[00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist. This one features a guest. We recorded live at the Rare EVO Conference in Vegas earlier this month. We sat down with nine speakers over two days, and today you’ll meet Mark the chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for the Al Grant Foundation.

If you’re not familiar, the A Grand Foundation goal is to foster partnerships to help contribute to the advancement of the overall blockchain industry and to drive adoption of the A grand blockchain. Since stepping into the role in early 2024, mark has been leading the charge to elevate a Grand’s global brand and strategy.

In this episode, we discussed what makes Aran different from other layer ones. Agen commerce and how it could reshape how we interact online strategies for achieving mainstream adoption of crypto, and how Aand is preparing for the post quantum world. And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist,

Luke: mark, welcome to Brave Technologies. How are you doing today? I’m

Marc: doing absolutely

Luke: fabulous. Yeah, thanks to be here. Thanks for, thanks for joining.

Marc: You know, since [00:01:00] you’ve joined Al Grand this year what’s been your main focus as a chief strategy and marketing officer?

Marc: Yeah, I think, two elements here. One is, all about raising awareness for Aran, and then the second thing is about more from a technology perspective to kind of push the decentralization agenda. And so. On the raising awareness side, like Aand is one of the OG chains in industry. and it’s known for, its like groundbreaking technology.

Marc: But it’s not necessarily having the awareness that some the more recent chains have. And so we wanna fix that and we wanna make sure and remind people why AAND is here and what makes Aand unique. So that’s one part. The second part is like we are as an OG chain, we still value very much kind of the original kind of OG values of the, of decentralization.

Marc: And so, so over the course of, the last year as a foundation, we have pushed very hard on this decentralization agenda. We introduced taking rewards to get the number of stakers up and the portion of stake that is owned by the foundation down. And so be good for the giving idea since the beginning of this year.

Marc: In beginning of this year, actually, the foundation controlled about 70% of the [00:02:00] overall stake in the network. Over the course of the last five months, that stake has dropped to about 20%. Wow. Wow. So we have massively, massively decentralized over the course of like five months or so. And the second part of that is we just launched our peer-to-peer gossip network, which gets rid of like the only kind of centralizing element that still remained in our network, which was the relay nodes.

Marc: Hmm. And so now with this Peter two b gossip network. Nodes can now talk directly to each other without having to talk through a relay node. And so that completely decentralizes the network as well. And so I would say with more than, with the increase in stake, with the reduction in stake owned by the foundation with this P two p infrastructure.

Marc: And with the number of node runners that we currently have, we have over 2000 live nodes. We are probably one of the most decentralized networks in the industry right now.

Luke: What was the biggest driver in, in reducing that foundation on stake? Like was it programs or a certain feature, or?

Marc: well, so it’s basically the incentive, right?

Marc: Like originally when, when Al Grant was found that we had this very kind of positive idea of like, Hey, you know, [00:03:00] staking another one is so easy. You know, you can take any computer, you can buy like a mini PC on Amazon for $200 and you can run a note with it. So it’s so easy to do.

Marc: We don’t have to pay people. People should just do it. Hmm. Goodness of their heart. Mm-hmm. Turns out. People like incentive, right? And so it turns out that we ended up, without doing this incentive system, turns out that Ante Foundation had to basically control a large majority of the stake to kind of guarantee the security of the network uhhuh.

Marc: And so we put this incentive mechanism in place and so people reacted. Mm-hmm. Uh, Amazing, right? People react to incentives. and so that’s why it’s like over the course of like, as I said, five, six months. We more than increase the number of nodes by 50, 60%. Wow. And so that allowed us to then gradually reduce our stake.

Marc: Mm-hmm. And so, the fact that our stake went down is a combination of one. Other stakers coming in and taking over the CQ network and then us proactively and in a measured way, reducing our stake as fast as we possibly can without kind of like, [00:04:00] compromising of course the Q networks.

