Okay, we're rolling. Naruto DevRel at avail. Welcome. Hey guys, how's everything going? Hey Peter. Hey, ah excited for this one. um We wanted to take a very specific approach to this call, this interview, focus on developer relations and really marketing specifically to developers, um which is such a difficult thing to do, but such an important thing for projects in crypto. m As a developer relations person, like how'd you get into the role? um And are you a developer yourself? Yeah, yeah, I am. So just to introduce a little bit. I got first exposed to crypto back in 2017 when I was still in college. My roommate comes into my room and he's like, Oh, do you know what's Bitcoin is? And I'm like, no, I don't. I've thought about it, but I've never done. And he's like, Oh, it's like stock that's going up. You so we were like, sure, we'll put in and we bought in some crypto or like some Bitcoin at that time. was $3,000, I think. And then I got addicted to it. So I kept on buying more and more and it was kind of fun. 2019 crashed, lost money, but I never sold crypto. I still held onto it. And then 2020 was like when I started like looking into Solidity, Ethereum, Bitcoin itself. And that's when I got into like the development. So I am a software engineer. I worked in web two for three years before moving to crypto full time at OVL. And I was also working on the side from like, you know, freelance projects and a P contracts, DFI contracts, kind of stuff. That's cool. How'd you hear about Avail so I met, I actually met founders at a conference and they were actually speaking at a conference that I hosted. So it was pretty fun. Um, it was actually. Proble from avail, then it was Mustafa from Celestia and then another project called power loop. So they both, they all three shared a panel and that's where I was, you know, like I knew about what avail is because DA layer and Celestia was really good back then. I was, and I was looking into DA layers. was looking into infrastructure because I was getting deep into the infratech as well. So that's how I found, and then trouble was like, yeah, why don't you work with us? So that's how it all started. Nice, nice. Well, you're very active on X. And I imagine that has been a good channel for you to reach developers. And we're going to talk about where developers hang out, how to reach them, what types of messaging works. And we'll get into that. But maybe we can first talk about crypto projects that want to grow through developers or developers that build on them or applications that build on them. It's such a noisy space like how like how to best attract developers maybe Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think I'll first introduce a little bit about OVIL and then I'll introduce on what tactics that we are using specifically because OVIL is a DA layer. It's a unification layer, at the base or the first product that we have is a DA layer. So DA is data availability. Okay, go ahead. is the data availability. And what basically it means, very basic terms, is that you need decentralization. And then Ethereum has this modular approach where you can separate out DA with other parts of the architecture. So you're basically just posting all your data that you would post on Ethereum mainnet to directly to avail or any DA solution so that the cost for your rollup is cheap. uh That is a very basic thing as a dealer, but we have multiple things that we are working on. Essentially, we call ourselves unification there. What it means is that we are working on something called Abilnexus, which is an interop solution. think of like, know, there are ZK chains, example, ZK sync, sorry, there's a chain on ZK sync, for example, so far, and then there's abstract. right, two different chains. The crazy part about all of this is that there can be an NFT on abstract and I have Ethereum or any kind of token on SoFont. Now I want to buy that NFT. So there's going to be a mechanism where the interrupt happens without me bridging out my assets to SoFont from abstract. And then, you know, go through that bridging process and all that. So we're just trying to make the UX better, liquidity better. so that anyone building on top of Avail Nexus, they can just click on one tab and then buy from any chain possible. Right, so this is our second product Avail Nexus. It's gonna be live very soon on Testnet. um We are working on very great POCs. We have a DevNet internally running as well, where I can buy an NFT from chain one and then transfer it to chain two, even though my assets or my ETH is on chain two. So that means that I don't need to bridge out to chain one and then, know, auto that transaction. The third product is Avail Fusion, which is a staking mechanism, but it includes Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum. So you can stake all different assets alongside Avail. Generally in a chain ecosystem or any kind of place, you can only stake that certain native token, right? uh For example, let's uh say some Bitcoin L2, right? So I'll be only sticking Bitcoin L2 or Bitcoin, but I cannot do some Bitcoin or Ethereum. So that's the biggest difference that we're trying to do. um Now the problem, and coming back to the very initial question on how we attract these developers, right? The problem is that Avail and many other infrared projects are very low-level tech. So it gets harder for us to acquire these talented devs because a lot of the devs in the ecosystem are basically dev developers. And then there are only few dev, there are only few developers who are actually protocol engineers or who are blockchain engineers who know what goes behind everything, every transaction or what a data layer is or what are intents, kind of stuff, right? um So there are different approaches that we use at OVL on how to acquire these developers. And then there