Block by Block: A Show on Web3 Growth Marketing
Each week, I sit down with the innovators and builders shaping the future of crypto and web3.
Growth isn’t a sprint; it’s a process—built gradually, step by step, block by block.
Let’s build something incredible, together. All onchain.
Block by Block: A Show on Web3 Growth Marketing
Reka--RISC ZERO, Launching Boundless, Access Verifiable ZK Proofs and Computation on Any Chain
Summary
In this conversation, Reka, the Director of Marketing at RISC ZERO, shares her unique journey from veterinary medicine to the world of crypto. She discusses her experiences in community building through Guild, the innovative technology behind Boundless, and the challenges of promoting zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. Reka emphasizes the importance of making ZK relatable and accessible, while also introducing the concept of the Berry as a new approach to verifiable compute. In this conversation, Reka discusses the innovative marketing strategies employed for the launch of Boundless, focusing on making zero-knowledge (ZK) technology more accessible and engaging. She emphasizes the importance of community involvement, creative storytelling, and the use of NFTs to create a relatable brand narrative. Reka shares insights on building trust within the team and the community, as well as the challenges of changing perceptions in a technical field. The conversation highlights the significance of co-creation and flexibility in marketing approaches, particularly in the crypto space.
Takeaways
– Reka transitioned from veterinary medicine to crypto through a series of fortunate events.
– Her experiences in volunteering and entrepreneurship shaped her journey into the crypto space.
– Working in veterinary medicine provided her with valuable life lessons and friendships.
– Guild.xyz serves as a community-building tool in the crypto industry.
– Boundless aims to make zero-knowledge technology more accessible to developers.
– ZK technology has the potential to solve scalability issues in blockchain.
– The Berry represents a new approach to verifiable compute in the crypto space.
– ZK has a perception problem that needs to be addressed for wider adoption.
– Reka believes in the importance of community and collaboration in crypto.
– The future of ZK technology could revolutionize how we interact with blockchains. We need to bring it down and make it more accessible.
– How do we make this more fun?
– The proof isn’t just being made; it’s about its use.
– Proof of verifiable work is useful and beneficial.
– This is our product analogy for better understanding.
– We had 1.5 million mints in 48 hours, showing engagement.
– It’s important to involve people in the reading process.
– We had over 10,000 proof of reads, indicating interest.
– Co-creation with the community is essential for success.
– It’s done with love and intention, which resonates with the audience.
Chapters
(00:00) From Veterinary Medicine to Crypto: A Unique Journey
(08:59) Building Communities in Crypto: The Guild Experience
(12:01) Exploring Zero Knowledge Technology: The Rise of Boundless
(22:06) Understanding ZK: Overcoming Misconceptions and Challenges
(29:54) Introducing the Berry: A New Approach to Verifiable Compute
(31:13) Making ZK Accessible and Fun
(36:48) The Power of Community Engagement
(41:54) Building Trust and Collaboration
(46:13) Innovative Launch Strategies
(52:31) Co-Creation and Flexibility in Marketing
Follow me @shmula on X for upcoming episodes and to get in touch with me.
Reka Director of Marketing at RISC ZERO Launching Boundless. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. I've been looking forward to doing this. I've been speaking with lots of ZK folks and ZK projects in the last couple of months. And RISC Zero and Boundless is one of the top ones that's definitely getting mind share. But you come with a really, really interesting background. From what I understand, you have a doctorate in veterinary medicine. Maybe tell us about that. Like how did a vet... a doctor in veterinary medicine end up in crypto. How did that happen? Well, I guess it's a series of fortunate events, but I didn't get into vet school the first time. So I had to get up here at 18 and I spent it working, redoing my exams and volunteering and traveling. That was the first time I flew and everything. And one of my volunteering paths led me to Sweden at this meditational retreat place. And I got into crypto in 2016, even before university. then during university, I was just a very entrepreneurial. I'm very social and I always look for opportunities to get better at pitching, business. I started a bunch of social media, small ventures, and then I started these organizations for students and all these things to be able to learn new things. And then I had a more serious startup and sustainable food production still during my uni years. And that got me into. some more business circles and Forbes magazine and all these things. And then COVID hit, so I stopped that one, but I reconnected with my then co-founders for Guild XYZ. They're also Hungarian. It's a very fun fact, but we're from the same small town, which is rare. So they were the only crypto people I knew then. So I was really refreshing that, you know, after three or four years of being in this space, very vaguely, I was not doing anything full-time or anything. ah having someone to talk about it. And then we started working and then we both guild and I graduated and ah I don't know, I just stayed here. I really wanted a more free life and being a vet is very stiff. I really liked that I worked in a clinic for eight years during this whole period. But I don't, it's, you know, it's, I like this lifestyle. It's, I like the freedom that comes with it. I like the opportunity and the growth and the change that comes with it. And being a vet is a little bit more. stegman in a way. We'll definitely get into your time at Building Guild, but I want to learn first about, you mentioned that you first didn't get into veterinary school. Was that hard learning that you didn't get in? What kind of setback was that for you? Like I think, well, in Hungary, there's only, I'm from Hungary and there's only one, uh, one veterinary university here. And I'm the type of person who I'm pretty set on what I want to do and when and how, and you usually have at least three schools lined up. If one of them doesn't work out, you go to the other. I only put this one. I didn't want to do anything else and I didn't get in. did a lot of other things as usually I did like five different things in high school. so, um, My medical, chemistry and biology exams were not always the priority. um And yeah, it's really hard to get in. There's only 110 people that they take every single year. So it's very competitive. It was hard, but I had other plans. had plan Bs. I was so excited to go volunteering and start