NOWNodes and LUKSO AMA Recap. Web3 for People, Not Just Keys

In celebration of NOWNodes’ 6th anniversary, we have an AMA session on NOWNodes X Spaces with LUKSO DevRel Lead Dmitry Machikhin, to discuss the BitOK’s mission, web3 infra if the future and how NOWNodes plays a role in powering Web3 infrastructure!

AMA Recap: NOWNodes x LUKSO

Pauline: Hello everyone! Thanks for joining our AMA! Today we are going to talk about NOWNodes and LUKSO partnership! I’ve been super happy to have witnessed that. Just in case: if you didn’t know, my name is Pauline, and I am chief strategy officer over at ChangeNOW which is a parent company of NOWNodes. My wonderful co-speaker and co-host is NOWNodes’ CEO Xena Kash. Xena, say hello to everybody. 

Xena: Hello, everyone. Nice to meet you all. Happy to be here. 

Pauline: Now we’re waiting for our hero of today’s space, which is the blockchain called LUKSO. And our wonderful guest today is going to be Craig Antocci. And we’re waiting for him to request a speaker’s place, and we’re going to start our wonderful evening. We’re going to learn all the alpha about LUKSO about what it does, and what it is, and what the synergy is between LUKSO and NOWNodes. Basically, we’re gonna learn everything. We’re gonna keep it real. We’re gonna drop some old stuff today, and we’re just gonna, yeah, have some fun.

And, while we’re waiting, Xena, how are you doing? I’ll just NOWNodes been so far since we met last week. 

Xena: Great. Working hard, actually. Working hard with all the new networks and new partners and, well, focusing on stability, of course. As always, we’re focused on stability mostly, more than anything else. So yeah. Many new developments, here in the NOWNodes, actually. Over the past several months, we actually added several new features.

So we’re not just an RPC provider right now. We also provide different APIs. One of the most important additions to our feature list, so to say, would be the notification service, blockchain notification service, which might be quite useful for, like, wallets and services. Also, we’ve added market data to our feature list as well. So you see, not only an RPC provider, as I’m saying. I basically, we’re becoming like an infrastructural provider. Yeah. Right. Not not only nodes, but also whatever you need to build your own service with on crypto and blockchain. Welcome.

Pauline: This is wonderful to hear and while we’re dropping all the exciting things about Navios, we’ve got our wonderful guest here. Craig. Hello. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. How are you doing, basically? 

Craig: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me today. I’m appreciating Jonathan Wong, our growth officer, so I’m happy to be here.

Pauline: Wonderful. So can you tell us like, before we get into the, like, the depth of it, before we get the trenches, can you tell us and our listeners a little bit about your background? What did you do before you joined LUKSO? How did you came to Web3? We’re basically itching to hear all about it. 

Craig: Thanks. I’m glad people wanna know my background. I’m happy to share it though. Let’s see. I think the most important place where we start is, I actually was a physics instructor for years. I taught secondary school physics, and it was I moved up through the ranks, became an administrator, and it was about, let’s say, 2018 when my brother convinced me I really needed to pay attention to the smart contract platform, Ethereum. That led me down the whole rabbit hole of learning and personal upskilling, and the more the deeper I got, the more I became infatuated.

I always had a little bit of a background in programming, but then I actually went and did a full, professional course of study in programming, through the MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And then I really fell in love with LUKSO, everything that LUKSO was offering relative to self sovereign identity and kind of building out a new vision for us as a social watching. And, that led me into the community of LUKSO. I’ve been around here for years and years and years, and I just formally joined the team as a DevLead and communications manager, just shortly after Eve Denver, actually. And that brings us up to the present.

Pauline: Oh, nice. And it’s wonderful to hear that we’ve got actual real scientists during this phase. We could use more of those, especially those trained over in MIT because I also have a little bit of academic background, and I know that MIT has a plethora of wonderful linguists because my background is linguistics. So, yeah, super nice to have you here. And can you talk a little bit about what LUKSO is as a blockchain? What problem it is solving within the Web3 ecosystem?  

Craig: Yeah. So Lukso was created, I think, fundamentally to rethink how identity, interaction, and creativity work in Web3. It’s kind of like I’d like to say we’re inspired by the build vision of building a more inclusive and user friendly, maybe culturally relevant blockchain ecosystem.

