0:04

Hello. Excuse

0:06

me. Hello. How

0:09

was it, Denver? It was good.

0:11

A lot of great talks and

0:13

events. They're a huge focus on

0:15

agentic systems and LLM in the

0:17

blockchain space, so that was awesome.

0:20

You think people have a convergence of

0:22

AI and crypto, like LLM, the

0:24

large language models, like the chat

0:26

GPs and the Grox? I think focus

0:28

has been on agents, right? So...

0:30

common tasks in a much bigger way

0:32

than has been done up till

0:34

now. And a lot of focus as

0:36

well on no -code and low -code

0:38

solutions, providing accessibility to

0:40

less technical users. Not

0:43

really sure what the future holds for

0:45

Ethereum and other blockchains, especially where

0:47

Solano was going, and then it seems

0:50

like Ethereum still has huge amount

0:52

of market share. And then I'm reading

0:54

that even at ETH Denver 2025, it's

0:56

about Layer 2s. Is that what

0:58

the excitement is? kind of where it's

1:00

like the industry at you see over

1:02

there in those proof of stake blockchains.

1:05

It seems to me that interoperability has

1:07

been a big trend. The

1:09

walls between various

1:11

L1s are getting thinner

1:13

and you know L2s being able

1:15

to interoperate across chains is I

1:17

think a big consideration. People don't

1:19

want to be built on a

1:21

chain and then locked into that

1:23

chain and not able to move

1:25

that data around and bridging in

1:27

the has just been really complicated

1:29

and painful. Seeing interchange, operability,

1:31

being a focus is encouraging. I think

1:34

there's going to be a lot more

1:36

of that coming up. Good

1:42

morning,

1:45

good afternoon, good evening. I'm your

1:47

host, Charlie Shrem, and you're listening to another

1:49

epic episode of The Charlie Shrem Show, where

1:51

together you and I twice a week, we

1:53

dive deep with some of Bitcoin and crypto's

1:55

most influential leaders. OGs, trailblazers,

1:57

to truly understand how this movement

1:59

came to be, where we are right now

2:01

and where we're going in the future. At

2:04

the White House, the first ever

2:06

crypto summit. mean, I never thought

2:08

we'd see the day. And it seems like

2:10

every guest I have on the show, I'm

2:12

asking them, with this new administration, are

2:15

things opening up? Do you see a

2:17

difference? Regulations? You can almost hear them

2:19

partying in the background. They're so excited. To

2:22

give a little bit of introduction to

2:24

Chris Jenkins, well -known as Jinx. We've been

2:26

friends for a couple of years now.

2:28

We've worked together at Drew Adventures VC Fund

2:30

and we've made together like 25 investments

2:32

during this last bear market. And it's

2:34

been epic. It's been really pleasure working

2:36

with you. And you've taught me to

2:38

understand building a website and building a

2:40

company to what that user wants. I

2:42

think you once told me when you're

2:44

writing copy on a website, just write

2:46

it as if you're talking to one

2:48

person. Like, who is your perfect customer?

2:50

I've since relayed that a thousand times

2:52

that advice. You're the head

2:54

of operations at the Pocket Network Foundation, and

2:57

Pocket Network, POKT, for

2:59

those who don't know, has been powering

3:02

node infrastructure of dozens of different

3:04

blockchains and crypto companies for years now.

3:07

Chris, give a little bit of background about yourself, and thanks

3:09

for coming on the show. Yeah, I'm

3:11

glad to be here. And yeah, I very

3:13

much enjoy working with you as one of

3:15

the OGs of the industry. It's nice to

3:17

be able to sort of ride on the

3:19

shoulders of giants. I've been a

3:21

product guy for a long time, an entrepreneur

3:23

who's had a couple of exits and I've

3:25

gone through the ups and downs of that.

3:28

I've been in the blockchain space

3:30

since around 2014, 2015 or

3:32

so. I got into

3:34

Ethereum pretty early. I was super

3:36

interested in this concept of building

3:38

apps on blockchains, which is just

3:40

the default behavior now, but back

3:43

then that seemed kind of crazy. And

3:45

yeah, I've taken over as head of

3:48

operations at pocket network foundation ahead

3:50

of our Shannon upgrade which is basically

3:52

the biggest upgrade of the protocols

3:54

technology in the history so we're very

3:56

excited about that what's going on there.