Marc: That’s huge. I

Luke: mean, that’s huge progress. Yes. It’s a short amount of time too. I mean, you know, you mentioned. Algorithm’s kinda an OG chain, and, and there’s a lot of different, options in the market right now. What, what sets Aran apart from your point of view, when people ask you that?

Marc: Well, I think, there’s two things. So we, we’ve always talked about some of the core features that, that set our grand apart, that we were one of the first ones to kind of solve this trimmer issue of like, hey, can only have two of three things. You can be scalable, you can be decentralized and you can be secure, but you can only do two of those three things, right?

Marc: So when. the premise of Aand at the beginning was, no, there, there is no agile dilemma. Mm-hmm. We can do all three. Mm-hmm. And, that has been the, the core of what, what Aand stood for. And so, you know, we can do 10,000 transactions per second. We are very decentralized as we just, talked about and very secure.

Marc: At the same time, we, you know, we have instant finality, which many of the blockchains don’t have. And so we’ve always talked about those core. Features that set the algorithm apart. But really what, that means is like, we’re trying to translate this [00:05:00] to, okay, what does this now mean for users, right?

Marc: And what does this now mean for developers? Mm-hmm. And so I think from a user perspective, what this means is that the defi experience on a grant is, is really unparalleled. Mm-hmm. People that use our defi protocols like folks finance for lending and borrowing, or tiny man who’s our A MM, right?

Marc: They will notice that transactions don’t fail ever. you don’t have to wait for transactions to complete. Right. All transactions complete within less than three seconds. Mm-hmm. We also have this very powerful routing system. So because the transactions are so low and because we have something like atomic swaps, it allows us to build these very, very smart routers mm-hmm.

Marc: That will find you the best route or the combination of routes to do swaps, ah, without you having to worry about any of this and without any of these swaps failing halfway through the route because. You know, atomic swaps will guarantee that they all go through, or, or none of them will go through Uhhuh.

Marc: And so all of these little, all of these technology features, right, that are deeply embedded into the protocol, make it such that the user experience of doing defi is just [00:06:00] tremendous. That’s awesome. Is just tremendous. And so, that I think is one thing that sets us apart from a developer perspective. I would say what sets us apart is really the ease by which and the productivity that developers have when they build on a grant.

Marc: And there’s two reasons for that. One is we support Native TypeScript and we support Native Python. So you don’t need to learn any particular language to be able to write smart contracts. And the second thing is that a lot of features for which you need smart contracts on other chains, you don’t need smart contracts on that grant at all, which significantly improves the security of your code and also speeds up the development of the code.

Marc: To give you one example. Yeah, I’d love to get an example of that. Tokens, right? ERC 20 on eum. If you tokens on a grant gets, are supported natively in the protocol. So you don’t need a smart contract to an issue, a token. Also the tokens come with built-in compliance. So for instance, there’s white listing, there’s blacklist, there’s freezing, there’s clawback.

Marc: So all of the things that you would require and tokenization contact for compliance reasons. [00:07:00] These features are all built into the protocol. You don’t need to write a single line of code to enable these things. So that’s one. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Multisig, right? Like if you’re a business and you wanna develop something on chain, you need multisig, right?

Marc: Mm-hmm. Multisig on Ethereum requires smart contracts. Mm-hmm. On another grants, it’s a built in feature. And so atomic swaps, right? The idea that you can basically trade without counterparty risk. Mm-hmm. Right. Is a, is a core feature that’s built into the protocol, doesn’t require smart contracts, and I can all go on and on.

Marc: So we’ve really built the A VM, the Aand virtual machine with the perspective of what is needed from a real world use perspective and built those features into the protocol. So you as a developer, don’t have to build those.

Luke: That’s fantastic because I think people don’t. Really understand or, or appreciate just how many issues and exploits happen from smart contract drugs.

