devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development Nathan Flurry - Rivet - The Future of Serverless is Stateful
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Sep 28, 2025 In this discussion, Nathan Flurry, co-founder of Rivet and a veteran in multiplayer gaming and developer tools, elaborates on Rivet's transformation from a gaming-focused platform to a general-purpose solution for stateful serverless applications. He explains their innovative actor model and how it supports real-time connections and long-running tasks. Nathan also covers Rivet's compatibility with existing infrastructures, its unique observability tools like Rivet Inspector, and ambitions for the future where actors become the standard for stateful computing.
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Early Game Development Sparked Rivet
- Nathan started building games as a child after his parents encouraged programming instead of playing games.
- He and his cofounder Nicholas built games together through middle and high school, which shaped Rivet's gaming roots.
Migrating Redis Logic To Durable Objects
- Nathan described migrating complex Redis Lua scripts into Durable Objects and seeing dramatic simplification and performance gains.
- That experience shifted Rivet from a games-only product toward a general-purpose stateful compute platform.
Actors As Stateful Compute Primitive
- Rivet defines stateful compute as long-running code with durable state and real-time needs.
- Actors are lightweight units that start, stop, sleep, and handle real-time connections and durable state naturally.