
whenever we come back from like,
especially conferences,
obviously first question is vibe check.
But second question is like, what, like,
you tend to get like from
your own individual
perspective and your experience,
like a feeling of a
direction of travel or
something that's going to maybe, you know,
even if that direction of
travel is just how it's
going to affect you,
what's your sense of like
how the next twelve months
is like going to shake up
for you in terms of like
your focus and your direction of travel,
like based on what you've seen recently?
That's a really great question.
I mean, the short answer,
the vibe check is like,
I think for as cynical as I am,
I remain an eternal
optimist and I want to take
away the silver lining from everything.
Right.
Denver was lower energy, I think,
than in previous years that
I've attended.
But I think that's for a few reasons.
One,
the market's doing whatever the hell
it's doing, which is kind of insane.
Candidly,
I didn't talk about prices with
pretty much anybody.
That didn't really come up.
But I think it's just that
the way things have gone
over the last twelve, eighteen,
twenty four months,
people have a little fatigue.
right the these like rapid
fire releases of things um
have made people a little
tired but I think that the
encouraging thing about the
vibe was that people aren't giving up
Right.
The people that I know that
are building cool stuff are
still here for the long term.
They're still interested.
They're still engaged.
Maybe they've kind of like
got a little whiplash from
how things have been,
but they are interested and
they're committed to to, I don't know,
moving the space forward as a whole.
Right.
And doing
cool unique shit that moves
the needle I think that
really is my takeaway is
that people are like sick
of kind of extractive stuff
and extractive players
extractive I don't know
protocols or whatever uh
and they're really keen to
like talk to people about
what they're actually
building and how they can
actually work together
Like Logo X Logo is out and it's like,
what is this fundamental
thing that we're doing,
this atomic collaboration
that actually matters,
that each party is uniquely
bringing something to?
There's that.
You asked me a second
question and it was
something to the effect of like,
where do I see my
trajectory over the next
twelve months and what I'm
going to be focusing on?
For me, I think as a function of
the move for me, which, you know,
it was a Chainlink years before,
I was at Chainlink node operator,
Linkpool,
who does validation work for a
number of different chains too now.
And then I was the head of
technical ecosystem at Elora, right,
where I onboarded the validator core,
which is why I know you chuckleheads.
And I worked on technical BD stuff.
They're a crypto AI company,
worked on technical BD stuff there.
For me,
I think the biggest
difference is I'm going to
be more focused on L ones
and L twos and their ecosystems, right?
Like Inc.
Um,
made some great connections with those
guys.
Uh,
I think what they're doing is really
cool.
I think the entire notion of like,
I don't want to call it a
centralized exchange sponsored, um, L two,
but like that's where their
DNA comes from, obviously.
Right.
They're,
they're closely affiliated with
crack and they're,
they're born out of that.
I think if you look at base
and the key innovations
they've made and the
benefit that they have from
the tooling that comes out of Coinbase,
which is to say things like, you know,
their agent software
development kit or the like
massive distribution that
the Coinbase wallet confers.
I think those are all
important and powerful things.
So for me,
I guess the take home message is like,
I want to learn more about L
ones in the space,
focus on how we can bring value to them,
their different ecosystems.
Um,
Solana is one that I just like need to
continue digging into and diving into.
I think that there's a big shift in, uh,
This may just be sampling
bias for me or perspective bias,
that it seems like there's
a lot of teams that are
building really cool stuff
that moves the needle on Solana.
Solana's long had this rap
for pumped up fun or
whatever is the only use case for it.
Again,
I think that's sampling bias in a
lot of ways.
That's what people are talking about.
And so that's what people see.
And it's engaging and it's
fun to really see a ten
thousand X or whatever.
And so that's what people
want to talk about.
Crypto Twitter is like not
excited about RWAs or whatever,
but I think that that's the
stuff that actually is is something.
So, yeah, I think like just with Solana,
people want to build where there's
liquidity right and money
and uh I think while you
know a lot of the the meme
coin stuff might have just
been a a passing fad that
who what was that oh was
that the uh that was the
sticker yeah you gotta love
that lag to australia
everybody else laughs so
they're like five seconds
later so like you know if
from my perspective the the
the meme coin stuff brought
users and liquidity to
Solana in a big way.
