Avalanche, Ethereum and the Future of Distributed Computing w/ Steven Gates (GoGoPool)

**Speaker A:** Foreign. **Speaker B:** Hello, and welcome back for another episode of the Strange Water podcast. Thank you for joining us. Today's episode is a bit on the longer side, so we'll move through the introduction quickly. Stephen Gates is The founder of GoGoPool, one of the more prominent staking services for Avalanche. While you may be familiar with them because you've delegated your stake to Avax, or maybe you've used their liquid staking derivative GG Avax, they've become a major player in the infrastructure that makes up the Avalanche ecosystem. And yes, you can stake your Avax with gogopool, but. But if you're a builder looking to deploy a sovereign app chain secured by the Avalanche protocol, no one is going to give you deeper, fuller, and better service than GoGo Pool. While this conversation covers all of the basics, like how does the Avalanche protocol subnet structure work to what makes Avalanche a compelling ecosystem to be building in? This conversation also aggressively explores some of the most basic, nuanced and important questions that lie at the bedrock of the blockchain industry. Questions like what are the implications of the hyper financialization of everything? To what is the end game state of the major blockchain ecosystems in an industry where tribalism is just part of our DNA? Conversations like this are a stark reminder of the value of real human conversations held across ecosystems. As I am sure you'll agree by the end of this episode, learning how people in other conversations think can add so much more to your understanding of what you know and love, and maybe even get you falling down a new rabbit hole. One more thing before we begin. Please do not take financial advice from this or any podcast. Ethereum, Avalanche and decentralized computing will change the world one day, but you can easily lose all of your money between now and then. All right, time to start the show. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us on the Strangewater podcast. **Speaker A:** Absolutely, Rust, thanks for having me. **Speaker B:** Of course, man. So before we get into this one, and like, I'm really excited about this one because, you know, we. We don't normally talk about Avalanche, and I can't wait to get into, like, why. That's an exciting platform. But before we get to any of that, I'm a huge believer that the most important part of every conversation are the people in it. So with that as like a frame, can you give us a little bit about yourself, who you are, like how you found kind of computer science and, and got into technology and then ultimately, like, how you found crypto, why you didn't run away, and like why you Settled in the avalanche ecosystem. **Speaker A:** Yeah, love it. So how did I get exposed to technology or how did I get into computer science? There's actually a funny picture of me like 3 years old with one of the original computers and I was like just playing with mouse and a keyboard. So both my parents were always technologists there, although we came like, we're immigrants from Hungary or in Eastern Europe and then came to America. But it's like always kind of technology has been. It's like AI security, blockchain. I'd say those are kind of the three in space, four predominant topics in my house growing up, for sure. So I think like, you know, of course playing a lot of video games, you know, had definitely summers in high school where I never left the house. And it was just, just playing with the boys, playing, you know, Team Fortress 2 CS Go and Dota 2. And yeah, good times. But then through that definitely exposed me to the more logical way of thinking. Kind of like engineering mindset of problem solving. Okay, here's A, I'm at A, there's B. How do I get there? How do I problem solve through it? So then I think during, actually in college, or rather when I was starting to think about going to college or university, kind of the biggest thing on my mind was like, I also played a lot of music. So I was like, do I go and then like, try to make it, make it as a musician or do I pick something else? And I went with my brain instead of my heart and was like, all right, well, I can probably learn to love engineering, so let's at least check that out. And then keep music as kind of a hobby. So kind of dove in head first. But then through college, like, the way I kind of floated sophomore, junior year of college was I would go to these hackathons coding competitions every single weekend. I would like, kind of think of an idea, find a team, kind of design out the idea on the car ride over to like Ann Arbor, Michigan or to like OSU or Penn State or whatever. And then like, we would get there, get to work, took it pretty seriously, pitched our heart out. And then through that, made enough money to. To kind of like have pocket cash and also like buy some small tech and also pay for a portion of my college, which was pretty incredible. And that's also what exposed me to entrepreneurship in a more serious way. I mean, I've always been entrepreneurial, but in a more structured like, okay, here's what a sales pitch looks like. Here's how you fundraise, here's What a product is, here's who the customer is, here's how you have a team. Like, I think back then I was probably most proud about how many coding languages that I knew. Now I'm definitely most proud about, like, the teams that are building their own teams in gogo pool. Like, it's. It's absolutely fantastic to see. It's phenomenal. So through kind of all that is how I really squarely landed. Like, coming out of college, my biggest thing was, do I drop out and another fork in the road. Like, do I drop out early and start doing startups, or do I graduate, then do startups? I cut it down the middle and graduated a little bit early, raised a little bit of funding for the first kind of startup, which was a AI video interviewing tool, before AI really existed and before anything to do with AI in the cloud was out there. So we were building a lot of operational tools for that. And then after like, a year and a half in, we had no revenue still, everyone kind of pointed the finger at me of like, okay, Stephen, you can talk to people. You go figure out how to sell this thing and get us money. So then another year and a half went by of me kind of learning sales fundamentals from scratch, learning how to build up a sales team, learning how to work with a sweet spot. Ended up being the top 100 staffing firms in the world, which is a very, very different culture than hackers in a basement or, like, crypto natives creating the next kind of like, AAVE or DEFI protocol. It's like, very, very different culture and different way to talk to people, different way to book calls and carry deals forward and close these, like, monster deals. But so that's where we found the sweet spot. Then Covid came. We lost 90% or 80% of our revenue in literally a weekend. Like, it was. It was quite fantastical. Like, co founder, like, looking at you, like, holy shit, this is, like, actually happening. Like, Covid got announced and then boom, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, like, we just. Everybody canceled, paused, you know, they also battened down the hatches because the segment we're going after was highly affected by Covid, especially early on. So that definitely sucked. And then we kind of grinded our way through, chewed a lot of glass, bled a lot of tears, kind of rebuilt the business through Covid. And then as we got to a more stable spot, had enterprise contracts, kind of, like, looked at each other like, why are we dying for this? Like, do we want to die on this hill? Or. Because our product had also morphed into a kind of an enterprise product and less so about creating a technological innovation. We're like, is this why we got in the game? We're like, no, not really. So let's just put this on maintenance mode and then start looking for the next thing. Then we had another mini venture during that but anime montage of us kind of trying out different ideas, finding our groove. We landed on lightning in a bottle of we're trying to create new business models for content creators. Especially like during COVID and post. Covid was a very big thing. And through that is how I came into to take crypto much more seriously. So that's when I would say I transitioned from crypto curious to becoming crypto native. Whereas like right during that time and we had always approached crypto as two things. There's cryptocurrency, which is the coins and the price action and defi protocols and there's blockchain technology. And we were approaching from a very blockchain oriented view, very infrastructure heavy. And that's how we landed on Avalanche is because we were just looking for a way to run our own app chain for this thing that we're fundraising for. And then as we went down the rabbit hole of like, okay, subnets is really the only