are different approaches that are being used by chain ecosystems. For example, Monad, DegaEat, um Eclipse, similar, but they have different approaches as well because their target audience is dev developers and our target audience is um protocol slash blockchain slash infrared devs. Hmm. And um no, that's, I'm glad you segmented that out because we tend to talk in generalities. Like when we say developers, it's very generic, right? But then there's, you know, web two developers, then there's web three developers. And then in, and then in the crypto space, there's protocol engineers, there's, know, DAP developers. And so it's important to segment all that out. um How, how did you come across or across that, that the specific segmentation that makes sense for avail? Um, so a lot of people think hackathons are a solution to go to, right? ETH global and code a lot of these, but we consistently figured it out that these developers are not going to be, you know, the main target audience and nothing like, you no offense on them. They're still in learning phase. So there's a long way for them to keep building. So for me, My target audience would be actual blockchain developers who want to start their own companies, who want to be builders. And they come up with a solution, let's say to launch an L2 or launch an SVM with a wing, right? Or they're building some interop solution with Intents or ERC7683, which is an intent specific EIP. And they come up with a solution that can leverage, that can be leveraged by Nexus or they can leverage Nexus, right? So there's a very big difference on how you have to source these people. Accelerators are incubators are a really great idea where people can come in and they're like, oh, this is what we're building. This is how we are going to build. And then it's on you, your organization on how the best you can support these people. Mm-hmm. And this is very interesting because I've always viewed hackathons as really very, very top of the funnel. like you said, some of them are going to be ready to build and start their own companies. Many won't. Most of them are still just learning. And based on my experience at having gone to 20 plus global events, Um, I've actually been very surprised, pleasantly surprised that a lot of the attendees are, uh, web two devs that are just getting into web three, which is, which is so good because we want to grow the pie. But at the same time, you know, for projects like avail, that might not be the target audience that's ready to build on avail or, use, uh, you know, the offerings that avail has. When, when was the time you kind of realized that that might be the case that maybe these hackathons aren't, aren't, don't have like the right characteristics of developer that we need right now. um I think so. I'm a big fan of ETH Global. A lot of like my journey started with that. I love Karthik and his team. ah But then, you know, we sponsored most of these hackathons last year and I think first two or three hackathons we realized that the developers that we are talking to, even if they're not, you know, new to the ecosystem, they're still building dApps, which doesn't really, you know, affect available directly. So that's what a big realization and we wanted to like pursue on what we can do ah because you know like we are already here we are going to be at other events as well. So what can be changed here? So my general approach was to identify the hackers who've been into ecosystem for two, three years and now they're looking to build their own project, own company or it can be completely different and that would be like Okay, you tested our product, give us a feedback. How did you find the docs? You know, what did you find the best? What can we improve? So these are like the two parts where you can do. Essentially, one and one last thing. This is what I believe is that if you see from 2017 to 2024, every hackathon boasts about how a big company came out of that hackathon. One inch or I think There were some more, can't remember, but one inch was one of them, right? So the problem is that you have to host multiple different hackathons across like, you know, multiple years, but then you only get one unique on, right? So hackathon should not be the main place where you attract devs to start a company, but hackathons is a place where you can identify who's here for the long term. and you can support them the best. I remember that. I think Kartik and Jacob and team at ETH Global, they're great. I've been a volunteer at a couple of, in fact, when I first entered crypto, back in late 2016, early 2017, I was a volunteer at ETH San Francisco. And that's when I got the, I think, the bug. I became just enamored with the whole process and the... And in the community and it was just so fun. um and, and I remember in, know, you mentioned one inch, I think that came out at even New York and I think I was at that one also. And I remember when they presented and was just fascinated by DeFi and how they, you know, they became this, they, demonstrated their, this aggregator on top of, you know, multiple dexes. And it was just, it was really just kind of a very. um, innovative and, but you're exactly right though. You know, there's very few kind of projects that come out of hackathons that are, um, you know, if we view these hackathons as a funnel, very few actual projects come out, come, come out of the bottom of the funnel. But, you know, many can become incubated over years. And as you mentioned, you know, as you, you know, as you attend these hackathons, you'll see kind of the same names and faces over and over and over again. And it sounds like that becomes your target market is like, okay, these developers have been to these hackathons and they continue attending these hackathons. At some point, they're going to be ready to build their