From poker genius to witch killer, how did the founder of LayerZero become a master of human nature?

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

The witch hunt event of LayerZero is in full swing.

Due to the flexibility of the cleansing mechanism (which employs multiple designs such as "self-exposure," "screening," and "reporting"), the intensity of the cleansing (expected to retain only 6.67% - 13.33% of addresses), and the precision of the cleansing strategy (which can deduce more witches based on the behavioral patterns of already "self-exposed" addresses), Bryan Pellegrino, the founder of LayerZero, who is nicknamed "Stinky Penguin" in the community, has also been dubbed the "Master of Humanity."

Little known is that Bryan had already demonstrated his astonishing talent in human game theory before founding LayerZero ------ from 2009 to 2013, Bryan, under the alias PrimordialAA, was once considered one of the most promising stars in the professional poker scene.

In 2009, Bryan made his debut at the 40th "World Series of Poker" (WSOP) in the $10,000 Buy-In Heads-Up event, finishing in 8th place and earning $92,580; in 2012, Bryan further excelled by securing 2nd place in the $1,500 Buy-In event at the 43rd WSOP, earning $117,199.

Although he later exited the professional poker scene early in search of "some interesting challenges," we can still find Bryan's impressive records in professional player databases like Poker Hendon Mob ------ total profits from live tournaments amount to $569,647, with a highest historical ranking of 1859 and a current ranking of 5097.

In 2013, poker media Card Player conducted a special interview with Bryan, where he discussed his expertise in heads-up strategy in detail and explained the decisions he would make under different opponent conditions, hand ranges, chip depths, and call pressures. It’s easy to understand why Bryan could execute precise strikes in the current situation of "witches in the open, I in the dark."

The Gaming Genius from a Small Town

Bryan was born in a small town called Danbury in New Hampshire, USA, where the total population was less than 1,000 at the time of his birth. As a child, Bryan felt that he only had his relatives around him, which led him to express to his mother at the age of 4 his desire to go to a place with "different" interpersonal relationships.

Around the age of 6, Bryan began to show a certain mathematical talent. The Pellegrino family has four children, in order from oldest to youngest: Deanna, Manie, Bryan, and Angela. Friday and Saturday nights were the Pellegrino family's "game nights," where the children would play games like Monopoly and Risk, and Bryan enjoyed it immensely, almost always winning.

In high school, Bryan was introduced to Texas Hold'em poker for the first time. At a friend's invitation, Bryan placed his first bet with $20 of pocket money, and his childhood gaming experience gave him a keen sense of risk and strategy. That night, his $20 turned into $60, and he used some of the money to buy a Georgetown University sweatshirt, while the rest he gave to his father to help Bryan set up an online account.

Although he was obsessed with playing cards throughout high school, Bryan still performed well academically, ranking third in his class upon graduation. Due to financial considerations, Bryan ultimately chose the University of New Hampshire in his home state, where he met two friends, Zarick and Banister, who would later become co-founders of LayerZero.

At the age of 19, at his brother-in-law's insistence, Bryan applied for an overseas study program in Budapest, Hungary, where he not only met his future life partner, Melanie, but also earned some money by playing poker online, leading Bryan to consider dropping out of school.

Bryan then communicated with his family, expressing his desire to give himself six months to either become a professional player or return to continue studying computer science. Bryan's mother, Audrey, replied: "As long as you don't do anything illegal and can ensure your safety, you can do whatever you want. If you go bankrupt, you can always come home."

From that time until the U.S. ban on online poker in 2011, Bryan would sit in front of his computer for 70 hours a week playing poker. Even during trips abroad with Melanie, Bryan would not forget to carry his full-sized computer with him. During that time, Bryan became obsessed with Texas Hold'em, and his skills continuously improved, allowing him to make quick decisions about risk and reward in 0.3 seconds based on different situations.

Bryan was living in Austin, Texas at the time, but due to the online poker ban, he was "unemployed" in name. Later, Bryan joined the sports betting site BuzzDraft, and when the company was soon acquired by another sports betting company, he became the CEO. Meanwhile, Bryan also went to Las Vegas, gradually making a name for himself in live poker tournaments and earning considerable profits.

