076 - Securing Bitcoin's Future: Keith Gardner on Branta, Guardrail, and the Battle for Safe Transactions

In this episode, Keith Gardner, CEO and founder of Branta, discusses the importance of Bitcoin payment security and the unique challenges faced by users in the cryptocurrency space. He shares his journey into Bitcoin, the emotional connection he felt when using it, and the motivation behind founding Branta. The conversation delves into a recent NPM attack that highlighted vulnerabilities in Bitcoin transactions and how Branta aims to provide a solution for secure payments.

Keith emphasizes the need for businesses to adopt secure practices when accepting Bitcoin and the potential for Branta to enhance transaction security. Keith discusses the evolution of Branta and its product Guardrail, emphasizing the importance of open-source philosophy, global reach, and a sustainable business model. He shares insights on the future roadmap, challenges of centralization versus decentralization, and the growing user demand for privacy and security in financial transactions.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Branta and Keith Gardner
07:46 Keith's Journey into Bitcoin and Entrepreneurship
16:00 Understanding Bitcoin Payment Security Challenges
22:04 Branta's Solution for Secure Bitcoin Transactions
32:09 Open Source Philosophy and Its Implications
34:07 Global Reach and Team Dynamics
35:40 Business Model and Financial Sustainability
40:37 Future Roadmap and Innovations
44:10 Challenges of Centralization vs. Decentralization
47:15 User Demands for Privacy and Security
49:28 Marketing Strategies and Community Engagement
56:03 Final Thoughts on Company Building and Action Bias

References
https://branta.pro/
https://x.com/unfakekeith

https://www.buildwithbitcoin.xyz/
https://x.com/BuildwBitcoin
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❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional.

Transcript

Keith: 0:00

Bronte integrates directly with businesses that receive Bitcoin. So if you're a business that's receiving Bitcoin, like what you're doing is you're, you know, communicating to your customer, hey, this is where you can pay us. And that's great. And so with, you know, basically one API call, very quick integration, these platforms can enable Bronte, and then the only thing that changes is this at checkout or at the point of pay, the user has the option to click a little link, boom, verify with Bronte. Now this can be optional or this can be required. That depends on the platform. We're going to see both. And you know, if you're if you're sending any meaningful amount of money, you want to click that link, and then you'll have a new tab. New tab in the same browser. Just kind of mirror back to you the address that you would expect with a big green bar. Um, kind of the metaphor here that I like to think of is triangulation, where, like, you know, if you're going to invest in a, say, you're going to invest in something, you probably triangulate at least two sources right before you make a decision and when, when you send bitcoin, you should probably check with one or two sources before you make a decision to set.

Israel: 1:15

Welcome to today's episode. We're joined by Keith Gardner, CEO and founder of Brenta, diving into the world of Bitcoin payment security, Keith shares his personal journey with Bitcoin, the inspiration behind Brenta and how their product guardrail tackles vulnerabilities like the recent NPM supply chain attack. We'll explore open source philosophy, the balance of centralization versus decentralization and the growing demand for privacy in transactions, with some added insights on marketing community and building a sustainable business, we hope you enjoy and as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you do enjoy the content we're producing, please remember to subscribe, share and drop us a comment, as This all helps us grow organically. Thank you. Lynne and I are partners at base layer advisors, where we use our network of Venture Capital Partners and startup founders to connect investors with unique opportunities within the Bitcoin innovation space. Alongside this, we help startup founders with their growth and fundraising. Visit our website's advisory section to learn more. Welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm co host Irene Munoz and joined with co host Lynne Bairstow, today we have the pleasure of welcoming Keith Gardner, CEO and founder of branta, Keith, welcome. We're excited to get into today's conversation. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. Branta is a company focused on Bitcoin payment security, and it's enabling the ability to pre validate payments. Since Bitcoin has this unique feature that payments are irreversible, this is quite an important topic. So we certainly want to focus on the conversation regarding what you're working on at brand to Keith, but before that, we'd love to understand you know, where you come from, who you are as a founder. So why don't we start there? You know, what were you doing before branta? And also, how were you introduced to Bitcoin? Yeah, I

Keith: 3:09

so, I guess my professional career really started at Bloomberg. I was writing code there. And to cut to the chase, there's a lot of ugliness when you're working on a Fiat stack. So that hit me, and then sometime later, during covid, I kind of found Bitcoin in a real way, and I saw this sort of elegance, and I saw a lot of wide open space in Bitcoin, importantly, actually, without necessitating a protocol change. So like, what I saw in Bitcoin was, okay, there's this protocol and there's there's so much to do. It's so obvious. This thing is so raw, it's very nuts and bolts. So that was kind of my ingress point to Bitcoin, the

Lynne Bairstow: 3:50

kind of the origin. I mean, for me, I know I've been in Bitcoin since 2013 but the first time you sign a payment, the first time you send bitcoin, really, anytime you send bitcoin, you have that gut wrenching feeling like, is it going to get to the person I'm sending it to? And and I said, Did you have any of those moments that made you just want to develop this and solve this problem or help help people get over that hurdle of fear? Yeah.

