GRTiQ Podcast: 58 Vince Petoscia

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Vince Petoscia (00:14):

Well, I think The Graph is really going to become a pillar of Web 3. Its value proposition lies in the solution it solves with providing verifiable accurate data extracted from blockchains. It really removes the hindrance of developers to have to build out infrastructure to get the data they need to build the apps they want.

Nick (00:42):

Welcome to the GRTiQ Podcast, today I’m speaking with Vince Petoscia, an Indexer at The Graph. Vince’s Indexer operation called Nodeify is a newer and up and coming Indexer. And because I’m interested in shining a light on the newer Indexers going to work at The Graph, I sought Vince out and begged him to do an interview. For anyone active in the community, then you probably already recognize Vince and Nodeify. After he launched he became very active and present all throughout The Graph community, including a special Reddit AMA on the topic of indexing. As you’re about to hear for Vince, becoming an Indexer at The Graph is a story about starting a new career, pursuing a passion, and at its heart it’s the tale of an entrepreneurial journey into Web 3. I’m grateful to Vince for being willing to share his story. And I hope Vince’s story shines a light on the path newer and smaller Indexers take to contribute in The Graph, along with their commitment and passion for the community and Web 3. As always, I began the conversation by asking Vince about his professional and educational background.

Vince Petoscia (02:20):

Well, from as far back as I can remember, I’ve really always loved exploring how things work, what makes them tick, taking things apart, putting them back together. When my parents first bought our computer, I spent an inordinate amount of time on it, it always seemed really vast and endless. At the time, it just remained a passion for me, but I always was the guy that everyone would call when something breaks. But after graduating high school I quickly developed another passion that I found in medicine. I got my formal education in paramedic studies, and I spent the next decade of my professional career as a paramedic. I continued to tinker with really any technology I found interesting, but I decided this is where I would pivot in the tech sector. Four years ago I began rapidly educating myself further with Linux, networking, storage solutions and distributed systems. Then I continued my formal education in network and systems engineering. I’ve spent the last three years of my life working as a systems engineer here in California.

Nick (03:21):

I got to imagine with that paramedic degree and being an EMT that that’s pretty intense and you probably have a lot of stories. Is it as intense as it seems like it would be?

Vince Petoscia (03:31):

Well, it can be, it’s really I guess 90% of it can be really hectic, but I would say 10% is really what sticks with you in that job. I’ve found a lot of correlation with technology and the systems that work together to perform what they need to. And it’s really just at the end of the day troubleshooting and fixing that problem. There’s a lot more obviously emotional aspect to it because humans are involved and not machines, but it really helped develop a sense of putting things together and learning how to fix them at a individual basis.

Nick (04:15):

Yeah, so I’ve had musicians that have been on the podcast as guests before, people with a lot of background and history in technology. You’re the first EMT, and for listeners that don’t know what that is, these are the folks that ride around in ambulances and help people and save lives, and so you are a GRTiQ first. What was it then the draw out of what seems to be a career path into technology? What was the drive for you to do that?

Vince Petoscia (04:40):

Well, I’ve always really had a passion for tech, my kind of two loves were really technology and medicine. And the paramedic portion of my life, it was really spent working out where my life would go from there and what it could bring. I was able to help a lot of people and change a lot of things for me personally and my family and other families. But what really stuck with me is that I think everyone has something they know they’re good at. I was good at medicine, but there’s always something, it’s maybe in the back of your brain that tells you, “You’re really good at this, you really like this.” And tech’s always been that for me since I can remember. And when I started to decide to pivot, it was more so that I had started digging more into cryptocurrency and technology. And I really found that I could really take those steps to go to the next level and possibly pivot from that career.

(05:46):

It was a lot of no sleeping, it was a lot of stress in my life, I probably slept maybe four hours a day on a shift of 24 hours. And it was a lot of heart-pounding action and it was fun. But the tech sector has always had a special place for me, and I kind of found the two passions that I had where I could combine tech and blockchain. And those have really started to expand in the past couple of years and I really started to see where it’s going in recent times. And I started about four years ago to bootstrap myself into the technology sector in a more professional way with more formal education. As opposed to just playing around with the Raspberry Pi and learning Lex. And as I did that I really started to see the potential in really pivoting my life to something different.