traveling. And that really kept me and my spirits up. I also had a friend who didn't get into her favorite medical school either. So we kind of spend that year together just learning and. being in the library, doing the exams together and daydreaming about what we would do if we didn't grind this hard and get into university again. And also I worked a lot. I had these really weird drops that you have to go through as a young person to just get experience or do anything with your extra free time, having no education at that point. So that was fun. Well, it sounds like you turn the setback into something very positive because it introduced you to really the crypto space. I guess so. But I didn't know then, you I was just happy to be there. I really enjoyed my time in Sweden. This guy I was staying with, it was also such a random goodness because it was one dude in the middle of nowhere in his little red Swedish house. And I just took a uh flight to Denmark and then took a train over there. And he picked me up in his car. I'm there as an 18 year old. So I was like, you know what, what could go wrong? But we became really good friends. He's actually a really good guy. And he was somehow into... crypto and the whole economical status of the world at that time. Even uh he predicted that Trump's gonna be president. He's very tapped in, even though all we do all day is walk around, drive around in the Swedish countryside and meditate and cook veggie food and I don't know. So it was a very interesting experience. I don't think if I, I don't know how I would have gotten into crypto if I'm not there and he doesn't like preach to me about it. And I don't know, it's crazy. for that connection that you made because now you're in crypto and you're adding a ton of value. The seven or so eight years that you worked in the clinic, can you share with us one experience like with working with animals that has made a big difference in your life? I almost made it really dark because I obviously had to put down a lot of animals and do a lot of gruesome things. I think. It was really defining to me working with the large animals, because I knew I wanted to be a small animal vet, even in school. Like I was just, I'm a dog, cat, and that's my interest. And that's where you can go crazy. And I wanted to work with epilepsy and like neurology and ophthalmology. Like that was the more interesting area to me anyway. So you get to do more of that with small animals, because people actually put money there. um But what was interesting to me is working in farms with animal production, for poultry, for cattle. And it was such good outside time, but at the same time, it's so depressing. And the contrast of you trying to make individual and group animals' lives a little bit better, even though the whole thing is just so dark. So that was very interesting to me. know this might be my more artsy soul, but that... Contrast was so interesting to me and I battled with it so hard because I've been a vegetarian for like 10 years and that's just one thing but you guessed my worldview based on that and working in crypto and Very love and light and to me that contrast was so interesting to battle with every single day getting up at 4 a.m and going to this farm and doing a small thing for that one animal while The whole industry I don't agree with and so that for me a personal know that was very interesting to like go through I did not think I'm going to talk about this in the crypto podcast, so thank you for giving me that opportunity. But it was great opportunity for, I think, a strange hardening or growth. I don't know. It was interesting. I think those times, I I can think back on my life at maybe less than 10 key moments in my life that have really changed the arc of the rest of my life. And as for a young person, you're on your own, you're working, and you're kind of figuring out what you love and care about. I mean, it sounds like being a vet really made a big difference on your worldview. For sure, for sure. And I made my best friends there for that I think I'm gonna be friends with for a long time. I never, people ask me a lot of times if I regret this, because it is almost six years of your life. And I worked for that privilege to be able to study there all my previous life since I decided I wanna be that at like 12 or something. It took everything from my life up until that point to even be there. But I think I did the most, like I did every single thing I could there. I took all the opportunities and. I'm not mad about it whatsoever. think life is beautiful because it changes. so this being more what aligns with my person, if that's to be, I have no regrets. I loved going to vet school. was hard. I liked doing hard things and it was hard, but in an enjoyable way. And I made great connections. I learned a lot of things. I decided I want to get good at public speaking. They provided a bunch of opportunities to learn how to pitch. That's how I got into startups too, because I wanted to like get better at pitching. And there was a. or an extra elective class for starting startups and I took it. That's how I learned what a PMF is, 22 or something, I don't know. awesome. Maybe that's a good transition to to guild.xyz. um You know, everyone in crypto that I know at least have, you know, they they are part of guild.xyz as a kind of a community building, um as a key community to help grow communities. um Maybe tell us about how you got into that. And then we can get into a risk zero and boundless and in CK. You're so tebbed in, it's awesome. um It was really fun. So this pair of two brothers, and I knew the older one from like my teenage years in Hungary and this town that I'm from. And they were, they already had a dev shop building for crypto. They worked a lot with pancake swap and they were just building small little things for crypto that some of them worked out, some of them didn't. They were trying their best. And then we started working together and then we quickly found from one of the things that we're working, they were working on as a chat bot and somehow we formed that into Guild and it was really fun. So I was there for three and a half years and I learned the, as you're saying, that's a beautiful way to put it. And thank you for saying it that way is it's a community for growing communities. Essentially it's a tool. It's permissioning infrastructure and community management tooling. And they just did a big upgrade recently as well so that it's even more like a protocol. um But that was really interesting experience of working with most projects in the industry to help them in some way, or form, either temporarily or permanently to have themselves an audience that they actually care for. And this is a very uh mutually beneficial experience for everyone involved and help them automate it a little bit. Cause that is also helping them leverage what