GRTiQ Podcast: 211 Mathieu Baudet

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Mathieu Baudet (00:14):

I think what we’re seeing in 2025 is perhaps, for the first time, the hope that the technology of blockchain is going to be normalized, just be part of the internet and not something that is being built on the side by some digents.

Nick (01:01):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast. Today I’m speaking with Mathieu Baudet, founder at Linera. With a PhD in cryptographic protocols and security, Mathieu has been at the forefront of distributed systems innovation over two decades. After serving as a security consultant for the French government, he joined Facebook in 2012 where he led developer tools, machine-learning infrastructure, and spearheaded the early development of the Libra Diem blockchain project. Today at Linera, he’s pioneering a revolutionary blockchain architecture that overcomes scalability limitations through an innovative micro chain approach. His work combines deep academic expertise and practical engineering experience aimed at reshaping blockchain infrastructure.

(01:47):

During our conversation, Mathieu shares fascinating insights on his journey from studying cryptographic protocols in pre-Bitcoin academia to building infra to power web3′s future, including his perspective on how Bitcoin’s singular focus helped pave the way for broader blockchain innovation. I started the conversation with Mathieu by discussing his perspective on Bitcoin’s original purpose and how his views on blockchain architecture have evolved.

Mathieu Baudet (02:13):

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. So you did some homework. Okay. So that quote, “Bitcoin wasn’t meant to be doing anything other than Bitcoin.” By that I meant wasn’t meant to be doing anything other than creating the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. And that was the first one, so that was a big deal. It was the first time we were creating a unique value over the internet without any government, I think at a time some people were trying, but honestly, for the vast majority of the public, that was not something that was even considered. People thought for the longest time, yeah, you need a central bank to create currency. So Bitcoin was this amazing breakthrough with very neat protocols, in a way, very elegant and simple, and people really could relate to it. Yeah. And it worked. But, of course. At the same time, it didn’t solve all the problems. To do arbitrary, decentralized computation at scale over the internet, it’s a bit slow, it’s a bit expensive. So that’s why it’s so interesting to study and to build new blockchain architectures in general.

Nick (03:24):

I love that answer. And building on that, you’ve also suggested that blockchain needs a paradigm shift, and I presume we’re going to talk a lot about the things that you’re working on that will introduce some of this paradigm shift. But, given your background, what do you think are the key lessons we should learn from something like web2’s evolution and its adoption and applying it somehow to blockchain development? What are we missing, or what do we need?

Mathieu Baudet (03:50):

Yeah. So I think what we learned through the history of the internet is that sometimes you hit a wall and it takes some investment and maybe some new ideas and a bit of courage to get out of it and move to the next thing. For instance, in the early 2000s, people are trying to build really large websites, so that they can host a lot of content and maybe also let people edit. I can participate more to the internet. And they realized that at the time, the databases that everybody was using and had this very rich query language called SQL. They started realizing that they were not scaling that well. And so people started thinking, and then that’s how they came up with a set of techniques that is called NoSQL now.

(04:38):

Basically what NoSQL means is that you take the core of the query language of SQL, but you remove the expensive queries that are very hard to scale, and then you work more on the frameworks to do things a bit differently and create queries that are easier to scale out. That’s exactly how Facebook works. For instance, internally, you’re not allowed to program a query that is just too expensive and it would just break. What we’re doing at Linera is in the same spirit. We’re really looking to solve the scalability problems and make them disappear by just a different approach and I guess not having them.

Nick (05:18):

We’re going to talk a lot about Linera and all the work you’re doing there. I’m excited to dive deeper. Before we get to there, I want to ask you about just where you’re from. And it’s a common question on the podcast, but love to turn the attention on you and your personal journey. So what can you tell us about where you grew up, your background and how your early interest in computer science and cryptography developed?

Mathieu Baudet (05:39):

I grew up in France and was born in Paris, but grew up in Burgundy. So very nice countryside, very nice area, beautiful nature. And then I went to Paris for studying to complete after high school. Went to Paris, and then studying, specializing in mathematics and computer science.

Nick (05:57):

What was sort of the formative experience from your youth that made you interested in these things? I’ve heard it from different builders in the space come up in different ways. Sometimes it was a parent introducing technology into the home at an early stage. Maybe it was just something they learned or came across at school. What was it for you that sparked this interest?