Keith: 4:17

Yeah. 100% I think I know moving a fair amount of bitcoin at the time. And this was like, probably 2021, I think I moved like 20 grand over a ledger at the time. Um, and for me, just as a person, when I feel emotional, I stop and I really smell the roses. Because, like, not that many things you know, really provoke emotion today, certainly in Fiat, right? Like when I swipe a MasterCard or a chase sapphire, there's no emotion. But when I moved some bitcoin across, you know, into the mempool and in a transaction like it was very emotional. So I just kind of lingered on that and let that marinate, you know, really stop and smell the roses. 90s, and I think then it hit me, like, there's no one to call here. There's no one to call. You can't call anybody. And Fiat, it happens all the time. And that was just a very obvious sort of indicator, like, like, if this hit me emotionally, it's probably hitting everybody. I don't know if everybody else has paid attention or not. The other thing that really struck me was, you know, in 2020, 2021, like store value was pretty dialed. I felt between entropy with signing devices. So, you know, open start, open source, verifiable firmware two or three, multi SIG, like this layer of monetization of Bitcoin was was good already. So I thought, well, if I'm going to contribute to Bitcoin, I'm probably not going to become a core developer. Lightning is really complex. That's being No, take a while to ramp up on. But then I thought about the point of actually sending your Bitcoin, because that's where I was touched. And then I just focused on that, right? Like it's store value, it's medium of exchange, it's unit of account, eventually, and I just felt we were at medium of exchange, and that was the most likely way I would wreck myself,

Israel: 6:08

and that, that dis, that decision path, out of curiosity. Keith, I mean, is this your first company? I mean, what? What led you to? Of course, you got to have quite a bit of conviction. And do you sacrifice quite a bit. You know, when, when you start a company from scratch? What? What was that moment for you?

Keith: 6:26

Yeah, that's a so I think people need to pay way more attention to this. So I can share my example. But this is, this is unique to each person. Um, so I think from a very young age, like, like, my mind always delineates between like, like, what's a good design, what's a bad design. Like, where can good designs go bad? So I had always been thinking about that. Now, for people that have been paying attention, there's this thing called bit chat right now by Dorsey and a bunch of other open source devs are jumping on it. And this, this is technology that is mesh. So if you have a phone right now, the model is centralized. They hit a cell phone tower ISPs, DNS, and this routes through centralized internet infrastructure. Now what bit chat is is decentralized. It's just peer to peer mesh, Bluetooth or Wi Fi. So this is not a company that I made, but in 2014 that was my guess. That was like my sophomore year in college. So I didn't know anything, but I hopped on the Xcode and with Objective C, there's this multi peer connectivity API. And so again, your question was on, is this my first, I guess, rodeo? Long story short, there, I built this app called Fresh with two H's. Now what fresh was you could walk around campus with your phone. If you had fresh, fresh was in the background, and when you saw a peer, it would show up on your screen a lot like bit chat, right? So like, if you're on the same Wi Fi network or within proximity, you could see somebody, and this app actually, you could, like, add your Instagram and your Snapchat, and you could just ping somebody and say, Hey, looking fresh. It's like a compliment thing. If you're in the library, you see somebody's shoes. It's the same architecture as bit chat. So I built that in 2014 published it. It was kind of big on our college campus. Probably nobody remembers it. I don't even think there's like remnants online. It was, it was a yellow app with like a wink in the face, very prototyping. But that was kind of my first like product that I built and offered, obviously, distribution execution. I was young, I didn't really have any goals with it, so that was kind of my first answer. And my second answer was, I guess some years later, I built a literacy platform, actually, with my mom. My mom has literacy content curriculum for learning to read when you're a young person in like kindergarten, a child. So we kind of took that, ported that online with the web stack that made money, never raised funds with it. That was cool. Um, turns out you can do, you know, kind of basic stuff, and make money. But during covid, I shut that down because wasn't really my thing. It wasn't really my passion. I learned a lot through it on, really, on executing, I think, executing tech. But when I found Bitcoin, it just resonated so much more. And when I found Bitcoin, it was all right, wait. I can zero myself out on Bitcoin and feel good. I don't want to zero myself out for literature. I just don't care that much. The kids are going to learn to read with or without me, but with bronta. But I don't know somebody else going to make bronta Like eventually, but I want to take a swing at it first.

Lynne Bairstow: 9:43

You know, Keith Brunt is focused on on the medium of exchange aspect of it, and there's so much talk these days, especially with the the financialization. Well, Marty bent calls it the the bitcoinization of finance, but it's like Wall Street taking over, and so. Store of value has just been so, so much in the news and the priority, but medium of exchange. Why is that important to you, and why did you want to focus your talents on this?

Keith: 10:09

Yeah, this is one of those questions you have to think about optics before you answer. You know, the short answer I kind of already said, but like, store of value is somewhat it's somewhat solved technically. It's like, my mind is very technical. I think on the store of value. It's like the technical underpinnings of, you know, the m of n, multi state, quorum, entropy for generating keys is very important. I don't know the supply chain for making, you know, cold cards, for example. But like, it's there. People are doing it now. I guess we're, we're in the distribution phase for store value. Like, we're kind of porting that into Wall Street, into finance, into treasuries. I'm just not that interested. I think is the really simple, like, honest answers. I just don't care that much. Like, I'm really interested in in flight Bitcoin, whether that's, you know, Bitcoin or

Lynne Bairstow: 11:04

like, and I, you know, I think sometimes too, it's the perspective of where you are and how you operate in the world, too. So, you know, Israel and I are blessed enough to talk to entrepreneurs all over the world and just some of the problems they're solving. But you know, do you have any of those experiences where you've been using it yourself and just realize the day to day pain points that people use from sending Bitcoin?

Keith: 11:29

Yeah? Yeah. I mean, that's probably like the perfect follow up is, I guess my other answer is, like, I'm not managing a ton of money, like I'm not a CFO or a CRO or like I'm not managing a massive Treasury for a massive company. So I'm not really thinking about Treasury strategies. What I am thinking about is when people impersonate me on Twitter. That's really bad. I've had people impersonate me and my friends lose money. So now I have a little line in my telegram that says, like, check shared groups or something stupid, like, what a what a trivial way to defer that or, like, what I'm also worried about is if I get an invoice, I don't want to get scammed. Like, if I have a $2,000 bill I have to pay this month in coin, I'm going to be really annoyed if I get fished it's like, you're not going to I'm not going to be out of the game if I lose 1000 bucks, but I'm going to be mad because some other human did that to me. So like, if people would stop scamming, I wouldn't be here. But the people will not stop spamming, you know? So anyways, I think there's just a, there's a really elegant solution for this, and that's why we're here.