And now that is maybe a
playground where people can
actually build out of there
into more meaningful things.
Now that there's more attention on Solana.
I mean, like the, you know,
Again, a meme coin, but I mean,
the Trump coin was on Solana,
so that's bought in an
exponential number of people.
I mean, you're not wrong, right?
Who will never come back?
That may unfortunately be true.
I don't remember who said this to me,
but it's a thing that I've long believed,
right?
Toys precede tools.
I mean,
you see that in like childhood
development,
little kids play with toys
that are like the tools
they see adults using.
And I think that's also true
in this space.
When you're seeing people build things,
you build something,
you get something like
pumped up fun and it brings
people in and it gets them
engaged and it gets them using the chain.
And then suddenly the guys
that built Phantom or whatever, like,
oh shit,
this needs to work better or whatever,
right?
And now to Phantom's credit,
that was one of the best
user experiences I've ever
had with a wallet.
That felt good.
It was easy to use.
It was nice to use.
So toys precede tools,
which is to say like,
you get this stuff that's
engaging and fun and maybe
like not super serious.
And that enables the people
that are building around it to go, oh,
well,
we need to make this better because
when people get here to
actually build stuff,
actually build stuff that
experience needs to be
quite good for them.
Or even just try to use some
things that are
good when they're not being
used but trash once they
get some users like I know
Eric being in the sorry
that being in the you know
big in the RPC space with
distributed RPC I think
they he works with teams
that tend to find their
issues when the users come
right and then it's like a
scramble to to try and fix
those things so I imagine
oh yeah when the traffic
goes up a hundred percent you mean yeah
Yeah,
like when the traffic hundred X is
overnight and all of a
sudden the five queries
that you are making to like
display a price become a problem.
Yeah, right.
We're calling the RPC twenty
five times for every every
page load has four hundred
and fifty RPC calls.
Better work on that.
Yeah, but that's also I mean,
obviously you're right for starters,
but that's also a it's a
software engineering
problem with especially maybe in
ecosystems with an SDK it's
obviously it's a huge
problem in any ecosystem
where you don't have so
what you're saying is the
barrier to entry may be
quite low in the
development cycle and that
Potentially,
there's not best practices
coming out of it.
It's simply this, right?
If you go and work for a
chain of fucking off-licenses, right,
as an engineer,
they've got a lot of money
because they're selling a
lot of booze and fags, right?
They're selling a shitload of tinnies.
And so...
you yeah you wow you just
threw down a lot of british
terminology yeah I I have
no idea like we're closely
aligned with your lingo and
I go that's why I threw in
tinnies I threw in tinnies
at the end to catch you up
no that's why I said
tinnies is that like a
toonie from canada or what
uh it's just kind of beer
and cannibalia oh okay
Booze and facts.
Beer and cigarettes.
It's like every corner shop.
It's what their bread and butter is.
It's booze and facts.
But if you work for a chain
of corner shops, as an engineer,
they're going to be like, oh, well,
if we have some kind of
delivery service or
something where it's just like,
we'll deliver in like a
half mile from our shop, build this thing,
optimize it.
they're going to give you a
budget and the budget is
going to be like always in a big,
in any company, right.
It will be less than you actually need.
Right.
But it will be some amount
of money and it will be
quarterly and it will be
regular and you can bank on
it and you can start to
come up with a plan and
then build it and optimize from there.
And like,
I guess what I'm saying is it's
much that the technology is new.
You have very little time to
ramp up with it.
There are a lot of people
who don't understand some
of the trade-offs of the
technology on top of those two problems,
which is that you're trying to build,
run before you can walk.
You need to beat your
competitors and everything
in the space is going super, super fast.
So it's got typey typey faster,
typey typey faster.
And then you also have like
this inherent problem of,
I think a lot of the
builders are bootstrapping
the ones who are small,
especially for smart
contract level stuff.
And I think that problem
goes over to Cosmos chains
because the barrier to entry is lower.
There's a lot of bootstrapping,
which means the money's running out.
And then the final problem
is that once you get there,
the economic sustainability
of your project is quite
often out of your hands.
