Jacob Gadikan, a central figure in Notional, describes the company as a "Cosmos-oriented, full-stack blockchain engineering firm" built on a foundation of continuous learning and problem-solving. Notional, comprising a team of "30 people," began its journey as an Osmosis validator, with the name "Notional" chosen to reflect something "hard to define or unclear." The early days involved Jacob, Kang, and Ricardo operating out of an old apartment in Hanoi, pioneering "at home bare metal" validation. Jacob highlights that challenges were a "blessing," as each problem encountered led to a solution, fostering their engineering capability. Kang is credited as a "remarkable man" whose recruiting efforts significantly shaped Notional. Initially, the organization was "very informal," but as they expanded to relay for more chains and encountered serious engineering hurdles, they formalized into a Singapore and Vietnamese company. Notional's activities span a wide range, including validating numerous chains, relaying packets, and engaging with "every piece of the Cosmos stack." They've become increasingly involved with Cosmosm, writing contracts and concepts, moving beyond just maintaining Go libraries. Notional is also developing a formal audit practice, aiming to create a productized service similar to Informal Systems, which Jacob praises for doing "a tremendous job." When asked about Notional's proudest achievement, Jacob points to their work in fixing the LUNC IBC problem. Despite the controversial nature of LUNC—which Jacob acknowledges as "a shit coin today" with "lots of users, lots of market cap"—the fix addressed "a really serious IBC problem, network wide" that affected stranded packets across multiple chains. The actual code fix was minimal, "one, it might have been three lines of code," but the real challenge lay in the three weeks of auditing by Notional's team, TFL, Terra Rebels, and other skilled Cosmos contributors, and navigating the governance process. This experience led to a profound insight into Cosmos governance, identifying a "totalitarianism bug" related to the 2/3 veto threshold. Jacob credits Ganzi of Stakeshito for the realization that "there is no consensus except social consensus," and considers Notional's biggest accomplishment to be "changing the scope of social consensus on luck." Gadikan offers valuable advice on bare metal validation, emphasizing a focus on consumer-grade hardware over server-grade equipment. He suggests using "a thousand dollar computer" with high bandwidth M2 PCIe 4.0/5.0 SSDs connected to a desktop CPU (like an AMD Quad II 16-core or Intel 13/14 series 14-core), paired with 32 GB of RAM per node. He notes that multiple validators can run on a single machine, though demanding chains like Osmosis and Juno get dedicated machines. Surprisingly, a "kind of shitty internet connection, like 10 megabits, both directions, reliable," is sufficient. Jacob also shares an important lesson from Mercha of Informal Systems: "Jacob, shut the hell up about miss blocks. They don't matter unless you're missing some ludicrous number of them." For backup power, UPS is recommended in developed areas, while he strongly warns against gas generators due to their deadly risks, advising reliance on large building-level diesel generators if necessary. Notional aims to "cover the whole damn planet," and Jacob actively seeks to help establish bare metal validators in South America and Africa. Discussing the recent Cosmos Hub Prop 104 grant, Jacob expresses gratitude for the community's "yes" vote. He explains that the proposal was refined with Jihan from Informal Systems, whom he praises for doing a "superhuman job of clearing the hub of technical debt." Notional's role involves assisting the hub team, keeping the hub up-to-date, and supporting interchain security for consumer chains. A significant task is "blockchain archeology"—retrofitting old hub versions (from Gaia 4.2.0 onwards) with modern database and IAVL libraries to dramatically speed up syncing from Genesis, reducing the current two-week, multi-binary process to an estimated five days. This work is crucial for maintaining "verifiable data that we can trust." The three-year grant is flexible, reflecting Notional's readiness to take on "literally anything" the hub team requires. Addressing the "reputation is key" mantra and the perceived "drama" surrounding Notional, Jacob acknowledges that crypto offers opportunities for "various compromises" and that one "can get rich fast," though not always through "kind or ethical ways." Notional has "rejected really quite a lot" of such opportunities. He attributes some of the contentious situations to Notional's willingness to be "the first to discuss issues really on a number of chains." He gives the example of SIF chain, where Notional identified and publicly reported on "economic modeling mechanisms that essentially broke it," leading them to withdraw from validating and earning community appreciation for their clear feedback. Another instance was the "crazy severe bug" on Jackal, where a web server exposed block signing keys. Jacob "made a lot of noise on Twitter" and "got the chain shut down" to protect delegators from slashing, emphasizing the gravity of "highly consequential decisions" made under pressure. He admits to "blame myself to some extent" for the drama, as he is "a person who speaks their mind." Ultimately, Notional's actions are driven by an "insistent on engineering rigor," influenced by a team member named Jay, who is "really rigorous on software" and threat modeling. Jacob encourages the community to "don't take my word for it, check" and to actively "read the code, check it out. And ask questions" on Cosmos Twitter, highlighting that Cosmos was never intended for passive acceptance.