Israel: 12:35

Yeah, it's, it's a problem that needs to be addressed, right? And and it is happening, and it'll likely continue happening all the more as adoption grows and the price, you know, brings in new interest, and there's never a lack of scammers out there. And we actually just had an incident, which we we do want to get your take on helping us understand what happened, but before that maybe, I guess we we can segue, and we haven't explicitly mentioned exactly what brand to does. But can you give us a quick page Keith of what branta is and how it works?

Keith: 13:12

Yeah, yeah. The first thing, yeah, so the 32nd pitch for Brontes, if you're a business accepting bitcoin, can your customers right now and double check that they're actually paying. That's the pitch, pronto. Lets users do that in under two seconds with zero

Israel: 13:31

friction. Getting back to this recent incident. So this, this, actually, this episode all came up because of this. We had you in mind because there was in the news and in the in the X community. It was quite spoken of, I believe it was a couple of weeks ago. Excuse the, you know, the lack of the right description here. But it was essentially an attack that affected many potential on chain transactions, and there was a lot of chatter on, beware, if you're using certain devices or certain wallets, you could be at risk of someone fishing the the receiving address. Can you explain exactly what that incident was? And then, of course, how branta is, you know, plays a role in this.

Keith: 14:17

Yeah, yeah. Let's just dial right in on this. So what happened was bad code got an NPM package. NPM is node package manager, and it's just a JavaScript library thing that a lot of websites. So websites use JavaScript, but also mobile apps use JavaScript, and back end servers use JavaScript. So JavaScript everywhere, and this bad code got in a very, very low level, sort of like, almost like a root level package in this code, the developer actually, I believe, got phished, or his, like count, got taken over, and then this code was injected through his credentials. No one's really. Way there to check it. The reason it got found is some developer had a failure in their CI pipeline, I believe. But anyways, why this matters is this bad code basically got distributed in a lot of places. I think it got caught pretty quickly. But what the code did, the code would look at your screen and just switch an address at and so this gets back to our store of value versus medium of exchange. I don't care if addresses are being switched. If I'm not sending Bitcoin, like, if you have a two of three, and you're on, you have a treasury company, right? And your bitcoin is just sitting, you're chilling, you're not moving your Bitcoin, right? But the package, what it would do is it would switch the address. So when you do go to move your Bitcoin, you think you're sending your Bitcoin to one address, but it's not the right destination. So this is very bad. And essentially what happens is, like, on the fly, basically you have a global intercept of all Bitcoin payments, potentially, and that's like the worst case scenario, right? So like, what's the daily volume on lightning or l1 I don't know it's it's pretty big. It's getting bigger, and you certainly don't want to lose your coin. So I can go on a lot more, but I'll pause there and let you chime in

Israel: 16:13

so it what was happening is that this, this attack would enable so let's say I'm sending transaction to Wallet Address B and on screen, kind of last minute. It would just basically swap that to some other address and and then if I fall into that, boom, it's gone right. Nothing to be done. Yeah.

Keith: 16:37

Like a great term is like last mile problem, where everything has been done Perfect, all the TLS, all the SSL, your multi sync, your wallet, everything's cool. Then at the very last minute, it's a really dumb trick. It's like a script kiddie trick. They just switch the address on your browser. So it's a very cheap trick, but it's very effective. Um, yeah. And so like, the the terms that I think in our like, you just shouldn't trust your screen. Like, why trust your screen? I don't trust my screen like, it works most of the time. But when it comes to digital scarcity, like, the screen predates digital scarcity, like, L, L, what is it? LCD screens, liquid crystal display. This was invented a long time ago. Um, same with processors, like they processors, CPUs, the clipboard, copy and paste your mouse. These technologies predate Bitcoin. And so what I would really like to see in what bronta is writing long form about, is how almost all technology we use today predates digital scarcity. It's all incompatible. So, like, humanity needs to hard fork all of our hardware, like now, and what branch is really doing is getting us to that other side where, like, right now, I'm on an iMac. I have an iPhone. I have another phone too, but I don't trust any of them. And just just to go on with one more point here. Luke Dasher on the on the supply chain topic, we'll talk about that topic. He wrote this brilliant tweet that has been keeping me up at night for like 700 days, and I just haven't spoken about it. And it's that the NPM package, it can swap the address that you see. But the really bad thing is, if the attack also swaps, you know, your screen and shows that the receiver has received your coin. So just to pause there and like, I don't like fear tactics. I don't like I don't like fear at all. I think fear is the only thing we have to fear. But if the attacker swaps your address and actually makes you think your Bitcoin was sent, like you're wrecked on both ends, like it's one thing, if you think you're sending to the wrong place, and you instantly know it's even more deceitful if your coins like if you think it worked fine, right? So Luke Dasher had this tweet, I don't think I engaged with it, but, but this is the danger we're facing right now, and so this is directly what brought to solve with basically a mirroring system that guardrail offers.

Lynne Bairstow: 19:12

Keith, you know, I'm like you. I don't like to I'm definitely a glass half full type of a person, but I think is really important to be aware how, how real is this threat? I mean, is it resolved now? I mean, where are we today, with the NPM throughout it? I mean, is it resolved? Could it come back again? What do people need to be aware of in order to to kind of be more cautious about threats like this?

