How Companies Can Leverage Protocol Specialists to Become and Stay Crypto-native - Viktor Bunin

to become and stay crypto native uh i think for many folks here that are working crypto companies they know how big of a challenge this is especially as you're scaling up you know when you have one or two folks and you're building a d5 protocol super easy to be crypto native when you have 50 folks or 100 folks or 5 000 folks it gets extremely difficult and so i'm going to talk a little bit about my story i'm going to talk a little bit about protocol specialists and also share how other folks here can also build up a protocol specialist function within their teams so i'm going to talk a little bit about our challenge so the company that i joined three years ago is called bison trails and bison trails is a very large node infrastructure provider we support more than 30 protocols we run full nodes validators archival nodes indexers all kinds of infrastructure needs and the challenge that we faced is that there's a lot of protocols out there and you know as a team we want to support the entire ecosystem but as you might imagine when you have thousands of protocols to choose from it gets quite challenging and so that's the job that i came here to solve and uh i'll tell you guys a little bit of a funny story so when i when i first interviewed a bison trails the job title that i interviewed for was operations manager and the job description said if you like crypto and you want crypto to be successful come work here i said great that's me um and you know in conversations with the two co-founders uh you know we didn't really know what the job was going to be and so the day before i wrote in my journal the things that i thought i should be doing as as as a member of the team and when i came to talk to them the next morning they said hey there's a couple things we think we think you should be doing i said great i have a list as well but mine's written down so you tell me what you think and i'll tell you where we align and so they listed four things and i'm like yep got all those four here's the fifth thing they said yep you should do it too i said great that's my job description and that's how the title protocol specialists came into being we made it up but now we have a team of two protocol specialists we have four protocol analysts and protocol specialists as a role has that has started to get adoption throughout the industry and so some of our competitors like blogdamon and figmen and others have protocol specialists but also other ecosystem participants such as a16z also as a team of protocol specialists we think it's a really important role and i'm super excited to tell you a little bit about it in my mind protocol specialists are to the 2020s where product managers were to the 2000s and so i'm super excited so what is a protocol specialist a protocol specialist has three key functions and we're going to talk about them in depth the first one is watchtower second one is playmaker and the third one is the trusted partner as a watchtower we are keenly attuned to emerging uh market and technology waves so we're the crypto native folks at the company paying attention to what's going on learning about it understanding it as a playmaker we're the key information node for all things protocol and that becomes really important because somebody has to go and learn all the things and you can't have everybody go and learn all the things and watch all the youtube videos it's quite hard and the last is a trusted partner and that we work with the protocols we support and our communities and i'm going to cover each of these in depth but you know one thing i want to highlight is that i'm going to be talking about our experience but then towards then i'm going to start talking a little bit about how does this apply to you guys and how can you take this information and put it to use within your own companies your own teams and your own ecosystems so as a watchtower there's the most key function is that this is the most crypto native person and team at the company right like folks on our team we live and breathe crypto uh the reason i'm not fun at parties and weddings is that crypto is all i do and so i'm a terrible conversationalist now um but you know from our perspective because we focus on protocols that's where i spend all of my time learning about the different blockchains that are out there the layer twos that are out there interoperability and bridge protocols and even d5 sometimes but the important thing is that you're not just out here doing research and learning about stuff although that is certainly very cool but then the goal is to take that information and operationalize it for the rest of your organization so that they can do their best work and as part of doing that you know you're constantly learning about things but the important thing is that it's very easy to get a massage subscription and you know see the updates coming in it's very easy to be on twitter and like follow the ceo of something or the founder of another thing and see what they're talking about and anybody can do that but the important thing and how you really become knowledgeable about what's going on and can think strategically is that we are very active members in the communities that we support we're actively contributing to them so we're not out there just like reading things we're out there creating things and creating change and creating impact and the last bit that we do as part of this role is that we're constantly vigilant for protocol changes you know on our side we run a lot of infrastructure and so when something's happening to a blockchain we want to know about it right if there's downtime if there's changes or consensus if there's like an attack going on or you know something that impacts us we need to be aware of it and you know it's it becomes really interesting because when we talk about like what does this actually play out as on our side one of the most important things that we do is that our team is responsible for leading the protocol road mapping that coinbase cloud engages in and what that means is that you know right now we support 30 odd protocols right we want to get to 100 we want to get to a thousand right these are crazy astronomical numbers and so one of the things that our team does is constantly learn about protocols but then take that information and create what are essentially like very fancy business cases that talk about okay how does this protocol work how does inflation work how do the nodes work how does this impact us who are going to be our customers how do we see the usage of this protocol developing and we take all that information and start empowering the rest organization to make decisions about okay do we want to support this protocol and if we do want to support this protocol how do we go about it right how do we go to market how do we think about pricing how do we think about all this stuff one of the