And so often I think
builders have a lot of
other problems on their
plate which don't extend to
query optimization.
Or it might be something
that they just figured, oh,
we'll figure it out.
And that is a good problem to have, right?
Extra users.
You call somebody like SERP and you say,
hey, got way more users than we thought.
Bill us.
We've got some money coming in, right?
And so I think a lot of
problems that would maybe
be a software concern in a
different industry end up
becoming an infrastructure concern.
Because don't build, you know, Yagni,
right?
Don't build anything you're
not going to need.
And your project, like all startups,
especially so in crypto,
is likely to fail.
So
Why do you read optimization, right?
I mean,
this also falls into the toys
precede tools kind of thing, right?
When there's still toys,
like whenever something fails,
it's almost fine.
You're kind of enjoying it.
You're like, wow, that was catastrophic.
Can't believe that worked.
And then as more people come,
then you have to start...
You get used that toy time
to flush things out.
It's kind of like the...
the adoption cycle of new
products where hobbies come in,
look at the Pebble Watch, right?
Comes in, bugs everywhere,
hobbyists love it.
And then as the hobbyists, you know,
help to create it into a
more official product,
then like early adopters, hobbyists,
and then it can actually go mainstream,
right?
It falls the same cycle as
the toys to tools idea.
but the interesting thing
here is that I think the
amount of infrastructure is
needed is far higher for
the toys than it is for the
tools so like the stuff
that we've gotten caught on
has been has been you know
mints or like huge meme
coin bullshit runs where
people are just fucking
running spam bots and all
that kind of stuff but if
we actually had an rwa chain that that
that had, I don't know,
like some sort of loan
closure and it had pure
visibility all the way back.
And we had, you know,
a set of investors were
providing short-term loans on X, Y,
or Z or something.
There's very little transactions for that.
Like it's totally nothing, right?
It's exactly,
it's all these fucking crazy things.
We're building this shit up that has, or,
or not to pick on Aptos,
but like the Aptos traffic
has come from Tamagotchi
type shit where people are feeding.
What is that thing?
like a it wasn't feeding it
was poking the cat all
right so so millions of
people are poking the out
of this cat right
everyone's creating a
transaction like it's a
good it's a good test for
that yeah like even that
cat right there that cat
needs a poke so um but it's
a good test but like when
when you actually get into
like I mean aptos is
working to be like the largest
money mover,
which I think is a great use case.
Like let's get all these, like,
I think that's great, but,
but people aren't, I mean,
unless you're doing,
unless you're taking over
like a credit transaction
where you're actually doing like POS,
you're not going to see
that amount of traffic for
those types of things.
Like it's really low.
Or unless you can do wholesale, right.
And, and wholesale is,
like, let's be real,
is not going to happen on
anything other than a
consortium blockchain with
super fucking known quantities,
with super fucking known operations,
and yada, yada, yada.
And it's a great use case, right?
But it comes down to, in that case,
the wholesale case,
the technology is hard.
The technology is not the problem.
The problem is business development.
Right.
It's meeting all those
people that can make that product work,
who probably will work at
big financial institutions
and playing a lot of golf with them.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I was talking to a strange,
strange love team a couple of weeks ago.
We were talking about some of this,
but like when those
financial institutions look
to be able to build that,
I don't know if they're
using any of these tools.
Like those, those tools will be bespoke.
I mean,
they can just grab a bunch of PhD
students or hire a bunch of
companies or acquihire the
people they need or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean,
every time you interact with those
sorts of people, like,
and I'm not saying this
because they're dicks necessarily,
but like,
it's just the case that when you say, oh,
I work on the technology side,
they have this like, oh, cool.
You know,
when you meet somebody in a
business or a networking context and you,
and they just
you have no utility to them
because they realize that
if they need somebody like you,
they can buy you, right?
Their organization has so much money,
they can find you or
somebody like you and buy you, which is,
you know,
as much stuff as there is going
on in the space that we work in,
You know,
I guess it's that sobering
reminder of how much
comically bigger TradFi is.
It's so like, is it weird?