At this time, a small incident occurred. Around 2013, as Bryan became wealthier, he was introduced to Bitcoin for the first time. Subsequently, Bryan and his brothers bought computers specifically for Bitcoin mining, but with the price of Bitcoin crashing in 2014 and the exchange he used collapsing (unnamed, but likely Mt. Gox), the investment did not turn out well.

Afterward, Bryan moved to Canada, where online poker remained legal. Bryan could continue to play online, but he gradually found himself feeling increasingly depressed and lacking competitive interest, even though that year should have been a key point for Bryan's career to continue rising. Bryan wavered, recalling, "Unlike many other professional players, I am not driven by money; I seek more competitive challenges."

Seeking "More Interesting" Challenges

Around 2015, after earning enough money, Bryan considered whether to retire. To this end, he and Melanie traveled to 12 countries with their infant son, hoping to find a suitable "retirement place," but during this process, Bryan realized that he did not want to settle down.

One day, Bryan saw a video on YouTube featuring a DeepMind AI named Agent 57 playing various Atari games. Agent 57 learned various game contents from scratch and gradually achieved game skills that surpassed human capabilities. Bryan was very excited about this and, combining it with his previous exposure to baseball during his time at BuzzDraft, decided to create a baseball data analysis tool using AI.

Bryan then ended his travels and settled in Vancouver. Although it had been several years since Bryan frequently wrote code, he ultimately created an AI tool that could predict pitchers' performances against different batters based on data. In 2016, Billy Beane, a well-known executive of the Oakland Athletics in Major League Baseball, called Bryan to purchase his AI tool to help his team with better statistical analysis.

During the same period, Bryan's interest in cryptocurrency also grew. At the end of 2016, Bryan personally invested in Bitcoin again. Later, in 2018, he co-founded the coding platform OpenToken with developer Daniel Chen, who had previously worked at a16z, to launch "democratized" cryptocurrency, which has since been acquired by other projects.

In the field of AI, Bryan achieved another significant breakthrough in 2020. He, along with Zarick and Banister (the two co-founders of LayerZero mentioned earlier) and Noam Brown from the Facebook AI team, published a research paper describing a poker AI called Supremus that could defeat some top professional players. This paper was later cited in a research paper on game theory by Google's DeepMind team.

Bryan stated at the time: "I have always loved solving problems; nothing attracts me more than this."

The Story of LayerZero

In the fall of 2020, the explosive popularity of BSC also caught Bryan's attention.

After seeing BSC's extremely high processing speed and low transaction costs, Bryan teamed up with Zarick and Banister to build an NFT-based gladiatorial game, which would store NFTs on the more secure and liquid Ethereum network while processing transactions on BSC.

However, during the subsequent game development process, Bryan and his team discovered that they had to manually transfer NFTs to some extent, but the existing cross-chain bridges either did not support NFTs or were easily susceptible to hacking.

Thus, Bryan and his team realized that what they needed was far more than just a cross-chain bridge; they needed a foundational code layer that could allow on-chain information to run across various blockchains, and cross-chain bridges could be built on this layer while ensuring security, but such a thing did not exist in the cryptocurrency space.

This was quite a daunting task, but Bryan became increasingly excited ------ because he finally found a challenge big enough, one that brought a level of excitement unmatched by any poker game.

The rest of the story is well-known.

In May 2021, the first version of the LayerZero white paper was officially released.

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

In April 2023, LayerZero completed a $120 million Series B funding round with a valuation of $3 billion.

In May 2024, LayerZero officially announced that the first season snapshot had been completed and raised the "sword" against the witches before the official token issuance.

……

According to the timeline disclosed by LayerZero, this largest witch hunt event in cryptocurrency history will end the "self-exposure" phase tomorrow. The master of humanity, Bryan, has already "fired the first shot" in this game; how the subsequent operations will unfold remains to be seen in the next round.