Mathieu Baudet (06:17):

I liked labs, for sure. There was no computers really at school back then, but I had one at home. So we were lucky to have one of those early computers, early PCs, and I was really quickly drawn towards programming. I thought that was really cool, to be able to program algorithms. I was trying to teach myself actually most of it, and I was reading also magazines. There was this one that had a very cool … At the end there was always an article about computer science. They were fascinating. I remember there was The Game of Life, for instance. I remember reading that one, and then immediately I was, “Oh, I totally need to program this.” So yeah. It was a project for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks and then I programmed The Game of Life, so I was super proud.

Nick (07:05):

When we look at your university years, you’re studying programming languages and formal methods I think would be the translation. What are you thinking about your career at this point? So you know you have an interest in these things, you clearly have the aptitude to do these things, but what are you thinking about your career and what are you trying to learn at university?

Mathieu Baudet (07:26):

In the French system, I actually did quite a bit of theoretical science first, math and physics. We had really good teachers. They were super interesting. And then the specialization to computer science came a bit later in something that I think would be called a master degree. And then, of course, I chose something that was in between maths and computer science. I was still very much rooted in the theory of programming languages. I was already looking at applications. Compared to maths, I think computer science is always like … What’s nice about it is also you very easy to see the applications or at least to picture them. When you learn about theory of programming languages, you imagine, “Oh, I’m going to be able to create those program analyzer and maybe analyzers and maybe they will be able to find bugs and just improve the quality of programs altogether for the industry and it’ll help people’s lives. So it was theoretical, but you could always see some applications. So I was pretty motivated.

Nick (08:24):

And you went on to get a PhD studying cryptographic protocols. And the interesting thing here is you studied that from 2003 to 2006. So these are early days far before this web3 thing became what it is. So what is somebody in 2003, 2006 studying cryptographic protocols for? Was this a common need and you serendipitously found it before the advent of things like blockchain and this whole industry that we’re now going to talk about?

Mathieu Baudet (08:53):

I think the funny part of it is that it was the closest thing you could study to blockchain protocols back then, basically, there was in media. So it was way before Bitcoin was invented and, in fact, at the time there were only a few cryptographic protocols that were used. I think what I was trying to explain to my parents what I was doing for PhD, I was saying, “Hey, you have the padlock and the Internet Explorer that tells you the communication where the website is secure. Well, you know what? That’s a security protocol. That’s a cryptographic protocol.”

(09:24):

That was almost the only example I had. For the longest time there was only a few cryptographic protocols that were deployed over the internet that everybody were using. Another the one was the for encrypting emails with the SMI or PGP. So that’s around that time, I was like, “Okay. So that’s great. I’m a specialist of those things,” but you create one protocol every five years, so it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of business going on there. It was fun and also still rooted in this area of programming languages, because the protocols are actually pieces of program written in our dedicated language usually to make them easier to analyze. Yeah. It was fun.

Nick (10:07):

I’ve had the opportunity to ask other guests of the podcast this question, and I’m going to ask it to you. You’ve got very strong academic background, clearly a very smart person. You’re published. You’ve published some articles that are deep on this topic, and so you’re the right person to ask. And the question is this. So here you are, you’re in 2003, 2006, you’re studying things that, as you just said there, is a little bit limited from the perspective of size of market. Blockchain hadn’t really come on the scene yet, so the real utility of what you’re studying was really not happening yet, but it would soon. And my question is, do you think this whole blockchain industry and everything that we’re seeing around it, did it emerge from people like you that were exploring really interesting things? And they needed a sandbox to build and look into? Or was it just coincidence that you had people that were exploring problems like you were and then this industry cropped up over there?

Mathieu Baudet (11:05):

I don’t know if I can claim that the things I was working on somehow helped the creation of Bitcoin. But, I think in general what people found out is that once they started trying to improve blockchain protocols, so after Bitcoin, very often they would find answers in academic research that was done before, independently. That’s really true for Proof-of-stake protocols that people are using in this whole category of protocols or blockchain protocols that are called Byzantine Fault Tolerance or BFT protocols. That’s actually a domain of research that started way before blockchain and is now used everywhere in blockchain. And of course the [inaudible 00:11:49] proofs and, of course, the cryptography in general, the cryptographic primitives, they were all invented before hash functions. That one is used in Bitcoin. So all of that was invented before and it’s definitely used now.