We really look to empower not just developers or traders, but also the creators, the brands, the communities, the everyday user that could really benefit from the technology that is blockchain. So, you know, we’re trying to move away from key based wallets to really, a smart contract based account where the key is less important and can be swapped out at any time. You’ve got an updated token ecosystem, so it’s not just the, quote, unquote, dumb ERC-20, which might not be the best way to say it. But I say that because ERC-20 lacks metadata and some of the composability that our new token standards offer. And we also feel that Web3 is just too finance driven and maybe a little too extractive and doesn’t provide enough room for the circularity of maybe these creative and social applications.

And if you’re interested in learning more, anyone, there’s actually two vision papers on the LUKSO Medium that actually do a pretty good job of, talking about what we think about relative to the new web three where identity is modular and accounts are smart contracts and the user is in control. So I guess, specifically, the problems that we’re solving, identity and ownership, you know, in web three identity is tied to keys, like I said. And the ownership of those keys and custody of those keys is fragile and impersonal. And our solution is universal profiles, and that’s our smart contract based account built on the ERC seven two five standard, and then the smart contract ecosystem around that, standard based, account system. 

Yeah. I that’s, I think that’s what I would say. That’s a pretty good answer, I think. 

Pauline: It is a pretty good answer indeed and an excellent one fact. I also kind of agree, with the key message that right now we’re kind of seeing crypto and Web3 as more as, kind of like an extension of, the web3 ecosystem where we have exchanges, wallets, neobanks, and stuff like that, but on the blockchain. And I do believe that, identity ownership, especially with crypto getting more and more adopted lately, is very again, as you said, it is very fragile, especially for newcomers.

It is hard for them to keep track of the keys, and I do believe that the mission of LUKSO of making crypto a little bit more user friendly is what more and more projects kind of need to be doing, sooner than than later.

Craig: Yeah. I think we have to look after the user. Right? The user comes first.

I mean, in our big picture, I think it was so we’re thinking about kind of creating a decentralized operating system for this new web3, where maybe universal profiles could be a persistent identity layer in the interface layer. And, you know, I’ve worked for universal everything, which is kind of the largest window into the new standards and what the LUKSO network is offering through this ERC seven two five base. And then the execution layer then can be spread out across LUKSO or Ethereum proper or other chains that offer block space and is inter-in maybe unique or stratified ways that are specific to the user. 

So I think, you know, we’re really looking at a stack that’s truly user owned and composable for the digital expression of the normal person. And I think the normal everyday user isn’t looked after right now in the industry.

Pauline: Oh, for sure. I mean, maybe this is I mean, at the very least in my personal opinion, the hostility of the web3 space, the hostility that has been persistent for basically since the inception of crypto, which have made it kind of to be more of a fringe thing that nerves engage in, has made adoption stagnate. And it’s very cool to have projects who are trying to solve that, but I do have a few questions about the identity layer. So we do have a few projects in the space that are already trying to solve the problem of identity in the decentralized context of blockchain and web3.

We’ve got your Polygon ID. And what makes LUKSO kind of different from these protocols that are trying to, and put identity on blockchain? 

Craig: Oh, great question. I think when we speak about identity in the LUKSO ecosystem, we’re talking about more of a soft identity that builds up over time reputationally through your interactions.

Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t store aspects that are defining characteristics of or or real identifiers for you. But the core technology is, again, built around the ERC seven two five, which allows you through, the ERC seven two five y to attach custom metadata. So, you know, I guess, links the data about yourself to the smart contract account itself. So when you come to the LUKSO ecosystem and you create a universal profile, this universal profile, through LSP three, which is a standardized structure through which we hold profile data and store it in this universal profile. You might have your avatar, the banner image for your account.

You might have links to your LinkedIn or your Spotify or something that’s important to you. You might also have tags that might say you’re a developer or you’re an artist or you’re a sculptor. You know, it’s as varied as the people who use the account. What’s interesting here is we’re not as concerned with or the differentiators, we’re not as concerned with adding your license or your health care records to this identity system as we are concerned about in a social context. What is your digital presence online, and how do you represent yourself?