Nick (06:44):

Vince, if you don’t mind, in general terms, how would you describe what your day job is in Web 2?

Vince Petoscia (06:50):

Well, in Web 2 my day job is a systems engineer, and we really do anything that inquires with low voltage. So that can be anything from networking to access control to security systems, to redundancy to storage solutions. And it just all kind of making those things work and planning that out. I do a lot of commercial entities that are in large [inaudible 00:07:19] scale. And it requires a lot of planning and integration and will this work with this? And trying to meet the customer’s needs and wants. And scaling that with how the technology’s evolving, what’s the new thing? What’s the best solution for this?

Nick (07:36):

So I’m interested in this evolution because you evolved out of medicine into technology. And then as you just mentioned there, you took another step in the technology field towards crypto and blockchain. So what was it about the blockchain and the crypto space that made you take that third step of pursuing opportunity there?

Vince Petoscia (07:57):

Well, I think it was really the kind of opportunities that [inaudible 00:08:02] and a lot of other platforms that have begun expanding in the space really rapidly. And it’s kind of given a chance at those that want to participate in the ecosystem to really find themselves. And anyone I would say with a technical aptitude at all and a passion for technology and blockchain and what that can bring to the world, it really gives them a space to find themselves in it and collaborate, build and work with others.

Nick (08:34):

So like a lot of people within The Graph ecosystem, you have a day job, but you’re spending a lot of your free time, nights and weekends working on your Indexer operation, which we’ll talk a lot more about in a moment. But Web 3 is top of mind for a lot of people right now. As a professional working in Web 2 right now, how do you define and think through what Web 3 is and what it can mean for the world?

Vince Petoscia (08:56):

Well, I think we really have to, if we want to go to Web 3 and we want to make that a reality, we have to really look back at what Web 1 was for the world. It was really open, it was moving faster than regulation can happen. We didn’t know what it could be, but we knew that it gave everyone a chance to participate, communicate, and really open up communities to people that didn’t really have one before. And Web 2, it kind of moved past that and we started seeing a more centralized infrastructure. Not everyone’s going to run their own web server and their own website and their own blog. And it really became a ease of use problem, where I could message someone on really any platform, but people do it on Facebook and Discord and all the other large Web 2 platforms because it’s easy. And you have that liquidity of users that you can interact with.

(09:55):

And I think what Web 3 is, is it’s really a hybrid of Web 2 and using the solutions that blockchain can solve for Web 2. I think the real essence of it is Web 2 was read and write, and Web 3 is read, write, own.

Nick (10:13):

Based on your experience, what do you think is the most misunderstood element of Web 3?

Vince Petoscia (10:20):

I think the most misunderstood element of Web 3 right now is some people are kind of taking to the fact that Web 3 is going to be this new internet and it’s going to be this new expanse, and Web 2 is going to kind of be left in the dust. To be truthful, I don’t think Web 2 is going to go anywhere, but I think Web 3 is an expansion of Web 2. And using the tools that blockchain can give you, control over your own data and identity. And solving those centralized problems that Web 2 has brought with tech giants, and really giving everyone a seat at the table and knocking down the walled gardens.

Nick (11:01):

So when you’re at work during your day job working as a professional in Web 2, are you routinely having aha moments where you’re saying, “It would be really nice to be using some element of blockchain here.” Or, “It would be really nice if we could include a token or something here.” Are you having those type of epiphanies?

Vince Petoscia (11:17):

Yeah, there’s definitely been some large use cases in Web 2 from what I’m doing, especially with identity solutions. Where I’m working with so many different platforms. Everything kind of expands on pricing, use case, what the customer needs, what the customer wants. And there are centralized distributed data systems like Okta and Azure and stuff like that, but they really only keep that in their garden. And there’s some integrations and you kind of get excited, you’re like, “Oh, thank goodness that they’ve finally integrated with this platform and now we can combine those two.” But I think with Web 3 and the identity aggregation that can be achieved with that is something that can really simplify a lot of solutions and really just integrate everything.

