Isaac Zarb, co-founder and CTO of Simplistaken, recounts his journey into the blockchain space, an adventure he attributes to a touch of "craziness." Simplistaken began about five years ago when an investor, who had previously engaged in Bitcoin and Ethereum mining in Malta, abandoned the project after high electricity costs rendered it unprofitable. Zarb and his team were tasked with figuring out "how to make money in blockchain" with the inherited data center. Their initial foray into master nodes, an early form of proof of stake, quickly proved unprofitable. This led them to Cosmos, where they became a Genesis validator for the Cosmos Hub. From a team of four or five, Simplistaken grew substantially, now employing nearly 40 people, with about 15 dedicated to staking. They manage "nearly close to 10,000 validators" across "about 20-something main nets," along with numerous RPC nodes. A significant challenge in their scaling efforts was ensuring reliability amidst server failures and the rapidly increasing data size of blockchain chains. Zarb notes that "30 terabyte chains to sink a new blockchain would take forever." Their solution involved adopting shared storage systems (SANs) with fiber channel, which allowed for essential maintenance, such as updating firmware after the recent Intel CPU vulnerability, "without causing any downtime." Zarb expresses pride in his team for achieving this level of resilience. Simplistaken's core focus is on providing robust and stable hardware infrastructure. Beyond this, they actively engage in development, having built monitoring tools like "Panic" for Cosmos and Substrate validators, contributed modules to the Cosmos Hub, and assisted projects like Agoric with their Oracle network. They are also developing their own blockchain, Entry Point, and a staking dashboard to serve RPC clients, delegators, and validators. Zarb strongly believes in the need for better validator tools, particularly for financial tracking and tax compliance, which led them to build in-house systems to analyze revenue streams and extract transaction data for accounting purposes. "It's a lot of work," he concedes, but essential. Regarding their infrastructure, Zarb emphasizes owning their entire hardware stack, from firewalls to servers and storage, across three data centers in Malta, the Netherlands, and Canada. This ownership grants them "very flexible" control. While they use some "refurbished hardware," it must be "manufacturer refurbished" and "latest gen" – never old servers or refurbished hard disks, which "should always be new because they degrade." Zarb advises against building a data center from scratch for new entrants due to the "huge cost" (estimating around 300,000 euros), instead recommending co-located hardware or renting until a steady revenue stream is established. He challenges the common belief that high IOPS are the sole requirement for running blockchain nodes, pointing out that "it's not about the IOPS... The problem is latency," which they addressed by switching from iSCSI to fiber channel for their SANs, reducing latency from one millisecond to "0.01 milliseconds." When selecting new networks to validate, Simplistaken has evolved past simply joining "all the networks" and "losing a lot of money." Now, they prioritize chains "which we either invest in, or we would have a good relationship with where we help out in the test net and we know that we're going to get a good delegation." They also support "common good chains" like liquid staking protocols and the Cosmos Hub. Their objective is to partner with teams, ensuring they are not at the bottom of the validator set. A key value proposition is offering decentralization by not relying on cloud providers, operating from their own data centers with "no cloud presence," thus ensuring resilience against cloud outages. Simplistaken's internal committee scrutinizes potential projects, avoiding anything considered a "scam" or lacking in a clear vision, and assessing the "quality of the team" and "chances of success." On the contentious topic of governance and validator identity, Zarb expresses his "personal opinion" that "especially on big chains, validators should be KYC'd." He believes that for entities "providing security for so much value, you want to know who's running these." While acknowledging Simplistaken's past focus on technology over community and governance, he highlights their current efforts, stating that "all validators should vote for that's something that we always try to do." He recognizes the complex reasons why exchanges often abstain from voting due to regulatory concerns but hopes for "more participation from validators." Addressing the security concerns surrounding KYC data, Zarb proposes a blockchain-based solution: "one KYC and then have zero knowledge proofs across anybody who needs your data," where instead of exposing personal information, one would simply receive a "yes" or "no" on validity status. This, he argues, would be a significant improvement over the current system of repeated KYCs across multiple platforms. Zarb also shares his vision for the broader blockchain ecosystem, acknowledging the "tribal" nature of different chains and their "separate ecosystems" with "very little interconnectivity." He likens them to various programming languages, each with strengths and weaknesses. While "most value right now is on Ethereum," he believes "there is space for more than one blockchain," comparing it to the co-existence of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. However, he yearns for "more use cases rather than just finance and DeFi," lamenting that "NFTs were a good idea, but they were used as art." He stresses that the industry has yet to find the "thing that's going to get mass adoption," drawing parallels to the internet's widespread adoption only after user-friendly applications like online shopping emerged. Zarb criticizes the blockchain's current "very difficult to use" infrastructure, citing the need for "so many wallets and so many ledgers" to interact across different chains. His ideal future involves a "universal currency and a wallet where you don't need, if I need to do a transaction on 10 chains, I don't need 10 tokens," where the wallet handles the necessary conversions, much like an international phone call doesn't require holding foreign currency. Ultimately, Zarb believes that "better connectivity will unite the tribes," making the ecosystem more accessible and fostering greater collaboration. Finally, Zarb announces Simplistaken's upcoming blockchain, Entry Point, which will enter testnet in September (entrypoint.zone). The project seeks to "change the way blockchains are funded" by exploring alternatives to the traditional model of "dishing out a lot of their token to help pay for validation," which often leads to validators "dumping your token." This innovative approach is currently under discussion on the Cosmos Forum.