crypto can do and crypto infrastructure can do for us. It's really fun. It was really fun. That's cool. And I think it's, I think Guild is one of those things where, um you know, as crypto matures, you know, and as there's more infrastructure for growing communities and for marketing and for um really just for a way for people to interact is, I think it's great. And there's trade-offs too with, you I think it's a good experiment in like token gated communities to see how it works. I remember, Last week I did a kind of a rundown on how to become a Barabadi. And one of the, in their funnel to become a Barabadi, have to, it's like a two gated kind of token kind of system. And so my, one of the questions I asked was like, I wonder how many potential Barabadi's drop off at this stage where, where they have to like, then they have to get the token and they have to, then it becomes a token gated community at that point. And, um, but it's an interesting question because not a lot of crypto people probably think in terms of funnels. Um, it's a very kind of web two thing, but it's like really important, right? Because if you've got a hundred people that want to be bare baddies and then they almost all drop off probably at that stage. Um, then it's like, well, how can you improve that? Um, because you want more bare baddies to come into the community yet that very step is, is like one of the root causes for why they are not. And so it's an important kind of question. Anyway, that's just as an aside around token gated communities and that's probably a whole topic on its own. um So now you're at risk zero launching Boundless. Maybe let's talk about that. I've been interviewing a lot of ZK folks in the last several months and ZK is a fascinating topic. uh I think now is the right time for ZK. Tell us how you got there. and kind of like what your goals are around Boundless and maybe help us better understand the difference between Aris Zero, its other products and then Boundless, which is kind of getting all the mind share right now. Happily. um So I've had like a other project in between Guild and Boundless as well, which was very over zero. It was very defy in the intense space. That didn't really work out, but I was looking for something. I was very excited because I never had the opportunity in crypto to gather this years of experience that I have and apply to something that is bigger almost. And I was looking for something that I'm, if I'm contributing to something that isn't inherently just mine, I really want it to be something that isn't perpetuating the same playbooks and narratives that we have and is here for more cycles than just this one or just, you know, this summer. And I really, really fell down alternative. approaches to building infrastructure. And one of those that I was fascinated with is ZK. And we've been working with ZK even at Guild in a way, and we've discussed it many times for more of the privacy identity solutions. But I fell in love with ZK for the scaling issues that we have and the interoperability issues that we have. so I... I'm fortunate enough that I know some of the investors of Red Zero. they've been on my radar and my in my circle for a while, but I took a call with them and I didn't really care that much. I was interested in the tool and the project and everything, the tech that they have, but I was like, you know, I'm talking with 30 other people. Like, I don't know. And then they are so lovely and they were the most consistent both in terms of how they approach building and their... mindset and attitude and the quality of the work they do is, and they kept showing up and every single person, I requested more and more calls with all the executives because I was like, that's no way. Like I'm going to find, I'm going to find the breaking point. And then I didn't. And they kept vowing me every single time. Even the VP of engineering could sell me about their vision and why this is important. So I was like, okay. And then I met more of them because I knew some of them already, but I met more of them. we're at one of our. are well at that point their events in um Bangkok as well. And it just worked and I was like, okay, so you guys need a little pizzazz on top of this. Everything already works. I can do that. um And it was a great fit. So I got here. We've been working together for quite a few months now and launching Boundless is interesting to me. So Riz Zero, I already joined with the premise that I'm gonna work on Boundless most of the time. So I do. focus a lot of my efforts on taking Moundless to market. yeah, that's majority of my focuses, Boundless is go to market, whatever that entails, everything really. em The team's awesome in collaboration for all of that. And the difference between the two, Riziro is a very well established entity that is forwarding technology around zero knowledge and that part of the industry. They've built an immense array of products in such short time that have either been replicated, because they mostly build open source, obviously, because very righteous and theoretically aligned, um or have been used as a basis for a lot of other products, which is a big honor to have in this industry. um And it will stay that way. It's a much more, it's focused on being the best in the industry. The founders are set up that way. The team's really good at it. So they'll do that. But we also need to expand taking that. Top tier technology and to wider audience and to wider. Applications wider set of developers. so boundless had to be born. Boundless is a protocol. Initially we said it's a universal ZK protocol, but it's true that it is that, but I like to say it in a way that balances the vehicle that we take that CK and that technology to every developer, to every chain, essentially everywhere. So it balances growing out of first zero and it will serve as more of as like the foundation as a very, very entity. It's also more approachable from a brand perspective. can't help but talk also from a brand perspective and position. But it's also a much more open and VEP3 aligned style of how it communicates and what it does. yeah, so Boundless has its own ecosystem that's very aligned with ReZero. So there's products that ReZero has built prior to Boundless like Zeth or Steel or Kailua. And these are all subproducts that most of them fit into Boundless really well. So for example, in Boundless, we say we have extensions. And Steel is an extension for um Solidity. So mostly, DeFi projects that want to use the ZK that we provide use that extension. For rollups that we work with, they use Kailua mostly. um And it's mostly in Rust, so it makes sense. We're really, really focused on using the same language that makes sense for the actual end developer and then the end user. Cause we don't, we really believe that the translation that we need to do between development languages and technologies