From a Poker genius to a witch killer, how did the founder of LayerZero become a master of humanity?

Original | Odaily

Author | Azuma

LayerZero’s witch purge is in full swing.

Bryan Pellegrino, the founder of LayerZero, nicknamed the “Stinky Penguin”, has also been dubbed the “Master of Humanity” due to the flexibility of the purge mechanism (using long heavy designs such as “self-exposure”, “screening”, and “whistleblowing”, the intensity of the purge (only 6.67% - 13.33% of Address is expected to be retained), and the precision of the purge strategy (more long witches can be derived from the behavior patterns of the Address who have “self-exposed”), Bryan Pellegrino, the founder of LayerZero, who is nicknamed “The Stinky Penguin” in the community.

What is less well known is that Bryan demonstrated his incredible talent for human gaming long before he founded LayerZero – between 2009 and 2013, Bryan, who went by the pseudonym PrimordialAA, was considered one of the most noteworthy rising stars in the professional Texas Hold’em world. **

In 2009, Bryan made $92,580 in his first $10,000 Buy-In head-to-head event at the 40th World Series of Poker (WSOP), finishing eighth. In 2012, Bryan earned $117199 by finishing second in the $1,500 Buy-In event at the 43rd WSOP.

Despite retiring early from professional poker in search of “some interesting challenge,” Bryan’s track record can now be found in professional player databases such as Poker Hendon Mob — $569647 total offline tournament profits**, an all-time high of 1,859, and a current ranking of 5,097.

In a 2013 interview with poker media outlet Card Player, Bryan talked in detail about his best heads-up strategy and explained how he would make decisions with different opponent situations, hand ranges, chip depths, and call pressure. Comfortable at the ever-changing table, it’s easy to see why Bryan is able to strike with precision in today’s “witch is in the light, I’m in the dark” situation.

The game genius in the town

Bryan was born in a small town called Danbury, New Hampshire, USA, and at the time of his birth, the total population of Danbury was less than 1000 people. As a child, Bryan felt like he was surrounded by only his relatives, and at the age of 4 he told his mother that he wanted to go to a more “different” place in the future.

By the age of six, Bryan had already shown a flair for mathematics. The Bryan family has four children, Deanna, Manie, Bryan and Angela, and Friday and Saturday nights are “game nights” for the Bryan family, where the kids play games like Monopoly and Western Army chess, which Bryan enjoys and almost always wins. **

It was in high school that Bryan was first introduced to Texas Hold’em. At the invitation of a fren, Bryan made his first bet with his $20 pocket money, and his experience in the game as a child gave him a keen sense of risk and strategy, and that night $20 turned into $60, some of which Bryan used to buy himself a Georgetown University sweatshirt, and gave the rest to his father to help Bryan open an online account.

Although he was addicted to playing cards in high school, Bryan still did well, graduating from high school with a third-place finish in his class. For financial reasons, Bryan chose the University of New Hampshire in his own state, where he met two fren, Zarick and Banister, the two later co-founders of LayerZero. **

At the age of 19, at the insistence of his brother-in-law, Bryan applied for a study abroad program in Budapest, Hungary, where he met his future life partner, Melanie, and saved money by playing Texas Hold’em online.

Bryan then communicated to his family that he wanted to give himself six months to either become a professional gamer or go back to study computer science. Bryan’s mother, Audrey, replied, “As long as you don’t do anything bad and keep yourself safe, you can do anything.” If you go bankrupt, you can always go home. ”

From then until 2011, when online poker was banned in the United States, Bryan would sit in front of his computer and play poker 70 hours a week, even when traveling abroad with Melanie, Bryan would never forget to carry his full-size console out of the country. During that time, Bryan was obsessed with Texas Hold’em and his skills were constantly improving, starting to be able to make quick decisions about risk and reward based on different situations in 0.3 seconds. **

Bryan was living in Austin, Texas at the time, but was nominally “unemployed” due to the ban on Texas Hold’em online. Bryan then joined sports betting site BuzzDraft and became CEO when the company was acquisition by another sportsbook shortly after. At the same time, Bryan went to Las Vegas, where he gradually made a name for himself in offline official Texas Hold’em tournaments and made a lot of money.