Keith: 19:37

Yeah, yeah, this is tough because, like, we're we three are on this podcast. It's September 2025, like people can listen in a year or in six years, right? Um, so I'm just gonna be honest. So this specific attack was like a best case scenario, right? Maximum visibility every every single person saw it funny, yeah, I think. Only $400 worth of not even Bitcoin was stolen, but some other coin. So it's like, minimum damage, maximum visibility. I mean, define what is a blessing, right? So for this specific attack, I'm very glad, like, nobody lost their book. I think it also highlighted the need for like, Do you have another layer, like, can your users check somehow that the device they're on is not compromised? So this particular attack, I believe, has been patched, certainly, certainly all critical infra has had their eyes on it. So this package and this attack, like, Yeah, I think, I think we're cool, but what I will say,

Israel: 20:42

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Keith: 21:03

with Bitcoin. Yeah, what I would say is this attack got detected. What did not get detected? What what is out there? What is dormant? It's two lines of code to write, code that does not activate until a certain time. So people are really smart with AI, writing these attacks is very cheap. I think, you know, you can have kids, you can have AI agents write this boom, slip it in. And there could be seven more of these undetected right now, as far as we know. So, yeah, that's my honest answer, yeah.

Israel: 21:34

And it highlights, I think, something which you precisely mentioned earlier, but it is something that not many people are paying that much attention to or or are aware of, which is, I mean, even if you have studied Bitcoin plenty, so you come to the conclusion that the Bitcoin protocol is, you know, quite solid. It's attack resistant. And even even there, there's still some, you know, threats, the quantum stuff and all these other things that still need to be, you know, looked at and perhaps upgraded, but all the UI and tools around it of how we actually end up using it and sending value to one another. I mean, to your point, it all seems like a big gray area and and a huge attack service. So it's, yeah, it's a fascinating topic on brand itself. Then Keith so aware of this attack and the massive vulnerabilities that these types of attacks present. How does branta actually work? I mean, for you know, we don't need to get too technical, but how do you actually implement that as as a business? And why then am I more secure?

Keith: 22:49

Yeah, yeah. So bronta integrates directly with businesses that receive Bitcoin. So if you're a business that's receiving Bitcoin, like, what you're doing is you're, you know, communicating to your customer, hey, this is where you can pay us, and that's great. And so with, you know, basically one API call, very quick integration, these platforms can enable branch, and then the only thing that changes is this at checkout or at the point of pay, the user has the option to click a little link, boom, verify with Ron. Now this can be optional or this can be required. That depends on the platform. We're going to see both. And you know, if you're if you're sending any meaningful amount of money, you want to click that link, and then you'll have a new tab in the same browser, just kind of mirror back to you the address that you would expect with a big green bar in kind of the metaphor here that I like to think of is triangulation, where, like, you know, if you're going to invest in a, say, you're going to invest in something, you probably triangulate at least two sources right before you make a decision. And when, when you send bitcoin, you should probably check with one or two sources before you make a decision to send so. So that's what Bronte does, right in I very much encourage people to go to our primal noster reads. We've been using this new feature on primal, and we have our long form content. But the real key here is like, if I'm looking at my computer like this screen. This is one computer. This is another computer. If I have an invoice on my Mac, I can scan that QR with my phone. And what's really cool there is, like, if my Mac is hacked, I'm going to see that on my iPhone right. Like, I can these links are portable to verify the address with bronta, there's no login. So you can be, you can be living in California, you can be in Hawaii, you can be in Paris, and you can just, you can just open the link on a phone, a computer. You can have somebody next to you do the same. So if you think your devices are compromised, it's like a one second thing to check. And these, all these devices. Will show you the same address without docs.

Israel: 25:01

Again, interesting. And you know this, this makes me think, I mean, if, if I'm a business that's serious about accepting bitcoin as a payment like I would almost think you you need to have something like this, because, I mean, otherwise, why even accept Bitcoin payments at all? And I'm just thinking through, you know, some of these scenarios. So let's say, you know, a customer thinks they're sending funds. There was some sort of phishing, and they it never got to me. I mean, to your initial comments in Bitcoin, there's no one to call, right? So who's the customer naturally going to be getting very upset with or trying to blame it's, you know, you get into, you present all sorts of unnecessary problems. I would think, yeah,

Keith: 25:48

yeah. I have a thought on that. I'd like to add is that, like, you know, I view bronta Is, all I want to do is help the other Bitcoin companies. Like, we're not really special. We just want to augment your existing business. As far as I know, we're not competing with anybody, but as a bitcoiner, I want the existing Bitcoin companies that are acting in good faith to succeed. I want to push this space forward. So one thought that I really love, it's from Parker Lewis, over at previously at Unchained, now at Zari, and Parker talks really eloquently about business continuity, when your Fiat systems fail by simply integrating Bitcoin as a payment rails alongside your Fiat rails, pretty straightforward to me, like, two is two is one. One is not. That's really cool. But like, what's the backup to your Bitcoin rails, like, where's your operational continuity when there's a supply chain attack with NPM, like, all of a sudden, if you're running a platform and chrome, brave, Safari, Firefox and Android are switching addresses on the fly. How does your how can your customers pay you? They cannot check if the device has been wrecked. There's no second source to check against. So that's what bronta offers for the first time. And, you know, like, I'm we're kind of still developing this thought, and we'll be publishing on it, but we really view bronta as like, the thing that absorbs the damage, like when there is an attack. Like, bronta is the backup rails to your Bitcoin in a sense, and it's called guardrail for that.

Lynne Bairstow: 27:23

You know, I'm thinking, What about individuals that are living on Bitcoin stand? I mean, we're maybe a little far from this, but it's like, can you do the same thing as an individual, like, if you're receiving payments as a I mean, maybe you are a business, but if you you know you send and receive on a regular basis, is there an individual level of Bronto that that can be implemented?