Nick (12:04):

It’s a great answer and I wish I could do another pass on my question, but you answered it beautifully. And it really does sort of spark interest in the convergence of that academic research and the questions people are asking in academia and then the emergence of blockchain and the practical utility of these things. When you think about the emergence of blockchain, you think about the emergence of web3, do you think of it as an experiment in technology? Like, “Hey, this is kind of an interesting idea, an interesting problem set. Let’s see if this thing can create value for the world?” Or do you frame it more as an evolution, like, “This of course was the next step. You build web one, you build web2 and of course web3 and blockchain, all this stuff with naturally emerge afterwards.” How do you sort of think about that?

Mathieu Baudet (12:51):

After Bitcoin emerged I think it was such a hit that it’s normal that people think, “Okay. What’s next there? What have we learned?” And then propose new evolutions of the technology. So what Bitcoin showed is that you could create a cryptocurrency over the internet. You could create essentially financially-abled … You could enable the internet with asset transfers and managing value, which usually you would think require trust between the participants and requires a government to monitor and regulate and root the trust, basically, into the law of a country. And yet, we find out that through this magic of blockchain protocols, we could create this trust out of nothing, or just out of the speed of communication and the communication abilities of the internet. Once that door was open, I suppose you could say, “Oh yeah. Of course people are now going to definitely create new protocols to make the internet of money,” which is how many people define web3. So yeah. After the facts always easy to come up with explanations.

Nick (14:10):

So let’s go back to your personal story then. So you pursued a PhD. We talked a little bit about your academic work, the types of things you were working on. What did you do after your PhD program get started in your career?

Mathieu Baudet (14:23):

Yeah. So I was like, “Okay. So I seem to understand security protocols. Well I’m going to put that to good use,” And I worked for the French government actually for four years as a security consultant, and also a bit of a researcher. And a little bit of a teacher actually also. Was super interesting, had a lot of fun. It was a great job. We were already trying to help the different organization, the French government to just be more secure and resist all kinds of attacks from … You can imagine the cyber attacks that can happen. Some of my colleagues, they were working on a very sensitive system, so there was always this tension between the need to be efficient and also a bit of paranoia, and “What if they do this and this? So they’re going to get into our systems and get the secrets.”

(15:17):

And I remember from those years that some of my colleagues, they were super smart and they were thinking about all the crazy stuff that you could do to try to steal the password. And the time people around them, they were like, “Those guys are crazy. Are you really going to, I don’t know, use the infrared port of the computer to do this, to spy on people? Nobody does that.” And then there was the Snowden papers and then we figured out that many of the ideas that looked like it was from sci-fi, they were actually in there. I was already gone by then. I still have fond memories about that time.

Nick (15:53):

It’s an amazing story. So you were working for the government, eventually you pivot into the private sector. Before we talk about that pivot, I want to ask you … You’re working for the government. Are you experiencing this moment where you’re saying, “This is exactly what I want to be doing?” In other words, you got all this education, you have passion in tech and programming. Now you’re doing it for a living. Are you looking around and being like, “This is I. This is what I wanted to do.” Or are you like, “Oh no. This is a little different. This isn’t exactly what I wanted,”?

Mathieu Baudet (16:25):

At the time I had a very, very comfortable job. It was great. I had a tenure, I was in job security and it was super interesting. I was still at the beginning of my career, I felt like I want to try something new, maybe challenge myself. And so that’s how I ended up working in a startup in Paris, at the time where there were relatively few of them, I have to say. Yeah. Working as also I wanted to do a little bit of management, project management. And yeah. Just try to learn something new. It was interesting. It was a big challenge.

Nick (16:58):

I got to imagine moving from government to private sector and a startup is a total change. How did you navigate that? Was that as uncomfortable? And did it push you in terms of your skills and the things that you had to be able to be good at? Did it push you to new territory?

Mathieu Baudet (17:16):

Well, the startup didn’t work out for a variety reasons, but in the course of also managing engineers at the time I thought, “Look, I’ve been coding since I’m a kid, but those guys are good. They actually deliver,” and I felt like almost intimidated sometimes. I was like, “Oh, man. I’m more like a researcher when I’m comparing myself.” So after I decided to leave that startup. I thought, “Okay. So now in the French system it was pretty clear with that kind of academic credentials and the experience, I was supposed to basically try stay a manager and try to get bigger teams in bigger companies, basically.”