There was also a hiccup around 2013 when Bryan first came into contact with Bitcoin as he became wealthier, and then Bryan and his brothers bought a computer specifically for Bitcoin Mining, but with the price of the coin in 2014 big dump and the exchange Thunderstorm (unnamed, but visually Mt. Gox) used by Bryan, the investment did not turn out well.

Bryan then moved to Canada, where online poker was still legal and Bryan could continue to play online, but Bryan slowly found himself feeling lower and less competitive, and that year should have been a key node in Bryan’s career to continue to climb. Bryan wavered, recalling: "Unlike longing many other professional gamers, I wasn’t driven by money and wanted to seek a more competitive challenge. ”

Challenges to find “more interesting”.

Around 2015, Bryan, who had made enough money, considered retirement, and he and Melanie visited 12 countries in 12 countries with their infant son, hoping to find a suitable “retirement home”, but in the process, Bryan realized that he didn’t want to settle down.

One day, Bryan saw a video on YouTube of a DeepMind AI named Agent 57 playing various Atari mini-games, and Agent 57 would learn all kinds of game content from scratch and gradually achieve game skills that surpass humans. Bryan was so excited about this that he decided to use AI as a baseball data analysis tool based on his previous experience with baseball while working at BuzzDraft.

Bryan then returned to Vancouver after his trip,** and although years had passed since Bryan’s days of writing code, Bryan eventually created an AI tool that could use data to predict pitchers’ performance against different batsmen. **In 2016, Billy Beane, a well-known executive at Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics, called Bryan and purchased Bryan’s AI tools to help his team do better statistical analysis.

Over the same period, Bryan’s interest in Crypto Assets has also grown. In late 2016, Bryan personally invested in Bitcoin again; Later, Bryan and former a16z developer Daniel Chen co-built OpenToken, a coding platform to launch “democratized” Crypto Assets, in 2018, which has now been acquisitions by other projects.

In the field of AI, Bryan made another huge breakthrough in 2020. He co-authored a research paper with Zarick and Banister (the two co-founders of the aforementioned LayerZero) and Noam Brown of Facebook’s AI team describing a Texas Hold’em AI Supremus that can beat some of the top pros, which was later cited in a game gambling research paper by Google’s DeepMind team.

Bryan said at the time, “I’ve loved solving puzzles all my life, and nothing appeals to me more than that.” ”**

The Story of LayerZero

In the fall of 2020, the explosion of BSC also attracted Bryan’s attention.

After seeing BSC’s extremely high processing speed and low transaction costs, Bryan pulled Zarick and Banister to build an NFT-based gladiatorial game that would store NFTs on the Ethereum network with greater security and liquidity, but put transaction processing on top of BSC.

However, during subsequent game development, Bryan et al. found that they had to manually transfer NFTs longer or less, but using the existing cross-chain bridges at the time either did not support NFTs or were vulnerable to Hacker attacks.

At this point, Bryan and others realized that they needed far more than just a cross-chain bridge, but a basic code layer, with the help of which on-chain information could run on top of each blockchain, and cross-chain bridges could also be built on top of this layer and ensure security, but such a thing does not yet exist in the Crypto Assets space.

It’s quite a daunting job, but Bryan is getting more and more excited about it – because he’s finally found a challenge big enough that the excitement it brings is unmatched by any poker hand. **

The rest of the story is familiar to everyone.

In May 2021, the first version of LayerZero’s White Paper was officially released.

In September 2021, LayerZero closed a $6 million Series A funding round.

In April 2023, LayerZero closed a $120 million Series B funding round at a $3 billion valuation.

In May 2024, LayerZero officially announced that the first season Snapshot was complete and raised the “butcher knife” to the witches before the official coin release.

……

According to LayerZero’s disclosed time plan, the largest witch purge in Crypto Assets history will end the “self-exposure” stage tomorrow, and Bryan, who is well-versed in human nature, has “fired the first shot” in this game, and how it will be operated in the future, let’s wait for the next round.