#1323 Josh Neuroth | Company Helping Access Your Data on Blockchain

Josh Neuroth is the Vice President of Product at QuickNode. In this conversation, we talk about all the new data that's being created on blockchains, what users are doing with this information, how QuickNode is helping them access it, and the new product QuickNode launched. ======================= Introducing Espresso - the world’s most interactive portable display. They have a portable screen that is incredibly light, comes with a nice stand, and the user interface is very easy. Anyone who listens to this podcast can go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠us.espres.so/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. They have a brand new offer waiting for you. ======================= In this podcast, we dive into the revolutionary concept of PropyKeys, an application that allows anyone to mint home addresses all over the world on blockchain. PropyKeys.com is a part of the Propy ecosystem, that has a grand mission to make homeownership more affordable and user friendly. We will explore the journey of Propy’s founder and how this innovative technology provides benefits for homeowners, and for the real estate industry. Join us as we discuss the Propy’s latest collaborations, including Coinbase, and its new fun project PropyKeys. X (Twitter): @PropyKeys Website: Mint an address at propykeys.com. dApp: ⁠https://dapp.propy.com/ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Josh Neuroth. He's the Vice President of Product at QuickNote. In this conversation, we talk about all the new data that's being created on blockchains, what users are doing with this information, how QuickNote is helping them to access it,

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  and then what exactly is Streams, the brand new product that QuickNote has launched. Josh also gets into what are the areas he's excited about, what are the areas he's not excited about, and things are overhyped. And then we even talk about what questions he has for people when they first enter the industry, and what warnings he gives as we enter into a brand new bull market. I enjoyed talking with Josh, and it is fascinating to see what people are doing with all this data that is now sloshing around on blockchains, publicly available for anyone to go look, analyze, and use. Here is my conversation with Josh Newroth.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:40Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:23Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Trust me, I use mine every day. You'll love the Espresso screen and I think it'll make you more productive. Go check them out today by clicking on the link in the description.

• 3:14Anthony Pompliano?

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• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. Got Josh here. Josh, blockchains get invented. Satoshi Nakamoto puts out into the world. Everyone gets really excited about Bitcoin. And at first, people are just buying, holding, transacting back and forth. Seems like everything's great in the world. Then all of a sudden Vitalik comes around. He's like, well, what if I take this blockchain idea and I add smart contracts? And we get this explosion of new use cases, new chains, et cetera. Today, there's a lot of people who are coming to the conclusion, oh, I can look on the blockchain. It's a public ledger. There's information there. There's details. There's insights. What is on the blockchain? Like, what are people using these blockchains to capture from an information standpoint? And what are they doing with the information?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, great, great question. So I think fundamentally, there's transactions on the blockchain, but those transactions aren't just like wallet to wallet activities, me sending crypto to someone else. It could be an application sending crypto to another application. It could be an application investing, you know, in another protocol. Could be a bot, you know, doing something on chain. And so, you know, people are interested in what's happening there. Like, where's the market moving?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  You know, where's the, where's, you know, one of the things that's happened recently is I think like capital has moved to kind of these, what are called layer twos there on Ethereum, these more or less shards, if you will, that are, that are sitting on top of Ethereum. And a lot of people are looking at that activity right now and trying to understand where ETH is going, where the rest of the market is going.

• 5:36Anthony Pompliano?

  When you look at the trading use case, I think that that becomes like very obvious. Are there other things like what maybe like, what's like the most esoteric thing you've seen someone doing with this information?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think certainly trading is, is interesting. And I always say that like your web three is kind of like this, this is a movement, right? And it's about organizing people in a way that's fair and meaningful to them. Right? And so I don't think it's just about trading. It's really about ownership at the end of the day. Like people, people in applications are, you know, investing just their time in these protocols too. They're getting more, we've seen lately, a lot of airdrops happening in space, you know, and those airdrops are going to early validators, they're going to contributors that were, that were, you know, contributing to the, to the GitHubs and committing things,

• 6:35Speaker 02

  committing even fixing typos in the documentation. And people are being incentivized and being paid out for their contributions. And so what you're really having here is you're having a capital system behind the open source movement. And that's really something that really has, those two things really haven't connected in the past, I think.

• 6:55Anthony Pompliano?