is so unnecessary. And so we are really primed to build in a way that that is not a step we need to take. So most of our technology is inherently built in a way we take, when we say we take it to every chain, it really means how our protocols set up, we deploy on chains. so. It's inherently native where we kind of kind of the opposite approach of what you would get used to with like an L1 ecosystem where you have to bridge to that chain and build on there and grow the ecosystem that way. We're more of the we come to you approach. It just makes sense with our technology. makes a lot of sense. we also like theoretically values aligned way we have this approach and it works pretty well so far. Maybe we can go come back to the branding piece because that's super important. But I'm curious about when you support applications on a chain, what does the integration look like? Is it boundless with, say, Solana? And then every application on Solana can use boundless services? How does that work? So without going too deep into how the protocol actually works, but we do have two types of contracts that are on chain within the Boundless protocol. And Boundless, for everyone listening, Boundless is not a chain yet, but it collaborates within that ecosystem. And so we have two contracts. One of them is the market contract and the other is a verifier contract. So to be able to request proofs from Boundless and the whole array of integrations that we have within the ZK ecosystem and other ZK VMs and other prover networks. And um you need the verifiers to be deployed on that chain. And so right now we have Ethereum, we just deployed our Solana one and we're working on doing all the other L2s as well. Depends on where we are needed most based on the applications that already are in contact with us or where we have demand. But yes, so when we have the verifier which takes the least amount to deploy for us, it's also much easier to integrate. It's in the native language of the chain as well. So we deploy that on the chain and then requesting proofs um from that environment is super easy, breezy, lemon squeezy. And that makes a ton of sense. And it reduces so much friction because now every application on that chain can use, you know, boundless. That's really cool. Versus the other approach that I've seen is, you know, every application on said chain, you know, has their own relationship with, you know, the partner. And then that integration has to happen with each application versus just on the chain. So I think... um It's the hub and spoke model is a, it's I guess another version of that. And you guys are going the route that's the most scalable and easiest. That's really cool. And with the brand awareness you guys have built, I imagine all the layer ones and everyone already knows who RISC-0 is. And so, you know, working and we know with Boundless is this kind of like the new flagship for RISC-0 it's like. I imagine the friction's reduced there. It's like, yeah, let's definitely work together. um You've said in the past, going to ZK real quick, you said in the past that ZK has a perception problem. It's so powerful, but mostly misunderstood. Maybe tell us about that and then help us understand what you're doing at Boundless to help ZK be less misunderstood. I think this is when I wrote my article about comparing ZK's adoption stage to Charlie XZX's pre-bred era. Yes. What I mean is... So how I also, my own journey into ZK, was first, came across it as a privacy solution. And then you go deeper in the rabbit hole and then you realize it's a very interesting piece of technology that can do way different things. And um I think what we need to understand is it's so universal and we're stuck in, we're not stuck. Maybe this is high horse. I don't know, but we have this mindset or narrative around ZK. Or an infrastructure tech in general that is very siloed and that there's a fragmentation problem and a communication issue and a messaging issue between the chains and data availability and everything. And there's a lot of breakages there. And I think that is the narrative that we have in the space. And it took me a second to understand as well and talking with some people, but what I would love to proliferate as the notion of CK fixes that. And I know it's. I know it's easy to say, but how ZK works, it's, our approach with balance of being this hope for it, while at the same time, re-bring it to you without a hurdle for, like a big hurdle of adoption is just non-existent. It, okay, I'm going to talk about like proof singularity thesis a little bit, cause it helps understand a little. You can imagine of how we communicate with a chain right now is you request. a question whenever there's a transaction or an action that has to take place. And they need to redo the math in every single block that you're asking a question from so that that on-chain action can take place. And it's almost like every calculator would have to re-execute 2 plus 2 equals 4 every single time you do a strange big equation. But those basic things would have to be re-executed every single time. So whenever you add a new node to this chain, It does not increase its execution power. It just makes it longer because you need to arrange that everyone got two plus two equals four. Yeah. Okay. We can move forward. So it's taking a really long time. It's a lot of wasted energy. And how in terms ZK does this is it has the proof that we know that two plus two equals four. And then all the blocks would have these proofs. I'm simplifying and this isn't exactly how it works, but then you would just ask the proof. didn't even go eight to you didn't need to go into the block to do everything. A proof can hold so much information in such an interesting cryptography, cryptic math way that you don't need to ask all those questions in all those blocks to get that one piece of information you need for that transaction to go through. So there's this world. Hold on to your pants, everyone, that we could have, we could do this, making these proofs for historical data and ongoing data at the current moment that are so compact that we could have, this is far away, but ideologically we could have one proof for each chain that holds all the data that we have. And that is refreshed of course every few minutes when there's a new block and new data is going in, but we could have one block that you just communicate with to do on chain actions. The scale. versus what we do right now, all the little questions to then having that one proof for a chain. Huge. We would not have the bridging issues. would not be all the rugs in between. There would be way less gas that we pay insane speed. So that we could have that for all chains. And then the theory that we have around app chains as well, that every single application will have its own chain. The fragmentation that that causes, wouldn't that be that big of an