thing. Cosmos polkadot subnets. Subnets is really the only thing still now it's the only way that we can start off, start a blockchain small, keep the same infrastructure and just scale it up. Just like I would scale up a. Just like I would scale up a MongoDB instance, right? Or like some, any database that would use internally. It's like, that made sense to us. Like, okay, yeah, this can scale and we'll just keep it there and cool. That makes sense. And we can make it flip it, make it permissionless and make its own decentralized economy eventually. So then through that process went down the rabbit hole of like, okay, subnets read the white paper, look at the code, tinker with the code, run our own, create our own tooling. Because there's not much docs or tooling at that point. And then that's when we start getting genuinely red pilled. We're like, holy shit. If we could solve, as we're building out all these ops, tooling and whatever, if we could solve this problem not just for us, but all the future Stevens in the world, all the future builders that could really move the needle. And we kind of got obsessed with that kind of thinking and then hence Gogo pool decided, okay, this is our first kind of toehold. So we pivoted completely just to focus on this. We were so convicted. And then yeah, started off with Gogo Pool, which is a decentralized liquid staking protocol built to help avalanche subnets grow and decentralize safely. And then now that protocol is growing, now we're running 10 or 12% of the validators in the avalanche network are being launched through our protocol. We have a liquid staking token that subsidizes the cost for running your own validator node. And then we have a GGP token that is acts as like collateral to make sure that this market remains trustless of matching up hardware operators to liquid stakers. And then now as we're kind of building this out, we've just announced Bloom, which is an open framework for subnets to decentralize. So now we're starting to see that the, the dream is starting to become real. Of now any builder will be able to like start with their own small permissioned app chain, grow it iteratively and then using Bloom, actually connecting to Google protocol, add in more validator nodes, attract more delegators, like diversify the network security. And then the important thing there we feel our unique perspective is that that has to happen iteratively. So Bloom is really geared towards helping teams make one test grow a little bit, learn about it, view the analytics, make the next version grow, learn next version, and then that way they can kind of sequentially grow out their blockchain network versus I think what the market thought would and should happen is sort of the cosmos approach of like on day zero, you have 150 nodes right off the bat and then that can just start growing, get to like 2000 nodes. But what we're seeing in the market really is that like that works really well again for crypto native teams actually doesn't even work really that well. It's a huge fucking hassle. But it works well enough to get things off the ground and rolling. But then for like, for every one crypto native team that has a cool idea, there are like a hundred crypto curious teams who want to experiment and try different ideas. And for them, especially the way Web2 entrepreneurs are kind of built and trained, like, it just doesn't make sense to like, boom, go out in a big bang, spend 30% of my tokens at TGE just to attract validators for an idea. By the way, I don't even know yet. We'll have product market fit and we don't know if it'll generate revenue. So that's the whole Kind of perspective that we're taking on the app chain space is like, these crypto curious teams, there's a lot of them very, very proficient and very expert builders. And it's these people we're trying to really help understand and wrap their heads around. What is this crypto rabbit hole and how do I decentralize? **Speaker B:** Yeah, man, so much there and I really appreciate just the full background. So before we really get into the, like, this next phase of gogo pools and like the Bloom protocol and all this stuff, like, I want to rewind us back to that moment where you, you've kind of like, put on maintenance mode, you've pivot out of your last startup and like, you're looking for problems that need to be solved. So can you talk a little bit about, like, what, like, we know kind of the punchline of this story is you ended up on Avalanche because you believe that Avalanche at the time and now was the only place where you could really, like, deploy a scalable, like, app chain in a way that, like, could achieve your vision. But can you talk a little bit about, like, what was your vision and, like, what problem were you trying to solve? And then maybe a little bit about, like, at that moment when you're kind of realizing, okay, this is the point of a credibly neutral space and this is the point of permissionless and blockchain, like, what really attracted you to, like, Avalanche, when, as you said, like, Cosmos has kind of a similar, like, vibe of your own app chains and now ethereum with the L2 and, like, roll up as a service thesis, like, we're seeing, like, very similar things. So can you just talk a little bit about that, like, Genesis moment of realizing that, like, you need to be an avalanche builder or climber or whatever you got? Whatever fits in the theme. **Speaker A:** I would say we definitely came in with our own perspective about how blockchains can be used in the world. Because we weren't already crypto native, we had our own fresh idea, our own fresh naive thoughts of, like, look like we think what's really cool about Blockchain is that it can create an economy that lives outside of yourself. Everyone owns it, but no one owns it. It's this incredibly neutral space, and because of that, it creates a lot of trust and buy in. That's the first component to it. The blockchain tech itself can help create this decentralized economy that we can influence, especially in the beginning, but it should and would, if it became successful, snowball into its own thing that always matches what the Customer preferences are right. It needs to be agile. But what's cool leading to. The second thing we thought was interesting about blockchain is that tokens turns out, are a great way to coordinate and incentivize behaviors in people. And what's even fucking cooler is that as an entrepreneur you think of, okay, how do I acquire users? I would give Facebook $10,000 a week and start running a B tests on my ads versus how do I acquire users in a token based world. It's like, okay, I have a token. I predefined all the rules for it. So again, it creates that credibly neutral people can trust it. And tokens scale frictionlessly, right? Like one token that's launched in the US cannot be accessed by people in Hong Kong and Singapore on day zero. It's like instant. So you get access to the global market instantly and it scales frictionlessly like it's perfect, right? Like you can and then creates its own economy can spread by word of mouth. It is the best user acquisition kind of mechanism that I've ever seen. Like, like, like it's actually incredible. I think it's so underappreciated in crypto. But yeah, I would say those are the two things that made us think like, okay, for what we're trying to do. Blockchain and having a token really can make a ton of sense because from our perspective, we were trying to build or we were building a AI video editor for content creators or like create clips, they can create their own montages and that's all cool. But was even cooler at that moment was the content creator themselves thought like, okay, cool, it saves me time. It's like kind of a math equation for them. Like, cool, I get to spend two hours less editing every week. But their community was actually who was like, holy shit, you're telling me I can just watch my favorite Twitch streamer and start creating my own fan montages out of their content, their evergreen content. And then I get to post it and just like have my clout know I get to earn, create my own business model, have ad revenue, et cetera. And that's really why we started paying attention to crypto and blockchain specifically. We're like, okay, that's the lighting in the bottle. This is the light bulb that's going off in people's heads for everyone. XQC he has 200,000 people watching him every single day. That's a lot of little mini content creators, right? That's a significant amount of throughput and scale. And then we're thinking like, okay, now how do we just organize this into this economic model that we don't run all the infrastructure ourselves? I don't want to build out my own Roblox economy. We don't have time for that. So what can we do that we could ship in three months? Oh, we could roll our own blockchain and then we can use a token to kind of be the grease in the wheels of this economy. And then the answer of, like, so with that perspective, and