Nick (12:12):

Vince, if you’ve listened to the podcast before, you know there’s a couple of questions that I routinely ask the guests. And one of them on Web 3 is this, do you think that Web 3 is an experiment in which we’re all just kind of hoping and watching that something comes of it? Or do you think it’s inevitability that this is a natural next step in the progression of technology?

Vince Petoscia (12:35):

Well, what I think people really should be paying attention to is how many people are leaving the Web 2 space, how much talent is leaving that space to join Web 3? It’s an inevitability that a lot of things will be built out of necessity, but some will just be built to be built. And sometimes those things can result in non-use cases or it’s just there because it can be. But I think when Web 3 becomes part of our ecosystem, and I think it will, I believe that most users won’t know that they’re using Web 3. And I think that’s when you’ll know Web 3 has accomplished something, when you don’t know it’s there.

Nick (13:20):

If you think about it in those terms, how do you think The Graph fits into Web 3 and the future of crypto and blockchain?

Vince Petoscia (13:28):

Well, I think The Graph is really going to become a pillar of Web 3. Its value proposition lies in the solution it solves with providing verifiable accurate data extracted from blockchains. It really removes the hindrance of developers to have to build out infrastructure to get the data they need to build the apps they want. And I think the more accessibility we give to developers, the more we’re going to see innovation, and I think The Graph provides that in spades. And I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to see a lot more innovation and at a more rapid pace removing those technical barriers from developers.

Nick (15:36):

So Vince, I really love that answer and I want to explore that a little bit more for listeners that may not understand the nuance of what you said there. But you said that The Graph unlocks innovation for developers. Can you describe that in a little greater detail? How does The Graph enable innovation?

Vince Petoscia (15:53):

Well, The Graph enables innovation because if I wanted to build a decentralized application, I need data from the blockchain to fill that with. It’s really like anything else, if you wanted to build a weather app in your hometown and you just wanted to display that data. You’d have to build infrastructure yourself to aggregate all the data that’s provided and just pull the data that you want. And that can be really technically challenging to get the data you want, but discard the data you don’t. So what The Graph’s really doing for developers is removing a large barrier, it can be financial, it can also be technical. And it allows them just to build, it gives the developer more time to focus on building and less time worrying about infrastructure and latency and all the other things that a developer has to worry about if they’re running their own systems.

Nick (16:54):

Vince, I want to turn our attention now to your work as an Indexer working at The Graph. I think it’s really interesting that someone like you who felt an attraction out of an existing career towards technology, and then like I said earlier, took that additional step. And to go to work building The Graph ecosystem that you chose Indexer as that role. What was it about being an Indexer at The Graph that caught your attention and drew you into that space?

Vince Petoscia (17:19):

What initially attracted me is I would say the challenge. Most validator nodes, I don’t know if you’ve ever run one, but most validator nodes in the space, it’s kind of a set and forget. The indexing stack is quite complex in nature and there’s always something new to learn, something new to optimize, and it’s really evolving quite quickly. And I think the challenge of just being able to do it is what first attracted me.

Nick (17:49):

Vince, you and I met a couple of months ago, we were introduced through Discord and connected and just kind of became acquainted like so many others working within The Graph ecosystem. And I really wanted to interview you and shine a light on what you are doing because you are brand new to indexing, you’re somewhat of a smaller Indexer. And I think in the spirit of keeping stake decentralized and empowering more people to participate in The Graph ecosystem, shining a brighter light on people like you is really important. So I’m really grateful that you would do an interview like this and talk more about what you’re working on. What’s the name of your Indexer for any listeners that want to look up what you’re doing at The Graph?

Vince Petoscia (18:25):

So my Indexer name on The Graph is Nodeify. It’s kind of a brand I’m building out that I plan to integrate more into the Web 3 space.

