GRTiQ Podcast: 205 Brianna Migliaccio

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Brianna Migliaccio (00:18):

And The Graph, it just simplifies being able to query data. And also with its network, it’s able to just scale and match the current demand of Solana’s high throughput and extreme amount of transactions.

Nick (01:02):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Brianna Migliaccio. At Solana, Brianna works to empower developers, helping teams leverage Solana’s speed and scalability. Her role involves a range of important contributions from creating developer resources, to bootcamps, to practical guides, all in an effort to unlock decentralized applications on Solana.

(01:26):

With degrees in mechanical engineering and nuclear physics from NYU, Brianna brings a unique technical perspective to blockchain development. Her journey began at Accenture as a consultant where she discovered her passion for software engineering before transitioning to web3 via Delphi Digital, where she develops smart contracts in the Cosmos ecosystem.

(01:46):

In our conversation, Brianna shares insights into the evolution of blockchain technology, Solana’s growing developer ecosystem, and the importance of user-friendly tools for driving greater web3 adoption. She also discusses the development of new validator clients like Firedancer, improvements in blockchain infra, and her excitement about seeing more web3 applications implement familiar web2 interfaces to drive greater adoption.

(02:12):

I started the conversation with Brianna by talking about her upbringing in Philadelphia and her early interest in STEM fields.

Brianna Migliaccio (02:20):

Yeah, excited to be here. Thank you for having me. So yeah, I’m from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I was born and raised there and stayed there up until college when I moved to New York, so not much outside of Philly for me.

Nick (02:36):

Talk about what you decided to do in college, and I’ve had a couple engineers on the podcast before, but you studied mechanical engineering and got a minor in nuclear physics at NYU. Talk to us about the decision you made about studying those two fields.

Brianna Migliaccio (02:50):

Growing up, I always liked things in the STEM field. My high school actually had a STEM program and I took as many classes as possible in the STEM program, so I wanted to continue that in college. I just really liked building things and figuring out how they were made and how to make them better, which is why I went into mechanical engineering, because you got to build a lot of hands-on stuff in college. And yeah, I just loved the idea of solving problems.

Nick (03:20):

What about this relationship between nuclear physics and mechanical engineering? Is there a straight line there where it would make sense to somebody or was this a little bit of a stretch?

Brianna Migliaccio (03:29):

I went in with just mechanical engineering and mechanical engineering is actually very much physics based. So I focused a lot on physics and liked it, and I realized that nuclear physics is the basic laws of physics just change once you get to a subatomic level, and I just wanted to learn more about it. I didn’t know why, and that kind of grounds how the nature of reality works in a sense, so I just wanted to learn about it and I thought it was really interesting.

Nick (03:59):

How did an education in some technical fields, I mean these are pretty heady stuff here, how did that shape your approach to technology and career? Did it give you a lens by which you saw the world and what you could do from a career perspective?

Brianna Migliaccio (04:15):

I think it opened up a lot of possibilities, because once you learn how to learn something in engineering you can learn anything after that. I just wanted to see what problems I wanted to solve, and solving problems is what’s really interesting to me. I’m passionate about it. So yeah, being in a very technical undergrad major just made me want to constantly solve problems.

Nick (04:44):

In anticipation of this interview, we talked a little bit beforehand to get a little information and do some research, and you talked about in college you were envisioning working on rockets but it didn’t actually come to pass. Tell us about that.

Brianna Migliaccio (04:57):

I always thought it was really interesting. I love space. I am just curious what’s out there and always have been, and I wanted the ability to research it. And I thought it was really cool. For my senior design project I built BB-8 from Star Wars, the robot, but a life-size version. And it was really interesting to put all the pieces together and code it to make it move, and just design it and figure out how to optimize it. And I just liked building things, and being able to build a rocket and see you going into space was really interesting to me.

Nick (05:33):

We’re talking today because you’re with Solana and you’re working in tech, so you’re not working on rockets per se. What changed?