the kicker of we want to make this big quickly, we're here to move the needle for people in the world. And for that to happen, you stack up these top streamers, then you stack up the top YouTube creators and then all the top podcasters. It's a lot of information. All that data needs to go someplace. So we needed a very high level of scale. Especially also because, like, we had VC connections. It's like, okay, I could feasibly raise a $15 million round for this. And then it's like, bang, we need to go global instantly. So that's why blockchain made a lot of sense, had the promises. Now, as you start getting into the practicalities and the realities of it, especially at that time, Polkadot felt really funky to go through election cycles. It's like such a crypto native kind of perspective on how do you do shared security and how to have network security, which is fine, but that wasn't us. We're not going to sit here like, dude, we're trying to raise like 15 million from VCs, go for series A and build a whole fucking business, get to 100 million ARR. I'm not going to play this election cycle game. Right? And then for Cosmos, for them, we were just seeing like, okay, this can't really scale past 100, 150 validator nodes. But again, for the level of scale we're trying to go for, it's like we needed a consensus algorithm because it seemed like that was the bottleneck. We needed this consensus algorithm that could really, truly handle 1000, 2000, 10,000 validator nodes and add them in in the space of two years. That's how we're trying to line up the infra. And then that's how we landed on subnets. It's like, okay, Snowman consensus can do that. There's all sorts of cool promises about avalanche warp messaging, which wasn't really a thing back then, but there'd be like a bridging solution implemented. This thing does start off permissioned at first and can turn Permissionless. We can roll our own token or have no token at all. We could deduce the gas token. So there's all sorts of levers and knobs, especially as you dig even deeper into the code, there's all sorts of levers and knobs that you can tweak and parameterize, especially as you keep building. So that's why to us, it just made the most. Yeah, it's just practical. It was like, okay, this is the only choice process of elimination. **Speaker B:** So before we get into Avalanche and that choice, I just want to hover over this conversation around like the power of tokens. Because, look, man, I totally agree with you that, that like, we're seeing something like, new here. And I think what's new here is that like, through the construction of tokens, we're able to incentivize use with like real hard financial value. Now, like, we got to be careful with that because that financial value is based on like, things that aren't illegal securities but are like kind of like, you know, and you never know where the price is going to go and you never know the insiders. And so what? Like, it's really hard to call it real financial value, but if you like boil away all of the bells and whistles, right, that's essentially what we're doing. And so I don't mean this as a leading question or a loaded question or whatever, but do you think that bringing this like, tokenization and this hyper financialization is going to have like, negative consequences on creator economies? And like, we're already seeing that creators built for the algorithms and then if you add or add this layer of like, tokens on top of it, I wonder if things start to degrade even more. So I just want to get your thought, as someone who's thought a lot about how to combine creation and tokens, like, what's. Where do you see this going? **Speaker A:** Yeah, so there's a few concepts to tease apart here. Is like, yeah, people are building for the algorithm, but they're not being told what the algorithm is. There's zero transparency around that. And that's why people are trying to hyper optimize for this black box. And the black box shifts every single hour. Right? Like, when does Uber do surge pricing even? It's like, okay, we sort of know, but like, do we really know how do I plan my own business, my own lifestyle around this algorithm that just like shifts underneath me. Like, creators are looking for and they're starting to demand transparency and security and neutrality out of the systems that they Use, right? Like, you can. And you can see with Elon, with Twitter, that was when he very briefly investigated blockchain to host the Twitter algorithm and, like, post the parameters of it. And then he's like, oh, there's no systems that I could actually use to do this, right? Like, not even avalanche subnets can handle the scale of Twitter at the moment. Although that's like, exactly what they're trying to focus on solving. So then say you just open source the code. It's like, okay, that's good enough, right? Especially for right now. The creators, they can start figuring out, okay, what actually does matter, because it's a discoverability problem. But I think that's where things can get irrational and the hyper financialization can start coming in and weird adverse incentives start kicking in. Is when people don't understand what they're building on because there's no transparency around it. So now it's just a race to the bottom. Everyone's just trying whatever they can. They obsess over it. Like, how does Google SEO work? That was another hum. That is still a huge market, right? But it's all because there's this algorithm. People don't know how it works. And I think as soon as you introduce a token onto that, that's when you'll probably get some Frankenstein bastardization version of like, okay, here's an algorithm. You'll get tokens for following the algorithm, but we won't tell you what the algorithm is. But people love tokens. So it gets worse, right? It's a downward spiral versus if you innately host it on a blockchain system. It's like, okay, look, maybe the algorithm is codified in something that looks like a smart contract. Like, all right, and here's a token. Very evenly and automatically, permissionlessly distributes kind of incentives based off of how you rank towards the algorithm or whatever. And also here's the governance structure for how to tweak the algorithm. It's like, suddenly, now that feels a lot more comfortable. Alex, I don't know about you, but my lizard, Blaine, my lizard brain gets calmed down a little bit. Like, okay, now I can make my own bets. How important is it for me as a creator to build out my own novel content? And how important is it for me to commercialize my content? It's like, now I can start making educated choices of, no, I really just want my own content. I don't care about the algorithm, so I just release whatever I want. Maybe it pops, maybe it doesn't. That's fine. Or. OR no, I'm Mr. Beast. I am here to gain the algorithm or not game, but I am here to, like, play the algorithm to get the widest distributions possible so I can create just the biggest YouTube channel in the world. It's like, okay, bro, here, go for it. It'll be nice and competitive or something in the middle. And I think Most people, almost 99% of people, will be kind of middle of the curve there. Of, like, look, I want to create my own content and get my message out there in the world and express myself to the world and hear their feedback, but also because I'm a craftsman, but also, like, I don't care about fully, fully getting commercialized. I just care to get commercial enough so that I can pay, like, three months of rent. Right. And then they can start making their own choices. **Speaker B:** Yeah, what. What you just made me think of is, like, we've had. We've seen this happen before, and, like, I'm a big Reddit lurker. I've never posted anything, I think, but I don't get really, like, my crypto stuff from Reddit because, like, there's just not that much energy there. But what I did notice is they went through this huge thing, like, during the bear market, or it was recently where they were giving out, like, moons, but, like, some. **Speaker A:** Oh, right. **Speaker B:** Point on, like, Arbitrum. Right. Arbitrum Nova, I think. I don't remember. But they're giving away some token based on, like, the amount of engagement your comments got. And that engagement was based on, like, Reddit's algorithm, which, you know, is probably more benign than, like, some of the crazier ones, but it's still just, like, a total black box. And I think on the one hand, like, yeah, the quality of conversation probably dropped. Like, it's just people, like, far, you know, creating conversation for a different purpose. But I guess, like, what you're saying is both on the creator side, but also on the, like, viewers, the consumer side. Like, at least if we understand what the rules are that people are trying to. **Speaker A:** Like, yeah, it's like, what's genuine and what's not. What is you just trying to score points on the algorithm versus what you actually think, Rex. You mean it's like, viewers want