And we wanna make that persistent because even right now, I’m talking to you in a Twitter space, but at any time, I could be deplatformed. I could lose this account, and then I would have to go and create a new account, but I would lose all of my contacts, all of my followers. In the LUKSO ecosystem, that account is yours. You own your digital presence, and you take that account with you to every one of the platforms that you engage with. So this soft identity that you build up reputationally that you own from day one is now independent of the platform, which is super cool.

And this allows developers then to plug into the standardized metadata that points to this data that can be held off chain even, and then reference it in an attractive way for its users based upon context. So if you had social media- where you were very highly interested in only representing the avatar image, when I log in to your decentralized Twitter, it will immediately log in. It will show my image. It will reference my username. If in a different context, you weren’t as concerned about that, but you wanted to know what my metadata tags were because you wanted to filter out and find everybody who labels themselves an artist on the blockchain, you can do that as well, and never mind looking into the transaction history of the chain.

So to sum up this very long answer, which I realized I gave one, the difference is is we’re not as concerned with that hard identity piece as we are with the soft identity, which is your digital presence that you wanna portray to the online portal, and then reputationally, on or a summary for, your activity and provides context for your follow users. 

Pauline: Well, it does make sense, and it’s all okay. We have invited you to the AMA to tell us what you think is important about the project that you represent. So, you can get all you want. My calendar is green rush free for the rest of the day. So, whatever you feel is important to say, please do.

And, what I also wanted to say about LUKSO with with what excites me about it is basically, you give people a choice, about what information they choose to reveal about themselves. And for the record, I don’t think anyone should be putting their medical data on the blockchain. This is just something that should not be done at the very least at this point in the existence of the space. Nobody should be putting what they’re like, it’s a very sensitive personal information on blockchain. But, basically, this is like a form of your digital avatar.

It can be anonymous, from what I understand. So basically, it can, like, have your username or nickname as a placeholder and a picture, instead of your folder. Right? 

Craig: That’s correct. Absolutely. You choose what digital presence you would like to have, and you can actually have more than one profile if you want. 

So if you had a more straight laced community pillar profile because you wanted to interact with your local bookstore who offer, let’s say, a chipped copy of antique rare books, so they had a digital twin on chain, then you could have that. If you wanted to be a little bit more out there and express your artist self, then you could create a profile specifically for that and really lean into those communities in authentic ways. 

Pauline: Amazing. Thank you so much for the explanation, it was super concise. And, the last question that I wanted to ask about LUKSO is, what’s your current kind of vision for the near and perhaps not near future? Is there anything exciting on the road map coming up? So if you want to share, please do. 

Craig: I’ll share with inbound. So let’s save that, so I don’t give anything away for anyone who’s listening. Okay. I guess, should. But let’s, you know, we’re really leaning into this vision of the full circle moment with the LUKSO network because what we wanna create is a circular economy on chain where the, in a context in a context like this where where maybe you are the issue maybe you’re the owner of a building and you wanna have an event in the building, so you wanna contract with an event promoter. And then as the event promoter, you wanna issue tickets.

So you can do that on-chain. And then if you issue tickets, you wanna then be able to verify very simply this ticket for the people who are collecting this ticket. So you would then be able to have distribution through the universal everything platform, then you’d be able to redeem the universal ticket, through again, maybe the universal everything platform. And you really have this kind of full circle of moment where at every stage of the event, the stakeholder is able to gain not just like a financial inspection with value from it, but a real world value that is making their life better. So not only are we trying to not only have our desktop extension universal profile, but we also have the mobile application universal profile.

And, we actually have a feature release coming up very shortly, that will just enhance that even more, make it a more pleasurable experience to use. So we’re really trying to lean into where the users are and how the users are interacting in their daily life and fitting the blockchain into their daily life versus trying to make them adapt to it. That is, something that we’re really looking at because, you know, in order for Web three to go mainstream, it’s it’s really gotta shift from a UX perspective away from the nerds behind their desktop, although I am a nerd sitting at my desktop right now, and get it into the hands of mobile users like my mom, right, or my daughter, my youngest daughter who’s 14, and make it meaningful for them so they can enjoy the benefits of this self sovereign identity or, authenticity and not make them jump through a million hoops to do it. So that’s kind of, that’s what we’re leaning into right now. 

Pauline: Wonderful. And, what does the token, basically, what does the token, what does the token, basically? What does the token like, what role does the token play within the LUKSO ecosystem? 