Luke: Right. And just bad implementations and things like that, that are discovered even in like hardened stuff that’s been out there for a while. So that’s, that’s really cool. You know, all Rand uh, released a roadmap in 2024. You know, what are some of the headline innovations you’re excited about with that roadmap that our audience should know about?

Marc: Yeah, so. [00:08:00] It’s, it’s interesting when we started building this roadmap, like, and we did a lot of analysis and like, Hey, what, what do other chains do? and what, what does their roadmap look like? And you know, one of the things I realized is that we talked about maturity, right? And so I think you can tell how mature a blockchain is by looking at the roadmap.

Marc: Mm-hmm. Because at the end of the day, what we all want is we want blockchains to be mainstream. Mm-hmm. And used by billions of users. And so. To me, if the roadmap is still focused on fixing protocol stuff such as, oh, I wanna scale beyond 12 transactions per second. Mm-hmm. Or I want to get finality down from 12 minutes.

Marc: Yeah. To like three seconds. You’re not ready to scale. Right? Right. You’re not ready for like real world adoption. When you look at our roadmap, like we’ve covered all of the protocol stuff long time ago, Uhhuh like, we don’t have to worry about these things anymore. Our grant works. It has never been done in six years.

Marc: It scales, it has all these features, so we don’t have to worry about any of this. The protocol is very robust and secure. So where our focus is for the roadmap is [00:09:00] how do we get to that billion users? How do we get, as a mature blockchain, how do we basically. Get to real world use at scale, and that’s the core focus.

Marc: And so there’s, there’s two elements in our roadmap to, to deliver on that. One is, let’s remove friction and complexity wherever we can find it. For users, for developers, but also for businesses. Mm-hmm. So that’s one, one big element of the roadmap. And there’s a number of products and features that specifically tailored to that, and we can talk more in detail about that.

Marc: Sure. And then the second, piece is all about what are the core use cases that will generate. You know, trillions of dollars of value. Right. Right. And we think there’s really three use cases that we focus on, and that’s on self-sovereign identity. Mm-hmm. Which I think is a massive, a massive opportunity.

Marc: The second one is on tokenizing financial products. Mm-hmm. And then the third one is on gente commerce. And so we’re doubling down on those three use cases and building the tools and enabling infrastructure that allows people to take advantage of those use cases and build new products and features on top of that.

Marc: So [00:10:00] that’s kind of the core of what the roadmap is focused on.

Luke: Let’s drill into agent commerce, right? Like, you know, you, you mentioned it’s one of the key themes on the roadmap. What does that term mean to you and, and how do you see it reshaping you know, how we interact online? So,

Marc: agent commerce to me is a, is a very interesting topic.

Marc: I mean, we all know that. AI is kind of eating the world. And you know, I use, I use LLMs every single day, right. And they provide tremendous, tremendous value, but they’re still at the level of like, I, I ask you something and then you reply. Mm-hmm. I ask you something, you take action on my behalf.

Marc: Is not quite there yet. Mm-hmm. That’s where the world is going. Mm-hmm. Right? Like the world is going towards, you’ll basically employ agents and the agents will act on your behalf. and so as a result of that, we think there’s gonna be millions, there’s gonna be billions of agents that are acting on behalf of people that also interface with each other.

Marc: Mm-hmm. And so then the question becomes, even an agent interfaces with each other and they have to, and they exchange value. They also have to be paid. Right? And so how does that payment mechanism work? Mm-hmm. Right? Are [00:11:00] they gonna use credit cards? Are they gonna use a bank? If an agent is based in Rome and the other agent is based in New York, are they gonna do an international bank transfer, right.

Marc: To pay each other 50 cents? Probably not. Right? So not So what’s the, what’s the, are they gonna wait three days for settlement, right? No. Right. So you need, you need the mechanism for like real time. Settlements. Yeah. That operates at extremely low cost and blockchain is the answer. Yeah. Obviously.