Keith: 27:46

Yeah, we've been asked a couple couple times like, yeah, yeah, there is. We're not. We have a waitlist coming right now. And the focus, just directionally, for the company, is it's more B to B, for the reason that you know, B to C, there is high friction, and ultimately, to run a company to make money at some point, right? Charging businesses is pretty straightforward. You just charge business on B to C. It's like, Lynne, if you want to come on, like, what do we do there? Like, do we charge you? Do we not? Is there some sort of throttling? But yeah, like, technically, we can do that. The other comment I would make it because our goal is very plainly said, to just eliminate scamming and phishing. I just don't like that. I'm not cool with it. Like, I have a personal problem with you if you're scamming, so stop the pod. Get off right now. But yeah, like, we can impact the most number of users if we serve business first. That's the short answer. The second answer is, privacy is slightly less of a concern for B to B than B to C. Right? Privacy and B to C is extremely, extremely high touch on B to B. There's a little more leeway.

Israel: 28:57

That gets me to, I mean, how are you actually rolling out Brenta so far. Keith, I mean, the early adopters, maybe, intuitively, one would think it's E commerce businesses you're talking about, but perhaps there's also, you know, other sorts of Bitcoin businesses that deal with high value payments. And also would, of course, be interested in a product like this. I mean, what's, what's the typical user so far?

Keith: 29:21

Yeah. I mean, you know, branch is, like, relatively young. I don't think anybody's really seen the model before. So speaking on go to market, it's a little, it's a little, you know, it's a little early, probably, to talk about that like I said, our vision is a SAT as a SAT. We want all SATs to get where they're going now, yeah, what was my other thought there? Yeah, like for, I guess for metrics is really what you're touching on. So we actually post some of our metrics on our website for now that may, that may change in the future. The metrics that we're really proud about right now are no downtime, no hacks, very, very solid, v1 product. Um, so. Like, the foundation is insanely strong. Reception has been fantastic. We're very proud in terms of metrics on, like, the fact that we don't track and we're very open about privacy implications. And I'll also say, like, behind closed doors, like buying is happening from the right people. So metrics are tough. When you're early, I think actually, you know, a lot of your audience is entrepreneurial. Focusing on metrics too much is probably not how you create great art. Like, I think a bronta is a big art project, and if you focus on metrics in the beginning, you're at zero. So, you know, we're focused on it, but more more so we're focused on, like, making something great for the big customers that you want,

Israel: 30:42

you're spot on. I think, you know, especially for product like Brando. I mean, what you need to have is close to 100% uptime. You know, know what? Zero attacks like you want to make sure that that that technical design is bulletproof, basically, right? That's great to hear. And how long has brand to been? I guess we never touched on it, but operational. Keith, yeah,

Keith: 31:07

so I guess branded the company, guardrail, the product brought to the company. I guess, you know, end of 2023, but more is just a shell in the beginning. Just stand it up, legal structure. Iterate right now. Our initial product was called Bronte core. We're not talking about that here. We're talking about guardrail. But just to give dates like, Bronte core was desktop software that's deprecated. It's open source. You can check it out, not doing a lot with it right now. But guardrail is it's a it's a it's almost a year old. It's almost a year old since conception. But a lot of iteration has taken place distribution testing, because this is the sort of thing that it really has to be perfect. And, you know, you can't really rush, like correctness and perfection, like the vision that I always, you know, iterate, is, like, you know, 50 Year Vision, 200 year business plan. What's, what's the 200 year business plan? So, like, what, what matters in the first year? It matters that you get it right and you still eat food every day, yeah. So that's, that's kind of the top

Lynne Bairstow: 32:17

talking about open source is guardrail, also open source or or just core. And what is your philosophy about building on open source? I'm always curious about that, because it seems to be so much more championed in the Bitcoin space than it is in traditional tech.

Keith: 32:32

Yeah, that's a great question. So, yeah, Bronto core is desktop software necessitating FOSS. So Bronto core is FOSS. Again, that's not like production grade. We're not pushing that, but you can find it on GitHub. So Bronte core runs on the user's computer that's FOSS got MIT on that. Now, guardrail is just server. It's really just a service that the core service that Bronte provides, API dots are open, but the actual server is closed source, yeah. And I guess, more broadly, like my views on FOSS versus closed source, um, it's an insane fusion. I think it's this, like, it's this beautiful yin yang. It's this grappling match between two very different models, and, quite frankly, centralized models perform in in certain areas very well you can provide, you know, like in nature, like a lion is centralized, a tiger is centralized. You know, what's decentralized is a forest or my ceiling, right? So even nature, like even nature, has centralized entities and has decentralized entities. And I think certain, you know, companies and products should be centralized because they best serve the users at the lowest cost in certain certain models, and software should be decentralized. So certainly, Bitcoin ushers in the need for a lot of FOSS. And when you install software really, FOSS is pretty, pretty hard to beat when you're using a service. I don't want to name companies, but most companies don't open source their stack, right? Like, if it's a web portal that you log into, very often, it's not open source. So that's, that's my thoughts briefly

Israel: 34:11

on it. And as far as the the reach and availability of brand to Keith, I'm assuming it's available globally. Who? I mean, where are your customers? So far, the initial pipeline. Is it us focused? I don't know. What are the demographics there?

Keith: 34:29

Yeah, yeah. So Bronto guardrail is available globally. We've been working mostly with Europeans and Americans so far, and that's just really because of Team proximity to America. Like Austin's a powerhouse. Nationals, a powerhouse. But you know, we've talked to people from, gosh, how many continents? Geez, maybe six out is Antarctica. So six, six continents, I think you've talked to a lot, and you're like, my favorite thing to do is talk to Bitcoins. But yeah, bronze vision is like, yeah, global, very.

Israel: 35:00

And how big is the Bronte team so far, Keith, I mean, speaking to how you operate as a business, you know, as an organization, are you guys hybrid remote? How big? What are the responsibilities there?