We're like a rounding error
or they're like,
I always tell the story of like,
I was talking to some guys and they were,
they were talking about
partnerships they had and they were like,
yeah,
these guys keep wanting us to run
validates on these networks.
They list off some networks.
And I was thinking, fuck, that's,
that's actually quite a lot of money.
They're leaving on the table
with a foundation
delegation and you know,
we were probably talking
millions of dollars they
were leaving on the table
because for them, it was like,
it's not a core business.
Why would we hire a team to
go off this thing that
might get regulated in two years?
Why bother?
It's like for a few minutes,
for a measly couple of mil, you're like,
you get out of bed for it.
Regulatory risk, brand risk,
like distracting your core
business people with random shit.
but back to that's for
eric's point right the the
the toys pc tools thing
like I kind of wonder if
that's like is that where
we are as a whole industry
I mean I think it kind of
is and that's certainly the
impression I get whenever I
talk to anybody who works
in like a serious industry
they certainly look at me
like I'm a fucking like
I've got snot running down
my nose and I'm playing
with toy trains you know
they're like oh crypto
Okay.
Blockchain, is it?
Look at you,
just playing with your blockchain.
Aww.
And you can say a sentence, too.
God.
Got a meme coin.
Don't they grow up so fast?
Got a meme coin.
Yeah.
It is changing.
Like, it is starting to tip a little bit,
though.
I see it from the RWA side.
I see it with the amount of
traditional finance
involvement in things.
You're starting to see RFPs
show up for stable coins in
certain situations in certain countries.
You're starting to see
organizations form around
regulatory bodies only.
like it's start you're
starting to see a little
bit of that tip right like
some things are like it's
starting to it's certain
whether whether or not any
of these tools have been
built for the last ten
years turn into anything
related to any of I just
said there's a separate
issue like like I said
before like it doesn't mean
that like just because the
technology gets to here
doesn't mean any of the
things that we did up to
this point mean anything
But I do think that the
technology is to a point
where it's starting to attract the right,
not the right,
a different set of
organizations that might
accelerate things that are
currently occurring.
And that maybe that's a rising ship,
a rising tide type situation,
meaning like that brings
validity to this.
And so therefore we have
these other types of things.
And now everybody gets
involved and they realize
that they can trade these
types of securities with their bank,
or they can also do it
somewhere else right and
that somewhere else has
been around for longer so
therefore it brings
validity to a certain
situation or something but
like again that's just a
guess but like I I am
seeing like it takes
forever but it is starting
to happen um so two uh
Phrase point.
I personally have been seeing some, like,
not Tradfire, but definitely, like,
Webtoon and companies from out of...
like different industries
starting to enter into, um, validating.
And I don't think it's
necessarily to make income.
I think it is to have a
presence in web three for,
for some brands like, um, you know,
taking some random examples
is maybe injective, which have onboarded,
um, douche telecom and NTT digital.
So could you still repeat that one?
Deutsche Telekom.
That was good.
That was better the second time.
Sorry,
I sounded a bit lazy the first time.
No, you fixed it.
I think NTT Digital is like
an infrastructure company elsewhere.
It's not just these guys.
Sorry?
Did NTT do the timing for
the Tour de France?
Yes.
This might be a different entity.
I think the entity,
they're like a Japanese, uh, bank,
I think.
Um,
Yeah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, I think that's, yeah.
Well, they do a bunch of stuff.
They're like a global services company,
but yeah, I think, sorry, Jerome,
I interrupted you,
but I think that you're right.
Those two organizations in
particular and Injectives
work there and in bringing them on.
I think Deutsche Telekom is
a great example of a team
that is entering the space.
They're doing it credibly.
All the validator operations are in-house.
They've been doing it for
years and years and years.
I think, candidly,
we have Chainlink to thank
for bringing them on board
in the first place because
You know,
I think they're running their
chain like node is that's
the first kick of the can for them.
And now they validate for.
I don't know how many
blockchains is I have to ask.
Maybe it's a dozen or something like that.
And they've got.
They were like the first
round of chain like operators, right?
Weren't they like really early?
They were pretty early.
Yeah.
I don't remember exactly
when it was they entered, but I mean,
I think they're a great
organization that is doing
it in a very credible way.
