March 02, 2026
Blockwind chief content officer Tsering Namgyal spoke to Kent Lin, co-founder and chief operating officer of Optimum, a high-speed internet protocol for Web3, on the sidelines of Consensus in Hong Kong.
Q: Tell me about your company. What does Optimum do, and how did it begin?
My name is Kent, and I’m one of the co-founders of Optimum. We build a high-speed internet protocol for blockchains. In simple terms, we help blockchains become faster and more reliable, and we help validators increase their earnings by improving how blocks are transmitted across the network.
The core idea comes from my co-founders, Professor Muriel Médard and Dr. Kishori Konwar of MIT. For more than 20 years, Professor Médard has researched a breakthrough technology called random linear network coding (RLNC). It’s a foundational advance in how data is transmitted efficiently and reliably across networks.
Before starting Optimum, I was investing in crypto as a venture capitalist and previously worked at McKinsey. I also built McKinsey Crypto DAO, a community of McKinsey alumni working full-time in crypto. Later, while doing my MBA at Harvard and leading the Harvard Blockchain Club, I began searching for technical co-founders who could help build a tier-one crypto company.
Over time, I realized that to build a top-tier crypto project, you need four things: a tier-one team, narrative, partners, and community. But everything starts with the right co-founders. Once you have that foundation, the rest can align.
We officially started Optimum in April 2024, though the research behind it goes back to the early 2000s. We’ve so far raised angel and seed rounds.
Q: What kind of traction have you achieved so far?
We started testing on Ethereum testnet around April–May last year. Since then, we’ve onboarded approximately 40 validator partners. Among the top 15 Ethereum node operators, we’ve signed about 90%.
At peak levels, our validator partners represented between $40–60 billion in staked ETH. That’s significantly larger than most infrastructure startups at our stage.
Our model works at the most foundational level of blockchain architecture. By improving how blocks propagate through the network, we increase speed, reduce latency, and improve validator profitability. Because we operate at this base layer, adoption can scale quickly.
Q: What problems does your technology solve for blockchains?
We are the first to bring RLNC into Web3 at this level. Blockchains today face two major challenges: performance and reliability. During volatile market periods, chains can become congested. For example, during a recent market crash, liquidation transactions on BNB Chain were delayed for nearly two hours because the chain couldn’t process them fast enough.
At the same time, Web2 infrastructure has shown fragility — think of AWS or Cloudflare outages. Blockchain, in theory, should be more resilient because of decentralization. But decentralization is often treated as a performance tradeoff.
We disagree.
Our philosophy is “Decentralize to Scale.” Decentralization should enhance performance, not limit it. With the right architecture, more nodes can actually make a chain faster and more reliable.
Q: Why focus on Ethereum first?
Ethereum is the largest and most decentralized blockchain, with the deepest research culture and most committed community. It also faces performance limitations due to its commitment to decentralization.
We believe decentralization and performance should reinforce each other. Ethereum is the perfect proving ground because if we can scale Ethereum without compromising decentralization, we can scale any chain.
Our long-term vision is to support Ethereum first, then expand to chains like BNB and Solana.
Q: Tell me about your team.
Professor Muriel MĂ©dard is our CEO. She is a globally recognized leader in information theory and network coding, with decades of research at MIT. She has received major international awards and is one of the most respected figures in her field.
Dr. Kishori Konwar, our CTO, is an infrastructure engineer with experience at Goldman Sachs and Meta, building large-scale systems.
I serve as COO, bringing a background in strategy, venture investing, and business development.
We complement each other: Muriel is the visionary technologist, Kishori the engineering executor, and I focus on commercial strategy and partnerships.
Q: You’re based in Singapore. Why?
We started in Boston but always intended to build a global project. I moved to Singapore to anchor our presence in Asia-Pacific, a region with high crypto adoption and strong communities in India, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia.
We are building a global team and community from day one.
Q: How does Optimum scale in the long term?
We are building what we call a “Flexnode” network. Today, we operate the infrastructure. Over time, we plan to decentralize it so individuals can contribute unused bandwidth and memory resources.
Think of it like a modern, incentivized version of peer-to-peer networking but optimized for blockchain infrastructure. Participants contribute resources and are rewarded, while chains gain performance and resilience.
Q: What about regulation?
We operate as infrastructure, not as an exchange or financial intermediary. Most regulatory focus remains on financial services. Our role is technological, and we are committed to operating compliantly.
Q: Why is scaling urgent now?
Institutional adoption is accelerating. Crypto’s total market cap is around $2–3 trillion, while traditional equities exceed $100 trillion. If tokenization expands — as leaders like BlackRock suggest — blockchain infrastructure must scale dramatically.
Add AI into the equation. Autonomous agents and algorithmic trading systems move far faster than human traders. If AI-driven trading volumes increase, blockchain performance demands will surge.
Current infrastructure cannot handle that level of throughput reliably. We aim to prepare the ecosystem before that capital influx arrives.
Q: Who are your investors?
Our angels include prominent founders and technical leaders from Ethereum, Solana, and other ecosystems. Our seed round was led by 1kx, alongside investors such as Robot Ventures, CMT Digital, Finality Capital, S&Z, Triton (formerly Kraken Ventures), Big Brain, Spartan, LongHash, NGC, and Animoca Brands.
We intentionally selected investors across infrastructure, DeFi, exchanges, and gaming to reflect the breadth of our ambitions.
Q: What real-world use cases does Optimum unlock?
Trading is the most immediate. High-frequency trading, tokenized equities, and on-chain derivatives require low latency and high throughput.
We are also exploring privacy-enhanced applications like dark pools, where institutional traders can execute large orders without exposing themselves to front-running.
Beyond finance, AI is particularly exciting. Decentralized AI training and inference networks often face networking bottlenecks. We can improve how nodes communicate, enabling more scalable AI systems.
DePIN(decentralized physical infrastructure) and large-scale data transmission are additional areas where our technology can make a meaningful difference.
At its core, Optimum is about preparing blockchain infrastructure for the next phase of growth. As capital, AI, and global adoption increase, performance can no longer be optional.
Our belief is simple: decentralization is not a cost. It is a competitive advantage — if engineered correctly.