other things we do is we do constant protocol updates and that there's an internal resource where we're out there paying attention all the time but let's say there's a change happening right and for us it's all about protocols for you guys it might be about d5 or nfts or identity there's a new standard being released there's a new you know bug there's a new upgrade coming up that we need to be aware of that change is something for us or for our customers or about our products and one of the things that we do is we have to know all the different teams within coinbase cloud and understand what is it that is important to them right like the sales team is really going to want to know when the inflation rate changes right the infrastructure team is really going to going to want to know when like there's going to be a change to the protocol that's going to change state growth for example is going to change something about signing or something else and we're constantly keeping our team up to date with that giving them this information and then empowering them to then carry out their functions so product can know what they what they're going to do sales and customer success and so on and you know when i talk about like actively contributing right like you guys might have heard about the first decentralized protocol merger between keep network and new cypher these are both protocols that we support uh on the coinbase cloud platform we've been running nodes on those protocols for several several years at this point we know the teams really well and one of the things that we saw was that there was an opportunity to actually merge them into a single protocol which is like an unheard of thing when it comes to work token models it's like really really cool it's the first one and i worked on it right so i led the governance proposal for that and this is something that impacts our team because you know now we're running these two separate protocols there's going to be a single protocol so that changes you know how we operate the infrastructure how we think about pricing how we think about like the long-term longevity of this protocol and so you know on the one hand we could have been kind of on the other side receiving information receiving updates as they come in and then trying to like figure out and scramble it's like okay what's our strategy going to be how are we going to go about this but on the other hand we can take this opportunity to go and actually like create the change that we want to see and improve these protocol ecosystems which not only you know improves their success but also improves our success on those protocols and also our customer success and so that's what i that's what i mean by the watchtower next we're going to look at the playmaker so the playmaker and uh and our role there is to serve as a key information point in that you know something i mentioned earlier is that when you have sales guys right you can have the most technical sales guy in the world but when you're covering 30 odd protocols and you're planning to scale that to 100 it's not reasonable to expect for them to go and learn everything there is to know about them on their own like you just you just can't have that and even if your team is like fairly small it's still very very difficult to do that and so one of the core functions that the protocol specialist serves is to aggregate this information in a way that can be spread across the entire organization so people can use it and understand it and work with it and that's where the documentation piece comes in and that when you have a small team it's super easy to just be like hey bob or mara or whatever here's how this protocol works here's what you need to know but you can't do that when you have 50 people or 100 people right you need to be able to scale that out and so documentation becomes super super important to scale scaling out that knowledge so when questions do come in it's like okay super strategic question how about this specific nuance this specific detail and then as you as you get them in you take that information and see okay can i improve the documentation right because other people might have this question as well and so you continue updating these living documents so they continue being used throughout the organization over the life cycle of your support for that that protocol or that dap or that ecosystem or whatever it is and the interesting thing that comes out of that is that when you're constantly thinking about these things and you're thinking about what are the needs of the organization what are the needs of our customers like how are they thinking about things how are things going to impact them what that allows you to do is start formulating strategies and be really thoughtful intentional saying like okay this change is coming here's what you need to do here's what you need to do here's what you need to do here's the trade-offs that you need to think about and like let's work together on formulating a strategy and that's super hard because you know for for you folks that you know work with customers or work with other partners or ecosystem participants it's very difficult for them to also keep up with what's going on and so having a trusted source of information that can help you think about things strategically and understand what's going on becomes an invaluable invaluable resource i'll give you a couple examples of that so one of the things that we put out for example on our website are protocol guides and these are like beefy awesome pieces of information so that if you wanted to go learn about nir sure you can go and like read all their blog posts read the documentation and read you know whatever and like watch all the youtube videos and that's one way of doing it but what we've done is we've aggregated all that information into these incredibly thorough guides that give you all the information you need to know to make actionable decisions on these protocols and information goes out to our customers and goes out to our partners it goes out to the community members and it becomes an invaluable source of insights one of the other things that we kind of think about is that you know there's strategic initiatives that come up and so as an infrastructure provider uh something that obviously impacts us is mev right maximally extractable value it's the ability for you know validators and bots to essentially you know control what's what goes into a block and in which order and extract value from it this obviously impacts us and so one of the things that's important to us is how do we do that in a way that is as healthy as possible for the ecosystem and community and so something that i worked on is i helped launch the flashbots e2 working group where a number of ecosystem participants such as infrastructure providers and client teams and other folks have come together to work with the flashbots team in order to give them feedback and advice and testing on their