Infura's Untold Story: E.G. Galano

Transcript

EG, welcome to the human protocol podcast. >> Thanks, Simon. Great to be here with you. >> Good to have you here. So um as obviously we were chatting the main goal and story behind this podcast is I want to know about the humans behind the big things that get built in this ecosystem behind the ups and the downs. I want to know what that was like for you as a human being. the ups and the downs and the arcs because I think it's very very important that we don't lose

sight of the humans and actually their experience throughout it all and the personal side of the big things that we built. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right. So, first off, tell us who you were before entering this world. I want to know about the game. I want to know about the uh reliability engineering side. Who you were and how you came in to the fold, let's say. >> Sure. Yeah. So, majored in computer science, was working in LA uh for a couple of different startups in the area.

um always doing back-end engineering infrastructure and I got the bulk of my experience at a company called Gaikai which was doing video game streaming and they were doing this really bleeding edge stuff. This was around like 2009 2010 where they were running games in a data center, capturing audio and video, streaming it to a thin client, letting people play games on their mobile phone that otherwise at the time the phones weren't powerful enough to to actually run. >> Yeah.

>> So, >> that was like an eye opening experience. It felt like um I was learning so much every single day. All of the people that I was working with um were super talented. uh engineers and learned a lot uh early on in my career there. >> So stayed there for about four or five years, went to another startup >> uh also in the uh LA area that was doing like backend hotel software. So the whole skip the front desk, you have a QR code to check in and that's your uh key that you use to get into the hotel. Like nobody was doing it at the time and that was the technology that they were building. And so,

>> uh, that company ended up getting acquired as well after I left. But the main thing there is I met my co-founder, one of them from Infura, Maurice. >> Okay. >> And he's the one that got me down the crypto Ethereum rabbit hole. >> Okay. What was, how did he do that? What did he tell you? And then what out of what Murray said, you were like, "Oo, >> yeah, >> this is cool. This is interesting." I went in. Um I I always loved going out to lunch with co-workers when back when we actually used to go into work >> and >> uh Maurice and I would go out to lunch and we'd talk about different ideas and say you know we should do a startup at some point like what should we do and um at the time it was uh AR and VR or AIM

ML and uh do you want to do something in these spaces? I'm like no that's not really um something that's really like speaking to me right now. What else? And >> he said, "Well, have you have you been following this Ethereum thing that's been uh launching?" It was probably >> early 2015 when he mentioned it to me, late 2014, something around there. And >> he said, "If you've been following Bitcoin, it's basically like that but better. Think like programmable world computer." So like that was that was the thing that he mentioned to me and I'm like, "Oh, that sounds interesting."

and he's like, "Well, I met one of the co-founders, Joe Luben, at this conference, and I think you you should really talk to him. He's doing this company called Consensus that is really really trying to build up Ethereum and anything like that helps Ethereum like progress forward. Um, you should have a call with him." So, he set up that call and that's why I met Joe. >> Okay. And then from there, how fast did Infura kind of come to be? pretty quickly. >> Pretty quickly I think I feel most of the things that around that time with consensus were like cool.

>> Yeah, let's go. It was like I remember it was like a weekend call. I had >> like two young kids at the time. They It was like a newborn and like a 2-year-old or something. And >> um >> I had to take the call on like a Sunday afternoon. Met Joe. He was sitting in the Brooklyn office and >> you saw people from like Newport over there in like one corner and all of these other like early projects >> and he told me about what Consensus was doing and Maurice was already doing some work for Consensus. >> Okay. >> He gave me the pitch of >> Yeah. So, you know, you build a project within Consensus and you have ownership in that.

>> Um it's kind of like an incubator accelerator type or not accelerator incubator type model. Yeah. >> And uh just build something that helps Ethereum like you figure that out. >> Okay. >> And like just talk to people, find out what you want to do. >> And I'm like, okay, that sounds interesting. So great. So you just need to give like two weeks and get started. I'm like, uh well, I I sort of have like I I'm not one of these other people that's like fresh out of school and can take that kind of risk. I have like a wife and a family and >> um >> let me let me figure this out. maybe I can kind of do this as like a contract and figure it out. He's like, "Yeah, that works."

>> Okay. >> You know, he he pretty much seemed open to anything. And um >> uh so I I said I would start doing that. And then he started setting up some calls and I met um Aaron from MetaMask and uh Dan and uh some people from Upport and from Udjo, some of the other early spokes that were um starting to build already at the time >> and started to try to figure out what we were going to build. >> Okay. So, was that exciting for you? Was that moment super exciting? Because realistically, you had card blanch, right? Figure out what you want. the door is open and come in once you figured it out.