issue? because there's no double work and there's no, it's just so much faster. So there's also the saying, I really like this, I'll say this as well, so you guys know, is when you give people more compute, you can't imagine what people will do with more computational power, all of this execution, but then you give it to them, instantly filled, immediately. I did not believe this, but there's studies and graphs that show as soon as we had the phone, Like the actual phones, smartphones that we have immediately filled the capacity and we keep 10Xing. Well, at this stage, we're not 10Xing anymore, but we kept 10Xing a computational power source that we have immediately filled out. So it's beautiful to, I don't even know how much this is gonna 10X, how many 10Xs this is gonna do for our industry, but it's well on the way to completely change how we interact with blockchains. And maybe these metaphors help understand. Cause I know it's such a hard grasp, distant theoretical concept, but these ones I think really helped depict. And I was like, okay, these sound too technical still. And then that came to Barry's so that verifiable compute can help explain this even easier and have more adaptability and more of a metaphor that we can use. Well, before we get there, let me maybe I can quickly summarize. First of all, I totally agree with you that, you know, when you give like a society more computing power or more energy, I've heard the same story about energy, that energy is like one of the key constraints that we have as a society. so, but when we have more energy, like the amount of innovation that can come from that is incredible. And you can see it on, you know, some of the charts that I've seen. And I agree with the same thing with Compute. And as far as like ZK being unrelatable, ah one of my bosses in a previous life was Don Song, who is one of the big people. She's like a major player in the ZK space. She's a professor at Berkeley. She's on many of the ZK papers. She's the inventor of the ZK bridge. ah And at the time, ZK was still such a... esoteric topic and it was not like down to earth. It was difficult to understand. And I agree with you at the time, the focus really wasn't so much on scalability, but it was around like privacy. At a time when privacy was like a big no-no, especially in America, um where some of these privacy uh projects were just looked down upon and really weren't They were being delisted from centralized exchanges. so, ZK kind of had that, it was having a hard time during that time, but I feel like now is like the right time. And I think the refocus on making ZK relatable is so healthy. And also that ZK can help all the scalability problems that the blockchains have, I think is the right focus. Now making it relatable, that takes us to uh The berry maybe tell us the thinking around first of all, what is the berry? How did you guys as a team come up with that or how did you come up with that and? Your goals around, you know bear bearifiable compute I have a hard time saying it because I want to say verifiable, it's verifiable. Yeah. just mumbled that beginning of verifiable and it sounds verifiable already. That's one of the things that helped us come up with that actually is, okay, so story. I've been a Barry. This has been my profile picture, this Barry for almost two years. I don't know, actually don't quote me, but a while. And I really identify with it. think red, well, actually let me take this off. I'm to talk about this. Red is a strong accent color. And people take note of that. So that was one of the reasoning of the berry for me, because I had so many stickers to choose from. just, the raspberry isn't even my favorite fruit, uh controversial. um That was one. And then, yeah, this trilemma of, wow, we do so many things. It's just so hard to explain. And ZK has like a brand awareness and reputation issue and... We need to bring it down and make it more accessible, easier to understand. We need something that is fun. The opposite of what the, what the view of ZK was even, even seven months ago, eight months ago. Um, and so I was like, we need something really cute and something that has so much meme and wordplay potential. And so. I don't know what happened, but I kept talking with the team and verifiable compute obviously came up in every single conversation. Cause that is the core of what we do. That's essentially like kind of a metaphor or uh an alternative way of saying, we're talking around what ZK does. And I really liked that term. And I think that is one of our most powerful terms that we can use around boundless by the way. So it's very core to our messaging. And I was like, how do we make this more fun? It's just, I wouldn't read this if I were me. Like I wouldn't, this is like what, thousand people are going to read this? This is crazy. And so I don't know. I turned around in the bed and actually, no, it was something around. I also looked for ways to involve our community sooner as soon as possible. you know, I have a big history in helping teams build communities. knew how important it is. You need tenure. need. You need a relationship with all of these people, with so many people. So you need to start that ASAP. So I was like, what if we have verifiable compute? I was already thinking about that so much. And what if we have an NFT? What if we have like a community, an adjacent community that's Barry's or what if I launch a Barry NFT for people that care about this narrative with me and are aligned with like this whole giggles and then it grew into I just couldn't stop saying Barry and more more alternatives that are aligned with verifiable compute and our story and how boundless works. It just made so much sense. Cause whenever the team first explained to me how the actual protocol works, there is a marketplace at its heart. And I was like, Oh, so a farmer's market. And then the proof is a Barry and then the, and then the rollups and the apps that are requesting the proof. They're actually chefs, they're master chefs and they need the best ingredients. So they're super specific about what kind of berry they want. They put that request into the market and the market has the best context to all the farmers in the land. And they tell the farmers like, Hey, this guy needs exactly pristine 10 blackberries and one raspberry. Can you make that happen? They're like, sure. Got you. And then they grow the berries, they bring it back to the market. And then the chef gets it. And the chef makes even cooler things out of it. They make the most exquisite cakes and juices and jams that you can think of. Because the point here is the proof isn't just being made. That's not the point of a proof. The point of the proof is that it's being used after. So it's really important what gets made out of the little proof, all the jams and all the juices and all the smoothies and the cakes. uh So it just