Craig: Great question. So the $LYX token serves the same purpose as the ETH token e in the Ethereum ecosystem because LUKSO is an Ethereum to clone at the network level. So it is used as a state token, to help secure the assets on the network.

So if we know what Ethereum does, that’s the same thing that $LYX does on our network. 

Pauline: Nice. Amazing. And, now I would like to kind of shift the attention. First of all, I would like to thank you for giving us so much information about LUKSO, because I do think that it is a great protocol with a lot of potential.

And that’s why NOWNodes have basically been your partner because we, as a company, also see quite a lot of potential in LUKSO. And I do know that you guys have been partners with NOWNodes for quite a while now. And, I’m gonna give a few words to Xena to kind of kick start the discussion about the partnership with NOWNodes. So Xena, if you will. 

Xena: Yeah. Hi again. It’s a great pleasure to have such a guest here. Really interesting. It means put and it has such a great story. Thank you so much for coming here, first of all.

And, yeah, I wanted to tell you, like, a bit, bit more about, the collaboration that NOWNodes has with LUKSO. Actually, I’m I would say that I’m proud actually to mention that, but I think that the NOWNodes team were kind of one of the best followers of the LUKSO ecosystem as a whole. And as far as I know, some guys from our team started, like, gathering the information about you, basically, even in 2023. And we became one of the first infrastructural providers supporting LUSKO, basically from the very start as soon as we could, support you. We started doing this.

And actually that’s exactly what NOWNodes is, I would say, famous for and, what we are aiming to do. We do support a lot of networks. I would say probably most networks that, ever compared to other providers. So we’re always open to finding new partners like you and I’m so happy that our partnership, in particular, became such a strong one and it’s been going on for several years now. And actually with the help of NOWNodes, even other companies within the crypto space, they can support LUKSO and they do support LUKSO.

First of all, I would happily mention that well, obviously ChangeNOW is currently supporting LUKSO using our service as well as such companies as Wallex and Hyperlane. But, yeah, we’re open to more companies out there to come to us and use our service to promote what you do and to bring more, like, mass adoption, mass understanding of what you do. And again, through our platform, through our infrastructural services, offer LUKSO to their end users. So yeah, and yeah, one of the mentions is actually like my team is so happy to talk to you and to like communicating with LUKSO. So one of the people communicating with you in 2023- he is listening right now. Tim, hello. He’s so interested that he came here and still watches you really closely. Yeah. So this is like a bit of a history between the two companies. Like, this is what I see about the partnership.

And Craig, like, what do you know about our partnership and, maybe know something about NOWNodes and how your experience with our service has been. 

Craig: Oh, okay. Perfect. So like I said, I’m pinching for John today. John has all of the institutional knowledge, but I debriefed with him and got as much as I could, you know, like, as quickly as I could learn it before I could come down and sit here.

So I know that we started this relationship, like you said, in 2023 pretty much as soon as we were going to launch our actual Testnet and Mainnet. I think it’s, John specked out March of twenty three was when we formally started the relationship with Testnet and then obviously from Mainnet on. And, you know, John actually said I’m gonna paraphrase some of Jonathan’s words because these are important here. He said:

”We are really drawn to NOWNodes as an infrastructure partner for several reasons. The first reason he gave me was reliable infrastructure with a strong uptime guarantee”,-  and John said,- “When you’re building in web3, consistency is everything. And NOWNodes commitment to high availability and reliable uptime across all of your supported networks really gave us the confidence that our applications would remain performing and accessible even under load or during network volatility”

He also mentioned a responsive and collaborative team. He said from the start, NOWNodes stood out for your developer first mindset. He said on pretty much everything, the team’s been fast to respond, open to feedback, and really proactive in developing solutions that fit our ecosystem.

And in a space like this, like, you can’t ask for much more. And that’s, like, a hugely human and, a wonderful aspect of this partnership. So, you know, you offer really accessible pricing that scales with developers and affordability really matters. And when you’re an early stage early stage chain and you are dealing with early stage builders. You actually had a builders, a grant program, I believe, that just came out.

And I think LYX from year one actually may have taken advantage of that. But I just saw him there, so I’m mentioning. And then, yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s what I know about the general history of the partnership and how it came together. That’s what John kinda debriefed. Am I pretty much on the point there, Xena? 