3:58

What we call the Morse version of the

4:01

protocol was essentially a giant four

4:03

to five year open public beta

4:05

testing a couple of concepts around

4:07

open data. One of them is,

4:09

is there a marketplace for decentralized

4:11

RPCs? Pocket invented that market and

4:13

we see now that there definitely

4:15

is. And you've got a number

4:17

of providers out there who are

4:19

serving that up. But one of

4:21

the things that has been a

4:23

barrier to really meeting the ethos

4:25

of Web 3 is that most

4:27

of these interfaces are permissioned and

4:30

in our Shannon upgrade, the entire

4:32

protocol will be fully permissionless. Anyone

4:34

anywhere can directly stick to the

4:36

protocol and access all of the

4:38

data available through it. You're

4:41

building out products for regular users, but

4:43

now you have this very heavy

4:45

like B2B company. Doesn't it get

4:47

hard sometimes? Yeah,

4:49

you're not wrong about that. Probably one

4:51

of the easiest ways to describe Pocket

4:53

to super non -technical people is that it's

4:55

the phone lines. We don't care what

4:57

kind of phone you're connecting to it.

4:59

We don't care what kind of conversations

5:01

you have on it, but you need

5:03

that connection from end to end to

5:05

be able to talk. A

5:07

slightly more technical explanation is that

5:09

Pocket is like a CDN,

5:12

a content delivery network like Cloud

5:14

Player. It is essentially

5:16

a network of nodes all around

5:18

the world that allows you

5:20

to access any of

5:22

the supported data sources that are

5:24

connected to that. Primarily

5:26

in the past, it's been

5:28

RPC connections for blockchains, but

5:31

with the Shannon upgrade, we are

5:33

moving to support all open

5:35

data. For example, we've got some

5:37

LLM models running on it.

5:39

We've tested signal relay proxies. We

5:41

are running Tor nodes. any

5:43

sort of decentralized data architecture can

5:45

be supported by Pocket Network. That's

5:49

a big difference. You're going from not just

5:51

like the telephone lines, but you're becoming

5:53

like the cable lines and the water lines

5:55

and the plumbing and everything. Any

5:57

type of infrastructure that's needed, you

5:59

guys are trying to do that, becoming the

6:01

Web 3 provider for the future. Yeah,

6:04

we saw the rise of agentic

6:06

systems and autonomous systems and

6:09

how they are going to need

6:11

unstoppable, near real -time data and

6:13

how anytime there's a delay

6:15

or a breakdown in those data

6:17

sources that has real -world repercussions,

6:20

people who are trying to run trading bots

6:22

and such, if your bot gets backed up

6:24

through network congestion and you can't get your

6:26

transactions through, that costs you money. And

6:29

that sort of scenario plays out across

6:31

a ton of different data types and

6:33

a ton of different data sources. It's

6:35

such an interesting world now. There's this

6:37

guy follow on Twitter. His name

6:39

is Peter. So if you go

6:41

to his website fly .peter.com, P -I -E

6:43

-T -E -R, he developed this like

6:45

massive multiplayer online game of a

6:47

flight simulator where you can shoot

6:49

people and it's all developed with

6:51

cursor AI running like on the

6:53

front end. partnering up

6:55

with infrastructure like yours, you

6:57

can have a whole decentralized

6:59

world. The sky is the limit

7:02

for what types of things people can do now. Yeah,

7:05

we are trying to make it

7:07

as dead easy as possible to

7:09

use decentralized protocol on the back

7:11

ends. At this point, we have

7:13

several SDKs really that we support

7:15

that allow building your own access

7:17

point to the protocol. We

7:20

intend to build a number of

7:22

templates for how apps can just

7:24

drop this SDK directly into their

7:26

DAP and start using it. One

7:29

of the other factors that

7:31

is supported in our Shannon upgrade

7:33

is that data providers are

7:35

incentivized to share their data across

7:37

the protocol, which means if

7:39

you are a provider who

7:41

has previously served data into a

7:43

walled garden environment, You've actually

7:45

got a mechanism here to be rewarded for

7:47

making that data open and sharing it out.

7:50

It's actually not theoretical anymore.