authenticity? Yeah. And. **Speaker B:** And I think, like, one of the cool things we've seen about crypto, which, like, you hear a lot of stories like this, that vibe stories and then, like, the individual people are hard to find. But, like, you always hear that in crypto. Like, we found that, like, you know, 500 like real fans who are like, willing to buy your NFTs. And like, that kind of stuff is more valuable than having like a million Twitter followers. And so, I mean, I guess I like, believe that, but yeah, I mean, I just think that we're entering like a whole new world because of the technologies that we're creating. **Speaker A:** No, absolutely. And I think you can feel self assured in your belief of that. Cause I think you see that across every business model, maybe ever. I can't really think of any business model, can you? Oh, maybe Advertisement, where Advertisement doesn't really care about the idea of a champion. They care about the idea of an impression. And we think of like SEO. Maybe that's the one business model where just like, doesn't matter who sees this thing. Like, the person paying for it just wants numbers. But even then, like, as a customer, as a person paying for Facebook advertising, like, that person still wants like, no, dude, I want to like, find for like the 500 diehards who like, can't live and breathe without this product I'm selling, right? And then it's like, find that match, you know? **Speaker B:** So I think we can go all day on creators, but let's shift back into Avalanche and go go pools and like, really. So the, the big, the next thing I wanted to ask you about, based on like your story of how you guys decided first that Avalanche subnets was the right thing for your video editor, and then realizing, like, oh my God, that was so much work. Let's just make a company out of what we needed to do to get started. But like, the thing that jumped out to me is that, like, you were uncomfortable with the idea that your subnet, like, could only run 150. Like, you're expecting like, way more than 150, like 2,000 or 10,000 or like numbers in those order of magnitude. And I guess like my question to you is, or I guess like, as some, for some context, like, I'm becoming more and more concerned with like, anything that's like, yeah, we're just going to have like hundreds of computers running this like, random piece of software and like, we'll pay tokens. But like, I just, I think there's a finite amount of people willing to, like, I'm a, I'm an ethereum staker. Like, it's a total pain in the ass. Like, even I'm thinking about quitting. So, like, just to get rid of the stress and like, I'm a maxi. And so I guess all to say is that I believe in credibly neutral Base layers based on thousands of nodes. I believe in having some redundancy, like maybe having five or 10 or 20 machines running something like a subnet. But can you talk to me about why? For your vision of what we're building here, it's really important that any company can build up a system that is able to scale to these massive, massive numbers. **Speaker A:** Yeah. So two things, and I'll go with the first one briefly. First one's a little bit more tactical about this example. Second thought, it's like we think a lot about, like, where is industry going? Second is more of a macro trend that I think is just undeniable. So we can kind of tease apart both. But the first is like, why did we strongly live about that? Two things. One, again, we want to go global. Like, we want this thing to be huge. Bigger than Twitch tv, right? It should be some. The market cap for this should be some mix of like Twitch TV plus Apple Music plus Spotify plus YouTube. Right? Like just huge, right? Like to really move the needle. Like, truly, like we had a mission. We're like, all right, like, let's do it. Like, we're able to. I really think that it's going to improve so and so build this. Maybe I'll build it after gogo pool. Like, I don't know. But like this thing has to exist and it has to like shift the market, create a new market equilibrium where just every creator is now it's just default choice, right? Where people are now using this sort of like business model system. But the question of like, okay, so why do you need so many validator nodes? Is like, one, to have something that big, you'll need a lot to create that currently neutral layer. But two, specifically for go to market strategy, it was really interesting. Creators actually really love the idea of running a validator node for a decentralized Patreon, right? So now it's not just Patreon running all the servers who also determine the algorithm, also determine the cuts, et cetera, and they can change the rules whenever they want. But now creators are like, wait, you're telling me, like, oh shit, I could run a node for this? Especially the early ones, especially the really, really big ones who are more savvy and like, oh shit, yeah, this could be big. It's like a new way for them to kind of support the creation of the startup where some person at the level of xqc, we could run a node, actually buy the token and stake the tokens on it. And now it creates a level of credibility for this whole system. But also it's not just him, it would be his 50 other buddies who are content creators as well. So that was part of the system. Like okay, everyone owns it, but no one owns it, right? And that's where the neutrality starts coming. So that again, think about, go to market as an entrepreneur, you think about, okay, so that's my first segment. Got Twitch, not time to go for YouTube. Much bigger, much, much bigger audience. They'll care about different things. For them to, it has to be like you need a certain level of neutrality. At least in our discovery, you need a certain amount of neutrality to get somebody like Mr. Beast to take it seriously, right? Because if, if this thing has got like two validators on it and it's just like two small fry content creators, Mr. Beast would be like, this doesn't really move the needle for me, like why, why do I join this network? Like why should I support this and kind of weave it into the fabric of my business? So that's for us, like why we needed more than 150 is because there's a lot more than 150 really, really, really good content creators out there. And we wanted to use the Valerie node specifically as a go to market strategy. And it seemed like it was going to go very well that now these people can actually run their own node, which is also cool because there's a real world example of this working. In Japan there is a loyalty points subnet and I forget the actual logos, but it was earlier this summer where 711 and three other kind of gas station esque companies or convenience store companies, they're all running one validator node each for this loyalty point subnet that now connects all their audiences, right? And then they're hosting loyalty points on this kind of like shared blockchain that's pretty incredible. Like to construct a deal like that where you get these people with their own incentives, their own vested interests, their own audiences, their own segments that they're going for. And then to be like, yo, like you run a valor node, your other five competitors are also in validators. This is just going to be something for your industry. It's not like you're not going to win more out of this than they will. They're not going to beat you out on the market because of this, because you're all running validators, right? And it's like suddenly that, that's, that's highly interesting. Like it's pretty cool to construct deals. **Speaker B:** Like that and just to pick that apart a little bit. So my background before I found crypto. I was, I worked for Anheuser in Bev. So like Budweiser, Bud Light. And I first I was in tech innovation, then I was in like just traditional hardcore corporate finance. But like something that is like very noticeable is like when we would always go to like bars and restaurants and say like hey, we're working with this technology partner. It's going to like give your point of sale the ability to, I don't know, like do promotions like the second the packers score or something like that. And like there was just so much suspicion around like well who's this company? Like do you own them? Are you going to get all the data? And it was just like no man, it's just like some, some fucking company we found that does like a cool thing, you know, and we just want to pay for it because we think more people will buy Bud Light if you do promotions. Like and so again like I. Full disclosure, just, I'm skeptical that they're. We're entering this world where like a bunch of people are going to like be running nodes to power like hundreds and thousands of different services. But. **Speaker A:** Well, I agree with you there. I don't, I don't think, I think the case for, let's just say retail, which you can imagine is people wearing a non masks and it's like okay, who's this person? I don't know, but it's you, it's me, it's