Xena: Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m so happy to hear this. And yes, exactly. Thank you that you noticed, like, we’re really trying to be really, like, people focused and, communicating a lot with our partners.

Obviously the overall team it’s, I would say, 80% technical guys, 80% developers and technical support guys. However, we’re doing our best to keep the actual face, you know, and to communicate with people, as much as we can because we need to understand what our partners need and we need to supply whatever, like, the partners, the clients, need from us. Yeah. Thank you so much. Really amazing words.

But, like, what In the beginning I have a question here. In the beginning, did you ever consider other providers as well and, how did you make this choice to go on with the NOWNodes basically? 

Craig: Yeah. I think that there are, you know, obviously crucial infrastructure providers like this. But at the outset, you know, we had clear priorities. You know, we wanted a globally distributed infrastructure. You know, we needed a partner with nodes that were gonna be deployed across multiple regions to ensure low latency. It was really, like, nonnegotiable. It was essential for providing the kind of responsive experience across the entire globe that blockchain really demands.

We wanted to make sure that there is API reliability and good uptime, and the NOWNodes track record is fantastic there. So that was, like, a really important aspect for us. You provided native support for our network. That was something we were looking for. Right?

We needed native support from the infrastructure provider and, you in NOWNodes, ensure that our own network would be well supported, not just technically, but also in terms of responsiveness to any updates that we are making, hard forks that we’re moving through or just our evolving RPC needs in general. That was something that was really concerning to us. That’s why we opened NOWNodes. And really, how it played out, this is, I’m gonna grab John’s words here. Again, I hope John’s ears are ringing where he is.

He said,- “we’ve been pleased to see these expectations met and even exceeded. The infrastructure has proven to be stable and responsive under load, and the team has been reliable in supporting our network, including adding features, resolving issues, and updating endpoints quickly when needed”

So basically, in his words, the onboarding was smooth and over time, the collaboration spelled more like a partnership than a vendor relationship. And I think that’s a real credit to the NOWNodes team that you would get that kind of words out of them.

Xena: Again, thank you so much. Exactly. Like partnership, that’s the word that we need with all the networks that we work with. We’re really partnering, not focusing on, like, vendor relationships but partnering. And that’s why you mentioned this, I think, but I would say this again. Like, yeah, we create several, like, initiatives to promote, to promote LUKSO and other networks.

Like for example with you in particular, like a couple of months ago we started the ESP program and we even had like several people, several companies who won this initiative. And we gave them an open access to use NOWNodes, in order to build platforms on LUKSO. And I wanted to give them notable mentions here. These are like FamilyLys, NFT platform, and RADAR- NFT collection platform and ONEYEAR Team. Like, these guys were really amazing, and again, we’re open to creating more such initiatives with you in future to attract even more companies, using your network and building with your network.

And again, thank you so much for the kindest words that you gave us. That’s really like honey, like honey to me. Thank you.

Pauline: Thank you so much, Xena. Thank you so much, Graig. And thank you so so much, John, wherever you are. It’s a shame that you can make it, but we’ve been having so much fun with Graig. Again, thank you so much for the kind words. I think, like, a human first approach is what we try to strive towards, in the NOWEcosystem, which is NOWNodesChangeNOW, NOWPayments. Because, again, I think a lot of, projects in crypto, especially a lot of, like, bigger companies within the crypto sphere, they have kind of lost the sites, of, like, the smaller person, the retail person, the regular user, like your daughter, Graig, or your mom, or my mom, or basically anyone else in the space. And it’s kind of, super nice to hear, that there are projects in this space that, again, as I already said, like to pay attention to the little guy because, string flies in numbers and we’ve got if we want to make crypto mass adopted for real, we need to attract millions and millions and millions of these little, of these little guys.

And you cannot do that if you don’t make the space user friendly, comfortable, and welcoming for those little guys. 

Craig: For sure. Yeah. Although institutions hold a, you know, sway over the global financial system and there’s a lot of money and capital in it. It’s the base of the billions of people who have phones in their hands that use it daily for communication, interaction, and finding belonging in this world, right?