own rollup or L2. That's when it makes sense for, you know, that becomes your target for Avale. Yes, for sure. How do you reach these? Because Avale and every crypto project is permissionless, How do you reach them? Like how do you identify, okay, this is the type of developer that is ready to build on Avale. How do you identify him? Okay, so one thing that I've realized in last one year is that hacker houses really work. When you're at a hackathon as big as ETH Global, there are multiple partners and you only have two days. And then these hackers who may be new may not be new, but are adaptive developers. looking into bounties, the easiest bounties they can get, right? and they have a low time limit. So it becomes very hard for them to build something on a wheel, even though we've received some really great projects. And because of that, I pivoted to an idea of hacker houses. We hosted one at HCC, we hosted one in Denver. So we have done two so far and we got a really good oh feedback on how we did it, what we did and... uh From these two hacker houses, we were able to get all of these steps to build on a wheel for seven days. They built some really great projects and we have two teams coming from these hacker houses to build their own product as well. So that's what I think really matters on how much focus you can give in the span of two to seven days whenever you're interacting with these steps. And that's why these hacker houses work. because in a hacker house, everyone is locked in, sitting in their own, in their room or in the living room coding, oh talking about the ideas. um When I did the E10-1, I was very, you know, not conflicted, but I was also very confused on how it's going to work out because we've never made these steps, how it's going to all look like for them, what are they going to build? But the minute everyone started coming, and they checked in, they're like, yeah, this is what I'm building. Someone was building like a uh token launch pad. Someone was building a game and they all were like, okay, we can launch on a wheel. We can launch on any L2 or, know, someone came up with a fast finality layer at ECC. So these things really matter because now you're giving direct feedback and you're having conversation for two hours straight. My head of product was in there. oh Our solutions in G9 team was in there and everyone was having a good conversation on what can be done, what is good, what can be removed, that kind of stuff. And this is just a hacker house side, right? There are multiple other ways where you can go and target devs. um Discord being one of them and how do you get is like, we have our own Discord. There are a lot of devs in there and everyone comes in and they're like, yeah, we are building this. How do we do, how do we reach out to the team? And that becomes a major thing. And then the third thing, and I think this is particular for me or anyone else is we need to have a strong personal brand on Twitter because we dev rels are the face of the company or the first line of the company. Um, if founders are busy founders have too many things to deal with every single day. Uh, my founders, you know, Preble and Unrug, they are like in multiple different conversations. So I cannot like. have developers talk to them. So I need to build that reputation in the market that, hey, I'm a dev rel and a real or I'm a dev rel or I'm a dev. And then this is what you can reach out to me for. people, every year, every single day I get 10 messages on Twitter itself. Some people want to build on a real, some people want to pitch an idea and I can give them feedback. It's not necessary that they have to build an avail to reach out to me. I can just, you know, have an honest conversation. give my feedback, give my insights. And that's how you build that reputation among the developers. So when you do that constantly for few months, few years, people talk, people are like, oh yeah, you go to Naruto and he's going to, you know, talk about your product. He's going to give you feedback. And then at that moment, I'll realize does their project align with avails values or not? If they do, then I pitch them that, this is what we are doing. If you're interested, you can build on avails. as well. So it's a long process. Yeah, no, I like that and I also like the the long-term approach because it's you the long view is always what's you know, that's kind of what matters in the end how let's go back to the hacker house uh format because I've seen different formats, right? I've seen the weekend hackathon from ETH Global. I've seen Colosseum does a, on the Solana side, Colosseum does a, I think a month long virtual hackathon. I think ETH Global's also done some virtual hackathons. And then there's the hacker house approach, which I believe many, think the Solana team has also done that across the globe. in Salt Lake City, Solana recently did uh like a, yeah, Mountain Dow. And so I'm curious about these formats and like what works. And would love to hear more about the Hacker House. Like, you know, first of all, like, you know, once as a team, Avail's decided that, you know, it wants to do a Hacker House. How do you get the message out to developers? How do you get them to register or sign up for the Hacker House? And then, and I guess what are the, once they are, at the hacker house, what are the, I guess, what does the format look like as a developer? Okay, so I think the number one marketing is Twitter, you you post it on Twitter, you put it on Luma, and then you have multiple different websites like Crypto Nomads, or the official, let's say, eat and worse, you know, calendar. So you put your event over there. But then there are other channels where you can channel your hacker house as well. Number one being you need to recognize who is going to be a great partner for this