Building Blockchain Infrastructure With Aaron Henshaw of Bison Trails

In this episode of High Bit, Aaron discusses the challenges of hiring a team to build an infrastructure-as-a-service platform for blockchain networks. When Aaron and his cofounder Joe Lallouz first created Bison Trails, they initially faced challenges running nodes and infrastructure for different networks. They found that by investing in tests early on and improving automation capabilities, they could streamline operations. Coinbase eventually acquired Bison Trails in January 2021.

For more info on High Bit, and to listen to all of the other episodes, visit: www.Initialized.com/HighBit

Topics:

2:28 Aaron's Background and How He Became an Engineer

5:21 Building Grand St. and Selling the Company to Etsy

10:55 The Early Days of Building Bison Trails

16:21 Building the Early Team of Infrastructure Engineers with Blockchain Experience

19:53 Slashing: The Penalties Imposed on Validators in Blockchain Networks for Misbehavior

27:07 What Bison Trails Taught Aaron About Building Large Organizations

33:28 Aaron on Lessons He Learned While Hiring the Bison Trails Team

38:00 Life After Bison Trails and Coinbase. What's Next for Aaron Henshaw?

High Bit is a new podcast hosted by Initialized Capital managing partner Brett Gibson about the art of technical problem-solving.

A high bit is the most significant part of the binary representation of a number. In programming language, it is commonly referred to as the most important thing you need to understand about a problem.

We spoke with our first four guests about just that. In each episode, we’ll break down a gnarly engineering problem and hear how the builder’s ingenuity and inventiveness led to a successful outcome.

High Bit is produced by Initialized Capital and hosted by Brett Gibson. Our showrunner is Candy Cheng. Episodes were shot and edited by Jordan Berns. Production support by Kevin Heinz and BTB Video Production.