It’s that interconnection. That’s really where we’re reaching into. And I think that this entire industry needs to reach if we’re going to survive long term and be more than just, you know, a recreation of systems that already existed on maybe let’s say lower friction rails. I think many of us got into this, or are attracted to this industry. I know I was because of the promise of smart contract platforms and how it can really transform my interactions with my local community, never mind the global world.

And I’ve yet to realize that in any meaningful way. And I wanna stretch towards that. I wanna reach towards that. I think that’s why LUKSO is really important for me and it’s why I’ve been in the ecosystem and I work here now. But, you know, at the end of the day, we’re nowhere without critical infrastructure pieces that are being provided by companies like NOWNodes or the ecosystem of NOW.

You know, that critical infrastructure is what allows these blockchains to, seamlessly so the end user can enjoy this wonderful UN. So, again, thank you all for the role that you play here in making sure that my daughter can one day use, enjoy the benefits of Blockchain on her phone. 

Pauline: I mean, we’re always happy to support great projects in this space because, again, this is, I believe, kind of like a symbiotic ecosystem because we as an like, as a product lineup, would not exist without all of the wonderful projects that are tapping into it, that are using the resources that we provide, that are, kind of offering support to, both existing and upcoming projects in the space, and I think that’s what’s important. We’re all friends here in the web3 space, basically, because it’s still so small and it’s still so, kind of basically, it’s a village, and we’re all here growing our own crops and sharing, metaphorical milk, from our metaphorical cows. 

Craig: Yeah. We have to think with an abundance mentality, right, and share amongst the village. And we can’t come from a place of scarcity where we’re afraid of what our neighbors are accumulating. Right? Or on our end and shared nothing with our neighbor.

Like, that’s that’s not how we grow. That’s not how effective communities grow. So, I think in this niche space, the more we can lean into the world that you’re proposing, and I think the world that I wanna live in, the better it’ll be for everybody. 

Pauline: Yep. For real. And, can you tell us a little bit more about the ESP LUKSO ecosystem support program? Is there I know that Xena has already been mentioned, in a few short words, but if you could tell us a little bit more about how it happened and how it played, what it was built around. I think that would be super interesting for everyone listening to the space. 

Craig: See, that’s a great question, but that runs just slightly out of my depth because that is in John’s domain of he really kind of thought about it. What I would say is, where we’re innovating is we’re really innovating as a smart contract ecosystem.

At the moment, there isn’t a ton of extra money sloshing around for speculative bets on things. Instead, we’re investing in builders at an early stage who align with the vision of this better, more expressive, web3. Right? Where we’re not limited by tokens and we’re leaning into the profile itself. So I think in this type of scenario, knowing that Family- is building a universal good, he’s building universal goods, which is actually something that many creators, brands, designers can plug into to make their local activity, a little bit more expressive and and capable in this world. Or in the case of, from year one, was innovating around notifications on chains. Like, these are primitives that have to be built. These are foundational elements that have to be built at the smart contract level, which might not have, like, a huge volume of money pouring into them right now, but to invest in them by providing this core infrastructure at a lower cost is really to provide the basis upon which others can stand on their shoulders and and, bring in the economy, the circular economies that we need to really grow. I think that that’s the general core belief behind that ESP process, I think.

Pauline: I mean, this is very noble again because, I do know quite, a big amount of founders who have really wonderful ideas but are struggling to kind of wear struggling to gather funds because they’re again, when you’re building meaningful, in the Web3 ecosystem, it’s kind of complicated to, get any real funding aside from ecosystem grants from projects like LUKSO or Avalanche or whatever, like, or Polygon, so on and so forth. Because these days, VCs kind of pay more attention to short term investments that are going to prove super lucrative. And, through that, it’s kind of easy, in my opinion, to get sidetracked from getting real value to the space aside from making a few lines and graphs come up. 

Craig: Yeah. You know, we’re fixated on these charts, and oftentimes we don’t have control over the charts. In fact, we don’t. One of the first questions, I remember listening to a podcast in 2020, and I remember I was standing outside my house while I was trimming up a hedge. And it was a trade by an investor saying he got into investing and really fell into that world because he did not understand why the charts were moving. And I remember thinking at that time, I don’t understand why the Ethereum chart is doing what it’s doing right now. And that kind of set me on this trajectory to where I am right now, but I don’t think the charts make any more sense to me.