Brianna Migliaccio (05:39):

I think that you want to look at your whole life outside of work as well, and if you want to go into a mechanical engineering field, you do typically have to move to a different location. And I was born and raised in Philly and I live in New York and I didn’t want to move anywhere else, I like living in the Northeast in more of a city environment. And that just came with having to make a career change. It was more of a lifestyle decision.

Nick (06:08):

I want to get your opinion on a couple of things given your background and some of the interests you’ve shared so far. So the first thing is when I think about humanity and huge achievements that shift, I guess, the trajectory of humanity and what’s possible. I mean I think about the printing press personally, I just think that reshaped everything. I actually think AI and what we’re seeing emerge there is one of those things. But most recently that SpaceX rocket. When I saw that SpaceX was able to launch a rocket and then park it on that pedestal or whatever you would call that, I don’t know the technical term, that seemed like a quake moment for humanity. Did you see it the same way?

Brianna Migliaccio (06:47):

Yeah, it was really cool. So SpaceX actually has a special place in my heart. When I was in college, we did a lot of work for SpaceX just for their Hyperloop research. So I’ve always been a huge Elon Musk fan and all of his initiatives that he’s making with SpaceX, so seeing that was really exciting for me on a personal level. It’s an amazing accomplishment. It enables the ability to have reusable rockets, which just speeds up the whole advancement of space exploration. So it’s a way to make the industry just more iterative and being able to launch into space more often. And it’s also the control and the precision that’s needed to be able to accomplish that. It just shows how insane the technology has improved in such a short period of time. So very exciting.

Nick (07:38):

Yeah, I agree. It was so exciting. And so I guess the second question is, and for listeners, we’re recording this in December and you’re joining me from the East Coast in the United States. There’s been a lot of talk about what’s happening in the skies in the East Coast with these drones, and the government has really fouled up, it seems to me, all the communication around this. Given your background and your interest in rockets and what’s out there, how do you make sense of all that’s going on back there right now?

Brianna Migliaccio (08:04):

I don’t know. I mean there’s always people that are going to be building stuff and flying it around, so it’s hard to know where it comes from and who’s doing the research. And yeah, it’s interesting, there’s a lot that’s up in the air.

Nick (08:22):

Well, maybe by the time this episode releases, we’ll have answers to those questions, but I’m intrigued by it and I’m mostly intrigued in the gaffe of the government in trying to communicate this and manage it.

(08:33):

Let’s return back to your story then. So we talked a little bit about what you pursued in terms of degrees at university, talked about your interest in rockets, but deciding that that probably wasn’t the venue or the path you were going to take largely because of lifestyle choices. So how did you get started professionally once you graduated?

Brianna Migliaccio (08:51):

Yeah, so I went into Accenture, a consulting firm. They’re actually the one consulting firm that’s very focused on tech, in comparison to all the other consulting firms where they’re more of a management/business consulting firm. So honestly, I didn’t know much about consulting at the time. There was a lot of recruiters for consulting firms that would come to Tandon, which was the engineering school at NYU, and they were looking for a lot of engineers. And I saw there were job opportunities available in Philly and New York so I just went for it more for the lifestyle choice. And I learned a lot while I was there. The one fun thing about consulting is you kind of get to do anything you want. We have at Accenture, thousands of different clients, so you pick what fits your skill set and what you’re interested in and get to work on it.

Nick (09:46):

When you think about the learnings from an experience like that, so as you said, a consultant gets a broad range of business problems to look at, what are some of the key insights you learned about business maybe generally, or management generally? Did you walk away from that experience in consulting with a big name firm like Accenture, with new insights on those things?

Brianna Migliaccio (10:07):

You see a lot about how big tech companies work and what their North Star is, essentially. I was focused more on the tech end where I was picking up small tech changes and infra changes in the business. So I would say for me it was more of a catalyst to switch to software engineering. Because what happens at Accenture is they hire all their engineers and put them in one bucket, just as engineers period. So I would get staffed at a lot of software engineering roles even though that wasn’t my major from college. So I got to learn a lot on the spot at the job and I ended up liking it a lot, so it helped me move my career in that direction.