everybody. Right. It's like I, I also agree with you. I don't really see a world where just average retail is going to be running like five other nodes in their basement. I don't think so. But what I do think so is people like 711 who they run a valid note with their ops team to create like this service, this new service for the industry that they think is ROI efficient for them. And it like unlocks, does what they've already been doing but better and unlocks new use cases. So that's more the trend that I'm seeing, which is a little bit different. Right. But I think there's an open question on like if we take Wall street would if you got paid in Wall street coin to run servers for Wall street, would you do it? Are you US based? I forget. Yeah. **Speaker B:** Yeah, I'm in Los Angeles. **Speaker A:** Yeah. Okay. So like like what people do that? Like I'm not sure. Maybe it's a system that touches every single person. Like everyone has a 401k. **Speaker B:** Yeah, I guess like let me put it this way, like I would like that Money and my fiance would like that money. But like only one of us is capable of running a node. And I think like the people that are capable of running a node like are just not that many. And like they're security minded and like uptime and frequency minded. And so like I like I'm already stressed out by running an Ethereum node. I can't imagine being someone who's running like 10 things. And so like our already limited pool of validators is like limited by just like their willingness to expand themselves. And so like that's what I get stressed about. **Speaker A:** I would agree. One thing we're seeing, I think to achieve that sort of dream, the UX of a validator node and what we think of as a validator is going to have to change pretty drastically. Like one thing that we're seeing for us, we for Google Pool, we release this product that's like a one click launcher. So in one button launch a validator node and then we work with a partner, very trusted partner working with them. They're great but they're the ones who manage the infrastructure. But it's your stake and you get to do whatever you want with the node, right? But they're just going to handle the ops behind it. **Speaker B:** So actually this is a great jumping off point because I've been meaning to, let's just level set what some basic stuff about Avalanche. So like can you like just explain to us, like I think most of us are, anyone listening to this is familiar with Ethereum. And so like we think of like Avalanche as I believe it's the C chain and it's just like a EVM equivalent, like space that like is faster and like its own L1. But like can you just explain what the construction of Avalanche is? Like what a subnet is and then what Gogo Pool is doing? **Speaker A:** Yeah, for sure. So the Avalanche network is really just a bundle of code that lets people run their own blockchains and we organize those blockchains into subnets. So like a subnet loosely, whenever somebody says subnet they loosely mean like look, here's an easy way for you run an app chain. That's what they want to market with. That's what like the basic layer is. Then they're like, okay, well what's our first blockchain? Like what's the first use case for this cool new tech, this blueprint for blockchains? Like what's the first plan we should kind of like implement? They're like, oh shit. Well Ethereum's huge. All right, let's make an evm. We'll call this the primary network. So there's the P chain which kind of runs the whole show, that controls the metadata, what subnets exist, who are the validators for it. That's kind of the coordination mechanism. And then there's the C chain, which is meant as a proof of concept of like, look, here's, here's one thing you can do with the subnet technology is run your own blockchain. But they started off working the EVM and then basically modified it very heavily to make it work with this new consensus algorithm. Soup it up, lower gas fees, like all that stuff. And then there's the X chain, which was another proof of concept. It's like, here's a hyper efficient way to trade, only trade assets. It's like just a trading chain. And then what ended up happening is Defi summer happened and then all the incentive programs happened and then Avalanche Rush happened and then everyone flooded into the C chain to play around this new Defi ecosystem that was coming up. And then they got exposed to the whole subnet idea of like, oh, this whole thing is really supposed to be a network. So that's kind of what ended up happening, which is kind of funny. **Speaker B:** Yeah. And then can you explain this like what a sub chain is maybe through the story of that crab game? And like. **Speaker A:** Oh yeah, yeah. **Speaker B:** Because like that's I think how most people probably like got exposed to the. **Speaker A:** Oh gee, they're retro at this point, but it's a cool story. So basically as part of this whole like, you know, so defi happened and then pay to earn games happened. Right. Axie affinity, like all that stuff. Then on Avalanche, a group created a game called Krabada which was a pay to earn, like crab racing game, basically, you know, buy crabs, whatever, play you earn the token, you know, whatever, create a little comment. It was pretty fun. Art was cute, but ended up getting really popular, like really, really, really, really popular. And that caused gas fees to spike enormously, which then degraded the AAVE experience or the compound experience of the Uniswap or Trader Joe experience. Right. For all the defi people who are trying to do defi stuff, they're like now suddenly paying. It wasn't as crazy as the Ethereum gas fees, but they're paying like 100x what they're used to and what they're expecting to perform their types of trades. So then the Crobato team was like, oh shit, well let's just, let's move it out to its own Subnet. So then they migrated all the crabs over to their own subnet, which is now its own little sandbox. It's just localized, had their own localized fee market. So what ended up happening is people bridged over to that transaction volume on the Crabada subnet was huge just because everyone kept kind of playing the game there. And then on C chain, transaction buying went down, gas fees fell down to what like traders would want and now everyone's happy, right? Like there's still liquidity for the crap token on the C chain, but the actual game is being played. All the transactions are being executed on the Krabada subnet. And then it was like the perfect use case of like, oh, here's an approach that works for scaling blockchains. You don't need to suffer with really high gas fees and have people compete. All the popular dapps compete. Instead you can take your Papler DAPP or the Breakout Star, put them on their own subnet. Now they have their own environment, their own rules, they get to control it. They add more utility for the token because now it's also gas fee. Like it's all, you know, they get to experiment with it. And then, yeah, people on the C chain, now they're happy because they can still play the game, but now they have lower gas fees to do with their C chain activities. **Speaker B:** So can we talk through like the actual construction of like how this happened? So just let me guess and tell me if I'm wrong, but is it essentially every node on this network is in some way or in the full way managing the consensus of the P chain, the primary chain that is coordinating all of this. And then there are specific nodes that are dedicated to running the C chain, like the EVM chain. There are specific nodes that are dedicated to running the Krabada chain, and that is that. And then how does the token Avax fit into all this? **Speaker A:** So the P chain or the primary network has a bunch of validators in it completely right about that. And now a subset of those people, eight nodes to begin with, then peeled off. They're still running the primary network. So it's still performing consensus for the P chain, the C chain, you still see the mempool for all that stuff. But now literally, what's literally happening is then they spin up another binary on that same piece of hardware that is the Krabada subnet binary. And then now it's a new process that starts up and it requires its own ram, its own hard disk space, and it also runs its own Consensus. So it's like literally you're almost copy pasting like okay, everything that's happening for primary network now it's boom, create another instance that's running for the Krabada subnet. And so that way they're very separate. Like there it's literally its own sandbox. **Speaker B:** And then how does the Avax token fit into all this? **Speaker A:** Then for the Avax token where it all fits in or value cruel, the Avax token is okay, there's going to be lots of teams who want subnets. To run a subnet. You first need to run a primary network validator, which is 2000 avax minimum. So basically people buy the Avax token, they stake it to start validating the main chain