Keith: 35:15

Yeah, so we're organized remotely. The team is listed on our about page so anybody can go check it out to be up to date. We're approaching 10 right now. Phil Geiger, previously done chain just came on as an advisor, which is great. Yeah, you know, I mean, the vision is like lean value. People talk about tether doing a great job in this. I think that's a good board starting for

Israel: 35:40

it's a theme, you know, we've been seeing quite a bit, right? Lynne and we, we actually have spoken to this in past episodes, and it goes beyond Bitcoin, right? The technology stack is just nothing compared to what it was 10 years ago. You have AI and all of these other automation tools that are just creating so many efficiencies. But there is also quite a bit to be said about the Bitcoin entrepreneurial mindset, you know, thinking long term, which you clearly are, you know, you mentioned a 200 year vision. And unfortunately, we've kind of steered away from that in the in the tech, in the tech world, we have seen this, this common denominator, quite a bit, right? Lynne, in the in the Bitcoin startup sector, which is interesting of a very lean and very efficient companies.

Lynne Bairstow: 36:31

And then, speaking of that, is like, how does Brande make money? You talked about the focus of B to B, and just, you know, how you, how you, as the CEO is really are envisioning the growth of the company and where it's best to spend your time. But tell, tell us a little bit about how Brenta is succeeds in finance.

Keith: 36:50

I mean, you know, the reason we want to succeed is because, like, I think in 200 years, Bitcoin will be around, utxos are going to be even cooler then than they are now, and I think scammers will be around at 200 years too. So, like, it's funny to talk about, but it's, it's actually, I'm, I'm de exaggerating it, right? It's more of 1000 year business plan. Like, why not just, why not just get real about the plan now for an entity to operate that long? Like, what do you want to do? If you want to stay lean, you want to add a lot of value. So, so in terms of the actual business model, like we charge businesses, there's a couple of plans that we offer. I'm not going to talk too concretely about them here, but it's if you can imagine a mix, perhaps of Visa or MasterCard model, maybe you think of lightning prisms or something like that. That's, you know, percentage based, that's, that's on the table. And then traditional SAS does what API calls. So there's a bunch of options. I've talked to some some pricing experts who are, like, just insanely deep in SAS pricing. It's crazy. Have all these sorts of like, base plus retainer discounts, 30 day free windows. They've got all this insane stuff for B to B SAS pricing like that field is not that. Maybe it's exciting. I don't know. It feels very well developed to me. So I think there it's more like, it's more like, what what are our customers doing and what works best for them in their business model? Because there are different use cases, right? Like, are you using guardrail for micro payments that need no latency? Right? Like, lightning is fast. Lightning is really fast. On chain is slow. These are two different use cases, and this goes back to the concept of FOSS versus, like a centralized company. Now, FOSS is very resilient. You think of a forest and mycelium, but you know, what's fast is a cheetah. Cheetah is a centralized entity, and a cheetah, you can do SLAs on how do you do SLAs on a decentralized forest? Or like SLAs on Bitcoin? Actually, Bitcoin kind of has achieved that. But that's like breakthrough of, like, 10,000 years, right? Like, we're not going to do that at Bronte, but what bronta is positioned to do is offer SLAs that do vary between the lightning use case of like, boom, boom, boom, super high throughput. What are your latency requirements? Is it 40 milliseconds? Is it 500 milliseconds? I don't know if you're moving $10 million in, you know, in in whale money. Maybe you have different requirements. Maybe you have a different use case for product, right? So there's a lot here to look at. And I think we're really like, what has really occurred, more and more to me, is like we have, we have just touched the iceberg. We have just dusted off the tip of the iceberg. And like you know, 90% of it is, is still to be polished and executed and distributed

Lynne Bairstow: 39:52

well, then then drawing on that. What are some of the kind of roadmap for what you what you envision you'll be able to offer as a company going forward? Do you have. Anything specific that you'd like to share or or not get people's hopes up too high, but, but what else would you like to see in this space?

Keith: 40:08

Yeah, yeah. So, So, great question. I mean, like I said, it's just that I just want people to be able to use their Bitcoin and not fear losing it. And like, should your should your money be emotional? I don't know. Probably not. Like, there's just more friction, some level of that's good because, like, bitcoin does turn it on your head. Like, instead of outsourcing your thinking, like you actually have to think before you send. It's very hard, right? Like you have to think, like you have to check the address, first six, last six is my fee rate Correct? Am I pulling the correct utxos. Am I on a tour node? Where am I broadcasting from my home? IP? So there's a lot to do to think about. What was your question? Oh, yeah, what's coming next? Yeah, I could talk about this for 12 hours. So this is a public podcast. I want to set expectations. So one thing on our mind is, like, I think we really solidify the company's operational continuity right now. And like, I don't want to spend my bitcoin or send bitcoin to places that don't have guardrail. I've used guardrail so much. It's like, oh, man, oof, you don't have guardrail. Like, I don't trust my Safari browser. I really don't. I just don't want to do business with you, sorry. So that's my mindset in terms of the actual product, like computer science is very cool. And actually computer science like in this so in this dimension, like physics doesn't really change, does? I don't know if physics changes, it stays the same. Computer science is almost like, outside of physics in some way, like, the relationship's a little less clear, but like, time complexity in computer science means, like, given an info, how long does it take you to process that? So this is something we're really thinking about, Bronte, especially with lightning and speed and just, you know, just server and electricity cost, um, and so with respect to the Lightning Network, like, yeah, I don't want to go too technical, but there's, there's some very clear foundational computer science concepts that can be applied to really collapse the time complexity of the system to all of one from from an O, of n, sort of solution. Something very, very similar is possible for on chain. Privacy can take a hit if you do this. So the first thing I would say is, in terms of, yeah, in terms of companies integrating this, this thing is going to end up being super fast, 100% SLA up time. And the other thing that I want to mention is, is subpoena risk, right? Like, that's annoying, like, depending on the administration that runs the country, or, like, subpoena is, is something to be on the mind. Like, if you want to build a 200 year, 1000 year company, this is something you'd have to think about. So zero knowledge is on our mind. It's on our roadmap. It's it's in our pull request. When we roll that out, I don't think it's 2025, but like, how cool would it be if bronta never had to know any information about who's paying but still let you verify destination on a centralized model? That's like, really cool. So I'll kind of stop riffing. I think that was vague, but like, that's specifically, like, what's on the product,