specific house or a co-host or a sponsor. So for example, at eat Denver, we had a real so fun. And then we had space and time, which is, which is a great L2. They have great experience. And I think it's backed with by Microsoft. So they're integrating with a wheel very soon. Then. There was Sofon, Space and Time, Warmhole, you know, all these different, we had like six to seven partners, so I can't remember all of them. But um the point was that they all aligned on this specific house. We call it Unification House because the bounties or the theme was on, you know, similar to this on like how you can make something using Warmhole, where you can bridge your assets. through base, Solana or whatever you like, right? So you recognize the partners. Now use these partners channels to reach out to the hackers. If I send it to the dev rel of Walmo like, hey, this is what I found. And she is by the way, very nice person. ah I think her name's Paul and she's very knowledgeable dev rel. And I just sent her this like, yeah, your partner of, know, audience hacker house, how about you share it with your community? So they share it. with their community. So Wormhole devs or people building on Wormhole knows this, know this. And then I reached out to Sofone, which is an L2 on, you know, ZKSync stack. So they're really great people, really stacked team and their first roll up that went mainnet with a wheel. So they're very close partners of ours. And I said the same thing, like you have such a big dev community, how about you like spread it there? So now you're getting applications from multiple ecosystems, not just of you, right? And that's the thing, like when you market, you want to market not just for yourself, but your partners, and you want to bring in the partner ecosystem to your ecosystem as well. Now, is the format, does it include a kind of like like a, you mentioned a bounty. So I imagine if, if you're a developer and you're building on wormhole plus so fun, plus avail, like would they qualify for like a bounty from all three projects? Is that how, okay. how it went down, the general idea was that it was a seven day, I think six day, six day long hacker house. We had 15 hackers with us. Everyone, you know, like everyone was sharing a room. There were eight rooms. It was a big house. And every day they have to check in with me or with our solutions engineer on what they're building, what's the progress look like. And then there were bounties from multiple different projects. Avail has their own bounty on Avail Nexus and Avail DA. Sofon had their own bounties. Vomul had a bounty to integrate Avail and then work with stuff. Space and Time had their own bounties as well. So basically everyone has their own bounties and people are free to choose whatever. And people can also kind of tag it with other projects. Like there was someone who built it with Sofon, but they also launched it using wormhole. So that means that now you're targeting two bounties, you qualify for both of them, and you give feedback to the users like, or like, sorry, the companies that this is what we get stuck on. And this is what the problem was. So it's a win win for everyone. oh I love that approach. one, obviously at these ETH Global events, there's a kind of a similar approach with bounties with uh developers trying to qualify for multiple bounties from sponsors. One challenge that I've seen with that approach is you often get uh projects or applications that are kind of superficial that are just bounty hunters. They're just trying to get the, you know, They're just trying to get a bounty from as many sponsors as possible. And then after the event, they kind of move on and they don't take things seriously. How do you filter out the teams that are serious versus the ones that are just there for the bounty? Sure. So it comes down to DevRel, me and Robin, who is another DevRel overview. And it comes down to us on how we want to select it. But essentially when we close the applications for our unification house of a Denver, we had over 300 applications. Out of 300, know, like 100 were non-residents. So that means that they just want to come and visit the hacker house. And then 200 were the hackers who wanted to stay with us. and build with us. Now, it's me, it's me and Robin, just two guys versus 200 people. So we are going every single GitHub, we are going every single Twitter and we're checking on what's their mentality, how long they've been in crypto, what they have built. I have personally checked so many Githubs and I've checked every single line of code as well sometimes because I'm like, okay, is it a good code or is it just one command? Is it just a folder? uh just a repository, what is it, right? What they have built in previous hackathons, does it actually work or not? So there's a lot of due diligence that goes into this because you're spending real money for people to stay at a hacker house, to have the groceries paid off and all those different things. So a lot of research goes into this. And then there are always questions like, okay, what are you building? ah What do you want to build? Do you want to keep it long term or not? You know all these different kind of questions and every now and then of course you receive people who are just bounty hunters or who do not want to continue but the goal should always be look for those five to six people out of 15 people so that's close to 30 40 percent on will they build something long term or not. I got six people from the unification house who want to build something on a wheel. And I'm in constant touch with them right now after two months of, know, it and we're getting over on like what they can build, how they should build, oh where we can support, where other L2s or other partners can support. So it's a big thing. There are bounty hunters for sure, but