Nick (10:51):

I had another guest on recently that said that that engineering brain primed the pump for being able to code, and I, as a non-technical person wouldn’t have assumed that. But did you have that same experience, that background in mechanical engineering and those degrees fueled your ability to learn coding and get into software?

Brianna Migliaccio (11:12):

Yeah, it’s all kind of the same thing. I mean in mechanical engineering, most of the projects that I had to do were coding submissions. We used MATLAB, which was very different than your standing coding language. It’s more like a fancy calculator than a coding language, but it technically is a coding language, and you would write coding scripts for your project submissions. But even any machinery that you worked with, like I would use a lot of CNC machines, and a water jet cutter, and 3D printers and stuff like that, all of that involves writing code. You’ll write a G-code and upload the file onto the equipment. So all of that together you are writing code on a day-to basis. It’s not really your typical front-end to back-end full stack type of thing, but it’s still the same mindset in my opinion.

Nick (12:02):

If we combine the learnings you had as a consultant, which I would probably argue represents industry dynamics and top level observations about businesses and trends, with this experience you had in learning software and getting a deep dive on the technical industry, if we marry those two insights you have with this idea about AI and how it arrived on the scene, and how it’s impacting coding and software engineering, how do you make sense of that and what do you see the changes being there?

Brianna Migliaccio (12:35):

Yeah, I think it’s enabling a lot more than I would’ve ever imagined a few years ago. When I was first starting, not that AI, but it couldn’t help you with any coding. So now you could ask almost any AI model to make a basic front-end website and they could do it and spit out the code for you. And it’s insane the progress that we’ve made in just a few years. So I’m excited to see how far that’ll go in the future and what it will actually look like to build out technology. Especially, AI’s datasets are just getting larger every day and they’re just constantly learning more, so it’s really exciting to see what’s going to happen in the near future.

Nick (13:21):

Amazing. So if we go back then to your personal story, you’re working at Accenture, you’ve got that incredibly strong university background, they’ve pulled you into the tech, you’re working on some software stuff. At what point then on this journey do you become aware of crypto and can you take us back in time and tell us what your first impressions were?

Brianna Migliaccio (13:40):

Yeah, it’s an interesting transition. I had a friend who was also working at a consulting firm at the time and fell down the rabbit hole of crypto. I went to college with him and we were both engineering majors, and he just one day was like, “Hey, have you heard of this crypto thing?” And I was like, “What are you talking about?” And I did a little bit of research and understood the basics of DeFi. It was right before DeFi Summer. And it seemed interesting. I was still a bit on the fence, and then I started looking into the actual code and how smart contracts were built and the tech behind it, and I got really excited. And then that’s when DeFi started to blow up and I was spending more time researching crypto and DeFi and what blockchain is than anything else, and I just figured it was time to make the jump.

(14:33):

I got excited seeing how there was this community of people building and helping each other just for fun. You don’t really have that in a web2 culture, you just have this open source, people are sharing their code, they’re contributing to other repositories, and you have everything clearly stated in code so you know exactly what you’re interacting with when you interact with any application. Which also doesn’t really exist or doesn’t exist at all in web2. So it was really exciting and I just figured I was young and could make that jump and take the risk at the time, and I wanted to do it.

Nick (15:11):

You’re working for a very serious company, Accenture’s a serious global consulting firm, you’re doing important work, I would’ve thought that that work at a serious company would’ve primed you to be very cynical of the things that were emerging in blockchain and crypto. What I hear you saying is there were some things there that drew your interest or attention. So I guess that’s my question. Did your time at Accenture and studying tech and software engineering prime you to adopt or see the value in the emergence of crypto and blockchain?

Brianna Migliaccio (15:42):

Accenture is more of a tech focused consulting firm and they do this thing where they have six initiatives every year that they want everyone at the company to focus on learning. And that year when I started, one of their six initiatives was actually blockchain. So they had courses that were pre-made at Accenture for blockchain, and they had a push to learn blockchain and how to communicate it to our clients. So I was spending a lot of time on the blockchain courses from Accenture. However, those were big corporate web2 jargon blockchain things, which was interesting but not really at the heart of what crypto is.