>> Yeah, it was exciting. But like honestly, I didn't go into it thinking, great, we're going to build this startup and Ethereum is going to be super successful. Like I was a bit like pragmatic. I'm like, okay, great. This is something where I I have a day job. This allows me to kind of like explore like doing my own thing. >> Yes. And I'm even getting like paid a little like on the side like which helps with young kids and trying to buy a house in LA and all of that kind of stuff.

>> So yeah, it just kind of felt it it didn't feel like um a huge milestone. It felt like a okay, this is a cool thing that I'm also now doing. >> Okay. Okay. And then how long before and what was the process before you kind of fully took the step in and quit your old job etc etc. >> It was probably about 6 months. So um that was around May of 2015 that I took that call and said yes and I would start doing it.

>> I within a couple of weeks did my first trip to Brooklyn. Went into the office. Yeah. met Herman who was ended up being the the first person that really came up with the Inferna name vision and like like that was part of the find a project to work on that sounds interesting. >> Okay. And once we all started working on that together, within six months, I I knew I wanted to do it full-time. And it was really starting to like resonate of like, okay, there's something here that we should all focus on. Because at the time at Consensus, everybody kind of >> split time between different things.

Like when you would >> record like your hours and stuff of like how you were spending your time, people would be like, "Well, I work 20% on this and 20% on that, and I'm doing some like open source work with 20% of my time." >> Yeah. uh and very few people had like one project that they were focus on fully. Okay. >> Yeah. We we ended up I think being like the first team or one of the first teams at Consensus that just purely focused on like one thing to start because the moment that uh we started to support MetaMask with their uh developer beta.

>> Yes. >> There was like a production system that had to be maintained and that was July. So it was like 2 months after I joined, we already had that. Wo. So yeah, now that you make me think about the timeline, it did happen pretty fast. >> We just didn't really realize how significant it was at the time. Like MetaMask was no different than any other project within consensus at the time. It was just, >> okay, here are a couple of guys that are building something and we're going to start running backend infrastructure for it. >> Yeah. >> And we didn't realize like how significant that like dependency or traffic would become over time.

What would you say from this moment in time where to your point you didn't realize how fundamental this would become? >> How quick was the shift to holy this is now very very important for a bunch of projects or all of them. >> Uh it took a while. I'd say it was probably a year and a half to two years before it really felt like that. And >> that thing that they say about like >> do you recognize product market fit or you know whatever they want to call it like at the time that you have it, you really don't because you start with nothing. Yes. And then all of a sudden

you get your first user and it's like are they really like what's the difference between somebody that becomes one of your like top 1% customers and users versus just somebody that tinkers on a weekend and then goes away, right? >> They look the same initially, right? >> And like their traffic looks the same and like their their project kind of takes off just like yours eventually takes off and like you don't necessarily >> see it for what it is at the time, right? And so it was things like little signals here or there like emails that we would get from people saying, "Oh, I'm building on Infura. We're doing this launch or can you like scale up in preparation for this thing that we're doing?" You start to get those kinds of emails. Okay.

>> And um people reaching out asking for help with things and then you start going to conferences and people are saying, "Oh, I'm using Infura. It's great. I love it. Can you guys also do this thing?" >> Okay. And then you start started to really see like how much people were actually discovering it and using it and >> um how much they were like depending on it. But it it really also coincided with how much Ethereum was starting to be used. And it was hard to tell how much of that was Ethereum and or us and like how much of like our growth kind of mapped onto that same like magnitude.

>> Okay. When was it blatant? When did it start becoming No, it is actually >> uh I would say it was around 20 like middle of 2017. So it was probably about a year after we launched in Yeah. That's when it was the whole like ICO craze. >> That's when we started to see >> uh we used to have like these notifications that would come into our Slack channel every time somebody registered. And I remember at one point there were like 200 new registr user registrations like every day. And that's what I mean by you don't really >> like I I had worked in tech but I wasn't on that side of it. I was like backend,

right? So I didn't really have a sense at the time for like how many new users should we have like registering and we were a free service at the time. Yes. Like we >> we weren't trying to monetize initially because people were just tinkering with Ethereum. That was the whole thing with how we built Infra was >> uh we're going to make it really easy for somebody to build on Ethereum and try it out. Like we didn't go into it with a monetization plan. It was just this is a problem. We're going to try to solve that problem >> and it looks like it's helping people. So we're going to keep doing that and then we'll figure out how to monetize in the future.