  When these companies or these users start to come into the ecosystem, it feels like initially, there's no need for them to have the data if you're just a user of the product. Right. If you're a user of an app or whatever, but the invention or the innovation around points and other things like that seem to now drive the average user wants to know like, what are the actions I should be taking? How many points do I get for it? Is there a potential monetary reward at some point? But the gamification almost drives more like on-chain interest and like necessity for the information? Is that, is that how you see it?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's actually great because I think people that maybe wouldn't have gotten as deep into the technology. They're trying to figure out how things are working. They're trying to get involved. They're trying to make meaningful contributions. And that's just, that's just a great thing in general.

• 7:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Walk me through what you guys are doing from like an actual product standpoint. How does the product work?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So at the end of the day, like, let me give you a little background of what we do at, at QuickNote. I've been working on more or less core infra for Web three for almost five years now. So QuickNote is a, is a platform where we connect builders to chains. We help those builders scale their blockchain-based applications. We also, when I say builders, those builders could be anyone from major exchanges to NFT traders, to hedge funds that are trying to pull data off-chain. And we basically help them build out their applications, access data, make transactions. And we support more or less more than 40, more than 25 chains now to do that. And so we have this new product that we've just announced last week.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  It's called Streams and I love to use this analogy. You think about like, if you're a builder or anyone that's trying to research transactions on-chain, it's almost like you're going to the post office and checking your PO box. When, when you try to talk to that blockchain, you have, there's a lot of work involved to do that. You have to query correctly. You have to kind of filter transactions. A lot of extra work in, in doing that. It's very similar to driving to the post office and you're unlocking your PO box. See if you have mail, then maybe you take that mail home and do something with it, pay a bill or something like that. With Streams, We're making that process a lot more efficient and it's almost like just getting

• 9:22Speaker 02

  an email and then your bill is paid automatically from some automated automated function. And so I think, you know, this is a great, like, the place we're at in the market right now is where it's getting easier and easier through tools like what we offer at QuickNode to do things in this Web3 space. It's almost like been demystified now and that there's, there's a whole set of tooling and like dev tooling that makes it very easy to, to do market research or build an application.

• 9:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And as the technology around streams is making this more like email, right? Kind of the, the efficiency of it, what new use cases are unlocked or like, what do you see people actually doing now that they couldn't do before?

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Hmm, I think it's really about a lower cost, a lower barrier to entry. You know, we had seen, um, it's, it's very similar to kind of like the early days of, of startups in, in kind of like the Web one era, the, you know, around the like 1999, 2000 days, like you used to have to go like build your whole data center, right? As a startup and you had a, like the pet, the, the, you know, the pet e-commerce stores and the grocery delivery services that ended up failing, they spent huge amounts, they spent like $10 million in their data centers without any users at all. And it's kind of what we, where we started with, with blockchain infra, but on a much lower scale than that. And today, um, whether you're, I, I see teams of like two and three people, like teams

• 10:48Speaker 02

  that are building like multimillion dollar protocols because there's just that the tooling is easy, the capital's there and that really the best product in the space wins. And so I think at the end of the day, like, what is Web3 really doing for the world? It's making entrepreneurship easier, raising capital easier, getting users easier through like monetizing, like we talked about airdrops before. So that's pretty exciting.

• 11:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And on those airdrops, are there things that you all can do in reverse? So right now, people can look at the blockchain, they can go ahead and they can tell what's going on there. But are there things that you can do to help the actual protocols or the airdroppers in terms of this connectivity?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's actually a use case that we see. Chains do use our infra to kind of pull that. They can look at what addresses are communicating, is the address they're pulling a contract, is it transferring assets, is it actually consuming gas on the network, basically spending money? So we absolutely help chains with that use case.

• 11:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're pulling it just to figure out like how many points someone has and to give the airdrops, or are they pulling it for different reasons?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  They can, I mean, it's, it's, it's to know, I think at the end of the day, they're doing it from, like, if you're a chain, you can use our infra to, to figure out your point system. Of course, we wouldn't know what points are going to what addresses. But they're also using our infra to kind of power their block explorers is another use case. Or in some cases, we have several large, top five chains that use this for their bridging infrastructure as well.