Marc: Totally. Right? And so that’s what we’re focused on. And, you know, how, how will this change for users? Well, I, I can think of like a, a number of use cases that I think I’m very excited about. For instance, you know. I think everybody will have an agent in their back pocket mm-hmm. That will negotiate access to data on their behalf.

Marc: Mm-hmm. Right? Like now you go to any website, you have to like do these opt-ins of like cookie opt-ins. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, it’s just absurd. Right? Absurd. Like, imagine you have an agent that don’t only does all this stuff on your behalf. Mm-hmm. So you never see these annoying popups anymore. But more [00:12:00] importantly, the agent can negotiate with the data with the website to say, well.

Marc: I, I’m okay with giving you the data, but it’s gonna cost you X. Right, right. Okay. And that agent could actually negotiate on your behalf. Yeah. So that you can decide to instruct the agent to not share data at all. Mm-hmm. Or share it under certain conditions and require payment. And that payment then automatically happens in a blockchain.

Marc: So I think that’s one particular use case that I think would be super, super compelling.

Luke: Do you see a grand working with existing solutions in the market on these types of things? Or are you all developing, like you have developers that you’re helping to incentivize to, to, you know, code up some of these solutions?

Luke: Or what, what’s the, what’s the thought process

Marc: there? So, so we firmly believe in a standard based approach. Yeah. Like if, like we don’t wanna develop anything. That is how would I say that is non-standardized. Mm-hmm. Because I think interoperability is key. Yeah. Yeah. So we all tend to live in like these kind of islands and crypto, right?

Marc: Yeah. You know, we do this our way and then you do this your way and we don’t talk to you. And so we don’t want that. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we [00:13:00] are fo we are gonna. Follow and use standards wherever we can. We do this for identity as well, Uhhuh. But we do this in this particular case as well. So there’s some emerging standards and it’s, it’s still a fast evolving place, right?

Marc: Right, right. But there’s standards run like MCP Uhhuh, which, which allows an agent to take action on a third party service. So we developed actually one of our projects on Aand developed aand, MCP. Mm-hmm. Go Plausible is the name of the company. They did, they did a great job at like abstracting away all of the, complexity of a blockchain and making it available to agents. So MCP is one of the protocols, of course, that we will use. Google has, its a to a protocol, which is agent to agent protocol. Coinbase has X 4 0 2 for payments. So we’re looking at these protocols and figuring out how to integrate them in the best possible way.

Marc: With Aran, the thing that’s unique, I think on, in our approach is that we wanna combine these standard protocols. With a security and identity layer. Yeah. That lives on chain. Yeah. Because the question is, okay, these agents will, may maybe have access to private keys, like. can you trust the agents?

Marc: Right. How do, who [00:14:00] determines what trust looks like? Right. So agents need an ID that needs to be linked to a trust model that lives on chains. Yeah. That’s one thing that we’re, developing. And then the second one, that needs to be a security model. Right? Like, what if an agent goes wrong? Right.

Marc: Right. Will you give an agent access to a wallet of a that has a million dollars in it? Probably not. Right. Right, right. How do you, how do you ensure that the agent has autonomy, but constraints? Yeah, yeah. Within like delegating and them to perform certain. We’re building this, this agentic security and identity framework that will allow agents to operate securely.

Marc: And and on on the, it makes

Luke: sense too. ‘cause you’re talking about these pillars, right? Like this, the sovereign identity. And, and with a lot of things out there too, just kind of like validating who’s, who’s posting what or creating content and then transacting with it too. So it makes a lot of sense.

Luke: I think it’s really, really cool. So but to, but to, to

Marc: your point about yeah, like the developer approach, like all of all of the things that we do. Is all really focused on developers. Yeah. It’s like we’re not building kind of end-to-end products, right? Like we’re building the frameworks and the protocols and [00:15:00] the SDKs that allows developers.

Marc: To build payment flows, agent payment flows on top of that. So, yeah, so it’ll, it, our whole premise is that we wanna basically give as many opportunities to developers to implement new use cases on a grant and do this in the, in the easiest possible way. Yeah. So that’s the entire approach for the entire roadmap.