Nick (18:35):

And if we go back to when you were starting to think about becoming an Indexer, I’m really interested on the front side of that before you even launch and kind of go to work on The Graph. What went into that thinking? And what I’m asking is did you build spreadsheets to try to determine how much self stake you needed? How much Delegator stake you needed? Did you build and contemplate marketing planning? Did you contact others? Seek out mentorship? Will you just take us back in time about what that front load was like for you before you decided to get involved and become an Indexer?

Vince Petoscia (19:08):

Well, I joined The Graph in December with the Coinbase listing, that’s really where The Graph came on my radar. And it wasn’t something trivial that I wanted to really invest in or participate in until I join the community and see what that’s about. Because I would say the hardest pull in any project is really what the community is about. And I joined the community as a Delegator on Discord mainly. And I just kind of sat there and just really focused in on what was the community doing? Was it all price talk? Were they building? Were they collaborating? What was really happening behind the scenes? And I quickly realized that everyone was helping each other, everyone was working together on something bigger than themselves. And I dug more deeper into the protocol and what other roles could I play in this? Because it really caught my attention. And that’s when I first noticed indexing, and I knew it wouldn’t be something trivial, I knew it would be challenging.

(20:15):

And it brought a lot of thoughts back in my mind to when I first found Bitcoin, that was around the 2012, 2013 era. And it was the first time I’ve felt like that since then. And I started to build out what was this infrastructure going to cost me? What would I potentially make? I started to plan out the financial models with Excel spreadsheets and started talking to people about it. And really finding out from other Indexers in the Discord, attending Indexer Office Hours, which I highly recommend if you’re thinking about becoming an Indexer. And seeing the problems they’re facing or what they’re working on. But the main aspect is that a hundred thousand Graph is required to be an Indexer, and that’s no small lift for a lot of people. So that was really the next step for me after deciding this is something I wanted to venture down. And I bootstrapped myself with an investor, thank you, Rich.

(21:19):

Then we talked a lot about what The Graph did, and I don’t think he invested in The Graph, I think he invested in me. I think he saw the passion for what I saw The Graph could become and what it could achieve. And after I achieved the one hindrance of the financial aspect, I began running on Testnet for a period of months to see if it was even something I can do. It was really challenging, it was very thought-provoking. It was really something that has challenged me like nothing has before. I could only think of another time that I was as frustrated, happy and sad at the same time, and that was when I was in paramedic school. And after I began on Testnet, I was really impressed at how helpful people from all around the world had the same vision that I did. And I don’t think that can be underestimated in building something.

Nick (22:21):

So it sounds like, Vince, you approached this a lot like starting a business where you had to think about capital, building out spreadsheets, making sure that it made sense from a financial perspective. But then there’s the other side of the equation which you just described, where you have to also build the technology and operational capabilities to be an effective Indexer. How did you find the balance in both of those roles?

Vince Petoscia (22:44):

I think the balance between the technology and the financial capital really came into play at different times in the process of becoming an Indexer. Obviously the financial lift was the first thing to come because if you can’t meet that, you can’t index. But that’s definitely the first thing you want to start to plan and figure out is, is it even viable to do? Can you do it? And then the technological lift, things might change in the financial aspect, but I think that the technological aspect really needs to be watched over almost on a daily basis as things in this space are changing so rapidly. And I think the main thing that helped me was really just being active in the community, and participating in the community and garnering knowledge that others were willing to share and really passing that along. I think the biggest aspect that’s helped me is really breaking things and fixing them.

Nick (23:44):

Going back then in time when you framed the decision to become an Indexer, did you do it from the perspective of, “If I meet that first financial hurdle of the 100,000 GRT, I can just kind of let this thing run self-sufficiently.”? Or were you also thinking in terms of, “I really need to onboard and attract some Delegators to participate with me.”?