Markets are wholly irrational, and they can be manipulated by large players. But what that has led me to understand is the real value there’s so much value being built outside of that silly line going up and down. But, as an industry, we really have to move into a space where we value real change for real people more than the silly line moving up and down. Because if we do that, it’s kinda just nihilistic. I mean, if we’re just here to make money and then pull it out of the ecosystem and never leave it here, are we really making our digital world better?

I would argue no. So, I love the programs, especially like the program coming from you guys as an infrastructure provider that allows people to experiment and gain access to the tools that they need to continue to push forward this smart contract space. So we actually see a smart contract ecosystem that isn’t focused on the token, but instead can be focused around the user, and that user can take various forms. Again, it could be the individual, it could be the brand, it could be the AI agent. It could be almost anyone.

Pauline: I mean, I totally and completely agree. And, while we were chatting, there were some questions from the community. So, to kind of wrap up this AMA on a very sweet moment, the first question is, was the partnership with NOWNodes going to help developers connect better with the LUKSO network? I know that this question has kind of been already answered, but, perhaps there could be more details from either you, Craig or Xena, that we haven’t really covered yet?

Xena: Well, I think I would start here. Like, well, yeah. We already mentioned that, obviously, NOWNodes supports luck. So, in, shared accounts and shared nodes and dedicated nodes as well. So if you need to build anything, basically, using LUKSO, you can come to us.

Yes, in addition to shared tariffs and dedicated tariffs, we also offer public nodes for LUKSO. So, again, you can use that. And this is a well, this is mostly the thing that we do to support the dev community here. Obviously, other things would be, like materials from us, some instructions and how to do’s, and all this content that we generate on how to use it and how other services use it. So it’s just an educational thing as well.

Yeah. And also, like, if there will be some other initiatives again, as this is Pauline mentioned, take part in it. You may win some access, free access to, those that we provide. Yeah. So I think that’s it. Craig, do you think I forgot to mention something?

Craig: No. I think you’re spot on. I think it’s important just for people to understand what you’re providing is a way for the end user to get their information onto the chain and off of the chain because without your core infrastructure, right, without the infrastructure, that, a company like NOWNodes provides, we would be able to talk to the team. 

Xena: No. Exactly. Yes.

Craig: So, like, that’s very important for people to understand this is critical core infrastructure. 

Xena: Yeah. Exactly. Happy to be happy to be here. So any other questions here? So I can see that there is another question.

I think it’s mostly to you, Craig. What specific actions will the team take to boost community improvement and get some momentum going? 

Craig: Sure. These are good questions. I think the first thing that we can mean is, do we have upcoming catalysts that are interesting in our ecosystem.

You said, Xena, that actually, NOWNodes is providing infrastructure for Hyperlane. Correct? Did I hear you say that?

Xena: Exactly. Yes.

Craig: Yeah. So Hyperlane is actually, it’s the work route switch, the bridge, the most anticipated bridge that will connect the LUKSO network with Ethereum and perhaps some other chains, actually use. So, really capitalizing on the catalyst of the bridge along with some other catalyst that I cannot speak to, unfortunately. Right? There are rules around what you can say and what you can’t say. So I’d love to tell you more, but I would say for us to aggressively lean into these catalytic events and communicate more across the base of our social media platforms, that would be something that I think you could look for. 

Xena: Thank you. And, we have another question, right?

Pauline: So, the last question is here, the last question we’ve got here is how much $LYX tokens is NOWNodes making from this partnership? 

Xena: Thank you for the question. Well I would say that what NOWNodes is making from this partnership is the trust and love from all developers using LUKSO. That’s what I can say here. 

Pauline: Amen to that. Alright. This has been a titillating conversation, but I’m afraid that our time is going up. And I would like to keep it a little bit short and sweet so as no one is tired from yapping that much. So thank you so much, Graig, for coming to the space, to the AMA event. We’re super happy and excited to support great projects such as LUKSO with our NOWEcosystem. Thank you so much to Xena for showing up as well. If you had to be here, but thank you not to us.

And, thank you to everyone who’s been listening to the space. I already love hosting these. I love seeing all the happy reactions and talking to all the wonderful guests and speakers of the space. And yeah, everybody have an excellent Wednesday. Thank you so much for tuning in and we’ll see you soon!