Marc: It’s fantastic. I mean,

Luke: Let’s talk about mainstream adoption too. What needs to happen to Web3 to like truly become user first and kinda invisible and, and get to that billion users that you’re talking about?

Marc: So I think there’s three things I think. One is of course we have to remove friction, right?

Marc: Like one of the elements in our roadmap is a new type of wallet called er. Mm-hmm. And so it’s really rethinking. What a wallet is from the ground up. Like in, in crypto. I think we are in a pre iPhone era. Right? If you want. I, you may not remember. I am like old. I remember. I remember I, I’m old.

Marc: I remember. I remember the Nokia days. Yeah. Where we had a Nokia smartphone. Yeah. And when you wanted to go online. You had to basically select your web gateway. Yes, yes. Right? Yes. And [00:16:00] then you had to click connect, and then it was trying to connect to a web gateway, and then only after like 30 seconds you’re connected to the web.

Marc: Right. I mean, you cannot imagine this anymore. No. Yeah. This is where we are in crypto.

Luke: It is. That’s being

Marc: kind, I think, in a lot of inverse respects you, right? Yeah. So that’s where in crypto. So I think we have to, fundamentally, we think. How users access crypto. And so like get rid of seat phrases. Right?

Marc: Right. Get rid of any type, any type of complexity and, you know, fees. Like how is it that every single time I do something on a blockchain I have to pay? Right. Like what kind of business model is this? Like when you’re in web two. Do you pay the provider of the Web two app for Oracle Access?

Marc: Right, right. No, no, no. Like why? Like why do you have to pay? So we need fee abstraction. Yeah. So there’s a number of things that need to happen in the way we, we onboard users that just completely. You know, abstracts away all the complexity. Mm-hmm. And, and that’s what we’re committed to doing. But again, we’re not doing this, we’re not gonna build an end user wallet.

Marc: We’re gonna use a, we’re gonna create a, a a white labeled wallet that [00:17:00] anybody can take. They can take the features, they can take, you know, pieces of the features. They can this completely open source. They can do whatever they want with it to allow them to basically create their own kind of branded version of it.

Marc: That, that really onboards those users. So that’s one thing. The second thing, I think what needs to happen is regulation. Mm-hmm. Has to improve. And I think in the US specifically, I think we’re making a lot of progress on that. So I think that’s an issue that will get resolved I think very quickly.

Marc: Yeah. There’s other progress happening there. And then I think the third element is reputation. Uhhuh. I think people still believe regular people still believe crypto is just only gambling. Yeah. Or scammy. Or and scammy, whatever it is. And so I think we need, as an industry, we need to be. We need to shine light on positive use cases of what crypto enables you to do.

Marc: Mm-hmm. That is not gambling. Mm-hmm. And that is not scamming people. And so I think there’s a reputational problem that’s still, that still needs.

Luke: Yeah. How do you balance that? Because so much of like marketing and adoption with crypto natives is, is around a lot of these culture, tribal cultural [00:18:00] things, but you guys are doing really interesting stuff that you want people to know about.

Luke: Is it. Is it about talking to that ring beyond that, or are you guys doing stuff to kind of connect with people that might be using other blockchains? Like what, what’s the approach on that?

Marc: Yeah, from a user perspective, I think we if you think about like from, just from purely talking as a marketing person Yeah.

Marc: How do you onboard new users? Like, I honestly think that let’s say doing TV commercials, that app that, that basically attracts a regular web, two users to crypto today. Feels for feels. Early. Yeah. If your centralized exchange is different because you’re talking about investment opportunity. Right, right, right.

Marc: And but, but if you talk about like the native crypto use cases, right? About like ownership and like, and, and consumer apps that basically convey ownership. I think we are very early still in that right, And so from our perspective, the way, the way we think about, in the very short term about like where do we attract users?