(16:21):

So I wanted to dig into it deeper on my own time, which is where I learned what this open source decentralized community of crypto is. And it just got me excited. It made me think about time when I was in college and everyone was working together to build things, and solve problems, and had a clear goal and was very passionate, and it brought the same energy and I wanted to be a part of it.

Nick (16:45):

Amazing. So a very common question I ask on the podcast, long time listeners already know this is coming, but when you try to make sense of the emergence of crypto and blockchain, how does your brain frame that? And some familiar framing are things like, “Oh, it’s a revolution against the sins of web2.” Or, “No, it’s an evolution of tech. This is just what would happen. You would have Web1, web2, and now web3 and it’s better.” Or maybe it’s about something social or political or related to economics. How do you see the emergence of this?

Brianna Migliaccio (17:20):

I definitely think it’s an evolution. I mean you think back to when the internet first existed and it was just static HTML pages. And people were like, “Okay, I can read the newspaper on this big computer in front of me, or I could just go pick up a piece of paper and read it.” And they were very skeptic of the internet. I think this is the same thing, it’s this new turning point where people are like, “Okay, I can make a token. Now what?”

(17:46):

So there’s still so much to be built and be discovered, and some of the tech is just not even comprehensible at this current point, just like it was back when the internet was first created. It’s exciting to see what’s being built today, but it’s very hard to pinpoint what it’s going to look like in the future. I think that there’s so many endless possibilities and I’m just excited to be building and creating that.

Nick (18:13):

So returning then again to your journey here, you become aware of crypto, you go down the hole, Accenture signs out some curriculum where you’re supposed to study blockchain, but you go even a step further and you’ve got some friends working on it. In 2021 then you make, I believe, the first formal move into the space joining Delphi Digital as a software engineer. What’s the backstory there and talk to us a little bit about that role?

Brianna Migliaccio (18:36):

Yeah, so it’s actually where the friend that first introduced me to crypto was working. I saw that they had an open position, and they were a very small startup at the time so I actually DM’d the founder on Twitter, because that’s what we do here in crypto, and was like, “Hey, this is my experience. This is my current knowledge. I am super excited to learn and I want to.” And they just took a chance and said, “Okay, good luck. See what you can do.” And yeah, I just went into learning how to write code in Rust, and write smart contracts and go fully into the back-end of building web3 applications.

Nick (19:19):

And that experience taught you, “I’m on the right path. This is everything I hoped it would be. I’m so excited that my ideals about crypto and blockchain are real and true.”? Or did you have some sort of harsh awakening that, “Oh, it’s not always perfect, but this is still a thing I want to work on.”? How was that transition?

Brianna Migliaccio (19:40):

It was chaotic, to say the least. Crypto is definitely volatile and I left a very comfortable web2 company to just learn and take a risk. And we were actually building on Terra originally, so a few months after starting is when the whole blockchain collapsed. So I definitely had some second guessing happening, but I was still very passionate about it and excited and decided to stick with it, and I’m very thankful that I did. A lot and the space has changed over the past two or three years and it’s just continuing to evolve. So, yeah.

Nick (20:20):

What were the key learnings or observations you made about the industry, or the technical work that you would be doing to present day that you derived from that first experience going full-time in the industry?

Brianna Migliaccio (20:34):

Well, one is just learning Rust. It’s not really a language you typically use outside of the blockchain world unless you’re working on embedded systems. Learning this new coding language was really interesting, it has a high learning curve compared to other languages, but it’s very robust. So as soon as you compile code, you know if your code works or not, whereas other languages you don’t. So that was a good skill set that I was excited to learn.

(21:03):

Other than that, I would say mainly the concept of smart contracts is very different than your typical web2 developments, and just understanding having the architecture behind decentralized systems and the importance of it. So it just shows a different thought process in building applications and is exciting to see what the future of that looks like.

Nick (21:31):

Smart contracts are conceptually somewhat easy to understand, but technically can be difficult. When I think about all the threads in web3 and crypto that people tend to focus on, of course we got L1s, we got L2s, we got dapps, but do smart contracts get enough of the credit for being that foundational component that makes the industry go? Or am I overstating it even in the question?