• 12:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And in this situation where you are watching kind of almost two-way, you know, information exchange, right? You've got the projects that are getting the information off the blockchain, and then you've got users that are doing it. How do you see this all playing out moving forward? Like, it's very obvious, the AWS model, right? Where people are giving out compute. And if you continue to see a rise in the need for compute, then AWS will continue to be valuable. This product almost has like multiple demand sides, right? You've got the, the things that we've been talking about. Are there other use cases or other demand vectors that you guys see coming into the market over the next, you know, couple of years now that institutions are here? And there's just more money sloshing around?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. I think one of the things that's really gone crazy in crypto Twitter recently that we've been, we've taken a bet on in the, in the past and continue to support is, is around kind of this concept of like app chains, application-based chains. And so to me, there's kind of like several terms floating around there that, that, you know, for lack of a better Or oversimplification mean the same thing. So you have app chains, you have rollups, and you have more or less this kind of new, new layer three terminology. What that generally means, I think, applications or organizations can run their own chain in a much easier way than ever before.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  And so why would, why would say like Delta Airlines maybe someday want to run their own chain? The reason is because is anyone using that chain would be consuming gas in that chain, which would be a new revenue stream for them, right? And so I think we're going into a future, and this is probably a, definitely a, many years down the road, where major corporations will move their reward systems to effectively a rollup that will settle on Ethereum or now Bitcoin. There's, there's a layer twos launching on Bitcoin right now, and some have already existed. And you could build your own kind of on-chain business application that settles on Bitcoin or Ethereum and effectively, you know, you can, you can monetize and incentivize

• 14:26Speaker 02

  your community through that, through that mechanism. So what we're seeing is kind of like this, this world where I think you have these public blockchains sitting, you know, that they're, they're almost like a public highway that everyone uses and owns, more or less. And then you have kind of these private blockchains that are sitting on top of these public, this public infra that are going to be used by corporations, by enterprise applications, by, you think about like even HR software, just like all the APIs that has to tie into, or you have Plaid that connects banks to banks. And like, that becomes a lot easier when you move, when you move business on chain. So we say this at QuickNote all the time, like, we're huge believers in just like the on-chain economy.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  We definitely see business moving on chain and have pretty good pipeline up with our sales team around enterprises coming in and doing kind of these private blockchains right now.

• 15:18Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you see that people do differently on Bitcoin versus Ethereum versus maybe like a base or kind of the newer, you know, more popular chains that have come on recently?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So Bitcoin, um, it's, it's definitely, I think the people just in the last few months have really started figuring out that you can use Bitcoin like in some ways like Ethereum. So, you know, your NFTs on Bitcoin has been interesting. Kind of early to say around the, the layer twos on Bitcoin. On Ethereum, I always think about Ethereum as it's almost like a global supercomputer that's kind of owned by the whole world. And I think with a future of kind of these chains is to be more like a business to business chain. Like you think about Bitcoin, Ethereum, they eventually will be kind of like this public infra, but it's business to business. All the consumer, the retail activity is going to happen on layer twos.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  And that's kind of a, a well documented thesis that's been validated now and continues. So like base runs on the OP stack and that, that optimism and, or that produces the OP stack runs on Ethereum. And so base is ultimately settling their transactions on Ethereum. So one way to think about it is users like Friend Tech is a social kind of D app that launched on base. That, um, those transactions are ultimately sitting on Ethereum. And so Ethereum is more or less becoming kind of like this B to B chain to these other, these other private and public chains like base.

• 16:47Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see base, it is part of Coinbase. Obviously, public market investors are interested in Coinbase. They would like to predict what the exchange revenue, the custody revenue now potential base revenue is. Is QuickNode the ability, like gives them the ability to now evaluate what's going on on base and try to back into like revenue that then could be used to construct part of, you know, the next earnings report type thing?

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yes, as long as Coinbase has moved applications kind of like on chain. As long as they've taken some of those core processes that they have internally, maybe running on AWS. And I think this is very much in their vision is to move that part of their business on chain. Then QuickNode provides the tooling in order to, to construct those, you know, reports and understand what's really happening on the chain.

• 17:38Anthony Pompliano?