>> Okay. And that was something that Joe and Consensus allowed us to do was like be patient with that and not try to like monetize too quickly. >> And when we se saw those like 150 200 new users every day, it's like okay, but it's because it's free. How many of these would be coming in >> paid? >> If it's paid, but in hindsight doesn't matter if it was free. Getting 200 new users a day is great for any project, right? And were you so I know that you mentioned you were going to conferences and so on. Were you then were you front line to dealing with Right.

>> Yeah. That was that was tough trying to do it with like also a small team because while Consensus was always a pretty big company. >> Yeah. You guys were lean. >> Yeah. At the time that I joined Consensus was around like 90 people already but there were four co-founders but one of them left pretty early >> and it was three of us. And so for that first year, it was just the three of us just doing everything. Um whether it was me or Maurice or Michael, one of us would go speak at a conference about what we're doing. >> Maurice and I were uh always the ones kind of like on call to respond if there was a new Ethereum node update that we had to deploy or fix some kind of backend bug or scalability problem. We were the ones that were responding to

that for the first year. And even like Michael, while he wasn't like in the trenches like um doing like the coding engineering stuff, he he had like some CISA admin like experience and would do his best to like chip in whenever he could. Like all of us wore uh whatever hats were necessary. What was that like in terms of managing? Because you mentioned earlier as opposed to maybe a lot of people who came into that early consensus and early Ethereum, you already had a family and you know wanting to make sure that that balance was there. Was that tough >> when you're doing everything yourself?

>> It is. I mean, not just time, but also like the culture, right? Because like you come to uh like work conferences and like networking events and things like that and it feels more like a rave and a party and like you go whatever whatever city you're in. you're living like that life trying to like meet people, understand like how they're building and then you go home and you're >> um dealing with like a newborn and changing diapers and stuff and trying to like >> reconcile the justosition between like those two lives. I used to say I felt like I lived a double life because like I I would go to like some conference somewhere and it just felt like a different reality because at the same time like Ethereum's taking off, all of

these people are becoming super successful with like whatever it was, maybe it was just their investments or the product that they were building. And then you go home and I'm like taking my kids out in the stroller and walking them to the park. And then while I'm at the park like getting a notification saying like, "Oh, um, Ethereum just hit a new all-time high and so like our servers are at like maxed out 100%." I'm like, "Okay, I've got to like run this stroller home, ask my wife to watch the kid, and so I could like get online and help Maurice cuz he's like his stuff's falling over." Yes, >> he had he had a newborn as well that was the same age, right? So, >> yeah, that was um now that I think about it, uh really exhausting.

>> Really exhausting, huh? And also I think to your point just the fact that you're obviously Ethereum is growing and then the knock-on effect then do you also start getting the this isn't working this is not reliable and so on like the criticisms that come to you and the project whilst you're having to balance all of these things. What did that feel like? That's sort of like always something that uh you deal with um managing like backend and infrastructure is like they'll say you know like whether it's >> infrastructure or IT systems >> people only complain when it's not

working right like it can work smoothly the 99% of the time and you only hear about that 1%. So you kind of have to have a thick skin with stuff like that. Like I I'm not super active on I've never been super active on crypto Twitter even though I'm following it. >> Yes. >> And you would see stuff like that like oh Infir having this issue or that >> but um >> you can't you one you don't have time to get involved in it. you're just focused on like solving the problem. >> And often times it was things that we could resolve fairly quickly and it was just >> like one person uh in particular or a couple of people that were being like uh overly

vocal or something and making it seem like it was much bigger than it was. It was like uh as far as infrastructure and like services go like a pretty like standard occurrence of like sometimes there's an outage or sometimes there's this thing that happens. The the difference is >> like when when your email goes out like you can check it again later and you're fine like okay I'll refresh it in a few minutes. when you're actually trying to trade and deal with like financial systems, >> it's >> like people then then people are angry because their money is affected, their investment is affected like whatever they're doing there's some sort of financial impact. Yes.