Brianna Migliaccio (21:59):

That’s a great question. I’ve never really thought of it that way. I mean, you have a blockchain that’s running and you want to be able to use it in some way, and how do you do it? Well, you have to write a smart contract. You wouldn’t have decentralized applications if smart contracts didn’t exist. So they are pretty fundamental to have a use case behind any type of blockchain technology. So it’s extremely important, especially as you want to expand use cases and bring this into people’s day-to-day lives. You’re going to have to be writing smart contracts that’s taking data and using that to interact with the blockchain.

Nick (22:37):

When I get the chance to interview people like yourself that sort of pivoted into the industry, I find that their first touch point, or the ecosystem they find themselves in, becomes an anchor to at least how they think about their career and the work they’re going to do. And so you landed in the Cosmos ecosystem. Is it true for you? Did that shape a little bit of the way you think about L1s and the industry as a whole?

Brianna Migliaccio (23:04):

I would say yes and no. So at Delphi it was not only a engineering company, but it was also a research firm. So the research firm was focusing on all L1s, L2s, any type of application in crypto, and doing a lot of research on it and consulting with the different ecosystems. So I had exposure to that and I guess I wasn’t just only looking into Cosmos when I first started, I was definitely looking at several L1s, several L2s, how do I use these? However, I was building in Cosmos. So I would say most of the applications that I knew at the time were Cosmos related, because that’s what I was building and the teams that I was working with. So it’s kind of yes and kind of no, I’d say.

Nick (23:57):

Makes sense. And so again, returning to your story, the next move you make from there is to why we’re talking today, you’re DevRel at Solana. So take us behind the scenes here, talk about that transition and the backstory of what prompted that move, and why you decided to even make a move like that.

Brianna Migliaccio (24:17):

Building on Cosmos is really fun, it’s a great community and a lot of extremely smart people that are fun to work with. However, it’s this appchain thesis which is very different than what Solana is. And building on an appchain is just a very different tech stack than building on an L1, and I wanted to just have exposure to a different tech stack and understand that as well. I think working in crypto, there’s so much going on that the more that you can learn across all chains is going to be very beneficial.

(24:56):

So I looked into Solana, I really enjoyed the community that was there, this clear vision that they had for all of the ecosystems that we’re building on Solana and everyone working together, and it’s really exciting. And DevRel doesn’t exist in Cosmos mainly because with an appchain thesis, there’s countless chains that exist, so the tech stack varies per chain that you’re building on, and there’s this cross-chain concept where it just wouldn’t make sense for them to have a DevRel. It’s kind of all chain dependent on how you’re building. So I thought DevRel was a really cool job and I wanted to also have experience doing that as well. So I saw the job description, I saw the ecosystem, I thought it was really cool, so I just applied. And yeah, here I am.

Nick (25:46):

And when was that?

Brianna Migliaccio (25:48):

Almost a year ago now. Actually exactly a year ago. It was December last year.

Nick (25:53):

So you joined Solana at an amazing time. I feel like, and again I have an outside observation or perspective, but it seems like since you joined Solana has been on an incredible tier and there’s so much enthusiasm within that community, so much share of voice within the industry, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch. Talk to me about that experience then of joining an ecosystem that was just getting ready to launch at the forefront of the industry.

Brianna Migliaccio (26:23):

It’s crazy how fast things move. My very first day at Solana, not first day, maybe second week, but very early on, I went out to ETHDenver and I was working the booth at ETHDenver. And I had several people come up to the booth and say, “What’s Solana?” And then not even a few months later I was at another conference, I think it was Consensus, and people were coming up and being like, “Oh my gosh, Solana.” So it’s crazy to see how much can change in just a couple of months in the industry. So that was really exciting to see.

(27:00):

I think because of the time it was a lot for DevRel, it was very exciting, where you had this opportunity. A lot of developers were curious about the chain and trying to understand how to build on it. So you had a lot of different touch points, a lot of opportunity to reach many developers in a short period of time. Yeah, it’s exciting.