there's a lot of due diligence that's going to accepting people. It sounds like that's a, I mean, you've done a lot of due diligence, you and the team. So you had 300 applications and then a hundred were, were non-residents. so you're, so you had to do due diligence on 200 applicants. Wow. And you went into their get hubs and I imagine you're probably, and then from the Twitter and fry from the 200, then it, you, you do another cut of maybe let's say a hundred and then you probably talk to individual interviews, probably at that point. Yes, you also need to talk to people individually. If you select, let's say, five people who are really good, there are always going to be five to 10 people who are really good with a lot of uh information. Then you conduct interviews for other people who you're not sure about. ah So that's when you do interviews for other people as well. So yeah, we did that as well. So it's a lot of time consuming, but at the end of the day, it is very rewarding as well for the company and for yourself. Now the projects or the team members that attended the hacker house and that you're still in contact with, um is there a, I guess, is there like a grant at the end of this or you help them with funding for their project? I guess what's keeping them engaged so that they want to build this application and make sure that they see it through to the end? Yeah, so we never believed in grants for a long time and we are um very cautious on who we give grants to. We don't give grants because there are a lot of people who are extracting the grant ecosystem, you know, be it Gitcoin, be it some other companies, a new chain, for example, people will flock over there and they're like, oh, I want to like build on, oh For example, MegaEat. MegaEat is one of the talk of the town, right? And they're very great people. I'm very close to the team, but everyone is like, they want to build on MegaEat or Moonet so that they can get grants, right? So we never believed in that. ah But now we have this plan of like, if there are devs who are really builder mentality and they want to build something, so they can come to us and they can propose what they want to propose and we will support them with any kind of grants that appeal. does. um These are like dev grants, but then we also support them with introductions to VCs, introductions to angel investors, um introduction to our partner chains. So, Stofan, Lens, anyone else. And then they basically, you know, build something with them and a wheel, and then it becomes like a joint bounty thing. And then they're finally able to raise that kind of stuff. So, are on the, you know, in the behind on the behind the we are helping probably five teams right now in raising or just introductions. And by the way, that's incredible because like a lot of people don't know, but you know, introductions to VCs and angels and then dealing with things like, you know, just operational logistics type things. It's such a pain for an entrepreneur. And to get some help with that is a huge value add that the avail team is providing these entrepreneurs. And I think that's one way we really need to kind of reframe the conversation. They're not just developers. not just builders. They're actually kind of they're entrepreneurs. They're business builders. They're building a real business. And I think when we kind of reframe it like that, it takes on a different flavor and like it just takes on a different kind of worldview that it's you're not these are not just developers. They're building businesses and you got to help them build their business. And a lot of building a business is painful stuff like accounting, operations, HR, know, it's, but all of that stuff, even though it's a pain, also adds tremendous value. Okay, now you on on X, you've mentioned a couple of things. Maybe I want to, I want to really understand how you are vetting developers or builders, because I think that's that's one of the key things. think grants, by the way, are they can be good and bad, obviously, and there's a lot of grant hoppers em is what I call them. They're similar to kind of bounty hunters, right. But one way to uh filter out grant hoppers from real builders that are kind of deserving of the grant is to do your due diligence. And so when you're doing due diligence on the projects and the teams and the people behind the applications, what are you looking for? You've mentioned GitHub. You look at their API usage. don't know. I guess tell us some specific things you're actually looking at. GitHub stars, et cetera. I mean, GitHub and Twitter are definitely like, first thing you would want to look at if it's a North Korean hacker or if it's a real builder, you know. But then again, there are other things where you would want to put in your if they're, you know, like if they're actually building on a wheel, if they are needing a grant. So you get on a call, you get their idea on what they are building. You get the vibes. You know, that really matters to us. We have a really good company culture that we try to preserve is to keep the vibes up, keep the constructive criticism, positivity up as well internally. So we always get on a call to get and do a check on the vibes and how everything is going with the other person. What their idea is, why they're excited. Personally, when I have talked to people who are building something and I'll give you an example, Loom. He's a really great guy on Twitter. ah Been in crypto since I think 2014, 2013, whatever. ah When he speaks to me about his project, his face lit up. It always ah has this passion when he talks. So that's one way when uh you're talking to developers or builders on a call on how excited they are about their project that they're building, because this is going to be... their life for five years or so, right? um Maybe more actually. So