and then they get to use that stake to start up their own subnet. And then that subnet maybe has its own staking requirements. I think they required the, you need to stake a certain amount of the Kramata token to be a validator and they ran an auction for that and whatever. So that's how the Avax token fits into all this. But I think it's actually there's a really big proposal in the community right now where trying to figure out. It turns out that was a really good idea. Especially when the Avax price was low, when Avax was like five bucks. It's like, okay, that could be reasonable. Now it's at 40 and it's like not so reasonable to spend $40 times 10,000 avax, you know, like whatever that number is, like $400,000 or whatever. Not so reasonable to like upfront cost just to buy Avax. $400,000 worth. And now I also have to do all the computation and whatever for the main chain plus the buy in cost just to run my own subnet. So now there's a really big proposal about how do we tease this apart. **Speaker B:** Yeah, how much like risk. So I'm assuming it's just like a proof of stake. Like the P chain is just like a traditional proof of stake chain where like you put up stake and then you run the program. And if you don't cheat, like your stake is fine, but if you cheat then you get slashed. **Speaker A:** That's how the consensus works. Yeah, exactly. But your principle doesn't get slashed, just the rewards get slashed. **Speaker B:** Oh well. So like yeah, I wonder if like yeah, as the price goes up like you can just base anyway. I don't know, I don't need to speak on behalf of like AVA Labs, but it's just like, I mean provide like basically like 0% loans to people for this Avax if it like basically can't be slashed. **Speaker A:** That's what's happening right now basically, is that people are. Yeah, they're basically renting Avax. That's kind of the business model at the moment. But what sucks is like Avax is playing to win, right? And there's like a specific set of use cases for block space that I think subnets are really good for. But to rent Avax, that requires one dev who's in the basement in Brazil to like figure out who the hell is Luigi. So I can DM him on Twitter and be like, yo, dude, can I like rent Avax from you? Or whatever, right? Or like talk to other humans. That's not really the world we want to live in. It's not super permissionless. Like we want to live in a world where anybody can kind of go down the rabbit hole and spin up a subnet without requiring this huge upfront cost. Kind of the model there right now is pay as you go so that people would be paying like maybe 10 avax a month. **Speaker B:** Why is that the model? Because like the lesson we learned from Krabata was exactly the opposite, which is like, start on like the general purpose chain and then like once you're so big that it's a problem, then like, yes, it's expensive, it's $40,000 to move over to the. **Speaker A:** Yeah, yeah, you're completely right. So the reason being is that we're seeing a lot of crypto curious teams who want to experiment with subnets, not crypto native teams and crypto curious guys or these teams, they have their own ideas. So subnets allow you to program in your like any vm. There's a team building a Move vm, right? So it uses Move, but uses the avalanche consensus to make it just hyper fast, even faster than it is, which is insane. So because of that flexibility, any builder can build whatever VM that they want. There's a hyper SDK, which is a framework to let devs just Lego block their own templated vm. So you can imagine if you are a. If you're like helium, they're building a Internet of Things blockchain essentially. Like, do you need solidity for that? Do you need the EVM for that? Do you need all the other stuff that comes with the EVM just to like program up like Raspberry PI to be able to talk to each other and be able to run these low level blockchains? The answer is like, no. It actually Kind of sucks because now you're competing for gas, it can kind of be slow, doesn't have the operations that we need, et cetera. So then they start writing their own custom VMs using these SDKs. And that's like one very specific instance of why people would just go straight to a subnet is just because they can't use the EVM for a reason. Does it make sense for that use case? **Speaker B:** Well then I guess my very unasked for suggestion to Ava Labs is we've seen some really incredible consensus based VMs, especially in the last year. Just deploy a DE and F chain for the next most popular ones. **Speaker A:** True, that's a good point. Yeah, I guess that's more of a BD problem now though, right? It's like as soon as you deploy. So like we already. There's an L1 in the C chain. Right. So let's just deploy another L1, another L1, another. **Speaker B:** Right, like the Solana VM. Like why not? Why wouldn't you do that? **Speaker A:** Yeah, teams are doing it. It's just that I think it's more of a PD problem frankly at this point. Now you can release it, the tech is there, but how are you going to find all the teams to build it? **Speaker B:** Yeah, no, I mean I guess like this is the solution to the other BD problem which is like it's too expensive for like teams to get in. **Speaker A:** Oh to like have them just host like look, here's a bunch of. **Speaker B:** Yeah, like we picked them five most popular. If there's a six month most popular, we'll add that one too. **Speaker A:** That is interesting. Another good insight that's happening with the games right now. So the. I think there are two subnets but the one I'll talk about is the, the Merit circle Dao. So they have their Beam subnet and they're sort of acting as a pseudo gaming publisher but providing tools and support, maybe investment, I'm not sure. But what they did was they rolled their own subnet and then they're just for games that they work with games just deploy onto that. Right. And then you can add many blockchains to one subnet. So they just keep adding new blockchains so that every video game or every Web three game, they just have their own chain. Right. I thought that was really clever. We see that kind of like publishing model pop up a lot in subnets. Yeah. **Speaker B:** Yeah, man. I like want to just ask you more about Gogo pools, but I just. Let me jump to this question at the end which is like like what's really crazy to me about this conversation is how much the roadmap of like Avalanche and Ethereum are like really converging. **Speaker A:** It is interesting, isn't it? It's like there's a problem space and people broadly know the solution, but now everyone's converging sort of on the same principles, like implement the same principles but in different ways, which it's pretty interesting. Yeah. **Speaker B:** And I guess, like, I guess to turn it into a question, what do you think that means for let's say like the three major ecosystems? Because Solana seems to be really doing its own thing with like modular blockchain. But so for Cosmos, Avalanche and Ethereum, like if we're all like skating towards the same place, do you think that that inevitably means that like we become all one ecosystem or do we like remain kind of like three ecosystem kind of connected by bridges or like, I guess like the real like hard hitting question is like, do you believe that in the future there's really space for more than like one trustless computing environment? **Speaker A:** I'll preface what I'll say with you're talking to an entrepreneur who talks to these teams every single day. And I'm constantly pipelining, constantly prospecting. Who's this a fit for? Who's not a fit for? Why do people use L2s? Why people use Solana? Why do people want Slimnets? So that's very much my perspective, which I think is probably different than what the VC perspective is. Angels, like retail traders, like, whatever. So I can only kind of speak to my, like what I see. What I see is sort of like two things. One is just in terms of business theory, I think people constantly underestimate. Not I think, but overall like kind of the principle of startups, people constantly underestimate the size of certain markets. It's like you don't quite grasp like how big these markets can be. So people constantly underestimate and it's way easier to look at a competitor, be like, okay, they have five customers, but wait, I have three customers, I want those five customers. Right. Instead of thinking about, wait, let's go explore, hold on. There's, you know, there's a whole cities filled with people who are curious about blockchain and they're just looking for solutions. Like they're constantly doing Google searchers, they're, they're on Twitter, they're like listening to spaces, they're consuming content like this because they're just trying to educate. Right. And so I think that's the first thing that we need to be careful of is that it's really easy for people to kind of like draw comparisons. Be like, no, we're at war, or we will eventually inevitably be at war, or