A month ago I joined GridPlus to help with marketing and business development efforts and I want to take a moment to introduce myself and talk about what I hope to accomplish.

This post will seem a bit out of place on this blog, but that’s the point: I’m not an engineer or a developer, I’m a fan that has followed GridPlus for years and I want to show everyone why I think their work is important.

Not an actual rock lobster.

How Did I Get Involved?

I’ve been following GridPlus since the project’s initial idea stage in spring of 2017. Their plan to enable mainstream use of cryptocurrency and other digital assets via secure and simple to use hardware immediately clicked.

The first application for the Lattice1 also resonated with me: leveraging Ethereum and this new hardware to give customers access to wholesale energy markets and make the existing grid more efficient. The Lattice1 can be used in many ways, but I’ve always found that with a minute face to face I can explain the GridPlus Energy business model to anyone and get them excited about it.

When I first heard about GridPlus I quickly became a fixture on their public Slack channel under the pseudonym Rock Lobster. As I learned more I found myself answering basic questions about the project for newcomers. The GridPlus co-founders, Mark D’Agostino, Dr. Karl Kreder, and Alex Miller are all rock stars in their respective areas of expertise, however one thing that became apparent was that casually interested observers often found themselves a bit lost in their nuanced and deeply technical explanations. Which brings me to this blog post.

I’m deeply passionate about this project and am eager to show the world how a network of Lattice1s will serve as critical infrastructure for crypto platforms and other distributed systems. My mission is to make those technical explanations readily understandable and demonstrate what can be accomplished with the new type of device GridPlus has built.

Everyone polled preferred the lobster avatar.

What I’ll Be Working On

I’ve spent the past two years talking about GridPlus every day and now that I’m part of the team that’s what I plan to keep doing!

Since joining, I’ve had a glimpse of the huge amount of work going on behind the scenes in launching the Lattice1 and I’m excited for everyone else to see it too. The three co-founders are well known, but GridPlus is a fourteen person team and growing. I’d like to put a spotlight on everyone’s contributions.

I will be accomplishing this through increasing communication across all channels and hitting the road to show users and developers what can be accomplished with the Lattice1. I’m starting this mission at the Take Off Startup Summit in Istanbul on September 16th and for the past six months I’ve been helping to organize the first ETHBoston hackathon so please come and talk with me about GridPlus, the Lattice1, and Phonon Network this September 6–8th at Harvard University.

I’m also working with the team and external marketing resources to tailor messaging for all the different groups that can benefit from the Lattice1: cryptocurrency fanatics, developers, enterprises implementing production blockchain solutions, energy consumers, energy firms, and many others.

Once everyone gets their hands on the Lattice1 we’ll need to provide resources to help people get the most out of it so we’re building a reference library for troubleshooting and learning how to take advantage of advanced features.

We’ve also got an awesome and dedicated community; I’ll be working to engage more, support community initiatives, and make sure all the new Lattice1 users have the resources they need to get their questions answered.

GridPlus Mobile, The Lattice1, and GridPlus SafeCards

Can The Lattice1 Help You?

If you haven’t been following us closely, you might think of GridPlus as just an energy company with a unique angle. However the Lattice1 was designed as a flexible tool to enable mainstream cryptocurrency use by abstracting away technical challenges from end users.

In addition to the Lattice1’s intuitive touchscreen interface, our SafeCards let users approach the abstract concepts of seed phrases and key management with a familiar physical format. This demonstrates to new users that cryptocurrency is a powerful yet accessible tool rather than an unapproachable technical experiment.

There are a lot of possibilities and I am excited to speak directly to people who can benefit from the hardware — my DMs on Twitter are open.

Dapp developers can leverage a network of ultra-secure always-on Linux devices with uniform hardware. If you’re still relying on users to install via a command line interface, push button deployment could do wonders for traction.

We want to start working with wallet developers for all chains in order to provide support for additional assets. This overlaps with the above point: with PoS chains the Lattice1 will be useful for both managing your assets and as a platform for staking securely.

We’re working behind the scenes to engage with energy projects and support proof of concept programs, but the Lattice1 opens up a world of possibilities for other IoT applications. Our combination of WiFi and Zigbee connectivity, a physically isolated secure compute environment, and a Linux general compute environment means that blockchain IoT projects can make their vision a reality without developing their own hardware.

Enterprise blockchain deployments are an obvious fit as well; the hardware boasts unparalleled resistance to physical tamper attempts and has the capability to run software customized to your specifications.

And, of course, anyone interested in cryptocurrency can immediately take advantage of the most secure and flexible tool ever built for managing and using your digital assets.

Keep Up To Speed With GridPlus

With hardware launch imminent I look forward to engaging with all the people that can benefit from a network of secure, always connected, blockchain devices. As more and more is built on the platform and users realize the potential of the Lattice1, that will likely include most of you reading this post!

Follow us on Twitter, come talk with us on Telegram, sign up for Texas GridPlus Energy plans, and discuss the project on r/GridPlus — I look forward to talking with you soon.