Nick (27:26):

So without saying one’s better than the other and putting you in that awkward spot, I do want to ask you about the different experiences of working in a Cosmos ecosystem and a Solana ecosystem, from the perspective of the devs and the community. So how is your experience in Solana different or unique to what you’ve experienced before?

Brianna Migliaccio (27:46):

Both ecosystems have great technology, really amazing developers. I’ve worked with some insanely smart people over the past several years and I’m very thankful for it. I would say what’s unique between the two is the different visions you have.

(28:04):

Cosmos has an appchain thesis of this sovereign chains and being able to build chain specific technology, and customize your chain for your application. So you did a lot of work at the go level, the chain level, running nodes and focusing on your actual chain performance.

(28:28):

Where in Solana you’re building on top of Solana, so it’s focusing more on the Rust level and building applications. And everyone is building their apps on the Solana chain, so it’s more people working together. It’s kind of crazy to see, sometimes I’ll make a PR to a repo, and then I’ll have several issues commented and other people trying to make a PR. And you just have everyone very excited about things that are being built in the ecosystem, where everyone just wants to work together. Because your application contributes to someone else’s and we’re building tooling that’s going to help several applications improve what they’re building. It’s just everyone wants to push each other to just further advance Solana as a whole, which is really exciting to be a part of.

Nick (29:22):

 Another somewhat awkward question, but I still want to ask it. It’s this question about the narrative we sometimes see emerge on crypto Twitter and other places where Solana is getting pitted sort of against Ethereum. And there’s data driven rationale why that’s an interesting question. And then there’s all the hype and speculation that makes it maybe less of a serious question. But what’s your perspective on that comparison and sort of how are you tracking this constant debate within the industry between Ethereum and Solana?

Brianna Migliaccio (29:53):

 It’s hard. You have two very successful chains that have made like groundbreaking technology in the future of crypto and blockchain. And I think you want to see all of them do well, right?

Like if Ethereum does really well, it’s just going to help Solana. And if Solana does really well, it’s just going to help Ethereum. We’re so early on in the future of web3 and decentralized technology that any advancement in any chain is just going to lift anyone else up and bring more visibility to this crypto bubble that we have currently.

I don’t really look at it as a competition, but more of just, “Hey, like we’re all building, we all want to see the same end goal. So like, let’s keep doing it.”

Nick (30:41):

I have this question, again as a non-technical person, about the proliferation of L1s and L2′s, and I’m trying to make sense of why this is happening and what the endgame looks like. Is there just going to be endless L1s, L2s? Within the context of that naivete, if you will, how would you describe to a person like me, what makes Solana unique and different in this evolving landscape of L1s and competitive dynamics?

Brianna Migliaccio (31:12):

Yeah, I think Solana, because it’s fast and it’s cheap, that’s our basic catchphrase at this point, it enables a lot to be built directly on the L1, which is pretty unique. There are of course other L1s that are fast and cheap as well. But Solana, you have Firedancer that’s being built currently that’s enabling 1 million TPS for a validator client. You have a lot of other teams that are working on making the most optimal fast technology possible, and they’re just constantly trying to break the status quo. It’s being focused directly on the L1, I would say, with Solana.

Nick (32:00):

And as a DevRel you get a front row seat to a lot of the things that the community is building and working on. And as I said at the beginning, it’s been fun to see some of the projects that have emerged from the Solana ecosystem. Are there any now, and I don’t want you to play favorites by any means, but are there any projects that you’re keeping an eye on, that have got you and the community excited of what’s possible when building on Solana?

Brianna Migliaccio (32:22):

In the spirit of not playing favorites, I’m going to focus more on the tooling and tech side of things just because that’s my main focus. If we improve tooling, then we improve more developers in the ecosystem, and then that enables more apps in the end. So we have a lot of great projects for tooling. We have new buzz testers and code coverage tools coming out. We have a toolkit that’s being worked on. We have new ways to simulate local environments and how to update that to do better testing for all of your applications.