it's just number one that on how a normal call would go with it, apart from all Twitter and GitHub things. Other things that I look for is what they've built in the past, or at least what they've tried to, but they didn't get the right resources. For example, back in 2022, I had a great idea to build um on Azuki, similar to like what Anime Chain is right now. But it turns out I didn't have connections back then, so I never could execute, right? But I had the POC, I had everything built out. ah So I also look at two people on what their idea is, what they want to build, what they have done in the past, what their background is. ah Sofans founder, Seb, he's a really great guy, and he worked at ZKSync for I think three years or so. Before that, he was at another place and he had that builder mindset, right? So you can recognize these builder mindset people on their past experiences, how they talk about their project, what does their GitHub look like if they're devs, all these different kinds of things. So it's a mix of everything. oh And always like, you can always be wrong as well, but at least they passed the first few tests that you set out for yourself. Yeah, and I think that discipline that you're taking with doing due diligence is so important. It sounds like there's subjective aspects, right? There's talking to them, hearing from their voice, the excitement in their voice and how their face looks when they talk about their project. And then there's also, um those are subjective things and there's objective things like GitHub stars ah and other things that they've built in the past. um Okay, no, I think that's really great, because that gives, I think, listeners, uh those that are in developer marketing, I think, some better ideas, I think a better idea of how they can go about growing their developer ecosystems and developer networks as they build projects that they represent. When we talk before the call about competitors, so if I'm a developer and I'm looking at you know, right, let's just use the data availability uh product right now. If I am in need for a data availability solution, you know, there's several I could choose from, how do you deal with that situation and make sure that, you know, that you put avail in the best light possible and that the developer, uh you know, chooses avail or leans towards avail versus another competitor, let's say. Yeah, there are some great competitors, you know, for a wheel. um One crazy thing that not a lot of people talk about is the technical stuff. The people who are actually building on a wheel, the people who are actually, you know, integrating a wheel, they know how effortless it is or how easy it is to be able to integrate a wheel. Right. And the one thing that we are very proud of is our customer service, because at the end of the day, A lot of our clients or customers are the businesses, different L2s. And when they're integrating, we make sure that any second they have any question, at least one person is there to answer in the Telegram channel. So anytime we get a question on our Telegram groups, and there are hundreds of them, I have three folders of these real chats. Either it's going to be me, Robin, or another solutions engineer. And we're going to be there for like right there if they have any questions on integrating so that we can provide the live support. know, someone is integrating with, say someone is building OP stack chain or, and, ZKSync stack chain, right. And they got into a problem or a bug where they couldn't figure something out. The first thing that I do, I asked for the logs. What's the error? And then this happens at less than 30 minutes. So our, this is our internal thing that if you're providing technical support, it should be less than 30 minutes so that people know that someone is working on it. I asked for everything and then I try to run on my own system. If I get those problems or not, if I cannot figure it out, then I take it to like a node engineering team or the people who've been working on it for a long time. Right. So what's the selling point for Avail is the tech. The tech is way better, specifically saying that what avail does is that avail is actually having a KZG proof commitments. What it means is that anytime a data is posted, there's a KZG commitment and that is very succinct, very small. So the data availability guarantee is less than a minute or so. There are other DA providers, they have that finality, but it takes them seven days because they have a fraud proof mechanism. similar to OP. So the data availability guarantee is late, even though maybe the block finality is less, 10 seconds or whatever. So for avail, the block finality is 20 seconds. But the data availability guarantee that the block is available is less than a minute. So that's our setting point. Now is that is that done through ZK? How are you able to do? Okay. Yes. So ZK behind it is a lot of like, you know, something we call KZG commitments or KZG polynomials. It's a whole math thing over there, but we get that. And because of that, we get, you know, this low timeframe for data availability guarantees. So that's the tech that that is our main selling point. And then another selling point is like, Every integration for every major protocol is already done. We have CDK integrations, have ZKSync integration, OP stack, oh Arbitrum, Nitro stack, and then we have Dimension as well. And it's very effortless. And then the third selling point, as I talked about, was the customer service. Anyone who's trying to integrate, have any problems. I am online 18 hours a day. So they get an answer in... Less than 30 minutes from me. You know, I've talked to other developer relations folks about this, but the role of customer service and providing white glove support is absolutely a game changer. in fact, one of the big