makes sense. then whenever we need it to describe, a lot of, we have a whole new incentive mechanism, by the way, that ZK. being the core of this infrastructure piece allowed us to create, it's called proof of verifiable work. And a lot of you will be familiar with proof of work, which is the OG incentive mechanism of Bitcoin and a lot of the blockchains, theory for a while. And it just produces so much wasteful work. you grow, um you do the execution, and then you get so many people compete to do that execution. Right now, the node operators, they compete. Only one of them wins. Everyone did the work though. And only one of them gets paid for it. And then all of this is waste. um And then the thing that they did, the point of that was to be made. It's not gonna have turned into a jam or a cake. It's literally going nowhere. Like the point of that was to be made. It's not going to be turned into anything. So proof of work is wasteful twice. And then proof of stake that Ethereum... turned into a couple of years ago, it's more you put in financial work. So it's less people competing. It's less waste there. But the point is still that the execution happened. The proof of that or nothing gets turned into nothing. So that still goes to waste and you have to put up capital to make the system work and improve a verifiable work. You grow only one person actually does the work at the end. So the other two are doing other useful jobs. So every single piece of work that's being done. improve a verifiable work is useful. And then everyone gets paid for all their works that they're doing. Plus the end result of the execution, the proofs are actually get to turn into something else that is even more beneficial and profitable. So there's even more upside. So it's all really exciting, but you see how the berries perfectly fit into it. you know, and how it started is I... I had to tease it. So I just did it from my personal account. I just started saying it and people reacted to it really well. My team was most of the time, my team was, I'm very grateful for them. They're so nice about it, but I brought it to them of like, this is what we're doing. I know we're a serious project, but believe me, the berries, we need the berries. This is the story that I just explained to you of how the marketplace works and it's the farmer's market. this, I was like, this is our product analogy. This is why it makes sense. Everything else will be a meme and they'll love it. When you, first of all, I love the universe, like the universe that you just created for me verbally, I love it. And there's so many brand extensions, there's so much you could do with, you know, with a farm and everything on the farm. When you brought this to the team, like what was the reaction? Tell us about that, tell us about what that experience was like, you shared this vision with them. They were like, okay. And so the more convincing part was me bringing the product metaphor. And then I guess a lot of it was I'm very stubborn and I feel like I know what I'm doing because this isn't my first rodeo. So I just was like, no, this is why we're doing this. It will make sense. Believe me. If I just say, for example, with our white paper, if we just post our white paper, probably does okay. Not doing great. And we need it to do great. And. I think this is the pizazz that you need to make it great. Cause it puts so much more intention and care into your launch. So put show so much more work and love that you put in it and the people reacted differently. It's worked that way every single time. love, call, still call this organic cause it's unpaid and, but the organic part does well because you put all that care and momentum building into it. And then they came around when the first thing we did an NFT mint actually first. um, to just have a Barry NFT. I don't know. I just wanted to solidify the movement and have something to show one chain. And we had 1.5 million mints in 48 hours. It was a 48 hour mint. Did pretty well. So the team was like, all right, you're onto something. You can go. And then our founder, Jeremy, at one point, he actually just a few weeks ago. So I've been on this publicly for so long. And then a weeks ago, I was like, I didn't get it, but I trust you. So let's go. Okay. It makes sense. But they get it now. Everyone gets it now. Everyone loves it. They fully trust. They put so much trust in me. It's crazy. But also they better because you know, what else are you going to do? not do good marketing or not do this. So I think we have a good collaboration on and a good understanding now of what we need to do. It's still an ongoing conversation with the new campaigns that we're doing of how Barry are we going to make this? And I'm always like coming from the standpoint of, I think I have more of a product marketing approach to things. So I come from like, how is this actually going to work? Like, what is the actual interaction that we have? How can I make this more fun, more inclusive, more? engaging and then the last layer on the cake is the very like the very last everything needs to make sense the whole thing needs to make sense six months out the six months out of here and then at the end it just makes sense and you add the berries on top. Well, I mean, as you're speaking, you're using language that comes naturally. Like you even use the word, you know, it's organic. Speaking about the white paper lunch. I mean, organic. mean, that's language you would use on the farm with food. You know, the last layer on the cake. Again, it's like the language comes naturally. it's really, uh you've kind of stumbled upon something very interesting because it's not forced. And it works. just really works. And I think it's memorable. And at least in the circles that I'm in, um know, people are talking about it and that shows, you know, some level of success that you're making ZK relatable. um And I love the, you know, you're thinking around like intention and time and love. Like you really care about these launches. um And it shows. And I think people see that and it's different because it's not just another meme coin where that was just careless, but like you're taking the time to actually do something and make something very serious, relatable. uh And I think we all appreciate that. Thank you. I do hope to proliferate this mindset a little more. And I take every single opportunity to explain how I'm thinking and how I do things. And I'm asked a lot if I'm not afraid of people stealing my ways. I'm like, no, you can't. Like, this is the point of if you are thinking abundantly, and Boundless is like that as a brand as well. That's one of our core pillars. uh Everyone benefits more if more people put more care in. attention and intention into how they do their work. And I'm as happy to help as I can whenever I do have to say, I left it out of the how team reacted and not just the