  But could I, like, for example, could I use QuickNode to say Coinbase's revenue from base is going to be X with some high degree of probability because QuickNode allows me to see how much transactions are being done, maybe how much gas or equivalent is being captured, and I can start to do some math and build a model. And again, I won't be 100% accurate, but I can probably come pretty close.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that is how our customers are using it today, right? And we don't give you like the, you have to do some work on the development side to kind of construct your model, if you will. We don't like model it for you, but the data that we have would be used in that model. We'd give you easy and fast access to that data.

• 18:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what about like altcoin issuers for ETFs or even the ETF issuers themselves? Like, if you know the wallet addresses, can you then start to use QuickNode to get better insights in terms of what inflows are or what their potential fee structures could look like?

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we don't tell you whose wallet address is. We don't have that information. But if you did know the address, you could absolutely use our Streams product to effectively every time that address, like, say, buys more Bitcoin, you would get like an instant notification, think of it as a push notification on your phone, that told you that that address had bought more Bitcoin or bought more Ethereum or maybe moved assets to another address as they kind of diversify across multiple addresses. So developers and builders of these things, like, they're using this technology and this tooling in order to thankfully make better applications and automate more of their processes

• 19:26Speaker 02

  internally to do that.

• 19:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then... With streams, what are the things that people can now do when you have that realtime ability, right? And kind of this, you know, you used that email example earlier, that from an investing standpoint, isn't just trading the coins, but maybe trading some of these other assets. And the reason I ask this is, I have a personal, I don't know, maybe conviction or like prediction, that a huge part of what today is considered traditional financial investing, look at the balance sheet, look at the P and L, try to back into, you know, what is the EPS, all these things. Now, if we have realtime data, and we can see what's happening on chain,

• 20:13Anthony Pompliano?

  man, that should make me a way better public market investor for the subset of stocks that will be related here.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:21Anthony Pompliano?

  So what are the things that you guys see, you know, with just streams in general, that now people are able to do that could help them in that kind of pursuit?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, there's one, there's one use case that comes to mind, just off the top of my head, and that streams pushes the data to you. So I use that analogy earlier of getting the email, right? And so the, basically, like, all these transactions are in something called the memory pool. Think of it as kind of like this cloud sitting above, above where the pending transactions are. Like, what traders care about is like, the second something actually is considered on chain, they want to know about it. And so, instead of you having to go ask, like, the Bitcoin nodes or the Ethereum nodes, what's happening, we're telling you, like, in microseconds, that that activity is now part of the chain. And so it's almost like a high-frequency trading use case, that we were, that is enabled through this new product that we offer.

• 21:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What are you most excited about on the product roadmap? So like, we're talking about what you guys have already released, kind of what's already out there now, but like, what are the things that you guys want to build or are in the process of building, that you're really excited about?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, so one of the things I think that I'm, one of the reasons I work at Quicknode, and I love, I love this company is because

• 21:31Speaker 02

  I think like for the last couple of years, we had certainly in 2021, we had a lot of hype coming into crypto in general. We had like all time highs, which hopefully we're getting there right now again. But you know, traditional business kind of stalled at moving on chain. And so I think, you know, from like, if you think about where QuickNote sits in the market, we have companies that are coming to us and be like, we want, we have a web three strategy. Help us figure out what to do next, how to use this technology, how to build applications on chain. And so I'm most bullish about bringing traditional businesses, making this technology easy for them to use.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  And kind of fit the models and the development environments that they're already used to building, basically make it risk free. As much as possible. And that's what we've seen today. We have with several Fortune 100 companies working with us right now to kind of build products and chains in the space. Which is so exciting. So to me, mass adoption doesn't really happen until traditional business feels like it's less risky. And easier to kind of move their applications to blockchain based systems. And that's what we're seeing today. So that's what I'm most bullish on. We have a lot of products that kind of help enable that. But I think, you know, like. It starts with platforms like QuickNote that where these companies come and they they figure it out and we have a great, you know, team that can help them, guide them through that process as well.

• 22:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And then in terms of the team that you guys have built so far, where did they come from? Are they like web native? You know, are they like young people? Are they super experienced from web two? We're going to like a lot of social media companies. Where did they come from?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. We have a great mix, man. We we have people from AWS, from Digital Ocean. People that kind of got cut their teeth in crypto and web three. And our team is truly global. I love this kind of, you probably see this a lot on your podcast, but you know, our team is truly like global, decentralized, if you will. We have people from. You know, Europe, North America, India, et cetera, Asia Pacific as well, Japan. It's so amazing to kind of see all like this builder culture that's that's truly global. And you know, me being an American. I obviously, I think so much of the tech ecosystem has been based in America. It's it's amazing to see kind of builders from all over the world.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Getting in full time and making stuff happen in the space. So it's been great.