(17:58):

And I thought, “I don’t want to do that. I prefer to actually become more like what is now in the US what you call an IC.” So the word, I didn’t even know the word back then, by the way. That’s not something that the time was really popular to say, “Oh. I could become a manager, but no. I prefer to be a badass software engineer. And that’s how I signed myself moving to the States, moving to California, to challenge myself again and start as a software engineer in the Facebook, so [inaudible 00:18:30] the US.

Nick (18:31):

Yeah. That’s a big deal and that’s a company that everyone here listening to this interview is going to recognize. But, in 2012 you moved to the US, you go to work as a software engineer at Facebook. And that’s again, quite a big move. So talk to us about that. What was it like working at Facebook? And what were some things you were working on?

Mathieu Baudet (18:50):

I think the previous move, somehow they were maybe ballsy, but they were really relatively reasonable. Changing country, I would say, at 30-something was a big deal. I have to say I did it for the love of computer science and just the job ambitions, I guess. But man, that was pretty challenging. I thought my English was okay and I arrived and I realized actually my English is not good enough to work in English, to work in an American company, especially with people with very diverse accents. I remember the first meetings where if there was somebody that was coding in, and maybe I had also a foreign accent, and I would be like, “I just don’t understand a single word what they’re saying.” So I was like, “Okay. Somebody help me.” But, after that [inaudible 00:19:37] of course.

Nick (19:39):

Well, you were at Facebook for quite a while and you did some really cool things there. So you found your footing and you got comfortable with that language/country move. Talk to us about some of the things you worked on at Facebook. Maybe there’s listeners out there that’ll recognize some of the projects and the things you contributed.

Mathieu Baudet (19:55):

Of course, I studied by working on security, on software security, which was my field, a little bit of cryptography, and then I transitioned to developer tools. I don’t know, I thought like, “Oh, I’m going to make myself useful, try to help people be more productive by having better tools to work on.” It was also a clean slate. When I joined Facebook was obviously already working, but developer tools, it was super early. So it was nice to be able to create the first, I don’t know, code Indexer at Facebook. I guess I like clean slate projects.

(20:30):

Yeah. And then I started working on machine-learning infrastructure. So I was very interesting. I was able to work on services, like tiers of machines that were handling an incredible amount of queries per second. So that was super interesting working with production engineers. So that was pretty interesting. And then I got after, I think that was four or five years there, I got an opportunity. I was interviewed to join the new blockchain project on Facebook. So that was a big deal. I was one of the first engineers in the project. It was super interesting. We were all super motivated. We built the thing and unfortunately it didn’t work out for non-technical reasons or for political reasons. The country was not ready, I guess. But, that was a super interesting project, for sure.

Nick (21:20):

If you don’t mind, would you be willing to just contrast the experience you had experience of working at a startup in France, technology doing similar work to what you would do at Facebook, which is a huge, huge technology company. What’s the difference? What’s the contrast there? In my brain, and I’ve never worked at something as big as Facebook, but it would seem like you were trying to drive a cruise ship, changing directions and getting people to move, whereas maybe in a smaller startup you could make decisions on the fly? But, I don’t know. Maybe it’s different. How was that experience for you?

Mathieu Baudet (21:58):

What was similar is that at Facebook they invented, or someone else had invented, but I don’t know, but they had this culture to let the engineers propose new projects. If they have ideas, you would be able to start a prototype and then show it around. And then next thing you know, maybe you’re creating a project. And so in that respect, it’s a little bit like creating startups. So they wanted really to make an environment where people could create those small projects very much in a startup fashion. So that actually was something that I liked and I felt that felt familiar. Now, the technical environment was completely different. So obviously when you work in a startup, you start with this zero line of code. You just write the whole thing based on a open source tooling and frameworks. And when I arrived at Facebook, I think the first time, they are also …

(22:52):

One of the things that’s pretty good, they give you access to the code base very early on when you join. And they actually challenge you, say, “Hey, here’s a task. You need to modify the color of the button somewhere and just do it.” Like you find yourself in the middle of this giant code base and it’s like a maze, basically, which was for me at the time was … I’ll just say it was completely unexpected. So I remember the first time, yeah, I was like, “Okay. So I have access to the Facebook code base. Let’s read it. I want to understand more how it works.” And then I opened a file and then I am like, “Okay. I have no idea what’s going on here. Let’s try another one.” And then you find out, “Okay. there’s 10,000 files. So okay. I’m never going to read the Facebook code base, actually.” It’s not a book. You can never do that.