>> So that was like a revelation of oh this is like a financial system like cuz initially some people were just doing things like buy buy a pixel on like the Ethereum homepage. Yes. And if they couldn't do that now, it's like, well, you could do it in like a few minutes. It's fine. Yeah. Like that's where like the significance started to hit us. Like, oh, people are like really affected by anything that happens right now. Like you should really start thinking about this like you're building a stock exchange, you're building a bank, you're building something that people need to always be on and always be reliable and like respond. And like we did, it was just um realizing that people were actually now using it like

that and it was delivering that value to them was a okay now it's time to like scale up the team and that's when we made our requests for like >> we need an increased budget for this and this is our hiring plan and how we plan to scale and Okay. >> Yeah. >> And was it around that same time that maybe you were thinking about monetizing? Was it around the same time that the conversation started? >> We uh we always thought about monetizing. We just didn't know how. Like remember at the time like everyone is trying to monetize through an ICO.

>> So we're like okay are we supposed to do like an ICO? Well that seems >> like one of the criticisms early on was okay well why should I use Infir rather than run my own Ethereum node? It's like well you could always run your own Ethereum node like you use this if it's valuable to you. convince you it's felt like if that was the way that we were getting people to use it and then all of a sudden we said and now we're doing an inferior ICO it almost felt like a bait and switch kind of thing and we weren't going to do that >> so we said well if that's not our plan of monetizing like what are we going to do if it's traditional SAS how should people pay for it is it like per node per API request and now it's pretty

obvious the API request model is what we and and others went with, but it wasn't clear at the time, like nobody was doing something like that. >> So, we knew we would do some sort of SAS, but like once it got to the point where it made sense and didn't feel like we were there yet, we tried offering premium support to >> projects that were doing ICOs, we're like, "Hey, you know, you just launched this 50 million, 75 million, like whatever it is, like ICO. It'd be great if uh we could put like a plan together to help support you guys through that."

like, "Oh, well, um, not sure if we're willing to pay that. Like, that sounds like a lot of money." >> Okay. >> So, that kind of made us feel like, "Well, >> that ICO like connected you with like tens of thousands, if not more like users through our system." It it did seem to add value. I'm not sure how to explain that to you. And that's where we were more like >> tech people not really thinking about like how to best monetize it on the product business side. And that's uh a skill that we learned over time, but we definitely did not have it at the time.

Otherwise, otherwise we would have gotten those contracts from every single ICO that launched on Infura. >> And that's an interesting thing, right? Because for and I remember this at the very beginning with bounties, it was explaining or not necessarily explaining to people but in a way for you guys in particular being that invisible layer and that you like you say when it works people don't even think about it and so then it's like oh but why would I pay for it? It just it's just there. And at the same time, did that ever feel strange to your point with everybody

else kind of building I would say the buildings on top of the road? Was that weird for you guys to kind of navigate maybe get more resources or anything like that? And to your point, getting people to pay for it because it's the unseen layer yet fundamental layer. >> Yeah. Uh it did it it was really hard to come to um uh to understand how best position ourselves like >> are are we infrastructure and nobody really like knows about it or are we like a product and that should be at the forefront and like >> we we monetize it in a different way because like you can think about things

like you know the app store for Apple and >> that's that's critical infrastructure for that iOS ecosystem. And they don't >> charge you a significant amount of money to like use it. Like it's not like here's $1,000 per review of each app you put on the app store or anything like that. They make their money in another way, right? And it felt like anytime we tried to do something that was too like right in your face like monetizing it like any idea like I was talking about with that like support for the ICO at least at the time it didn't like work um or it didn't really seem like something that was like the right um way to monetize and so we >> held off until we finally launched like

the paid and fur product in 2019. So if you look at it it was over 3 years is what it took us to get to that. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And then the journey from then on, what would you say has been was there ever a moment in this journey where you're like, I can't do this anymore. This is to this. Like were there any intensely critical moments where you doubted the journey or you were the work life balance was just off? Was there any moment like that or were you always kind of because you had that balance?

You were able to be a lot more grounded, let's say, than others. >> I'm not sure if it was like a healthy balance. I I tend to always uh work a lot and I've always enjoyed it and that's the thing I would tell the team is >> like we're we're fortunate or prior to I AI um those of us like working in tech like are are fortunate to have so many opportunities >> out there and >> like >> you should be able to find a project to work on that you're really passionate about where work doesn't feel like work like if work feels like work, you're probably doing the wrong thing. And so Infura for a long time like did not feel like work. It it eventually got there.