criticisms against the Ethereum ecosystem is that developers are left to work on their own with very little support. And because of that problem, it's driving people to the Solana ecosystem. Yes. so I think to the extent that Ethereum projects or projects within the Ethereum space can provide more white glove service and better customer service, that's actually going to keep developers in. And ah it's sounding like that's really that's working really well for Avale. Yes, exactly. um This is the biggest feedback that we get from multiple partners that our tech support is really good. You know, not just the dev roles, even founders are very active on Telegram. let's say I'm sleeping, it's night time, but it's daytime for them because they're based in Dubai, so they can reply or, you know, there are multiple employees or like my coworkers who are spread across like India, Europe, Dubai. Southeast Asia so they can reply if you know our founders are not there or devils are not there but just to make sure that we try to make it acknowledge that your problem has been acknowledged we are working on it and we'll give you support by the end of the day you know that kind of stuff. And I think that's huge. And again, for listeners, providing white glove support for developers and customer service is absolutely a game changer. Developers appreciate that so much, both web three and also web two, but web two especially since they're just learning. But providing that type of support for developers is huge and creates loyalty. Because imagine if you're a developer, then you're building in an ecosystem and you're getting a lot of support on one, but in another ecosystem, you're left to be on your own with zero support, you're lost, the docs are not structured well. You're going to go to the one that has the least friction and providing and if that ecosystem has folks that are willing to help and step in and give you the support you need, you're going to stay loyal to that ecosystem. Sure, exactly. And I think more companies need to do that. That's why I think like dev rel position is really important, ah but it also has like its own gaps and pitfalls. Yeah, let's talk about the dev rel position. How do you work with, um you mentioned brand, which is really important, but I'm curious how the dev rel position works with, let's say, marketing and growth and business development. How does that look like at avail and how do you work with each other? So I think it depends from companies to companies on how they set their dev roles. um I've heard of organizations where dev roles are under marketing. I have seen dev roles under solutions engineering, under sales as well. So it completely depends on the KPIs and the goals. For Avail, um dev roles sits under product. And product or slash engineering, it's the same thing. And this is because available employees or our head of product or our co-founders, they want us to succeed in the sense that we know what we're talking about when we are talking about two external parties. If I talk to dev rels, sorry, devs every single day, and there are issues that I cannot solve, I would go to engineering team. But those should be the issues that are very, very deep, which are not easily recognizable. and they're probably a bug in our own system, you know, that kind of stuff. But if I'm talking to independent developers and I'm trying to explain them what Avail does, I'm trying to show them how the documentation work, how they can build basic things, how can they can fetch the data, how they can submit the data to Avail. These are very basic things and I need to know these. And that is why we sit under the product because I need to be knowing how to code. I need to be knowing how to sell. but two developers and to talk to developers, I need to know their language, right? So both the dev rels, me and Robin, we both are devs first and then we are rels, you know, that's what we call ourselves. But it definitely depends on the company, their KPIs on where a certain dev rel should sit. To me, I genuinely think the dev rel should be in under product. or engineering kind of same thing, but they should be under that. And then they should be helping the marketing team, like how Robin and I do. Robin and I, we used to do a lot of events as well before, until we hired someone for events manager full-time role, so that we don't have too much pressure. And we also put in a lot of thoughts on marketing because we are talking to devs. So our official account also needs to be talking to devs or someone else, right? So we put in our thoughts, we are attending the meetings from marketing team, are attending the calls with the content team on what should be pushed out. So a lot of things are very uh cross ecosystem or sorry, cross teams at Avail. Yeah, and I think sitting under product actually makes a lot of sense because, know, when you're under product, you're, you take on a different view, right? It's not just about developer relations, but it's also the developer experience, which is, is absolutely critical. Marketing cares about the developer experience. Business development cares about developer experience. Engineering. I think they do care about the developer experience, but their approach to it is a little different. And I think product is definitely the right place for a developer relations parole. And you're right, it's very cross functional. um And content, of course, matters in terms of attracting the right people who are asking the right questions and then making sure that your content answers that for them. m Which brings me to my next question in terms of like content. um How do you decide on the types of content to create that attracts developers? um And how do you work with a content team on that? Okay, so that's a little bit. Okay, so I'm gonna give you out my