Nick (23:42):

So Mathieu, I want to ask you this question about working on blockchain at Facebook. And you’re having this great experience where you’re using your education, you’re using the things you’ve learned to that point, and you’re building new technology at a world leader like Facebook. Did you develop high conviction for the technology of blockchain while you were there? Did you get your hands dirty and say, “This is the future,” despite the outcome of what you were working on?

Mathieu Baudet (24:14):

We thought everything would work, obviously. At the time we were building the infrastructure of Libra, which was renamed to Diem. Yeah. We were very, very excited about the opportunity as an engineer to create infrastructure that potentially would be rolled out and used by potentially billions of people. So we were super, super excited about this. Part of us were also a bit scary, because blockchain at the time was not particularly … And in some ways still now, is not particularly known to be scalable. The technology was still young and we’re thinking, “Okay. Is this going to hold?” We’re very concerned about … We really wanted the thing to be rock solid. We thought like, “Okay. This is going to be like a honeypot. Everybody’s going to try to hack [inaudible 00:25:00], so we really need to make everything super tight.” I felt like I was going back to being a PhD student many ways in a field that was not the same, but it was also relatively familiar being protocols. So yeah. We had a really good time there.

Nick (25:16):

So you joined Facebook, you made the move you described earlier 2012. And then 2021, so quite a time later you presumably start having the ideas for Linera. Take us back in time. What were you thinking about? Where did this idea come from? And what was the early problem set you were thinking about?

Mathieu Baudet (25:39):

When we were working on the core protocol of the Facebook blockchain with my colleagues, there was a moment where the core protocol already was in good hands. The specifications, everything was written. The engineering team was implementing and making sure everything is performing, is well returned and everything. But, on the theoretical level, with some of my colleagues on the research side, we were a bit worried that what happens if we actually have a billion users trying to make transfers about the same time in parallel? We knew that on theoretical level, the classic protocol that we had implemented was not going to be able to handle unlimited TPS. There was always going to be a limit. That’s why we started thinking about how we can do better, like what would be a plan B if we are reaching the limits of the capacity of the network? We started working on an infinitely scalable payment system, using some ideas that were in the academia that we thought there was room for improvements, and we came up with something that was super simple and really, really nice. So we did this article called FastPay.

(26:48):

Yeah. So it was a low latency, infinitely scalable payment system. One of the main ideas to start with was to say, “Well, if you want low latency at scale, and it’s a decentralized system, so the computation is going to be distributed amongst a network of what we call validators …” Traditionally in the blockchain systems, people wanted lots of validators, because They wanted really to maximize the centralization and censorship resistance and validators would be very small. The hardware requirements would have to be minimalistic. And with my colleagues, we thought, “Okay, but that’s actually limiting.” There’s what’s called the blockchain trailer. And we didn’t think with those terms the problem was escapable. And so what we did was we were like, “Okay. Well, maybe what we need is larger validators,” and so we started working, and it was a natural thing to do for us.

(27:40):

Being in a big tech company, we thought, “Why don’t we just assume that validators are okay being elastic, being potentially data centers. And then let’s design an algorithm that takes advantage of that.” And so we did that for a payment system and it worked really well. We were super happy. But then it was just a payment system. Long story short, Linera is essentially a generalization and so when I created a company, I had this intuition that we could do better than payment and we could add smart contracts and we could make the whole thing programmable, like a full lay-on. That’s what I did, basically. I had an idea to do that. It took quite some efforts and we had to come up with new ideas with my colleague and eventually we built Linera with this concept of micro-chain, which is a generalization of the notion of user account in the original paper that was only doing payments. And we came up with, yeah, this is a really, really new approach to building decentralized applications.

Nick (28:37):

Where’s the name come from, Linera?

Mathieu Baudet (28:39):

Not every name has a good story, but in this case I think I was really influenced by the concept of linear scalability. So the idea is that if you want to double the capacity of the network, you just double the amount of machines essentially. So it’s linearly scalable. So it’s a nod to that. But, I thought the name ending with ERA was cool. Sounds like other startups that you may know. I was influenced by the name “Libra,” and because it does sound a little bit similar.