you know things do get uh hard and difficult >> but like that first like three four years >> it's like the hard work is still like just so fun and so rewarding because you do things like you are on an air like I remember I was going to a conference I'm on an airplane and I look over and I see somebody like using Infira's dashboard to like log in and check their project they were probably preparing for their demo or presentation like that's the kind of stuff where it's like seeing somebody like using your project in the wild like that never gets old. That always motivates you. Hearing people like as you're walking by saying like, "Oh, well hold on like let you just use Infura for that or like sign into Infura and like they have that thing that you

need." Like that stuff's like really addicting. Yes. That's the stuff that keeps people building and like gets you excited. um when it gets hard like there's like initial we started with like no competition like we were the only ones that were doing this and then as more people come into the scene and they say oh well if that project's valuable I can be valuable too if I do the same thing or do this different twist on it yes >> like that gives you that pressure like the competitive pressure is good but it's also tiring it wears you down right if you don't really have >> whether it's like the support system like at home to help you through that support system like on your team. Yes.

And like within the company like it makes it like a more of a struggle and um how you weather that is part of like the maturation of any like product or company like that whole thing of getting to product market fit but then also keeping it right. >> Okay. >> Staying relevant in a conversation in an industry that's like increasingly competitive and growing. >> Yeah. >> Okay. What was a moment where was there a moment as you say in the maturation of Infura where you're like this is getting too much and

does that lead to you stepping away? I never considered stepping away because or never seriously considered stepping away because it it's when it's the thing that you create, there's this like >> uh attachment that you have to it, right? You don't want to abandon it. You don't want to abandon like your team like you're leading a team. And like also like >> the >> Did you feel a great deal of responsibility? >> Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. with like any any outage, any incident, um thinking like, oh, all of these projects are relying on us. All of these like customers like trust us to power their applications.

>> And if they're losing users as a result of us having an outage or not delivering the value that we promised them, it's a lot of the responsibility, right? And so, >> uh yeah, that that responsibility never wore me down. Like I would say at around like the DeFi summer phase, it felt like >> the uh Ethereum ecosystem had like matured to the point or the the web 3 ecosystem had matured to the point where it wasn't just Ethereum >> and there were tons of things out there that we weren't doing like uh we were pretty late in supporting Polygon and um some of like the new chains that were

coming up at the time like Arbitum and Optimism where people had been >> asking us to support it for a long time and like the scale of Ethereum that we were supporting was so massive just because there were tens of millions of users using MetaMask alone that were relying on us and that kind of like distracted us from doing anything that was like net new. >> So, >> okay. So, just you were focusing on core. Is that because the team was limited or just because you were so you had so much on your plate that these things were kind of secondary?

>> So, one of the one of the lessons I learned was not to >> even if you start with like no biases, you sort of like >> get them over time, right? Like with ours it was Ethereum was the main thing we're focused on and from 2016 17 18 a bunch of like new chains and projects would say >> oh okay you're doing this for Ethereum do it for us too and that was >> like maybe we tried that like once or twice and it didn't work out. Okay >> uh like we would stand up the infrastructure and nothing would get used and we'd have to tear it down. And so it was a a cost an opportunity cost of our time and expenses doing that. So when Arbitum or Optimism or Salana or somebody like that came to us and said,

"Oh, we're launching this new chain to that point about like you don't know what customer is going to be like the next hot thing. You don't know like what offering is going to be the next hot thing." Yes. >> So like Salana is a big one like where we said like no we're not uh sounds cool to like this whole thing you have with like vertical scaling and um it's written in Erling like sounds sounds really cool but like we're really focused on this Ethereum stuff right now and >> um can't help support that launch. >> Big mistake with like not doing that. Not not even like the money, right? Like Infra made plenty of money just focusing on Ethereum. It's like there was a use case for in that instance like Salana

and users where we could have provided value very early on to the ecosystem and that's like a missed opportunity right of >> like what we were doing we had learned at that point it was around 2018 that we met with them >> uh we could have like we had two years of learnings on running that infrastructure they were just launching like we could have helped them not just launch but actually push things forward I'm sure by like contributing some of our umertise learnings like pretty early on right like they've been successful without us but >> um like I look at those kinds of things as the like that's what the pressure does it it makes it really difficult for you to assess things like in the moment

because everything's just going and it doesn't slow down right >> and then um I was mentioning like DeFi summer and like the NFT craze like around 2021 start to feel like the things that people need aren't necessarily the things that you were building. >> Like we were starting to add tons of chains and like new network offerings, right? But it was still like lower level instant like access to like node infrastructure. >> Okay. >> And now people were starting to hit like >> bottlenecks at like another layer like how can I query all of this NFT data? I need an NFT like API to improve that.