And then just from the tech side of things, you have, I mentioned Firedancer earlier, but when they continue building this client that enables 1 million TPS it’s just going to unlock so much that can be built on top of Solana. And then there’s also a new company that just was announced DoubleZero, and they’re just focusing on improving the fiber layer of the internet. So if you think about if Firedancer accomplishes their main goal, the next roadblock is really going to be jitter and the issue with the internet speed. So now we have DoubleZero that’s coming in and trying to preemptively help out with that roadblock just to enable… The possibilities are endless in the future. So very exciting.

Nick (33:44):

And Brianna, as you know, a lot of my listeners are enthusiastic about The Graph, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is about all the cool things that are happening in terms of The Graph offering enhanced support for devs building on Solana. What’s your opinion of that development there? And as a DevRel building in Solana, how important is having robust indexing solutions available to devs?

Brianna Migliaccio (34:09):

Yeah, it’s definitely extremely important. Solana, because it’s high throughput, there’s so many transactions per second, there’s quite a lot of data to deal with consistently. So indexing the network is just a very important thing for developers. And The Graph, it just simplifies being able to query data. And also with its network, it’s able to just scale and match the current demand of Solana’s high throughput and extreme amount of transactions. So it does make things a lot easier.

We did a live stream actually with The Graph where I wrote a smart contract, and then they took that smart contract and used The Graph to index all of the data of the instructions that we ran in the smart contract on chain. And the entire workshop itself, from running the smart contract, deploying it, running transactions against it, writing all of the code for The Graph, and then being able to index it was about an hour long. So it’s super easy to use. If anyone listening wants to check it out, I think it’s on YouTube, if not, it’s on Solana’s Twitch. But it’s very developer friendly. It makes the developer experience on Solana a lot better. So really excited to see just the future of that in general.

Nick (35:26):

And I’ll put a link in the show notes for any listeners who want to catch that. I’m aware of that workshop and it looked like it was well attended and people were super interested in it. So congrats to you and the team and the team that supported it from The Graph.

Brianna, I just want to ask you a couple of final questions before we get to the GRTiQ 10, which are 10 fun questions I ask every guest of the podcast each week. The first one is I think one that you’ll find a lot of fun. Tell us about what makes you optimistic about the future of the Solana ecosystem.

Brianna Migliaccio (35:56):

I’m just excited to see the blockchain being put to real world use cases, and just seeing it soon to be used by everybody. My favorite thing is to see web3 applications that have a web2 front-end. So it feels like you’re just using a regular application, but it’s actually running on a blockchain. And seeing all of these amazing teams that are building the ground level technology at Solana, to just improve to be able to allow for these applications to be built. So really excited to see it. I think the future is going to come quick and it’s going to be more than we can think of at the moment.

Nick (36:38):

And how about this question? Suppose we have a listener who is technical and does want to get started on Solana and see what’s possible. What are the best resources or the best ways to get started?

Brianna Migliaccio (36:51):

We have quite a lot. So I would say the newest one that we just launched is a developer bootcamp. So it was actually created by myself and two other DevRel members on the team. And it’s pretty much blockchain basics, all the way to developing and deploying your own lending protocol, a simplified lending protocol. But it’s about 20 hours long and goes over pretty in-depth several applications to build. So I think that’s a great way to get started.

If not that method, we have several documentations and guides of just example projects that you can follow along. My favorite one to point people to is a CRUD dapp, because anytime you’re building on any tech stack a CRUD dapp, it’s create, read, update, and delete. It’s your basic functions for creating any application. If you learn how to do that on a blockchain and deploy it, you can pretty much make almost anything after that. So if you go to solana.com/docs and look for the CRUD dapp guide, you can follow that. It goes through the back-end, the front-end, the deployment, everything you need. And then, yeah, you can go on from there.

Nick (38:07):

And then before I ask you the GRTiQ 10, the final question I want to ask is about this phenomena that occurred within the Solana ecosystem. So I was mentioning earlier, you joined at an amazing time as Solana really got a ton of thought leadership and a ton of following and dev support. One of the things of this cycle that caught people by surprise is the emergence of, or re-emergence, I guess, of memcoins. And a lot of that happened on Solana. And clearly a lot of projects on Solana are doing very important things and a lot of real world applications. I could build a list just as an observer of those things, but this memecoin phenomenon was quite interesting to watch in parallel. How did you make sense of that and what was your experience of seeing that emerge in this cycle?