• 24:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what about like the ecosystem or the industry in general? What are you most excited about heading into what many people think is, you know, much bigger bull market? What are milestones you're looking for or things that you see as kind of, you know, accomplishments that lay ahead?

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so good question. I think kind of to my earlier point around traditional business moving on chain, like one obstacle is, is really has been around gas fees. And so like, if you think about like replacing a database and just using like an on, just using a blockchain instead of a database. It's like you can't charge, every time you write to that database, you can't charge like a $1 fee, right? For most use cases. And so I think just like in the last six months, we really unlocked kind of these gasless chains and these gasless use cases on the roll up tech. And that's going to help kind of move this traditional business on chain. So in terms of, I know we talk a lot about new tech in the blockchain space,

• 25:02Speaker 02

  but we really haven't unlocked like the tech we needed until like the last six months, in my opinion. At least it wasn't to a place where it could be maturely used by, you know, a major enterprise, major Fortune 100 company. And now we have it. So that is probably going to really, I'm very bullish on the next few years here. I think we're still getting started. We're still in our infancy as kind of a crypto and web three ecosystem. And so we're going to start seeing, you know, major companies and, you know, come into the space and, and put, you know, make their own stable coins, move their rewards based systems on chain, do clean energy credits, all of the above. So it's going to be great.

• 25:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And what are the areas that people are excited about? You think maybe are overhyped or, you know, don't have as much kind of forward momentum as, as others think?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Well, I think, you know, I think, good question, good question. Overhyped, I mean, you know, I think obviously there's been a lot of, I'm a fan of NFTs. I think we got a little carried away with some of the NFT valuations in the past. I guess, I guess at the end of the day, like, you know, me, I have a hard time believing certain fashion brands are valued at what they are, or people pay $600 for a t-shirt, but people still do. So it really comes down to like, supply and demand. And so, you know, I don't know, like, as long as there's supply and demand, I guess you can say something might be overhyped, but it's really your personal, personal opinion at that point, as long as people are buying it. So I do think like, one

• 26:37Speaker 02

  thing is, is that in general, like, valuations for all coins were really kind of crazy in the last cycle. And I think this, this cycle, we have a little bit healthier valuations. Like, when I talked to the chains and the D apps, the, the last two years of kind of this, this funky market, they've focused on profitability, they focused on revenue. I think my friends over at Beefy Finance just posted that they have, they're a D app, they're truly decentralized team, they have $7 million in their treasury, without raising any major source of venture capital. And so, you know, protocols like that, like, I, I think, you know, that they, they

• 27:20Speaker 02

  actually can have a, a valuation that comes from something substantial, because they focused on cash flow, they focused on revenue. So I think, you know, like, we probably saw overhyped valuations, but this time coming in, they're a lot more justifiable.

• 27:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And then, how about the institutions and kind of their participation? Do you expect it just to be from a financial exposure standpoint, or do you expect them to start to kind of play on-chain and build things and do all that?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Well, there's a lot of, a lot of people trying to figure out how to tokenize assets right now. And I see that in conversations. I think, I think, Anthony, we're kind of at this place where no one wants to get fired for building out like, a web three app in their, in these financial organizations. So they're playing very carefully, but they're, they're like, slow and steady. They're not getting out of the space. And I think with this latest kind of cycle here, we're going to see that speed up.

• 28:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Um, if you had to ask people who are coming into the space, what are the things that you want to know from them? And I always think about like the questions you ask people signal a lot in terms of what you are thinking about or what you're focused on. So let's say somebody, you know, they had heard of Bitcoin or crypto before and it had all gone down. They thought it was over. Price comes back. Now they're entering the space as a user for the first time. What are some of the questions that you would love to ask them?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. So users coming into the space for the first time. Um, well, generally I ask them like, you know, what, what's their main goal here? And I think like the answer I continually get is to make money. And that's why I think like at the end of the day, like web three and crypto, crypto overall, they're very, it's, it's very capitalistic. Like people are here because they're entrepreneurs or because they're investors or they're trying to make something and get more users. And so, you know, I don't know. I usually try to ask them like, what are they, what are their financial goals? Were they, are they investing? Are they trying to build something? And it goes from there. So I think you have people that kind of sit on the sidelines and they just want to,