proposed design for the flashbot system on ethereum after the merge this impacts everybody and by being early to the conversation and being really strategic there it informs how we look at it it also informs how they look at it and it creates like this really nice road map for how you go about dealing with these things that are really like impactful to the business and the last thing is you know when you when you think about empowering people and you're thinking about empowering customers it also comes down to kind of like nuanced nitty-gritty details that like nobody really understands and so one of the examples is on keep network there was pro this product called tptc and what that is is it's a decentralized bitcoin on ethereum and the way they did it was like this maximally secure powerful system and they used collateral in eth in order to secure the the deposited bitcoin to make sure that you know that the nodes that are holding the bitcoin can't run away with it well well they can but they're going to lose more money than they gain right but one of the things that that required is that now you have these collateralization ratios and those can fluctuate and they can fall and you can be liquidated and liquidations are a difficult concept to understand because you're dealing with nodes it's not just like a defy liquidation and so one of the things we put together for example is a guide that was not only used by you know our team and our community but also other users and participants who say okay how do i go about managing my keep infrastructure in a way that keeps the system healthy and secure and make sure that i don't get liquidated and continue earning rewards so it's really impactful work that ends up having reverberations uh throughout the ecosystem and the last thing i'll cover uh of the three is a trusted partner and so as infrastructure providers we see ourselves as protocol stewards right in the same way that folks that are working within the dfi ecosystem right if you're like heavily integrated into ave you have to be a steward of the ave ecosystem right you have to participate you have to help out and make sure that that ecosystem is healthy and good decisions are made and that's exactly how we view our role on the protocol side and so we also become governance and community leaders in that governance a lot of the time is a thankless job but it becomes really important um and so one of the things that we take upon ourselves is when we see those opportunities to say okay how can we improve these protocols and you know something about the uh actually i'll cover that next uh how can we improve these protocol ecosystems right and how can we improve the communities and so one of the things is for example i was the judging steward one of the leader lead organizers of east denver in 2019 and 2020. you know and this you know this is stuff that i was doing while i was employed at what was at the time bison trails that is now coinbase cloud and the reason we saw that is because obviously this is an extremely impactful event and brings the community together and is really beneficial to everybody you know we helped organize the lightning summit for the lightning network we helped organize new york that was you know one of the eve global hackathons so there's a lot of stuff like that and i'll give you a couple examples of that you know at this point we've launched you know 30 some protocols and you would not believe it but we got really good at it we've seen all the different iterations of how things can be done we've seen all the different governance designs and all the different parameters and all different trade-offs and so now when we work with a protocol we like we have great tactical knowledge of saying okay you want to run an incentivized suspect here's like a really great example of how to do it here's a really bad example of how to do it here's the things that they did well here's the things that they did poorly right here's the timelines you should be thinking about here's how you engage the community here's how you share updates and by doing that we're continuing to improve the protocols that we are actively participating in and will ultimately end up supporting and uh two examples well one quick example of that is that uh the near protocol uh which is like a really great uh protocol that has smart contracts and uh is doing really well but they had this like limited uh main net or like maine beta you can think of it as and they wanted to take it to fully public and you know accessible mainnet but the way to do that is they wanted to do it via the community and that it's very easy as a you know centralized team to flip the switch and be like ah this is the main net now but they wanted to come from the community and so one of the things that we worked on is okay let's put together a process by which the community can talk about and decide like what are the what are the factors that we're looking at what are the characteristics of this network that are important in order for us to launch mainnet in a decentralized way and vote on it and so one of things for example was you know what's the percentage of tokens that are currently staked if two percent of tokens are staked that is not a very secure network right and so there is some level there let's say it's 10 or 15 or 50 percent like whatever that number is but you want to be thoughtful about it and so those are some of the areas that we helped out and i already mentioned the the east denver organizing and so when we go back to it right the watchtower is healing in tune to emerging market and technology waves right we're the crypto native person we're paying attention to what's going on we're empowering people the playmaker is a key information node for all things protocol that we want to have knowledge that is shareable and accessible and so that our effort can uh spread throughout the entire organization and last thing is a trusted partner what's the protocols we support and their communities and you know i it's so so so important because it's very easy to be a taker and a user and somebody that just like you know leverages a protocol but doesn't give back and it's kind of like in the background and it's hanging out but when you actually engage and you improve it you improve it for everybody and you improve your own success and we think that's really important and so how does this apply to you guys how do you think about starting a team how do you think about you know bringing this capability in-house and actually developing it for yourselves and also for your colleagues well one of the first things is that this is a brand new role right it's you know it's been around for three years it it was made up now it's a little bit less less made up uh but it's still very very new there's not a lot of playbooks and you know i'm hoping that this will serve as a playbook for some folks one of the first things to start with is that you want to start with