team, the whole ecosystem is the berries work really well now. Cause I've we've proved that they work, but the initial like month is uphill. Like, you know, how many messages, DMs and comments and momentum building even in the shower. Like I've done to push this through so it looks like it works. That is something I don't want. If someone's listening to this that's doing something similar, I don't want you to be discouraged because you'll have to do a lot of front load work that nobody knows about, but you'll do that for weeks, months, depends on how good you are at this. Yeah, I think having come from this type of work like in the Web2 space, one of the hardest things to do is the whole area of change management and changing hearts and minds. um And in crypto, we often default to technical challenges, but the technical challenges are probably the easiest to deal with. What's really hard is changing hearts and minds and changing people's worldviews. And I imagine having worked with many ZK folks, know, they're probably highly technical, academic, and I imagine some of them probably did not take very lightly the whole Barry thing that they probably thought, you know, you're making light of like what I'm doing very seriously. I, and maybe some of them didn't even appreciate that until they saw that, wait, people are really taking this in, in there. It's serious. and they are. You know, Barry is not making ZK into a light thing, but instead is making it relatable instead, and they're becoming more interested in it. And so it probably took some time to actually change hearts and minds is what I'm guessing. And it sounds like that's what happened. Yeah. And less internally, I guess, in some sense, yes, but I more mean if you want to meme something into existence, it is more what I mean, that you have to frontload so much work and belief and just delusion, honestly, until it becomes real and shows that it works. But yeah, internally too. But more importantly, I meant from the bigger... making it into an existing thing, like making something that exists is like the bigger work is before people believe it exists. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm glad you brought that distinction up. I mean, there's kind of the internal challenges and then the external making like very kind of the, you know, the meme um and creating that. you said something earlier that I think is really important to emphasize and underscore. um know, growing communities takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort and you have to start really early. And so you wanted to get on top of that ASAP when you first joined RISC Zero. and launching Boundless. And I think that's an important thing for the audience to remember is that growing communities takes time. um You can't just hire some KOL shop to help you build. It actually takes time, effort, engagement, and you have to be patient with it. um And as Reka shared with launching Boundless with Barry as kind of the the main flagship kind of visual identifier and story and narrative arc. Like that takes time too. And so for the audience to just remember, definitely stick with it. And if it works, great. And then if you need to adjust, that's okay too. um Maybe we can talk about the launch. um I have your tweet open. I'm not gonna read all of it, but you give a really great rundown. For those that are interested, the tweet is dated April 23rd. You guys, so Boundless launched its white paper and you orchestrated lots of moving parts. Maybe we can go through each of those and tell us from uh like a director of marketing perspective, like how you orchestrated launching the Discord and then. the you know, you previously said you guys launched it NFT and how that was kind of part of it. um And then the white paper and then the the engagement tactics that you had around the white paper, which I thought was very interesting, which I hadn't seen done in crypto. And so maybe we can go through that. Thank you. So the thought process was, this is a white paper. Like it's something that you need to do. It's super interesting. It's the core principle of what the protocol is doing. this is our, it's like a coming out of what you're actually building to the public. So it's very important. It's a pivotal moment, but to be frank, it's boring. People don't read anymore. People don't know how to read. I don't know how to read. So was like, how do I make people read? How do I make people care about a ZK-ish, like core ZK infrastructure's white paper, aside from the ZK people, because ZK people will care. They are so lovely and they love this. How do I make more people care about this? What would make me care about it? And then how do I make people feel included that they're part of this? the barriers don't, the initial barrier, if they didn't really have to do anything with this, I think it's something for later. It's, had that, it's there. know who they, we know who the very holders are. They know who they are. Um, it's for later, but this, I think, well, it was a lot of momentum building. So obviously you have to think about the three weeks prior to you launching anything, think maybe two, but what are you doing in that time? The whole team, your whole presence is under your microscope as your, your, you intentional content or whatever. campaign-making person is everything counts. And so what you're talking about, how you're talking about it, what you're launching prior that gauges interest and or primes people to what you're launching afterwards. So we were very strategic with timings of things. We knew people were waiting for us to launch our Discord server. We don't really need a Discord server terribly, but people really wanted us to have a Discord server. I don't know if people care about Discord. I thought that's a broken... broken pathway, but apparently not. I was proven wrong. So I'm happy we went with it. So I was like, what will give us a lot of engagement before the white paper launches? So we dropped the discord the day before. And I think within 24 hours, we hit a hundred thousand people joining, which is insane. We have three layers of verification. Remember this is my bread and butter. This is what I did for three and a half years. We have three layers of verification. So these are not bots. They're individual people. Their origins are questionable. I fully acknowledge this. These are not people who already cared about wellness. know that. Mostly because that number grew to 250 within a week. What do we do with 250,000 people in Discord? I don't know. We'll figure it out. We are figuring it out, but still it's crazy. And we're very grateful, but holy smokes. I did not see a Discord growth this fast in forever, in ever actually. So very grateful. But then next day we launched a white paper. So. Components of a white paper lunch, what do you do? You upload it somewhere, right? For people