there's only space for one. But it's not really what we. **Speaker B:** No, for sure. Get off Twitter, if that's your opinion. **Speaker A:** Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's, that's like my first perspective is like I talked to so many teams who haven't even heard of Solana, you know, or like haven't even heard of Altiz. And not because like, you know, they just like, you know, they're on month two of exploration. Right. It's just, that's how it is. Then kind of the second perspective I have on this is I think because the market's really big, a lot bigger than people think. The like, everyone is converging on the same principles. But I think they'll be appealing to different segments. So for Avalanche, and that's, that's a chain by chain, network by network decision. But I'll ask you a question after this. But what I see in subnets is it's really appealing to big app chains, people who want to run really, really big kind of global scale app chains and they want to scale into that within one to two years. It's not really like we are seeing indie studios and just especially devs who just want to experiment, especially with tokens. It's so interesting to see these devs are bootstrapping, but they view the token as like, wait, no, I can create a chain that's just as big as JP Morgan subnet, but I'll use a crypto native way to do so versus have a large team. So that's kind of cool. But what I'm seeing is that subnets seem to be really good for a really high computation use case. So if you want a really high scale or you have high computation needs, or you need really, really flexible computation, seems like subnets are a pretty good fit for that. There are kind of multiple success stories coming out of that. So I think, and I think like Cosmos has its own thing, right? If you want kind of defi. Like Cosmos is pretty good to have kind of defi app chains. Have them talk to each other. There's a community there, there's liquidity. Like that's kind of cool. And then here's my question. It's like, what are you seeing on the L2 side? For me, I see people seem to gravity towards L2. It's like cool. This is a very accessible way for Me to experiment with block space. So I'll experiment and I'll touch everything and kind of like, wrap my head around how all this stuff work. And then second, segue nicely is like, ETH has a ton of liquidity. So what we saw at blast L2, it's like, okay, you can put up a fucking landing page with cool branding. Yeah. **Speaker B:** I mean, that's not an L2. It's literally just like, honeypot. **Speaker A:** Yeah. But it's interesting, right? Like, there's a business model now. There's a lot of, you know, very ETH whales who are like, you know, like, how can I push this? You know, with the new things? So that's like, a market there that, like, a subnet probably can't really tap into, or at least I don't see how a subnet could tap into that within, like, four weeks, put up a landing page and attract the whole ETH crowd. So it's kind of interesting. Those are kind of the two things I see. It's like direct commercialization and kind of experimentation. But what are you seeing? **Speaker B:** I mean, I think, like, first and foremost, like, you just have to, like, remember that we're in an industry that is, like, like, completely delusional and mental. And I love that preface. Well, like, just, you know, like, your whole, like, blast seems ridiculous until you remember, like, that, like, Luna didn't seem ridiculous until it was too late. Right. And, like, Avalanche hasn't had, like, too many of those moments of, like, that magnitude. So, like, I hear you. But also, like, I do think that if something, like, I. I think the reason that blast got, like, $700 million in, like, less than a month, and they probably have more now that prices are pumping, is that, like, Paradigm backed them. And we're, like, all, like, very much believe rightfully or wrongfully, but, like, it is clear that everyone believes. These are the last days of the. The bear market. And, like, everyone's just trying to get in and, like, build up points. Like, this points thing is just crazy to me. And so I think, like, number one, like, that's the lens you have to look at everything through. I think under that, like, where actually interesting stuff is happening. Like, BLAST is a scam until it's not. Right? But it's definitely, like, a scam right now. Like, even the Paradigm guys were coming out and being like. And so, like, whatever, right? Like, I think Eigen Layer was, like, a really cool idea until it turned into the exact same thing. And like, now it's just, like, literally, like, absurd and so you know, I think under that, like, what's really, like, cool about Ethereum to me is like the just like, acceptance that we're trying to build, like the next generation of the Internet. And the next generation of the Internet, like, when you think about like blockchain space as HTTP, like there's one that wins out and it's not because, like, it's better or like, we can go back to like all the other things. Like the, the point is that it's just like the one that like, we all decide, like, works well enough. And that's, that's literally what credible neutrality is. And so my whole conversation earlier about like being skeptical about getting like a bunch of people to run a bunch of different computers is like kind of this like, like surrender to the belief that like, there really just needs to be like one credibly neutral space, like there needs to be one HTTP or like SSL or, you know, these basic building blocks of the Internet. And then from that everything will spring forth. And then on top of like, now when we're Talking about the L2 layer, like everything that we're talking about for Avalanche, like, I see the exact same like, conversations and like, examples have, like, starkware is like, basically this like, other world that is just as alien to me as Avalanche. But, like, it's clear they're spinning up stuff like Immutable X sounds exactly like what you're. That the example, like the gaming subnet, right? Or like, I could just go on and on about that kind of stuff. And I think that for me, again, it's just like first principles, like what, what we're doing is continuing the, like, the Internet didn't stop being developed. Like, we're continuing that. And for me that's like where my like, kind of Ethereum maximalism comes from. **Speaker A:** No, I love it just to push on it a little bit. So I understand the HTTP HTTPs reference, right? It's like, this is a protocol. I guess the argument is probably that it's meant to be a protocol, but I've been hearing a lot of arguments and kind of what I'm seeing from the builders, that they don't really view block space like that. They view having an L2. It's like, okay, Ethereum is the main server, right? It has its own cost to it. And I use HTTPs to talk to it. I use protocols to talk to it. And the rules are defined by protocols, like how blocks are being made. That's a protocol or consensus. But the, like, okay, if that doesn't work, then the Analogy that the builders kind of like, what I see in their eyes is that. So every L2 is sort of like a microservice or it's a way to scale out like a little cluster of like, hey, this app is working really well. Let's give it five servers now, instead of like, at an enterprise might get a little technical, but at the. At an enterprise level, it's like you start off with the monolith, right? You build out a lot of code, all the devs are working on that, and that monolith is running one gargantuan server with just a lot of ram. And then it's like, oh, shit. But wait, people are making a lot more read requests than write requests to, like, search queries or, like, you know, a response from a search query. So, like, that specifically needs. We can use the whole thing. So, yeah, Val get its own little, like 10 servers that will scale up horizontally first and then start scaling up and then the model starts kind of like turning into this cloud of computer modularizing. Right? Yeah, sure. Modularizing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're right. I. Yeah, but so it's like. There's like, the server itself isn't a protocol. And like, even the aspect of scaling out the system, you sort of follow protocol, but it's more of a verbal social protocol between you and your other engineers on the team, where it's not like, oh, this thing is going up. So now it'll automatically scale. Like, these rules do exist, but right now, frankly used more as a convenience to save our, like, save engineers who are on call from waking up at 2:00am Right? Like, just. No, if surge is having at 2:00am, okay, just scale it up. We'll pay a little extra because sleep is more important. Right? It's like more like that versus, like, no, like, we need to scale this so then it'll scale automatically and the machine builds the machine. You know what I mean? And I don't know. I'm trying to rationalize that with the kind of the. Or rather I'm