Vince Petoscia (24:06):

I think we really need Delegators to expand our operations. While you could operate at 100,000 Graph and really just operate at 100% effective [inaudible 00:24:16] garnering no Delegators. If you want to expand in the ecosystem of The Graph, you do need Delegators, because without Delegators, you can’t effectively allocate more stake onto the network and provide a more redundant service to the network as a whole. And it can’t be understated what a large role Delegators play.

Nick (24:38):

I’d be curious to know, Vince, what surprised you most once you got started and were performing this daily activity of being Indexer? What surprised you most about that?

Vince Petoscia (24:47):

Well, initially I thought what would surprise me most is the technical lift that it took and how I got there. But really for me it was joining the cohort of other Indexers and it’s such a diverse group of talented people from all around the world that are really laser focused on the same vision at the end of the day. I think that it’s kind of incredible, if you look… Indexers are really competitors to each other in a data business at the end of the day. And the altruistic nature of the Indexer community has been really astonishing to watch. I’d advise anyone to attend Indexer Office Hours to really see what’s going on behind the scenes with that community.

Nick (25:33):

Vince, then from the perspective of a newer and smaller Indexer, I’d be curious to get your thoughts on what you wish more people within The Graph ecosystem either understood or appreciated about the experience of a newer, smaller Indexer.

Vince Petoscia (25:49):

Well, I think the two things that people should appreciate in smaller Indexers is it lets people know that it’s possible, you don’t have to be a massive corporation or an institutional investor to join the ecosystem. Not to say that 100,000 GRT is no small financial lift for most people, but I think that it’s kind of living proof that you’re not going to be a millionaire overnight, but are more so doing it for the passion of what they want to do and the vision they see.

Nick (26:55):

So Vince, then I got to ask about keeping stake decentralized, and from your perspective as a smaller Indexer, how do you think through this issue of keeping stake decentralized? And how important it is?

Vince Petoscia (27:08):

Well, even more broadly, I think decentralization and blockchain, it gave us the ability to decentralize, but we also have to combat human nature. And people like being together, and I think blockchain in general has given us a opportunity to be together but separate, if that makes sense. It’s something really hard to achieve in blockchain though, as we’ve seen some centralization taking place in other ecosystems. I think it’s really important to start having these discussions early in the bootstrapping of the network. Especially, with the ability of stake to really snowball with compounding interest, it can quickly be something that gets out of control.

(27:58):

And I think we’re going to start seeing a lot more institutional investors come to The Graph ecosystem. And we really need to pay attention to that because I think we’ve seen the centralization happen in Web 2 and what that’s brought us. And I think a lot of people are unhappy with that. And Web 3 and decentralization in blockchain is really important because it gives us the opportunity or a do-over really to give ourselves a voice and not give it away to somebody else. And we have to really pay attention to where stake is going in any protocol and make sure that that doesn’t end up in the hands of the few and not in the many. You want to have a voice in where that goes.

Nick (28:44):

So this is an incredibly difficult question, but I want to ask it to you, Vince. And the question is, is there a solution or a mechanism that protocols should adopt or enforce to ensure that stake remains decentralized?

Vince Petoscia (29:00):

Well, I don’t really think that anything punitive should ever be measured. And I think you’ve seen with blockchain and how it’s become a trustless option, we need to incentivize people in their own best interest. And I think when people follow their own best interest, if where it leads them is to decentralize, I think we’ve found the nail on the head. And there are some things I think we could do within The Graph to help that. I think that simple UI changes have shown a proven effect on getting stake decentralized and really kind of pushing your user to say, “Hey, it’s in your own best interest to go the way of decentralization.”

Nick (29:48):

What would you say to Delegators who say, “I’m all in favor of keeping stake decentralized and I’m really excited about people like Vince, smaller, newer Indexers getting involved in The Graph ecosystem, but they represent maybe too much risk. And so I’ve got to go with kind of the bigger, better known Indexer to avoid the risk of staking with a smaller Indexer.” What would you say to them?