Marc: It’s, it’s what we talked about earlier. Like we have the best defi experience. [00:19:00] Mm-hmm. We’d like, and but that is a Web3 audience. Right, right, right. And so from a marketing perspective, we’re very much focused on kind of a Web3 audiences for now. Yeah. But once we have the Rocka wallet and once we have a more web two based kind of offering, then we can basically expand from there.

Marc: And to give you one example, we did a partnership with, world Chess, Uhhuh and world chess are web two users. They’re chess players. Right, right. They have over a million chess players. And so we work with them to actually launch a loyalty program that’s completely unchained. Oh, cool. And they just launched, it’s called The Tower.

Marc: Nice. And so you can actually, as a chess player, you can actually climb the tower. The more you play and the more you maintain a streak. That entire system is completely based on our grant. Oh, cool. But it’s completely abstract away for the users. Yeah. World Chess is offering it as a custodial. Service Uhhuh.

Marc: And so we launched a product called Interm Mezo that allows World Chest to manage custody of assets without having to do anything without Oh, cool. Anything. Right. So that’s kind of a web 2.5 solution. Right, right. Right. I mean, and it’s one way to onboard, right? Yeah. And then later in the year when we [00:20:00] launch Roca, they will, me, world Chest will launch it in their own kind of branded version.

Marc: It will be a completely self custodial wallet. Mm-hmm. And so chest layers will be able to take full control. Over their loyalty points. Yeah, right. Non-custodial. So it’ll be fully non-custodial wallet. They’ll be able to take full control over their loyalty points and they’ll be able to trade them, participate in defi, whatever they wanna do with them.

Marc: Yeah. And because the wallet is identity based, they’ll be able to take that wallet and go from an online chess tournament to an in-person chess tournament, just kind a QR code and prove who they are. Oh, cool. And so currently there’s a huge amount of friction that that players go through when they move from online.

Marc: To offline. Oh, okay. To kind of prove who they are, take their reputation with them. So this is gonna be a plantation that is actually completely crypto based, but that has a very, very compelling use case behind it. I love

Luke: it. You’re meeting people where

Marc: they

Luke: are like, it’s the only way you’re gonna get to the bigger audiences and, and bring them something where they don’t have to think about it, but you’re giving ’em something that they’re, you know, making life a little bit easier.

Luke: Right. You know. Let’s switch gears a little bit. quantum computing shows up in your roadmap. Yes. Um, You know, how’s [00:21:00] algorithm preparing for post quantum world?

Marc: So we’ve always been pretty advanced in this area. We have a thing called state proofs. And state proofs use kind of quantum signatures.

Marc: And what that does, it allows us to secure the ledger, make the ledger quantum secure. So our ledger today is quantum secure. Mm-hmm. So if there is a quantum computer that launches tomorrow, let’s say mm-hmm. Right. That contributor will not be able to override anything that’s already written on the ledger.

Marc: Nice. Today. So, so this ledger is computer going to secure? What’s not yet quantum secure is accounts account signatures. And consensus mechanism. And so, so we’re making a, the first step is done, ledger is done. So now we’re moving into accounts. So next step we wanna do is we wanna basically quantum security accounts.

Marc: And that’s part of the roadmap. And so we’re gonna move to a quantum secure signature scheme that allows people to create accounts that follow that signature scheme and that become quantum secure as well. So that’s the next step and that. Awesome. And that’s on the road.

Luke: No, it’s great. It’s great. From your perspective what does a user first approach to blockchains look [00:22:00] like?

Luke: So.

Marc: We talked about the Nokia Yeah. Example, right? And the i and that to be is very much what, user first means, right? Like I think it makes no sense. when Apple launched the iPhone, they showed you what user First means. Right? It’s like they, they thought from a user perspective first about like, what, how you use a phone and how you use the internet, and, and they abstracted the way, all the complexities that were associated with this.

