When I told our CEO I wanted our best blockchain engineers to work part-time for Ethereum Foundation and Solana, he didn’t blink. Constantine trusted me. But I understood why it sounded mad.

We were scaling Blockdaemon from 10 to 187 engineers. We’d just closed a funding round. Everyone knows you’re supposed to lock down your best people during hypergrowth, not let them moonlight with the competition.

But here’s what I’d learned: certain engineers need challenging work more than they need loyalty speeches. If Blockdaemon couldn’t provide that challenge every single day, they’d leave anyway. Better to let them scratch that itch with Ethereum Foundation while bringing back knowledge that would benefit us for years.