Nick (29:14):

When you think about that transition from Facebook. And obviously you’re a talented guy and you do what you want to do, you’re working in a very well-established firm with a ton of runway and profitability that you could have stayed there forever and just lived out your life. But, you decide to make this move, you decide to become an entrepreneur. Talk to us about that transition. Did that take a ton of courage? Were you nervous? Were there times where you were uncertain you made the right decision? What was that like?

Mathieu Baudet (29:44):

Right. Yeah. So leaving a big tech company to create a startup, that was something I wanted to do. Of course, I was remembering what it was to work in a startup. I remembered also, “Oh. If I work again in a startup, I definitely want to be a co-founder.” I thought that was definitely more fun. When I was at Facebook working relatively hard on creating new projects, I was essentially already trying to create startups, except in an environment that was a big tech company, which has some advantages in terms of what you are always paid, for instance. But, some inconvenience in the sense that it’s not quite real life. There are still some policy issues. And if I’m going to work a lot and to create something new, I’d better do it as a real startup this time. And I thought, “Well, okay. I have an idea.” Of course, the timing was pretty good, end of 2021. It was beginning of 2022, was a very good time to start the crypto project and get funded. Yeah. And that’s how we started.

Nick (30:46):

When you were talking about the problem set and exploring those original ideas behind Linera, you said things like micro change. You said things about validators. And I’m not technical, you’ve already picked that up. And a lot of my listeners are non-technical as well. So if you were to describe to us in a non-technical way, as best as you can … Of course these are technical things. What makes Linera different, what makes it innovative? How would you go about describing that?

Mathieu Baudet (31:10):

Well, first I guess you need to picture what a blockchain is. The name “blockchain” comes from the fact that you organize the computation coming from the users of the blockchain into a chain of blocks. And so there’s this data structure that’s using some clever structures that’s called a blockchain. And so at Linera, what we’re saying is, “Look, putting all the users, the entire world, putting their computation inside a single chain of blocks is always going to create a bottleneck. And of course, you can improve the protocol, you can try to come up with new ideas to make the blockchains handle more computation per second.” So that’s what people in the profession call transactions per second or TPS. You can improve things a lot and people did. But, on the theoretical level, it’s always going to be potentially a bottleneck.

(32:12):

So at Linera we decided to do essentially the opposite. Instead of having a single chain of blocks for everybody in the world, we decided to have lots of chains of blocks. In fact, we want to be able to create those tiny chains on demand, possibly even for a single user. When they arrive in the system, we give them a chain and say, “Hey, welcome. Here’s a chain of blocks for you.” And that changes completely the way you structure the computation and opens the door for new applications, in particular, applications that needs more responsiveness. You are going to be able to interact with the system in ways that are much faster, in fact, much more alike the traditional web systems.

Nick (32:55):

Makes a lot of sense. So talk to us about the Linera community then. You assembled an amazing team. You went to work on bringing this vision to life and you’ve got a community around it. What can you tell us about that team and community?

Mathieu Baudet (33:09):

Yeah. We’ve been very blessed with a strong community. It didn’t happen overnight. We’ve been working at it more than a year, thanks to this amazing marketing team and community team that I was able to hire. And yeah. It’s been really humbling and motivating. Very, very encouraging to see the support and the interest from the community. It’s alive. It’s a living organism, a community. Things happen that are completely unpredictable. So one thing I wake up and people start saying, “Yeah, gmicrochain,” for instance, for “Good morning.” Where does it come from? I don’t even know. The next thing you know, somebody is posting a video. I don’t know. You have some mascots or drawings and pictures of actual mugs with the Linera logo on it. So that’s the fun part about web3 and communities, that I think it’s really just the spontaneity and the creativity of people when they believe in the project.

Nick (34:05):

What’s on the roadmap at Linera? So you had this original vision. I get a sense of what you’re trying to do here and it seems very exciting. What’s happening now? Where are you at on the roadmap and what comes next?