Israel: 43:25

and it's kind of where we need to get to. I mean, beyond it being, you know, cool and interesting. Because if, if bitcoin has proved anything extremely concretely, it's that any sort of centralized database or or power entity will be corrupted and it will be abused, right? So it's a very real, real problem that we need to solve in in all of these other edge, edge cases around the protocol as

Keith: 43:56

well. Yeah, it is. And it's like, like, I think you guys talk a lot about entrepreneurs and like, what is the path and attorney? Like, one, one problem that I think every company faces and every family as well as, like, okay, one person dies. How does the entity go on? How does the collective go if I get hit by a bus who takes over Bronco? What decisions do they make? What do they do with the data? How do we make this thing impenetrable, right? So, so, you know, founders are probably a different breed, like founders are weird. Ensuring continuity after you is a challenge. But then one thing I have in my mind is, is actually merging Bronto with nostr, or something like nostr. So, like, one point I also want to drive home, and we should probably get back to the topic of guardrail, but noster is very cool. It's probably very, very censorship resistant on the long run, depending on relay incentives. And I'll pause because we're probably getting off track

Lynne Bairstow: 44:54

here. No, no, no. I love this because I think one of the things is, you know, bitcoins is entirely new financials. System, and so this gives entrepreneurs so many it's like Greenfield for what you think about the problems to be solved that have never really existed before. But here we're talking about, you know, making financial transactions peer to peer as they're as Bitcoin was designed to be, but in doing so, you have infrastructure that that facilitates the payments. But where does that infrastructure hold data? How can it? How can it ensure privacy or provide privacy? So how do we not fall back into some of the same problems that we have with centralized internet, for example? And so I love that you're thinking about this as you're building branta and saying, How do I make my company provide this tool that provides this assurity of money going where it sounds, going where they're supposed to flow, you know, while, while providing the privacy that a user will want that's that's on Bitcoin. So I love the fact that you're thinking about that. And I think it's really important.

Keith: 45:58

Yeah, it really can't be

Israel: 46:00

on any other way can it? Yeah, and, you know, it's interesting. I think we're also moving into a moment in society where the user will demand these things. I mean, there's just been so so many mishaps, so many attacks, so much abuse, so much, you know, you name it, I think especially the younger generation. And going forward, it will kind of be demanded from from users, I do believe, from most businesses, you know, hey, I want a certain layer of security and privacy if I'm going to interact with you as a business and send you value the period,

Keith: 46:41

yeah. Like, are you really a serious company? If you, you know, accept Bitcoin, but don't let people double check where you're sending. I don't know. I don't want to be too antagonistic, but, like, like I said, I've used guardrail enough now, some of it behind closed doors. And I just, I don't like sending Bitcoin somewhere I can't verify, like, I'll get an invoice through telegram or the internet or email. It's just weird. It's creepy. Somebody's giving me this information, but they're not like, are they not confident enough to register with pronto? Or they just haven't heard about it yet? But it's just, it's a weird feeling just guessing. You're basically just guessing, and that it's so easy to attack, that is the point. And that's why the supply chain attack last so I guess second or first week in September 2025, caused such a rough one.

Israel: 47:29

I think maybe branta will be one of those things that once, one of those tools that once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? I mean, once you know that, you you can verify this, this type of Bitcoin payment like, to your point, why would you ever transact in a different way

Lynne Bairstow: 47:46

and and with a small team, it's hard to get that visibility. And so you're, you're actually approaching this through some partnerships to correct like with Ambus and other other entities. Or how are you thinking about scaling the awareness of Bronte, yeah.

Keith: 48:04

Gosh, this is such a tough one. Like, quite frankly, I'm not a go to market expert. Like, I guess an interesting skill. We've talked to some people who are and it's challenging, right? Because, like, there can be competitors, copycats, I guess, like, that can happen. It's just, it's hard, taking something perfect to market, building it, getting the eyes on it. You know, speaking of the entrepreneurs, like, if you've done something from zero without a market, you don't have anybody to lean on. Like, if you, if you're introducing a new model, like, Who do you compare yourself to? We don't even have like, we're still building the vernacular and vocabulary on how to describe this thing, because there is no parallel like guard. So guardrail makes a lot of sense to me. Like, don't, don't run off the side of the road with your Bitcoin. But then a mirror might even be better. And I've said this on I've said this before, but um, the idea of a mirror, right? So like, we're still building the vernacular and the vocabulary. People who are running Bronte love it that that's really cool to see. So, um, so yeah, like, with this particular product, network effects are a thing. Now, I'm not a social media guy. I actually, I actually, really, really dislike social media. I don't even really like, yeah, I just don't like it. It just feels weird. I like to be out in 3d space, like at the beach or in a cafe, like, you know, we can bump into you, or just, like, hear noises. So social media is weird to me. I'm not a natural at it, for sure, but the engagement has been good, and the network effect is real. So people see people running bronta, they want to get in on it. Everybody else wants to get in on it. It works. It's cool. I think people like the team, we're really excited. We're almost limited in capacity for the onboarding right now. Just to say that out loud, too, you

