From Web3 Infra to AI Infra: Differentiating in the Agentic Era I E.G. Galano

Sat, May 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

In this talk, E.G. Galano, co-founder of Infura, draws parallels between the evolution of blockchain infrastructure and today's AI infrastructure to share lessons on product differentiation in the agentic era. He traces Infura's journey from being the first Ethereum RPC gateway in 2016, through scaling challenges during CryptoKitties and DeFi Summer, to eventually losing market share as infrastructure commoditized — and how they responded by moving up the stack into multi-chain support, NFT APIs, and higher-margin indexing services. E.G. argues that AI inference is following the same pattern: starting as base-layer access, adding abstractions, then requiring coordination and outcomes layers. He shares his personal "E-Stack" project — a multi-agent system mirroring Infura's org chart with agents for protocol upgrades, SRE, support, product management, and even a crypto Twitter lurker for incident detection. He then presents Infura's marketplace vision where anyone can permissionlessly serve RPC traffic with staked SLAs and verifiable reputation scores, and explains how this model extends to AI skill and API marketplaces — solving the problem of data-driven, verifiable tool selection for agents that currently rely on Reddit sentiment rather than actual performance metrics. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Inference Is the New Infrastructure 01:37 Parallels Between Ethereum and AI Infrastructure Cycles 03:09 Abstractions: From RPC to Specialized AI Models 03:53 Scaling Challenges and Battle-Testing 04:40 What Is Infura and Its Core Value Proposition 05:58 CryptoKitties, ICOs, and DeFi Summer Scaling 07:19 Self-Hosting vs Managed Services: The Recurring Debate 08:18 Declining Market Share Despite Growing Users 09:52 Differentiating When Infrastructure Commoditizes 10:25 Going Multi-Chain as Costs Decreased 11:27 AI's Next Layer: Outcomes and Agent Coordination 12:49 The E-Stack: A Multi-Agent Infura Org Chart 15:05 Building Moats: Network Effects Over Code 16:41 Infura's Marketplace: Permissionless RPC Providers 17:29 Agent Discovery, Payments, and Reputation 18:28 Verifiable Performance Scoring for Marketplaces 19:12 Extending to AI Skill and API Marketplaces 20:02 Data-Driven Decisions for Vibe-Coded Production Apps 21:04 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow E.G. Galano X: https://x.com/egalano ✅ Follow Infura X: https://x.com/infura_io ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city