• 29:28Speaker 02

  they want to have a chance to be part of kind of the growth of some of these, uh, these chains and these D apps and, and applications and other people, they're trying to be involved because they're starting a business more or less. And it's a new kind of business that is global and lives on chain. So,

• 29:47Speaker 02

  and then I think, you know, on, on the, when I talk to you, traditional business folks, I want to understand how they're thinking about leveraging this technology. How are they looking at reaching new markets? Are they like a US-based kind of investment firm that's looking to do more investments internationally? And potentially that can be a lot easier. What have we seen as we've talked to some of those investors is that tokenized assets makes it easier and easier to do kind of cross-border investment. And that's been a really interesting kind of problem space to, to evaluate.

• 30:24Anthony Pompliano?

  And then what are the pieces of advice or the warnings that you would issue to people entering the space for the first time? And I use that as a proxy for things you've learned, having been here for a while and gone through many market cycles.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Man, I guess you have to always do your own research, but I will, I will give you my, my tips. I think, you know, I think, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, you know, you're looking at pretty safe investments at this point. If you're investing in those, just like a, maybe like a company that's been around for a few decades that, that has a, you know, maybe part of the S and P 500 or something. These altcoins, I think, you know, you have to be really careful of. And I'm a kind of like my, some of my friends call me no hype Josh. So I think the teams are really smart and you have to, you can't just, what I say, when I say that, what I'm meaning is they're really clever

• 31:19Speaker 02

  at how they're marketing these chains. And you really need to like, look at not the potential utility, but does this chain have developers? If you're trying to invest in kind of these altcoins, is there on-chain activity? Again, QuickNote makes this easier with our products, right? But you have to kind of just, don't look at the marketing narrative, look at the utility and is it really happening? Like are other applications using this protocol? And, you know, pretty is also like gas, like gas consumed is a big indicator too. No one's using the chain, don't invest in it. So, you know, I don't know. That's, that's one thing. I also look at, you know, one thing I

• 31:59Speaker 02

  think is a clear indicator, my personal thesis on, on investing in the space is when you look at these altcoins, the ones that really invest in the infrastructure side, they're the ones that have the best chance at taking off. And so, you know, we, we do a lot of work at QuickNote at integrating new chains. That means that like the chain works with us, in most cases pays us to integrate into their platform. And we don't take everyone, right? And so chains that are like, you know, working with the development tooling, those ones have a good chance of succeeding with versus ones that are only marketing focused. And so chains that have taken the time to invest in QuickNote and other infra platforms, that is a good indicator. And I do see that being

• 32:43Speaker 02

  used more and more by investors in the space.

• 32:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about QuickNode?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're QuickNode, N O D E dot com. You can find me on Twitter. I just changed my username to East of E, E T H, East of E, so.

• 33:03Anthony Pompliano?

  East of E do, do you want to explain that for folks who may not get the reference?

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of my, one of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck, who wrote East of Eden, classic straw, you know, human-based struggle in the story. I would kind of always like this idea that like, we're trying to build the perfect utopia, but it can never really be built, like utopia doesn't exist. And so, you know, we could, our struggle makes, makes the world a better place. And so I spend a lot of my time working on, or working with customers and applications that are building on ETH or auxiliary to ETH. And so I thought it was the perfect username for me.

• 33:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And if people want to get a job at QuickNode, is the website the best place?

• 33:50Speaker 02

  You know, I wouldn't say it is. I really am a sucker for a good cold outreach. I love it when, well, I'm hiring a product manager right now. So if you're a PM and you're listening to this, you know, hit me up. But I love when people give me a, you know, a two, three-page PDF on here's what I can do for you, how it fits into your strategy and they, you know, something like that. That's probably the best way is a cold outreach.

• 34:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Well, Josh, I really appreciate the time today. I learned a lot. Obviously, QuickNode continues to be a great company, one that I've been a long time supporter of. And I think that the bright days are ahead, hopefully. So

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 34:31Anthony Pompliano?

  We'll definitely do this again in the future.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Thanks, Anthony.