Lynne Bairstow: 49:57

mentioned nostr, and I know that. Nostr is so much more than a social media, but I think first application of it is kind of a replacement, where you are able to take all that you share on social media and port it from one one application to another, and you own that content, which I love, that whole concept. How else are you thinking about nostr as I mean, either in terms of, of go to market, or in integration with, with bronta,

Keith: 50:25

yeah. So, um, there's a there's more to be fleshed out. Like, this isn't now. We're kind of, we're kind of brainstorming now. So, so for everybody listening, I'm gonna treat you as if you were on the screen, even though you're not. But you're right. Bronta and nostr Bront is very centralized, like I've said, we've already basically de risked the obviously the performance, obviously the security, but also the privacy. To a large extent, what nostr offers that is interesting is it's really resilience, right? It's resilience. It's an entirely different model, potentially cost as well. What I love about Nasser too, is it's it's keys, not credentials, right? So, like you, you cannot sign up to nostr with like a username and email, and there's no Reset Password button. At least that I'm aware, somebody can roast me if I'm wrong. But that model seems really good. I think, like, people don't like email. That's old. I guess I'm being a little vague with response to guardrail. But like, here's another way to think of it. So right now, when, when you, you know, verify an address with with pronto, you see a URL that's hosted through centralized DNS. It's hosted through a centralized ISP. Now nostru is too right. Now there's also distributed CDNs being built. I think it's called Earth satellite. I haven't looked recently. I may be wrong, but CDNs are content distribute distribution networks. That's a very important thing to actually make distributed. So there's a lot of value inherently having Bronto run through that, right? Because, like, what if, what if an ISP gets corrupted? What if DNS gets corrupted? That's bad. So it's just, you know, noster side by side with broncha is probably like a turbocharged version of what we already have, so likely it's more of a layering thing than a than a drop and replace, like the centralized model of the cheetah, or the line, like, it's strong, it's very, very strong, but if you can, like, all right. So we had this analogy earlier, of Parker Lewis unchained and now zap right was saying, okay, bitcoins backup for your Fiat. Okay, what I'm saying is, bronze is back up for your Bitcoin and lightning. But now what we're saying is, wait a minute, bronton, nostr is actually back up for your Bronte. So, like, there's a whole, like, ripple effect of technology and like, nostr is pretty early. I love it. I actually, like, nostr is such a positive place. If you lose your key, it's annoying. And, like, there's still some UX things, but, you know, there's a lot to be built. So in 10 years, I don't think we're going to recognize

Israel: 53:12

anything that we Yeah, and I mean, just like any new technology in the beginning, it's annoying. And yeah, the Bitcoin payments, quite frankly, today, are still, for most people, you know, like, it's not easy, you know, if, at least if it's, if it's true, self sovereign on chain Bitcoin, you're, you're transferring, heck, you know, once you've done it a few times, okay, you get used to it. But for a first timer, you know, like, what is this? You know, I'm interacting with a like, USB stick and a bunch of like, coded numbers and letters, and I just have to kind of trust that it gets there to your point earlier, you know? But, yeah, that that's how technologies tend to evolve, right? And at first they're they're not too easy to use, and then all of these other pain points get, get worked out. So I mean, extremely excited for what you guys are building at Bronte, Keith, I know we're we're closing up on on time here. Lynne, I don't know if any other you know questions or comments on your end, but would love to get you know some final thoughts from you. Keith, you know on company building on the Bitcoin space. What? What's keeping you excited, worried?

Keith: 54:23

Yeah, um, well, you know, one, one picture, there's a meme about this. But, like, I would like, like, envision a world where there's just no phishing or scamming. Like, how cool would that be? We already have lightning micro payments for cost of email, cost of message. Let's get that everywhere. Like, let's get that at Signal, Telegram, email, because then, you know, phishing, it's last, but then with branch, you can still check authenticity. So that's really cool. That's the vision that, you know, I want to paint for the world. Now, I guess, in terms of company building like, I have no advice. I'm not an advice. Guy, I'm actually an anti advice guy. What I do? And I actually mean that, like, I kind of, like, stopped reading books a few years ago, and I said, Okay, enough books. I've already I've read a lot of books. Bitcoin books were kind of my last like thing. And then I said, Okay, action. So always biased for action, just to say it again, like bias or action less, passivity, passivity. I would also say, like, your brain is your enemy. Like rational thinking got us where we are. Everybody knows the bell curve meme, like, think less. I actually mean that, like your pre I don't even know if your prefrontal cortex is where the thinking comes from, but you know, really act from the gut, having good people around you that you can bounce ideas off and triangulate your ideas. Sometimes it's good. You have to know when to use that and what not to use that. And yeah, I mean, numbers can't kill you. So I just say, like the world needs more action from good people with good intentions.

Lynne Bairstow: 55:58

I love that, and I can't think of a better place to to close the conversation, Keith, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your vision with us. I think it's super important technology to to take us where we need to be with Bitcoin as a medium of exchange and and thank you for putting the time and talent that you are into this.

Keith: 56:17

Yeah, of course, of course. Happy to do it. Thanks for having

Israel: 56:21

me. Yeah, it was a pleasure, Keith. And you know, if anyone's interested in getting in touch as well, where can they? Where can they reach out?

Keith: 56:28

Yeah, just come on to nostr. We're branta at nostr. We're on x, we're on LinkedIn as well. You can find me pretty easily, and we recently started doing weekly spaces on Twitter, no amas workshops, or how to onboard to pronto, kind of anything on our ethos. So we're doing that. So far it's been Wednesdays around noon Eastern. And yeah, I'd love to, you know, engage and have you. And, yeah, looking forward to chatting

Israel: 56:53

more, or we'll certainly keep, uh, keep up with the progress. Keith, wishing well, and thanks for coming on to the podcast.

Keith: 57:00

Yeah. Thank you so much. You.