a single protocol expert these people today are pretty rare there's like not a lot of them and what you want is you want one person that really understands what's going on to hit the ground running and really understand like okay what are the what are my company's needs what are my team's needs right how should i be working with them how should i think about building out this team so that when they do start hiring people they can start hiring people with that in an extremely judicious way and you know on our side the first uh political specialist that we hired elias simons who's you know my closest partner it took us about a year to find like the absolute right person right and you know we were kind of taking it slow and you know we weren't like extremely actively looking but at the same time it's like after we brought them on powerhouse like incredible incredible talent incredible value out to the team and you know we have two protocol analysts here right now we have two more starting uh in a couple of weeks and they're also hitting the ground running and starting to add value really really quickly and if you don't do that then and you hire somebody that's not actually crypto native and it's still kind of like learning then there's like you have no idea how long it's going to take them to catch up and you have no idea where they're actually going to end up because if they're the most crypto native person at your company they don't have anybody to look up to right they don't have anybody to start working with or learning from and so they're building our dysfunction while still trying to figure it out and it's very difficult to do with a brand new function the other part is educate in that when you're working with product managers you're working with engineers you're working with sales people you don't want to be like oh i'm the crypto genius and these are the crypto dum dums like that does not work and that is not scalable and so as you're working with these folks like you want to spend time educating helping them understand and helping them like really piece the information together in a way that frankly like you know excludes you from the process like they don't need you anymore like that's the ideal outcome the ideal outcomes to not be needed anymore unless it's in case of emergency it's like you know we have a joke at bison trails like victor as a service and that one you know you try a lot of things and when things go wrong it's like hey victor you know we need to pull you in and actually come come help troubleshoot this the other part is creating process and then because this is a new role and you're like okay you're doing some sales stuff and you're doing some marketing stuff you're doing content stuff and doing product stuff well if you just let this person like run wild and start stepping on people's toes and it's like okay i'm gonna be a product manager now like they're not a product manager and so what you want to do is you want to be really clear about okay how does a protocol specialist interact with other team members like where do they actually plug in and that's something that we've been pretty judicious about and that okay you know here's how we have the protocol pipeline here's here's how we identify protocols here's the funnel that it goes through here's how the decision is made and once that decision is made here's how the protocol specialist works with the different teams in order to empower them right without actually doing their job and so being able to be specific there sets everybody up for success the last part and i keep harping back on this but documentation you know documentation takes a lot of work but it pays dividends especially as the team grows you know the closest partners for protocol specialists number one is product and that fundamentally in many ways this is like a strategic product crypto native role and you're gonna be spending a lot of time with product helping them figure out what what should be done and then the ideal is that as you inform product and as you work very closely with them they can take that information synthesize it understand what's going on and put plans of action in place that pull in the other teams to execute on their rel respective components all right i'm gonna wrap it up and so here's the questions that everybody should be asking themselves because everybody here is from a different walk of life and you're working on different projects and you have different size teams so how do you actually apply this i talked a lot about protocols but as i mentioned it could be d5 right it could be nfts it can be identity it could be so many other use cases and so the first question to ask yourself is what problem are you solving right if you are a money manager or a hedge fund and you're like doing liquidity mining really what you want is somebody that understands d5 protocols understands collateral ratios understands how liquidations happen understands how you can do recursive borrowing and also probably has some solidity skills right the second question is how external versus internal should my team be because that changes quite a lot and so on our side we're very external and so you know we don't have room for just like a hardcore researcher that just like goes and finds answers because that's really important but really this is a team-based role and so you want to be somebody that's very communicative you want to be somebody that can write well you want somebody that can speak at conferences and represent you and your brand and your team in the protocol communities in which they operate and the last bit is what other skills do you need and so i gave the d5 example earlier but again that can apply to all walks of life and so one of the things that we got very fortunate with is that elias simus my close partner he is really great at data science like you can give him these mammoth data sets and he figures out what's going on and is really able to derive insights from them and that's super helpful for us because one of the things we did was you know we're running e2 validators and we looked at the test at performance and we said okay how do we actually measure the performance of validators that go beyond just like the basic matrix of like did you attest when you were supposed to did you propose when you were supposed to right and this is like a complex problem but once you have insights there then all of a sudden you're able to make strategic decisions around your infrastructure and how you roll things out and like where you're based and all kinds of stuff right and that continues to apply throughout all the various protocols that we're part of and so i'm extremely happy to you know have the honor of sharing this role with you we think that it's super high value and i will be over there and so if anybody would like to learn more or get any feedback or advice i'm more than happy to chat with you and so thank you so much for for your time and for listening