Right.
They've had the support that
they had for that.
That team initially was like
an innovation thing.
And now it's a it's a whole business unit.
Right.
Um, and I think you look at teams like, um,
there's Brad Feinstein over at AWS.
Um,
they operate validators for a number of
networks.
They have a whole team of,
of engineers that, uh,
like have built open source
kind of frameworks for
teams to come in and like
stand up quick launch
things for chain link nodes.
Or I worked with their team to, uh, create,
uh, as a worker node launch pad,
which is basically this ML
model that's instantiated
on the Alora network.
um so you can go in and
launch one on the alora
network just like that
basically using the
framework that they
developed but no I think
you're absolutely right um
that there's these teams
that are entering the space
and there's teams that are
doing this this doing god's
work in onboarding these
kind of institutions and
enterprises and again in
this very credible way so
So I think, um, well to that,
to my own point, uh,
with people diversifying, um, so that's,
I guess,
an entry point into Zellick's
business model with validating.
So they aren't necessarily, um, you know,
you guys aren't running around chasing,
um,
that type of business as your core
business.
You are first and foremost, a security, um,
company and a security auditing company.
However, um,
for like payment for service
and being in those ecosystems,
you guys do like a credit
system for your validators.
So some foundations might
choose to onboard you guys
as a validator and make it delegation.
And then you guys in return
will commit a certain
amount of the revenue from
that towards like security
auditing credits, for example.
Yeah, that's exactly right, man.
You know,
the team at Zelleck brought me on
to help lead BD for their
audit side and then also to
lead BD for their validator
operations unit, right?
You know, like I said,
I've got some experience there.
That's what I've done over
the last number of years,
having worked at Linkpool
and then onboarding the
validator cohort for Alora.
I've kind of worked both
sides of the sword in that way.
You know, Zellick, right?
Our mission is pretty laser focused,
right?
We want to find all the bugs
and save all the money.
Our auditor cohort really
comes from the competitive
hacking world of CTFs, right?
Which is like the
competitive hacking or info
security Olympics, right?
Our two co-founders founded the
Team that won number one in
the world the last three of
the four years, Perfect Blue,
Jazzy and Luna.
They ran that and they
continue to run that and
continue to support the CTF world.
Our kind of thesis there is
that those problems in the
CTF world and in the
traditional information
security and in the
competitive hacking world,
they're big problems,
they're complex problems.
They're hard, right?
You've got to be really an
incredible mind and an
incredible developer and an
incredible hacker to be
able to go in and solve
those problems in the first place,
let alone win those competitions.
The core thesis really is
that that skill set
bringing those people in
from that world is like
bringing big fish into a small pond,
right?
And it really seems to have
played out over the years.
Our validator operations businesses,
like you say,
it's really intended to
support our auditing
business from a perspective
really of deepening the
relationships with these foundations.
Like I said earlier, right?
while we do a number of things,
while we do security audits
for smart contracts, you know,
for Web two stuff,
we've worked with teams like Polymarket,
et cetera, on those angles.
We really like to do, and I think what our,
our, our kind of specialization is,
is in the ability to ramp
up and work very closely
with these L ones,
whether they're building
kind of a novel system, a novel alt VM.
Uh,
we work really closely with these
foundations over the years,
like from pre-launch all
the way through many, many cycles later,
uh, in operating a validator, a.
It's good when shit goes
pear-shaped and you pick up
the red phone to be able to
call somebody on the other
end that has worked with
your core node software for
months and months and
months and has audited it.
Certainly to be able to pick
up the phone and call and
have you guys answer when
the red lights are flashing
and you break the glass,
to have teams like
yourselves that have the expertise.
That was part of my core
thesis at Allura is like, look,
I want these guys that
They do this stuff for a living.
They eat, sleep, and breathe it.
And when I hit pager duty,
what I want is the Erics of
the world to roll out of
bed with a cigarette in
their mouth and go, okay,
let's figure it out.
Don't start smoking, though.
It's just weed, dude.
Okay, cool.
No problem, then.
I don't think that's legal
in where you are.
Are you breaking the law?
I mean, next to crypto?
Yeah, come on.
That's nothing.