trying to understand. **Speaker B:** I mean, I think that that is a reflection of, like. I think. I think that's where a lot of the energy is right now. And I think, like. And that's where, like, builders that are, like, actually focused on, like, creating companies and like, especially, like, through our lens, like, you know, the lens of our craziness of our industry, like, trying to flip something around quick enough to, like, do a token and, like, catch the upswing, right? Like, and. And listen, like, no, no shade thrown on Them like uniswap, like was changed our understanding of what blockchains are. And like that's what they did, you know, Like, I have no problem with that, but I do think that like a lot of what you're talking about is a reflection of like that part. And I think like you go to the Ethereum, like protocol research, like reading like directly what Vitalik's writing. What like guys like Dankrad and Justin Drake and like, you know, core, like Ethereum builders are like really focused about like, like building this like kind of like perfect settlement layer that is like ready to accept like orders of magnitude more and more of inputs from like roll ups today, L2s today. But like what we're finding in the magic of ZK cryptography is like all of these other applications that basically allow you to do all this crazy stuff off chain and then like in one. **Speaker A:** Proof, like settle it on chain. **Speaker B:** Yeah. And so like what, what I like more and more I'm convinced of is that like ZK is this magic technology that allows us to project computing from like high computing environments into like limited computing environments, but specifically the evm. So that like the idea is like, do whatever you want on like a single computer, on like a subnet of a thousand computers. Like whatever, it doesn't matter. Do whatever you want and then just send the ZK proof. And then like that is kind of, I think like the unlock that like helps you understand. Like to me Ethereum is like today what the Internet is, is like this like weird like thing that happens to exist between all these centralized entities, like around the planet that are like connected to each other. And then like this is the Internet. It's. And it's like kind of emergent. And the point is, is that every entity on the Internet or sorry, everything on the Internet is like an entity that's centralized and like controlled offline and what like what blockchain does. But like specifically what I think Ethereum will do is like provide that one entity that just is of the Internet itself. It's like the Ethereum of the Internet. And so ZK is that technology that like magic that allows you to do like more and more complex things off chain. Like that is basically what starkware is doing is like getting that cryptography tighter and tighter so that they can do more and more off chain and then just like prove it with just like one proof. And so anyway, I'm rambling but like that is like ZK is like why things are getting so exciting right now in Ethereum world. **Speaker A:** All right, well, I can definitely get behind that, especially in terms of here we're talking pretty decently abstract with some proof points. And this to me feels very similar to kind of like how people think about Bitcoin. It's like, okay, this is Bitcoin's use case or segment. It's like a store of value, credibly neutral, decentralized, a pretty awesome asset. It's like, that's pretty good. And they've made enough progress where it's like, oh shit, there's a bitcoin fucking ETF now. This is going to work. That's pretty cool. And I can definitely see also for Ethereum, I could see it absolutely growing to this kind of global settlement layer where it's like, oh shit, if you squint, there's arguments against it, same as Bitcoin. But also, oh shit, there are a lot of proof points. Right. It seems to be growing. It's like, oh shit, this could really work. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. **Speaker B:** Yeah. So anyway, I do think I want to get back to go go pools with our last couple of minutes here. But yeah, I do think that the jury's still out for sure. And my biggest belief is that all the good work that's being done on Avalanche, on Cosmos, on Solana, on Phantom. Yeah, that's the L1, right. On all of these L1s is that either they're going to be basically corporate chains and that's fine, or they're going to eventually find a way to, to settle directly to Ethereum and like that work's not going to be wasted. That's just like how you plug into the world computer. **Speaker A:** I would love to see that world too. I think that's totally cool because I think subnets, the only really, I think the core value props of subnets is like here you can make an app chain, customize it for your own rules, bootstrap it pretty easily because there's all these validators ready to get started and like get you off the ground. Solve the, solves the cold stock problem for you. Use a token, create the economy, build your own app chain and then there's no reason why you couldn't just settle to Ethereum. That sounds fine if that's what consumers want. **Speaker B:** Yeah, yeah, well, and then like small plug for listeners. I did an interview with Risk Zero over last summer and like they did, they have already gotten to a point where they have like a Linux running with the ZK proof, like everything it does. So like that's how you can project. Yeah. It's incredible. But we're basically showing that you can do arbitrary computing and then create a ZK proof and then that can go into any blockchain environment and then you've effectively moved that computing into that blockchain. And so that's definitely the future and has implications for all of us. But again, can you tell us what you're doing? And I guess we'll use this to sign off if people like why? What's the ideal person that would use you? What are people looking for when they come to you and how can you help them set up their stuff on Avalanche? **Speaker A:** Yeah, so we have two audiences, one crypt native to crypto curious. For the crypto native people, we're simply put the highest yield way to stake Avax. Two ways to do that. One through liquid staking, it's like, okay, go play in defi. It feels a lot like lido. Like it's good. And then the second way is run a validator node. You earn extra yield from running the validator node, but you put up your own capital and you get matched with liquid staking assets by staking the GGP token. That's also really cool. So why would you want to run a validator node? Because then that blends over. That is now. And also why stake gg Avax? Both are geared towards creating a decentralized staking protocol that is all geared towards helping these crypto curious people, all the crypto curious teams get started, bootstrap their own subnets, get validators from the protocol, get Stake or Avax security from the protocol, solve the cold start problem. So then they can kind of keep building. But I think for us, what we're kind of doing uniquely, which you know, definitely stems from me just being an entrepreneur and like just you know, whatever. But it's like the way, seriously the way all these teams are trained and even just every Silicon Valley team, every proficient team is trained is to decentralize iteratively like release your app chain, then start decentralizing in a very iterative, pragmatic way. Right. And then from there I think that's what Google Pool is, was highly useful for. So if you're looking to build a high programmable and especially a very, very scalable from day zero app chain, then I think subnets are probably, it's good enough, definitely good enough to like check out and read docs and message around just like kind of like see what can the tech do for you. And then gogopool helps them kind of grow and then our company or our onshore company also does a lot of services to these teams. So we help them implement bridges, help them figure out tokenomics, help them figure out market making, like all the other kind of crypto native stuff that a Web2 team would have to kind of pick up. We provide all sorts of services and small programs for, as well as grants, as we also do grants for teams. I keep forgetting to plug that one. **Speaker B:** Awesome, man. Well, and how can people get in touch with you? Like, what's the. Where can they find you on Twitter? Where can they find gogo pools on Twitter? **Speaker A:** It's stvngts Stephengates without the vowels. And then the gogo pool is gogopull with an underscore at the end of it. **Speaker B:** Awesome, man. Well, I really appreciate this. I really appreciate you letting me just get my ethereum out. And man, I learned a lot about what's going on in Avalanche and like, why it's exciting and just like, yeah, what's going on over there. So, man, I appreciate it. Thank you. **Speaker A:** Yeah, I've learned a lot as well. Thank you so much. **Speaker B:** Well, have a good one and see you around. **Speaker A:** Cheers.