to read. You put the first page or the abstract on Twitter with a nice thread explaining what this is. You celebrate, you send it around. Awesome. This isn't enough. Like what else are you doing to make this exciting? Gladly we had multiple plans. Thank you, berries also. So we did have a comic at the end, which is Tim who wrote majority of the paper. Actually, he draw that initially with his hand and then we had our illustrator clean it up a little bit. It explains the core mechanics of slashing and how the market work if in case there's an unsuccessful. Anyway, it explains a couple of scenarios, but it's a cute little comic. We left it in there special treat for anyone who opens this 10 page document. And then I was like, Hey, we need to make a community thing out of this. Like we need to involve people into reading this. And it's kind of a meme on Twitter that people can't read. And I was like, what if we make it a proof of read that you've read this and what if we let people, well, first of all, we make this, we put the white paper on its own page so that it has its own moment and have this reader, this very customized reader for it. And have you have the ability to highlight certain texts and that be preloaded into an image for a tweet. And we are integrated the Twitter so you could just tweet it directly from the site. And that being the proof that you read this. People took the most hilarious, most hilarious quotes out of this. And mostly because of the comic that we had at the end. So some of them were just like, GIP proof. Huge. I love this. Massive. And so we had over 10,000 proof of reads, which is again, what the heck? I don't, I I don't. My KPIs that I set prior to this were not that big, but I'm really excited about it. eh And we were like, all right then, so people picked the favorite quotes. We know exactly which ones stuck with people the most. So let's convert this into something after the fact. And now it's proof of thought to prove that you're not only reading, but you're thinking. And now it's a content making experience and collective effort. So we continue. It's always looking for ways how to include more people into what we're doing. and make them feel like they have a say and an impact because they really do. And always ask yourself, how do I make this more fun? And for me, the berry is a massive handle that I can just pull on because even the reader, like it has a progress bar on the top and there's a little berry that you can follow and we scroll through just so you can see the berry. And that's crazy. It's just the small tiny things that you can add that actually like makes so much of a difference. and yeah, we have, we have crazy success with this. And honestly, I was so, I went on a break. first ever PTO in my life. I, we launched next day. I was off. I was out. I was out like a light, the amount of content and everything and strategizing and yeah. That sounds like a massive amount of work and orchestration that you did. You and the team thought through the proof of read, the proof of thought. Was that planned prior or that you just thought of that, hey, what do we do next? I think we had, we had some of it. We had it, but the rules or exactly how we see it go, it's honestly, it's under formation as we already launched it this week. We'll see. It's also such a free flowing thing. We'd rather co-create it with the community based on what they do with it. Um, it's not, it's not like a contest or like, I don't like questing or any of those things. It's something we go create. So it's fluid. We'll see what people do with it. And then. But yeah, it was kind of planned. We knew this was going to have a second phase. You know, can we talk about that really quick? Cause I've been part of teams where, you know, the, the founder wants like a pre-planned kind of thing. But in a lot of this, it's more art than science where it's you, kind of, you know, use the word co-create. Let's, let's, let's do something, see where it goes and then follow it from there. How do you deal with situations internally where maybe the founder who's, who's highly technical and very strict and wants kind of a pre-plan. plan versus let's kind of do something, see where it goes, follow it, and then let's just follow the wind. How do you deal em with situations like that? There is a, you have to know what you're doing, like the principles and the major key pillars. I think that's very fair. Even if you go with the flow type of person to have, I like to work that way that we know. the backbone of our plan and then the rest we'll figure it out. But the thing is is you can't always be reactive. I don't want to be reactive. This isn't what I mean. I mean you give space for co-creation and there's a time and space for that and it takes a little practice to know when that is and when it's a more benefit than a hindrance. um I think most things we do with community we have to have an angle and a reason why we do things because you don't just want to give or take and ask from people without reason. So you have to have your whys down, but then the how should be at so custom to the people that you have in your audience. So yeah, I don't know. We have the backgrounds, have to have some of it, have the framework and then free flow the rest of it. Well, in the last couple of minutes, I have a couple of rapid fire questions. Is that okay? Okay. you do. Okay. Let me maybe just one rapid fire question then. Okay. What's your favorite on-chain community right now besides, know, boundless or zero in the berry community? I like the baddies. I'm a baddie, but I think they have been through so much hardship, the criticism never stops from origin to now. And Keisha and the team have been like powering through all of that. I've stayed with them in Thailand as well. And it's the most, one of the most honest things. And I know from the criticism, it seems the exact opposite. And I think it's a nice place. I think it's, I don't know a ton about the baddie community, but it really does feel like it's overdone. The whole criticism is just like, it's overdone. Okay, maybe one more question. What's the most underrated web three tool? No. Okay. I try a lot of them. have so many in my test flight and on my phone. I have so many apps. They don't really stick. I don't know. don't have one. I'm sorry. for a product person, that's important to hear. um And definitely a topic for next time maybe. Well, Reka, thank you so much. This has been so fun. I think as a crypto community, we've watched you launch Boundless. And you guys are doing so many things right. And I think for all the growth marketers and marketing people listening, there's so much we can learn from Reka and from what the Boundless team has done. So thank you. it. We're trying to do things differently. And I think it shows. And it shows and it's done with love and intention. Thank you. Thank you.