and we didn't have something at the time, >> okay? >> Or it's getting really difficult to query like thousands of balances at a single time. You need to like >> do something to improve that. And while we were trying to improve things at like a low level, yes, >> there were like higher level abstractions or product offerings where now we were starting to feel like we were behind. >> Okay. >> And as the Ethereum and like crypto ecosystem grew, now there's tons of funded projects that are building exactly that thing. >> So like what's the choice that you make? Do you do you go up the stack? Do you go broad? Do you do like specialized uh products? And like that's where it starts to uh wear you down because you it it feels like a very high stakes uh

period where you have a limited finite amount of resources. Yes. and like how you best deploy that to maintain your lead or um grow your current user base >> and also make the right choice. Yeah. >> Right. And then it's on you and your other two co-founders to be like which one do we pick? >> Yeah. Well, at that point we were down to two co-founders. Uh Maurice had left to focus on >> Okay. So, we're 21 2021.

>> 2021. Yeah. >> Yes. Okay. Okay. So then two co-founders. What What choice? Which one's the right choice, Michael? >> Uh, sorry. Which >> No, just like No, but you two going >> Yeah. Um, well, at that point, you know, it's it's not just up to the co-founders. Our team was probably over 40, 50 people at the time. And >> it's like, okay, do 25 people work on this thing? Do we carve out like five people to focus on a new thing? Okay. >> Meanwhile, like the the core product is always feels understaffed. Like always feels like there's never enough people that we can throw at that problem because of just like the massive scale.

>> Yes. >> Like there's always some improvement that we can add or tech debt that we can tackle. >> So how do you balance that? >> Okay. And in terms of the decision to move on, we're fast forwarding now a few years. What did that feel like? What was the process of stepping away from your project and your co-creation of the past 10 years?

>> Uh it's sort of an evolution of what we were talking about that around like late 2022. Yeah. Like I really realized that while Infura at one point was critical infrastructure, if we went down, it felt like Ethereum was down because so many projects couldn't connect to the blockchain anymore. >> Um, enough other options now existed, things like our friends at Alchemy and Quicknote and all of these other projects that uh offered uh similar RPC products >> that we weren't this like single point of failure for the ecosystem. Whereas at one point maybe we were.

>> Yes. >> And it's like well that kind of means like this is this was always like public blockchain data and it kind of felt like a commodity. >> And so I started building a protocol for that called Den the decentralized infrastructure network around like late 2022. >> Okay. And my intent was make it so that anybody can like run the the same infrastructure that Infura does to offer this like commoditized data whether it's Ethereum or Salana or like anything out there. Okay.

>> Um so that as people build real world asset trading systems and like reimagine the entire financial system on top of blockchain technology. Yeah. there isn't one, two, or three companies that are like underpinning that. Just like you can look at the the cloud hyperscalers as kind of like the same thing like okay >> any any tech that's out there and fear included are built on top of Amazon, Azure, Google like the the big three hyperscalers, right? And so >> it felt like one of the best things that we could do to transition like the legacy of Infura into like what's needed like current day was build a decentralized protocol for it. So that starting with RPC, yeah, it can be

something that's offered on a decentralized network. Okay. And then um expand that out to other offerings that starts to look more like a decentralized API marketplace. >> Okay. >> So that that was sort of a natural evolution for me. It felt like at one point it was that bait and switch if we did something like try to launch a protocol on something that Infura had with its early users. Yes. But now it had like sufficient like critical mass or something where you could actually launch a protocol like that and it was actually in like the best interests of like the community, the tech uh and everything at the time. Was that important for you to your point, the point that you just made here for the

good of the community and the ecosystem? Like you have that and again coming back to the responsibility angle >> and this is something that maybe sometimes uh there are co-founders that obviously of projects that we don't necessarily uh think of as valuable. they're more about extracting value that they don't feel a sense of responsibility. But I think for you know for a very good reason there's a lot of the founders from those early days that are very much carry that responsibility of we need to act for the good of the community and the good of

the ecosystem. >> Yeah. I I would say like there's there's a balance, right? Because I'm not saying everybody should solely do public goods and things, right? Yes. And >> there like we we had ownership in Infura and Consensus had an ownership stake in Infura for incubating it and we sold Infura to Consensus in 2019, right? >> And so from that point forward, I was a consensus employee with Consensus equity, okay? Like helping build like consensus value, right? And so like I I got rewarded in like the value for what we created within fear. like I and the team got rewarded for the value that we created. Like there's a difference between like getting value and like solely maximizing value for yourselves in like a self-s serving way, right? And

you know, unfortunately in crypto, we've seen a ton of that. Like you see those like value extractors coming into it of the uh how can I make this valuable for me? The benefit of like being early in Ethereum is you met a lot of people that went into it like focused on like the things that are about the Ethereum community and trying to make Ethereum successful making web 3 successful >> and if they also became successful as a result of that. Okay. >> Yeah. Right. And >> honest so like the value that Infura provided we didn't look at it as how to make money. We genuinely were trying to solve a problem and it created value.