But yeah, with the model for us,
for validators, like you said,
is to work really closely
with these teams, these foundations.
They delegate to us.
And then essentially they
earn back a share of the
rewards that we earn from
their delegation as audit credits.
And that's good for foundations.
It's good for LSTs.
It's good for any of these
protocols that have like a
big layer one token bag or
a token that they can delegate to us.
um you know vcs work with
vcs and offer them the same
model right delegate to us
you guys are in back audit
credits are we're
intentionally very
selective about the teams
that we work with for this
process right um I think
that block you mean the
blockchain teams you work with
Uh, or about the,
the teams that we validate for.
Yeah.
So, okay.
Yeah.
Exactly.
We're intentionally really selective about,
about choosing networks that we, uh,
go live on, you know, there's a,
there's a lot that goes
into that calculation.
And the hope is that we can
get to work with them early
and get to work them for a
really long time.
That's really our goal is to
build these relationships
with these teams for the
longterm and then support
their ecosystems as they flourish.
Yeah.
So are you in effect on retainer then,
if you are validating for them?
Can you be thought of it that way?
And if you, so you give credit to the team,
could that team then like
assign credits to, hey,
there's this dApp that's coming.
I wanna give that to them.
Yeah, absolutely, man.
Right.
They can have it be their
own projects that they're
building or their own
products that they're
building that they need
audited or they can turn
around and hand off those
audit credits to like maybe
they want to launch a
really cool game where you
poke a cat on their network.
Right.
And that team maybe is
they're super scrappy.
They're bootstrapped.
You know, they haven't raised funding.
Maybe they want to go live
sooner than the grant
process or whatever can can
get them there.
And the team has the ability
to we're super flexible, you know.
matter to us we want to work
with people doing cool
stuff and they're their
audit credits to spend how
they want right and so they
can pass those along to
either subsidize that team
or wholly cover the cost of
the audit which you know I
mean we're really good at
what we do so we're not
cheap uh but we believe
that we're the best in the
business and so those teams
get like an s-tier security
audit uh that's basically
free to them as a function
of that delegation right so
That's really cool.
Thanks, man.
We like it.
The teams that we've worked
with have really enjoyed
that model so far.
I think that is like one of
the more valuable,
like value adds that I've
seen in recent time, like for, you know,
like foundation teams.
There's, there's like, you know,
quite a few different like
value ads that people have come up with,
like over the last few
years to be like more relevant to the,
um,
the big delegators like foundations.
Um, but I think this one is like a pretty,
pretty decent and important one,
particularly like, I mean,
there's a similar deal with, um,
like SERP down here, uh, where he runs,
uh, services on behalf of like the, um,
foundation say foundation, for example,
for teams that are still
bootstrapping that they can
get access to good quality
services while they're sort of coming up.
Um,
And like a one-two punch of, you know,
that perspective as well as
like the security perspective.
And then I think they've
probably also partnered up with, you know,
some marketers and stuff
like that really helps
drive those smaller teams
who need like a bit of a step up.
Yeah, I agree.
Do you guys take,
is there liability associated with that?
There's no liability, right?
You don't take any ownership of that.
Does that take any ownership of that?
Like if there's a,
if there's a contract issue
associated with something
you guys have signed off on, is there any,
do you guys,
do you guys pick up spares
when it comes to, Hey,
there was a loss associated
this contract and it was
something that we reviewed.
Like,
is there insurance associated with that?
I'm not aware that there's
insurance associated with that,
but I mean,
in over five hundred security
reviews that we've done,
not a single one of our
clients has experienced a
loss of funds for, you know,
scope of work that we've done.
So, you know, that again,
we like get in there.
The goal is not to rubber stamp something,
but the goal is to stake
our reputation on those things.
Right.
So we've never experienced
none of our clients have
ever experienced a loss of
funds as a result of code
that we reviewed.
So but as far as I know, anyway.
I think it would not be
commonplace for people to
provide that type of guarantee.
I don't know if that's true.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think that is pretty true
on the... Away from Web three type stuff.
Like that's actually... In the trad space,
it's gone.
Yeah.
I'm sort of looking at it
from a purely like a Web
three perspective.