Marc: and that’s what User First is. and I think we have very few products anywhere in crypto that actually have followed that approach. Yeah. And so, because I think all of the people, like it’s very complex technology, right? It’s super complex. And all of the people that actually develop apps need to be very, very technical, right?

Marc: Right. To develop them. Right? And so, and so therefore, it’s not a surprise that the technology itself is not abstracted the away because for the people that develop the products. It is obvious what these things mean. Right,

Luke: right. It’s almost like they’re showing ’em off. Right. Like Yeah. In the product ux, which is great for science projects, but like yeah.

Luke: So great for like [00:23:00] adoptable technology. Yeah.

Marc: And so it’s, it’s very interesting. And so when we were doing hackathons for instance, like we would see these projects come up and they would be. They would be very impressive from a technical perspective and like, wow, did they do this with a smart contract?

Marc: That’s amazing. Yeah, it’s super, super cool. But there were never any UIs, right? Right. Because nobody like cared about the ui. And so it’s very interesting. We just participated last month in Bolt Hackathon and Bolt is this AI provider that largely kind of built full stack like vibe coding, right?

Marc: Yeah, yeah. Full stack apps using vibe coding. And so they they had an amazing success. They had over a hundred thousand developers. Wow. Participate in this hackathon, which is like, that’s huge. Yeah. Mind blowing. Right? Amazing. So we were their blockchain partner, so we had a specific category for blockchain based apps.

Marc: And so it’s very cool to see like. What you get as apps when they’re built by people that are not blockchain native. Right, right, right. Yeah. So like, oh, this thing look good. Right? Oh, imagine this. And so what I think needs to happen, and we will do much more of this, is that try to marry these [00:24:00] web two developers that are more frontend, frontend developers and marry them up with our core engineers and our smart contract engineers.

Marc: The people that are very, very sophisticated in how to build smart contracts. And I think The right combination is to marry them together and have them work together. So all of our future hackathons we’re try and accomplish that is like, can we do team building? Mm-hmm. Ahead of the hackathon where we take some really, really good front engineers that have TypeScript experience that, but maybe they wanna do vibe coding, have a brilliant idea, maybe they don’t know how to code, right.

Marc: But can do vibe coding and then you marry it up with the backend people that know how to develop on a blockchain and how to build smart contracts safely. Mm-hmm. Right? And so, and that I think is the right, that is the right combination and that’s how you get. That’s how you get magic to happen. I think

Luke: that’s awesome.

Luke: No um, mark, man, it’s been great talking to you. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you think you want our audience to know about, about what you all have gone got going on?

Marc: I gotta say one thing. Yeah. Like, we’re launching a very cool new campaign in September called Algo Land. Nice. And it’s for anybody who wants to explore.

Marc: Awesome. And so we will have, it’s a campaign that will [00:25:00] last for 13 weeks. We will have weekly prizes. We’ll have quests for you to do on chain. You can actually discover all of the great projects that run on our grant. You can win weekly prizes. We’ll have prize to the Formula One in Vegas, for instance.

Marc: Fantastic. Vegas. Yeah. And we’ll have prices at the end as well. So it’ll be very exciting. We’re very excited about launching this because we want more people to explore the ecosystem that we’ve built and the, and specifically the defi experience that we talked about. So

Luke: fantastic. and where can people go to learn more about Al Grant or follow your work or anything like that?

Marc: So they can, they can find us on, on, x of course. Okay. Follow algo Foundation. Al Grant Foundation of, they can go online and look at us. The website is al grant.co. Okay. Or they can follow us on Twitter, on Instagram. Uhhuh, we are on TikTok. We have a discord. If you’re technically in nature, sign up for a Discord server and we can help you develop stuff on our grant.

Marc: And so, yeah, many, many channels.

Luke: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much, mark. I really appreciate it. Love to have you back on too, and, and check in back in on how things are going. Great.

Marc: Thanks for having

Luke: me. Thank you.

Luke: Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist Podcast.

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