7:52

Even this podcast data, I'm

7:54

getting offers from large language

7:57

models to license non -exclusively this

7:59

podcast audio, just because we

8:01

have such high quality audio, multiple people

8:03

speaking on separate tracks on good

8:05

microphones, and I have hundreds, not thousands

8:07

of hours. It's like they're

8:09

using it to train. But it's all

8:11

still siloed. I have to upload it to

8:13

Google Drive. And then I have a broker

8:15

who's going to go out and broker it

8:18

for me with these large companies. It's an

8:20

old system for it. And I feel like

8:22

you could automate that. Like you could have

8:24

AI check the quality of the audio that

8:26

it even needs and score it and price

8:28

it out. I'm surprised there's no audio marketplace. So

8:30

if I wanted to build that, how

8:32

would pocket in the infrastructure? What would I need

8:34

there? Essentially, you

8:37

would probably be working with some sort

8:39

of a decentralized storage protocol because

8:41

you'd need to actually store the file

8:43

space itself. But then pocket would

8:45

become the delivery mechanism by which apps

8:47

could access that data that's stored. One

8:50

of the things that we want to

8:52

encourage after the Shannon upgrade is

8:54

live is in the past, the architecture

8:56

of the network has primarily relied

8:58

on node runners who were staking two

9:00

data sources, but they were running

9:02

pocket nodes primarily. But we want to

9:04

get people who have existing data

9:07

sources already to stake a pocket node

9:09

alongside of their data node. because

9:11

it's cheap and easy to set that

9:13

up on top of your existing

9:15

infrastructure. By doing that,

9:17

and even by using existing

9:19

decentralized architecture like Torrents, for

9:21

instance, you could literally serve

9:24

up any decentralized architecture for

9:26

storage through Pocket Network specifically

9:28

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9:30

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9:32

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really interesting, and in the previous

11:19

world, what has happened that

11:21

other than censorship, why is having

11:23

a centralized content delivery network

11:25

a bad thing? The

11:28

biggest problem with all of the existing

11:30

solutions that are out there is

11:32

that they have some point of access

11:34

which is centralized and that point

11:36

of access becomes a point of failure

11:38

or a point of control as the case may

11:40

be. If you are a

11:42

country that has been added to

11:44

a block list by some

11:46

sort of enforcement or regulatory agency.

11:49

You can be immediately shut out

11:51

of content that you rely on or

11:53

of access to data and systems

11:55

that are part of your daily life.

11:58

Metamask accidentally blocked Venezuela

12:01

for a couple of days, a couple

12:03

of years back. That's one example. News

12:05

sources are another example. The

12:07

ability to access the internet at

12:09

large is another example. Interfaces

12:12

have always been the weak point

12:14

of Web 3, always. Tornado

12:16

cash is a good example of

12:18

that. And we took some flack

12:20

about that a couple years back

12:22

because one of our gateways, as

12:24

a US organization, had to follow

12:26

compliance guidelines for that. But in

12:29

a fully permissionless, decentralized protocol, you

12:31

have unstoppable access to data sources

12:33

all around the world. Remember,

12:35

during the Arab Spring, we saw a huge

12:38

amount of... censorship on blog posts and things

12:40

like that. You don't really see that anymore. It's

12:42

not as up front and center as it

12:44

used to be, but there's still a huge amount

12:46

of censorship going on on the internet. If

12:48

you try to put out certain types of information

12:50

and data, it just gets buried and there's

12:53

no transparency around it. So you could definitely see

12:55

that being worked on in the future as well.

12:58

Anytime there is data that is

13:00

uncomfortable for various types of entities that

13:02

have power or influence or some

13:04

level of technological control, Steps are often

13:06

going to be taken to try

13:08

and limit the distribution of that particular

13:10

kind of data. So

13:12

it's critically important, I think, to

13:15

humanity at large, and hopefully that

13:17

doesn't sound too pompous, but I

13:19

really mean it from the purist

13:21

perspective, that data has to be

13:23

free, that open data has to

13:25

exist out there. And we're talking

13:28

educational data, clinical data, scientific research,

13:30

all the types of data that

13:32

are responsible for humanity progressing. When

13:35

it's locked behind Walt gardens, it's

13:37

you know, you create classes

13:39

of information and people that disadvantage

13:41

those without power and those

13:43

without money Open data is the

13:45

basis of the greatest

13:47

type of equality What's next after

13:49

the Shannon upgrade? Building out

13:51

a library of apps I think there's

13:53

been a lot of talk in the past

13:56

about gateways because I think that was

13:58

one of the easiest things to understand about

14:00

data relays with blockchain and

14:02

RPC relays in particular. But

14:04

with a fully permissionless access to

14:06

the network, you don't need

14:08

to have a whole big gateway to

14:11

run a small data need app.