Mathieu Baudet (34:19):

Technically speaking, we have launched what’s called a testnet, so it’s a network that is not the production network yet. So you can use it for development, prototyping. It’s already using real validators. That’s really the step before mainnet, traditionally, mainnet being the production environment, where it’s going to be real money and it’s going to be immutable and stay forever. And so we’re working really hard on making the next step happen where the real production environment, the real mainnet and where we are in production, which also going to be obviously the time where we create the cryptocurrency or the tokens, however you want to call it. There’s a number of steps so people will be able to obviously see that and be associated to the different campaigns when that happens.

Nick (35:10):

What’s the one thing you’ve learned about entrepreneurship that you could share with us? As we’ve said multiple times, you move from Facebook, you learn some cool things there. Now you’re a founder. What’s the one or two things that you would share with listeners that have the vision to become a entrepreneur like you, Mathieu?

Mathieu Baudet (35:26):

Okay. It’s hard at times, but I think it’s been a really eye-opening experience for me. I like the fact that when you are developing your own project or your own business … People can be entrepreneur without having a startup, by the way. You want to create a music band, that’s a project. You could be the leader of the band, even on the side and still you’ll feel like you are already creating something. You need to hire people, you need to create a momentum in your project, make sure that people are happy, manage. And so entrepreneurship, it’s a mindset. It’s not only startups even, and I found it fascinating. I really like the fact that whatever happens, you take responsibility for it. Right? So it’s very liberating once you get used to it.

Nick (36:13):

A lot of my listeners are enthusiastic about The Graph, Mathieu. And we’re talking about blockchain today. We’re talking about blockchain data. Do you have any perspectives on that component of indexing and how that fits into the scaling solution you’re building there and services like The Graph, when it comes to supporting or enabling this scaling solution?

Mathieu Baudet (36:34):

So obviously indexing is a very important component of traditional blockchain infrastructure that’s allowing applications to look into the data that are on chain. At any time, any kind of data, they are indexed and I have a lot of respect for The Graph. It’s one of the better projects out there, a really good team. We could end up working actively with that kind of technology with the team, we’d be very happy to. Actually, one of the things we’re doing is also allowing applications to talk directly to the blockchain without an Indexer, but we also very happy to use an Indexer at times. I’d say I’m looking forward to do that.

Nick (37:13):

When you think about where you are today as a builder working on the problems that you’re working on at Linera and you think all the way back to your university days, are you using everything you learned along the way? Does this story for you personally all add up to what you’re doing today? And you’re taking bits and pieces from university, working for the government of France, working in that startup, working at Facebook. Does it all culminate to where you are?

Mathieu Baudet (37:39):

I think on the technical level, I’m actually very thankful for my PhD advisor. I felt like I learned a number of things back then, that helped me a lot in the early days of Linera. Coming up with the protocol and the new design on paper, it was definitely, I felt like, “Oh, my God! This is the moment. This is the moment where I’m definitely using everything I learned during my PhDs, for sure.”

Nick (38:04):

It’s an amazing feeling, and I think most people who hear this interview want that in their own life. What makes you most excited about the future of blockchain? What’s the thing that keeps you moving, keeps you excited and optimistic?

Mathieu Baudet (38:19):

I think what we’re seeing in 2025 is perhaps for the first time, the hope that the technology or blockchain’s going to be normalized, just be part of the internet and not something that is being built on the side by some digents. For me, that would be the end goal, is that people start using blockchain technology, perhaps even without knowing. And then you know that you’re successful.

Nick (38:44):

This isn’t a question I was asking when I started recording this podcast back in March of 2021. But, it’s a question I have to ask now, and it’s a great signal about how fast this industry is moving and all the tech that seems to be bubbling up. But, you started Linera in 2021. You’ve been building ever since, and then AI became really this talking point that permeates the industry and narratives and has impacted software engineering. How has the emergence of AI, and maybe you’ve included all along, I don’t know … But, how has it sort of impacted the work you’re doing at Linera?

Mathieu Baudet (39:20):

It’s good news for blockchain projects. Of course on the surface you would think, “Oh, the investors, they changed gear. Now they are supporting more in AI. They’re investing in AI instead of investing in blockchain,” but it’s creating interesting problems that blockchain can solve. One of the concerns of people around AI is what in the blockchain industry we call centralization of power. And that’s what we’re good at solving, trying to make sure that we have protocols in place so that the data are not in the hands of a few people. The models are not in the hands of a few people. Maybe helping create business models for people to contribute to the training of machine-learning models, while keeping their data private. So lots of interesting challenges coming from AI. And then of course, we love using AI like everybody else, to go faster.

