Team Profiles: Kasey Alusi

Get inspired by the talent and passion that drives Validation Cloud forward. Meet Kasey, our skilled VP of engineering from Boise, Idaho.

Q: What’s your role at Validation Cloud? Tell me about your background and experience prior to joining the team.

A: I joined Validation Cloud a year ago as a Principal Software Engineer and designed and built the first iteration of our Node API product backend. Today I am the VP of Engineering. In this role, I have the privilege of working with all of the amazing people on the engineering team who build the Node API, in addition to our upcoming Ethereum Staking and Data products. Before Validation Cloud, I led engineering teams at Workday and Ripcord. At Workday, my team designed and built the blockchain infrastructure and microservices that served as the foundation of trust for Workday Credentials. We had the opportunity to collaborate with many thought leaders in the community which deepened my understanding and passion for Web3, self-sovereign identity, and decentralization.

Q: What motivated you to join the Validation Cloud team, and in what ways do you envision your role supporting the company’s mission?

A: I strongly believe that the Web3 movement will bring value to both organizations and consumers. However, before that vision can be realized, the proper abstractions have to be established. For example, AWS simplified the complexities of virtualization, storage, and networking which allowed enterprises and startups alike to focus on delivering value to their customers instead of maintaining servers. I joined Validation Cloud to help streamline the complexity of interacting with and extracting useful data from blockchains so that our customers can focus on delivering value to their customers and communities.

Q: How did your interest in Web3 technology develop, and how do you believe Validation Cloud can help organizations tap into Web3’s potential?

A: My first interest in Web3 was focused on the decentralized nature of investing in the 2017 bull run, which led to a technical interest in the underlying technology when I read the Bitcoin whitepaper and Ethereum yellow paper. Towards the end of 2018, I had the opportunity to join the team working on decentralized identity at Workday. While building that product, I had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with other people and companies building in Web3. Through these interactions, I learned about other enterprise use cases beyond decentralized identity and the pain points that these organizations had.

One of the biggest challenges that enterprises face when building in Web3 is learning, operating, and maintaining the underlying blockchain infrastructure. Companies want to focus on the part of their solutions that delivers unique value to customers — the dApps and services situated on top of the blockchain. Running the blockchain infrastructure doesn’t add value to their products; they merely require access to the chain that meets their requirements around reliability and performance criteria. This is where Validation Cloud comes in. We are providing a Web3 platform with enterprise-grade performance, scalability, and reliability. This enables our customers to focus on their area of expertise whether it’s high-frequency trading, tokenized securities, or metaverse economies.

Q: What unique features or advantages does Validation Cloud offer compared to other Web3 infrastructure companies?

A: Every customer of our Node API product gains access to a globally distributed network of blockchain nodes. This distribution grants them access to the nearest blockchain node to them anywhere in the world without the customer having to even consider where they access our services from.

Additionally, our Scale plan offers unlimited usage across all chains and networks that we support. This plan allows enterprises to use RPC endpoints as much as they need, without needing to worry about costly overage fees or managing billing tiers.

Q: Which team values resonate with you the most, and why?

A: I like all of our company values, but “Commitment to Excellence” holds a special place in my heart. I love building products that provide real value to customers, and our commitment to building the best products enables us to continue moving forward. Because we build with a high degree of quality and an eye toward the future, we are able to invest more time into expanding our feature set, network coverage, and product offerings.

Q: What strategies do you implement to encourage effective collaboration with your team members in order to deliver high-performance and customizable products in staking, node, and data-as-a-service?

A: Clear, concise written documentation and a low-ego culture are key to our ability to deliver high-quality services for our customers.

Validation Cloud is 100% remote, and the engineering team is distributed across several different countries and time zones. In order to move as quickly as we do while maintaining the quality of the end result, we have to be experts in asynchronous communication. This means creating documentation ahead of meetings, writing clearly, and leveraging diagrams and visual aids when necessary. The first and most obvious benefit of this is establishing a shared understanding and direction. The process of writing designs and plans down also forces the author to consider details that might be left out and also gives other stakeholders reading the documentation a chance to fully digest the information and respond on their own time. This process of asynchronous communication sets the foundation for a highly collaborative engineering culture.

I strongly believe that good products are built by teams of people who work together to question assumptions and critique ideas. When we approach a new problem, one person may author the initial design, and then we review and improve it as a team. This requires us to put our egos aside, trust our teammates, and focus on the end result: delivering a product that our customers love and rely on.

What specific achievement, particularly something accomplished by your team, are you proud of during your time here?

A: I’ve got to share two. The first is the performance of our RPC services, which is tracked and verified by a third party — see CompareNodes. This accomplishment is the result of contributions from nearly everyone on the engineering team. To consistently stay at the top of the charts, every layer of the architecture must be streamlined.

The second achievement is our first proof of concept for dynamic, on-demand staking with withdrawals for the Ethereum Zhejiang testnet. This was the result of incredible work from primarily two members of the team, Todor and Mo. This proof of concept laid the foundation for our full Staking product scheduled for release later this year and provided us with invaluable customer feedback.

Q: What do you like to do outside of work? Any hobbies or interests outside of Web3?

A: I love biking of all kinds, primarily mountain biking in the Boise foothills when the weather is nice and Peloton in the winter months. I also enjoy reading and listening to a variety of podcasts to expand my horizons. Two current recommendations:

• A Thousand Brains — this podcast presents a model of how the human brain works and what it can teach us about building general AI.
• Huberman Lab — hosted by a Stanford neuroscientist, this podcast provides science-based content on everything ranging from how dopamine controls motivation to how to train for different kinds of cardio.

About Validation Cloud

Validation Cloud is a Web3 data streaming and infrastructure company that connects organizations into Web3 through a fast, scalable, and intelligent platform. Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Validation Cloud offers highly performant and customizable products in staking, node, and data-as-a-service. Learn more at validationcloud.io| LinkedIn | X | Medium