14:13

You should be able to just easily

14:15

drop that simple SDK in. So

14:17

we're going to be expanding out a

14:19

library of all sorts of different data

14:21

access type apps that developers can come

14:23

in and just pick whatever they're looking

14:26

for and drop that right in. with

14:28

a little bit of a template and a framework for

14:30

how to interact with that data. We

14:32

really just want to make it dead

14:34

easy for developers around the world to

14:36

be able to have that sort of

14:38

a backend to their product and also

14:40

to make it easy for content creators

14:42

of all sorts to use that same

14:44

system and be incentivized for it. It

14:47

seems like everything is changing. There used

14:49

to be web developers. You'd have

14:51

coding languages, even things like from HTML

14:53

in the beginning, and you'd have

14:55

websites, and you'd have to build

14:57

it, whether it's the front -end graphic side

14:59

of things, the back -end, whether it's an

15:01

application, whether you're building some product

15:03

or service and you need to operate it.

15:06

Seems like it's changing completely, and I've seen

15:08

those charts of how the jobs for

15:10

software developers have gone down completely. but

15:13

it seems like there's all these AI apps

15:15

that can do all these things for you,

15:17

and it's just a matter of being able

15:19

to communicate with them because a lot of

15:21

them operate using the large language model type

15:23

of chat GPT system, and being able

15:25

to have the perfect group of

15:27

applications that can talk to each other

15:29

through content delivery networks, and that's

15:31

how you deploy products and services in

15:34

the future. It's so fucking intimidating. It's

15:37

funny because the same thing

15:39

is happening that happened with

15:41

web development, which is simple

15:43

things don't require a developer

15:45

anymore. Engineers have

15:47

gone from laying bricks to

15:49

building brick laying machines, which I

15:52

think is a good use of an

15:54

engineer's time and skill set. Instead

15:56

of me building web pages, let me

15:58

just build an application that lets you build

16:00

web pages. That's the better

16:02

approach to that. We're seeing the same

16:04

thing with LLMs now. a number

16:07

of the companies that i've been

16:09

looking at or following their projects

16:11

that's what their focus is is

16:13

how to deliver this sort of

16:15

functionality to non -technical users with

16:18

the same kind of understandable interface. A

16:20

drag and drop type approach that says

16:22

hey i want to access this

16:25

kind of information and i want these

16:27

sort of automation triggers to happen

16:29

and i wanna you know bundle that up

16:31

and share it with my family or whatever the

16:33

case may be. I just had a crazy

16:35

thought. I can't even fathom

16:37

a world today with AI and

16:39

just what we're doing and how

16:41

we're doing it without crypto tokens.

16:43

Could you imagine if Bitcoin was

16:45

never invented, you just strip that out

16:47

for a second and the world

16:49

just continued on its pace of

16:51

technological development. How would things look

16:54

today? Would we even be talking about

16:56

AI agents and tokens between them

16:58

and just how even in pocket

17:00

work? I never really asked this

17:02

question. It's so unique. Without

17:04

tokens in crypto, there would be

17:06

no such thing as decentralized

17:08

Web3, period. The reason

17:11

is because as soon as you

17:13

add a point of sale

17:15

layer to be able to operate

17:17

in USD or whatever, you

17:19

have created a centralized interface, whether

17:21

that's PayPal or Stripe or

17:23

whatever. Whatever type of interface

17:25

that you have to be

17:27

able to operate through traditional

17:29

financial systems, that becomes your

17:32

centralized point of failure. without

17:34

crypto within these systems as

17:36

microeconomies, there's no way to

17:38

incentivize the participants within that

17:40

ecosystem. So if crypto

17:42

had never been invented, we just flat

17:44

out would not have decentralized systems

17:46

the way we do. It's

17:48

so crazy to think about that. I don't even know what

17:50

that world would look like. Chris

17:52

Jenkins, Jinx. What's the story behind

17:54

Jinx, anyways? Jenkins? Well,

17:57

first of all, it is...

17:59

is an incredibly common name. Jenkins

18:01

is an incredibly common surname. And

18:03

everywhere I went, there was always at least

18:05

one or two Chris's and sometimes another Chris Jenkins.

18:08

So, Jinx became my nickname as an abbreviation

18:10

for my last name and it's stuck and I've

18:12

had that for years now. I think my

18:14

mom's the only one who actually calls me Chris

18:16

on a regular basis. I want to

18:18

write you into a movie. It's like a movie

18:20

character name. Thanks so

18:22

much for coming on the show today. I appreciate

18:24

it. I'm excited for the listeners to hear about

18:26

what you guys got going on. Yeah,

18:28

it's always a pleasure. I appreciate your time

18:30

as well. And again, love working with

18:32

you. You're a fantastic partner. Yeah,

18:34

you too. You too. I'll talk

18:36

to you soon. Thanks, sir. Bye.

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