(40:10):

We might also help connecting AI and crypto. So everybody is talking about AI agents. AI agents are these autonomous programs that are using AI to choose what to do next, to make decisions. And of course, it’s more fun if they can trade, if they can manage assets. But, you are not going to connect your AI agents to a bank. That just doesn’t happen at the moment. You have a bank account, you need to be a human being. Not everybody even manages that. AI agents, if you want them to have a financial life, then it’s going to be on the blockchain. That’s the natural way to do, and especially since blockchains are already programmable. So very natural things to interconnect.

Nick (40:56):

Well, I’m going to ask you the GRTiQ 10 now, Mathieu. And it’s a great opportunity to learn more about you. As long-time listeners know, I always ask these questions, because it gives us a chance to learn more about you. But, hopefully listeners will learn something new, try something different, or achieve more in their own life. Before I ask you those, if there’s a listener out there that’s heard a little bit of your description about Linera and the testnet, where can they go to learn more information, to get involved and to get active in the Linera community?

Mathieu Baudet (41:27):

The easiest way is to find us on Discord. The website linera.io is going to contain all links to join us on Discord or Telegram and then start being active in the community.

Nick (41:40):

Now it’s time for the GRTiQ 10. Mathieu, as I said, fun questions and I’m really excited to ask you, are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Mathieu Baudet (41:48):

Okay. Okay. Let’s try.

Nick (42:01):

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

Mathieu Baudet (42:04):

Recently I’ve read The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It’s in a book about entrepreneurship. I thought it was awesome, so I recommend that one.

Nick (42:15):

Is there a movie or a TV show that you would recommend everybody should watch?

Mathieu Baudet (42:19):

The Kominsky’s Method is one of my favorite TV shows with Michael Douglas. It’s excellent. It’s too short, unfortunately. It’s a bit deep, but I really thought that the acting was this amazing. Just watch it. Just read about it.

Nick (42:36):

And Mathieu, if you could only listen to one music album for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?

Mathieu Baudet (42:43):

I’m going to be paying tribute to the most famous jazz album of all time, which is Kind of Blue by Miles Davis.

Nick (42:51):

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

Mathieu Baudet (42:53):

That was to just be a solo founder. That was a good advice. At the beginning of Linera, when I was hesitating and somebody told me, “No. You know what? That’s your project. You should just carry it.”

Nick (43:06):

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

Mathieu Baudet (43:13):

I think it taps into what I was saying earlier. I think people don’t realize how liberating it can be when you just taking ownership of what you do and stop blaming others. Of course, sometimes they would be to blame, but it’s so interesting when you start taking things the way they happen and to keep going.

Nick (43:36):

What’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself?

Mathieu Baudet (43:40):

There’s a lot to be said around life hacks, but there’s really a lot of tools that you can use. If you want to create new habits or lose some bad habits, you can really find a solution and think about it and engineer solutions. You don’t want to watch TV so often. Well, don’t put the TV in the middle of the room where you’re going to always be. And so that’s the kind of life hacks I think if people should know. Maybe they should teach it at school.

Nick (44:05):

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

Mathieu Baudet (44:16):

Yeah. Self-confidence, probably.

Nick (44:19):

And then the final three questions of the GRTiQ 10 are “Complete the sentence,” type questions. So the first question is, “The thing that most excites me about the future of web3 is … ?”

Mathieu Baudet (44:31):

Going mainstream.

Nick (44:33):

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

Mathieu Baudet (44:39):

Me, I guess.

Nick (44:42):

And then the final question, Mathieu, “I’m happiest when … ?”

Mathieu Baudet (44:45):

Well, as an engineer, I’m happiest when I see users coming in. You see the stats of your app going up. That’s the best feeling.

Nick (45:03):

Mathieu, thank you so much for joining the GRTiQ Podcast. It was a lot of fun to get to know you, hear your story, and also get a sense of the problems that Linera is working on and the cool things you’re doing. I’ll put links in the show notes for anybody who wants to dig a little deeper and learn more. If listeners want to stay in touch with you, Mathieu, follow things you’re working on the things that you’re interested in, what’s the best way for them to stay in touch?

Mathieu Baudet (45:25):

Once again, find us on the Discord, Twitter and Telegram. Yeah. We’ll see you there.