And you can look at like so many startup like founder talks of like solve a customer problem like focus on like your users's problem. Turns out like it's true like it that actually does build value. You just have to like trick yourself into not focusing on the money. like as like as much pressure as you feel to focus on it, just keep focusing on the problem because that translates into money in the future if it really is a problem and you're solving it in the right way. >> What does that feel like after 10 years of even though like you say >> you sold it in to consensus in 2019, but still what does that feel like to kind of put that chapter?

It it felt good to not be feel that pressure to just continually grow like the monetization of like Infir as a product that okay >> um what I told like consensus at the time was >> it's going to get more expensive to try to >> uh like defend this layer where you see so much like commoditization happening with this particular product. >> Yes. like focusing in on value like as a company in other areas where it's uh like MetaMask being in the company consensus chose to focus on like the consumer side of like how to make that experience like best and like deliver value that way. Okay. In which case within Fura it's uh transitioning to a point where you can keep adding new

services here in like almost like the most like costefficient economical um resilient way which is this like decentralized protocol. And so like that's what we were designing was by having a protocol it means any new network that launches >> um some if somebody out there is running the infrastructure for that this protocol gives them a way of like offering that to the existing customer base of Infura and now consensus gets access to like 1, five, 10 different networks without having to be the ones running the expensive infra infrastructure for that. So so that was the transition. It felt like a natural one of I'm still helping Infura grow, helping serve Infura's customers, but

doing it with people outside of our team. Okay. Like it's now like a community of people running infrastructure for >> Infura. Infura. So it was comfortable. It was a comfortable transition. >> Yeah, that part of it was what was uncomfortable. What what became uncomfortable is like where we're at uh where we got to over the last year is >> like do we at that point decide we want to like continue on like launching like a token and doing like a a whole like token based like protocol. Does that feel like the right fit for this or like what's the what's the right way to take like this to like the next step? And >> part of that meant like there needed to

be some like credible neutrality and so leaving consensus is something that I'm finally doing in the next month or so. >> And um >> that is uh that's a big change for me obviously being at one place for the last 10 years. Yes. >> Um, stepping out of that sort of like comfort zone of familiarity and really honestly like security of working within like a place pretty consistently for 10 years in crypto is almost unheard of unless you're a big exchange. Yeah. >> And um uh and so that and then like what is the right product to build like going forward because opportunity cost is like a big thing like I I mentioned in a couple of uh

>> points in our talk >> that there are so many primitives that now exist like real world assets exist now because of some of the underlying scaling technologies that didn't exist 5 years ago right >> and stable coins like initially we only had die. Yes, >> now we have so many different stable coins and better stable coin infrastructure that enable like better user experiences and thus products that are now getting mainstream adoption. Yeah, >> when you look at agentic commerce and all of the things that are exciting with like AI development and agentic development and consumption, >> crypto like I I fully believe in the crypto rails are a great solution to

that problem >> and people that are building like towards that using crypto primitives now are are doing the right thing with the technology. It's not like don't try to build another DeFi application if like you're just kind of like forking something out there that already exists. Like be more original like there's so many cool things that we can build with the underlying tech. Okay. >> That that's what uh I'm planning on doing with the team next is >> yeah bu building that >> product with the underlying infrastructure that can now scale with the technology or those primitives that I mentioned that now now exist. So, it's an interesting So, it sounds like yes, there's the closing of that chapter, but

there's a lot of excitement about putting everything that you've learned and everything that you've experienced in this new world that does have the capacity that wasn't there in the past. >> Yeah. >> To kind of continue. So, you're like ready to go, ready? Your energy levels are not dimmed. No, I it it's been a roller coaster, especially like the last three to six months. You know, there's >> uh crypto's dead, crypto's not dead, DeFi is dead, DeFi is not dead. Like >> it's like Schroiger's cat.