secrets, right? One thing definitely that works if you want that personal brand or you want to be known um among the developers on Crypto Twitter is to post about what the Twitter is talking about. If the meta of the week is mega eat, then I'm gonna be building or looking on some technical things about MegaEat. ah Three months, four months back, the meta was AI agents. So Robin, another dev rel, he came up with a video on how to launch your own AI agents using Eliza. So that's one of the golden rules is that you talk about the things that are happening on Twitter right when it happens on Twitter. not a day late, not a day before, exactly then. If you have something very important, then that's okay. But if you have at least an hour of free time, then you go and research on what the marketing market is talking about. And then you put your thoughts out as a developer of what you think about Monad, MegaEat, know, another uni chain or uni swap or any kind of decks or whatever like people are talking about. So that's one of my biggest alpha. if someone wants to you know, kind of copy that and learn from it. Second content that we do is on how you can build on a wheel. And this requires, you know, like a lot of our own testing, a lot of time on what can be built. um How much time does it take to, you know, build something? So Robin created another video and he's like a video guy because he does it way better than I can. He built a video or he made a video saying, D-Y-O-R. Deploy your own roll up, you know and you can make Your own roll up or deploy your own look on our bit from stack in less than 15 minutes It's on YouTube a lot of people I did we put it on Twitter as well. They got a lot of like, you know inflows through that so the content should always be a real specific on what can we build so that Developers can take something from them learn from it and then launch it it. But then content should also be anything that is not a visual setting. Because that's where, you know, like, a lot of people see your real talent and then they get attracted to you as, you know, some great developer. And then they can see what available is. And then from there, you can on- So the basic idea is like you try to build those relations, not specifically through avail, but your own knowledge. I think that strategy is really tried and true. think, you know, if you think back in early days of kind of inbound marketing with HubSpot, that's exactly their approach. And, you know, you just create really good top of the funnel content, which is very generic. And then middle of the funnel content is more specific. And then bottom of the funnel content is really around the specific project and how to do something with that project or with that offering. And that type of inbound approach works. know, web two, web three, it doesn't matter. It just works really, really well because it meets the user where they are. You know, a lot of these users, for example, you you bring up the mega-eath example. They may not know about avail yet, but they're interested in mega-eath. And so just meet them where they are and provide content that meets their needs, that builds trust. And at some point they're probably, they're going to be curious, Hey, this content that you created on MegaEath, tell us about your project. And then that kind of introduces them and gets them in your funnel. And I think that's great. It meets the developer where they are. I think that's the key. to someone in LobsterDow Chat. It's LobsterDow Chat, like, know, the OG Telegram chat since I think 2018 or so. A lot of people, think some 17,000 people, Stanny from Lens is very active. A lot of people are active there. And I was just having this conversation about some other project on how they're building, you know, this narrative. And then someone DM me and they're like, yeah, I wanted to get in touch with a real team. I didn't know how to get in touch, but I saw you in the lobster doubt chat. Do you want to talk about what I'm building? And I'm like, sure. You know, that's, that's what it is. And he's like, yeah, you've got a really great knowledge on how you can do this. Would you give me feedback on this? And then we are trying to integrate a wheel with it. And I'm like, okay, for sure. That's awesome. That is awesome. Well, Naruto, this has been such a just helpful conversation. You you bring a ton of knowledge in terms of developer marketing that I think the audience will be very appreciative of, and be able to apply immediately in their work as they develop, as they, you know, aim to meet developers needs and grow, you know, their own developer ecosystems. Any last things you want to say about that specifically or about Avail? I would say that if you're in a dev rel position, it's a very tough job. I realize it because I work in it, but there are a lot of things that can be done. If you're a dev slash builder, I think this is the best time to build something because the market is a little bit down. There's tariffs, there's a lot of fear, but it also gives you time to build more and more actual good stuff. So, you know, the whole idea is like, do not be just be in a doomsday kind of mode, like, yeah, nothing's going to work out. think a lot of things are going to work out. And if you're ever building on OVL, I can support you with anything you want, marketing. I'll be your dev rel. I'll be your personal dev rel if you build on OVL. And that's my biggest pitch, you know. You heard it here folks, if you want to build and partner with Avale, Nerudo will be your person. He will be there for you and the white glove support that he talked about earlier. That's not a joke, that's serious. And you'll get the support that you need. Well Nerudo, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. This has been so fun and so instructive. Thank you. Thanks a lot.