And people can be pretty
litigious even for...
potentially for like
technical advice and due
diligence and stuff like
that so in the in the
traditional space in
So I guess I can say it
doesn't work in insurance
and stuff like that without
really disclosing anything
that I'm not allowed to.
Like I have to have,
if I'm going to give it
like due diligence,
and usually due diligence, right,
is investors ask for it, right?
That's why investors ask for
due diligence.
They want something
technical to go in and go like,
what's the quality of the code?
Oh, look at that.
Oh, dang.
I asked our team to take him down.
I was sick of what he was talking about,
so I asked our guys to take him offline.
Elon turned him off.
But...
Yeah,
the long and short of it is like you
write your report, you hand it in, right?
And you have to have like
pretty good insurance in case,
let's say you just missed
something fucking massive.
And then like two weeks later,
the regulator comes,
especially if they're in a
regulated industry,
regulator comes in and goes like,
what the fuck?
It turns out it was so bad.
They had no idea.
And you were like there for
two weeks talking to all
their engineering teams and like,
shooting the shit and trying
to find out if they were
any good and they were just
hiding all the bad shit
from you sure yeah that
you're gonna get they're
gonna shoot the messenger
they're gonna be like that
guy he talked to all of
them he didn't spot that
they were animals and you'd
be like yeah we're trying
to crack out the insurance
lads we're in trouble
It's so different, like, you know,
tax structures or things like there.
There are liabilities when it comes to,
hey, I did your return.
And these are the situations that we met.
Like,
there's some structure of that in
terms of liability.
So I was just curious if that.
Yeah.
Accountants are the same thing.
But like,
just because it came up because
we were talking about the
the the what was it by bit
with the safe wallet fucking hack.
like number one fucking chef
kiss on that thing that
thing was an awesome hack
like that was like
ridiculously cool um eric
you're on mute but but like
oh I'm just saying wow like
yeah I know it was wild so
so that yeah so somebody
they so so they uh lazarus
took ownership for it right
so they they took over a
developer's machine they
figured out the way to be able to move
AWS keys and they got access
to that and they moved
specific JavaScript up to
AWS that waited for
transaction from this
specific wallet to then
basically produce a
different transaction
behind the scenes than what
was shown in safe.
Fucking awesome, man.
That is like legitimately cool.
Um, and then everybody's like, oh yeah,
you know, like, like for my eyes,
that's totally safe liability.
Like that is one hundred percent on them.
Do you reckon that was, like,
just some interested parties doing, like,
the hack?
Or do you think it was, like,
a funded mercenary hack?
It could have been, like, some... No, no,
that was organized.
That was people who... It
was definitely Lazarus.
But, like,
if somebody within... Is it
possible that somebody
within SAFE was promised a
hundred million?
Or ten million?
Or five million?
Or two million?
To be able to do that?
Or to be able to allow that to happen?
I mean...
It's like,
just drop the keys on the way
out of your office.
And then the other thing
that just happened was
O-One Node getting double
signed on Osmosis.
Was it Osmosis, Schultz?
Yeah, it was Osmosis.
With just this weird race bug in Horcrux,
right?
So they didn't do anything
wrong with that.
That was just a purely open source.
And that liability is obviously on them,
right?
Because they're running this
software that's
that is, you know,
whatever the hell it is.
So,
but it's like this whole idea of like
liability when we start getting,
like we were talking about before, Eric,
like partnerships and like
these groups are like
working together and now
we're starting with this
huge like interchange type
structure and like we're starting to,
like these independent
entities are now working
much closer together.
And this idea of liability
is a pretty cool topic actually.
Not, sorry,
I'm not calling it like it has
nothing to do with what
we're talking about,
but I'm just saying like,
it's just pretty interesting.
So, Eric, I don't know if, like,
the liability would be on them,
but they do have the opportunity to, like,
step up to the plate for something.
Like, I'm talking about the double sign.
Like, it's... Well,
when you delegate... They
did step up and help.
Yeah, so, yeah, that team... Strangelove.
What?
Strangelove.
Yeah, Strangelove.
Sorry,
you're talking really quiet and
Schultz's microphone is
exceptionally loud.