Brianna Migliaccio (38:54):

It’s always fun to see what people build and what the community finds interesting. Everyone’s going to have a different lens to look at blockchain, but I do think memecoin are very relatable. Everyone loves memes. It’s a great way to onboard new people. Some of my friends that I’ve tried for quite some time to onboard into crypto, they just were never really into it, and then I showed them some memecoin stuff and they immediately made a wallet.

One of my friends, she has her wallet and she named it My Farm, and it’s all of her animal memecoin and she loves it. And now she’s using that to use Jupiter and Raydium, and she’s on DEX scanner every day. And so I think there’s always interesting ways to onboard new people. And at the end of the day, you want to find relatable, enjoyable content, so it makes things fun. And there’s a lot that can be built out of it in the future.

Nick (39:55):

Well, Brianna, now I want to ask you the GRTiQ 10. As I said, these are 10 questions I ask each guest of the podcast every week. And I do it because I think it introduces listeners to new ideas, encourages them to try something different or to possibly achieve more in their own life. So Brianna, are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Brianna Migliaccio (40:13):

I’m ready.

Nick:

What book or articles had the most impact on your life?

Brianna Migliaccio:

So I read one recently called Subliminal. It talks about the power of your subconscious mind and how important it is to focus on how your thoughts are formed. And it made me restructure a lot of how I thought about things. So I liked that book a lot.

Nick:

And how about this one? Is there a movie or a TV show that you would recommend everybody should watch?

Brianna Migliaccio:

I don’t really watch TV. Everyone always says I live under a rock. So I can’t really help with that one.

Nick:

Not the first person to not be able to answer that question. Totally fine. But there is this question about music. If you could only listen to one music album for the rest of your life, do you have an answer for that?

Brianna Migliaccio:

Yeah, I would say it’s one of Drake’s first albums, his Take Care album.

Nick:

What’s the best advice someone’s ever given to you?

Brianna Migliaccio (41:19):

This is actually from my STEM program teacher in high school. He said, “Anything’s possible if you have enough nerves.” So I always focus on that.

Nick:

And Brianna, what’s one thing you’ve learned in your life that you don’t think most other people have learned or know quite yet?

Brianna Migliaccio:

I don’t know. I don’t think I know anything that other people don’t know.

Nick:

And how about this, what’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself?

Brianna Migliaccio:

I started meditating before I do deep work, and it helps focus significantly more, so I recommend that to anyone.

Nick:

And then Brianna, based on your own life experiences and observations, what’s the one habit or characteristic that you think best explains why people find success in life?

Brianna Migliaccio:

Yeah, I think it’s finding what part of your work you’re passionate about. Having a passion in what you do on a day-to-day will always make you go the extra mile.

Nick:

And then the final three questions are complete-the-sentence-type questions. So the first one is, the thing that most excites me about the future of web3 is…

Brianna Migliaccio:

True ownership over data and digital assets.

Nick:

And how about this one? If you’re on X or Twitter, whatever people call it, you should be following…

Brianna Migliaccio:

Me.

Nick:

And then the final question, Brianna, complete the sentence. I’m happiest when…

Brianna Migliaccio:

I’m at the dog park with my dog.

Nick (43:03):

Great answer. So Brianna, thank you so much for joining the GRTiQ Podcast. It was so much fun to get to know you. We worked hard to schedule this interview, and you were super patient and willing to sacrifice some time, and I’m grateful for it. So thank you very much. And it was great to learn your backstory. I think it’s inspiring for a lot of listeners to learn how people evolved into the web3 industry, and the work you’re doing at Solana is super cool. If listeners want to stay in touch with you, follow the things you are working on, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?

Brianna Migliaccio (43:31):

I’m the most responsive on Twitter, so if you want to message me on Twitter, it’s b_, my last name, migliaccio.

Nick:

This has been a production of the GRTiQ Podcast. For more information including detailed show notes, visit grtiq.com/ podcast. That’s grtiq.com/podcast.