>> Yeah. >> Is it? Isn't it? Is it? Isn't it? Yes. >> Yeah. I uh I would say I don't know if everybody in crypto is feeling that. Like I think like AI having this like impact on all industries and like the >> Yes. the huge like steps in like change and impact that it's having is making everybody reconsider like current products, what they're focusing on, how they prepare for the next 6 months and six years, right? And part of that starts with a bit of that like >> uh the uh I guess like more like not optimistic way of looking at it. And then you start to like rationalize it

and then you prepare and you say okay now I understand this and now I know how to move forward with it and then the optimism comes back. >> Okay. So the optimism does come back and that's one of the learnings that you've had in these past few years. >> Yeah. And that's where the does it ever get tired? Do you ever feel like quitting comes in is >> I guess like quitting never feels like an option. It just is like you just have to like reinvent yourself or the product or um adjust your mentality and like keep trying to maintain um not relevance but uh competency and clarity of vision and like okay I understand like what we need to be doing going forward.

>> Okay. Okay. question that I tend to always ask is there anything that you've wanted to say publicly but never have or something that you've thought but particularly because you said you don't you're not really on crypto Twitter or anything like that you know so you're not like in the morning >> I just don't I just don't >> Okay so what would you express not necessarily as a tweet but is there anything that you have wanted to say in all of these years and then you just have it.

>> Uh, let's see. Yeah, I I mean, first and foremost, like to everybody that's ever like built on Infura, like thank you sincerely for um relying on us and trusting us to build out this product to help support whatever it was that you were building and growing. Like I you know to those that point earlier about notifications coming in of like new user registrations. You see people like Stanny from a like with his like personal email like signing up for an account and you know you don't know who that person is and what they're going to end up building stuff like that right >> and so whether or not they're um people are still using Infir as like their main

like product for something like that just the fact that at one point we helped in their journey like sincere thank you to everybody for that. And then um the other thing is people tend to get really stuck on like the ideology around like Ethereum like the whole like Ethereum mandate stuff that's happening right now. And >> I I I've always been on the side of like being a lot more like pragmatic with things like your idealism can like exist or not exist. It's like almost like distinct from like how you choose to like run your business or like build a product. Like granted, there are people that don't look at this as a business or a product and that's where that comes from,

>> right? >> But so many people don't have that luxury and need to pay their bills and so that they can actually contribute and be a part of this ecosystem. And so as you're building a business or looking at how to like provide value, there's so many things out there that uh that we've now built over 10 years in crypto that improve on existing systems can actually build better products and look at it more from that like building better products to solve uh problems for people that actually exist. And don't get too stuck on the evangelizing side of it is what I would say.

>> Okay. Okay. >> Love that. I like the fact that you you're like you say, you're on Twitter, but you're like a lurker. You're a lurker. Okay. >> Um and then one last thing. What is something that you let's say a rule that you now apply or will apply let's say to the new product or just in your life that you have kind of gotten to in the past 10 years like EG of 10 years ago did not have this eg of 2026 absolutely does not like always follows this particular

rule. >> Yeah. Um you can Oh man. Uh being being nice was something I always like pride myself with and that's you know we gave fear away for for free for a long time and like >> because we were afraid of like the ramifications of like having people pay for it. Turns out when we actually started to monetize it, >> people valued it and they're like, "Oh, good. Now I understand like what motivates you. Now I understand like this isn't something that is going to go away tomorrow because you don't monetize. Like that was like a form of like we're we thought we were we were afraid of not being nice giving it away for free, right? Okay.

>> So some that's that's one thing is like >> if there's like a reasonable rationale like people are reasonable and they'll understand it. You don't need to be overly concerned about the impressions that you make on people. >> Okay. And then the other thing is um whenever you meet somebody like at this conference or anywhere like you don't know what that relationship will bring. >> Yes. >> And go into everything with an open mind. Like you don't know if like that person is like your new best friend or like your next like top 1% customer. And I I went into a lot of meetings because like like I said, there's a lot of

grifters honestly that like gravitate to ecosystem where there's a ton of money and it's really hard to filter out like >> the the signal from the noise. >> And so defaulting to noise I regret, >> okay? >> Because you miss out on the great signal, >> okay? >> And it's exhausting trying to filter, but it's worth it. And uh that's a lesson that I learned in this. >> Um yeah, >> have an open mind. Be >> discerning.

>> Yeah. >> Okay. Awesome. EG, thank you so much for joining us. >> This is fun. >> Yeah, I loved it. >> All right. Thank you so much. Tank year.