Vince Petoscia (30:12):

Well, what I would say is risk is relative. What a hundred million dollars is, is $10,000 to me. So I would say it’s all about perception, and I think the biggest thing if you want to mitigate risk is 90% of that is, are they active? Are they there? Are they present? Can you talk to them? What are they working on? Are they doing anything to help the protocol? Do they seem invested? And I think especially with a lot of smaller Indexers and even a large majority of large ones, they don’t have a problem in reaching out and talking to you and having a discussion. I think you should have those discussions and in combination with tools like Graphscan and communities like The Graphtronauts that you can join to really gauge skill, reputation and where that Indexer is going. You can look at financial tools if you’re concerned with that and see their chain history, it’s all there to see.

Nick (31:12):

Vince, as an Indexer at The Graph, a participant in this Graph ecosystem. What are you most excited about when it comes to the future of The Graph?

Vince Petoscia (31:20):

I think what I’m most excited about right now is really seeing the large push of the hosted service on Ethereum Mainnet to start. We’ve already started to see it trickling over onto Mainnet. We’re just at about over 300 plus subgraphs on Mainnet. And I’m really excited to see how that shakes out when a larger majority of the hosted service goes over onto the decentralized Mainnet. And more so I’m really excited to see and interact with all the other communities that The Graph is bringing. As of right now, Indexers are really just on the decentralized Mainnet, which is only Ethereum. But I’m really excited to see the other protocols really come into the fold like Solana and NEAR and Cosmos [inaudible 00:32:10] the new up and coming ones and I’m really excited to learn more and see what those things can bring to the table.

Nick (32:18):

Well, Vince, we’ve arrived to the point where I’m going to ask you the GRTiQ 10. For listeners that are new to the podcast, these are 10 questions we ask each guest of the podcast. Are you ready for the GRTiQ 10?

Vince Petoscia (32:29):

Absolutely.

Nick (32:40):

So question one is, Vince, what book or articles had the most impact on your life?

Vince Petoscia (32:45):

I would say the book that really changed things for me was How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Nick (32:51):

Question two, Vince, is there a movie or a TV show that you think every human should be required to watch?

Vince Petoscia (32:57):

Yes, and it wasn’t until recently for me, but the Harry Potter movie series is fantastic.

Nick (33:03):

How about this? What’s the best advice someone’s ever given you?

Vince Petoscia (33:06):

Compare yourself to yesterday’s you and not to today’s someone else.

Nick (33:10):

If you could listen to only one music album for the rest of your life, what one are you choosing?

Vince Petoscia (33:17):

Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Hits.

Nick (33:19):

Vince, question number five is, what’s one thing you’ve learned in your life that you think most people don’t know?

Vince Petoscia (33:26):

No one asks you questions if you’re carrying a ladder.

Nick (33:31):

What’s the best life hack you’ve discovered for yourself in life? Either something that’s made you more productive or efficient or just improved yourself more generally. Is there a life hack you’ve learned?

Vince Petoscia (33:43):

The main financial hack I’ve learned is if you’re thinking about buying something, pretend someone’s going to give you that or the cash in your hand, which one would you choose?

Nick (33:55):

Question seven is based on your own experience and observations. What’s the one habit or characteristic that you think best explains people’s success in life?

Vince Petoscia (34:05):

I believe what makes people successful in life is that they persist.

Nick (34:10):

Persistence, I like that one, Vince. Here’s question eight, it’s a complete this sentence question. The thing that most excites me about Web 3 is…

Vince Petoscia (34:19):

Ownership.

Nick (34:21):

Another complete this sentence, question nine, if you are on Twitter, then you should be following…

Vince Petoscia (34:25):

[inaudible 00:34:28].

Nick (34:28):

And question number 10, another complete this sentence. I am most happy when…

Vince Petoscia (34:33):

I’m with my friends and family.

Nick (34:43):

Well, Vince, I want to thank you for being so gracious with your time. People want to learn more about you, follow the work you’re doing and your Indexer operation. What’s the best way to do it?

Vince Petoscia (34:52):

I would say the best way to reach out to me on Twitter at Nodeify_eth or The Graph official Discord, you can find me in there as well under Nodeify.