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TAO Daily

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24 juin à 14h41

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https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/

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<div id="bsf_rt_marker"></div><div class='booster-block booster-read-block'> <div class="twp-read-time"> <i class="booster-icon twp-clock"></i> <span>Read Time:</span>6 Minute, 42 Second </div> </div> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">If you followed our previous article about <a href="https://taodaily.io/tpn-sn65-pivots-to-distributed-llm-compression-and-optimization/">TPN&#8217;s pivot</a> from VPN infrastructure to distributed LLM compression, you&#8217;ve already seen the <em>what</em>.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">This conversation is about the <em>who</em>, and the slightly unglamorous truth that one of Bittensor&#8217;s interesting subnets started life as a decentralized VPN service.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The TAO Daily team sat down with <strong>Mentor</strong>, one of the four original co-founders of TPN (SN65), to hear how a VPN became an LLM optimization network, and why the team is convinced this is the version that sticks.</p> <div id="ez-toc-container" class="ez-toc-v2_0_76 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction"> <div class="ez-toc-title-container"> <p class="ez-toc-title" style="cursor:inherit">Table of Contents</p> <span class="ez-toc-title-toggle"><a href="#" class="ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle" aria-label="Toggle Table of Content"><span class="ez-toc-js-icon-con"><span class=""><span class="eztoc-hide" style="display:none;">Toggle</span><span class="ez-toc-icon-toggle-span"><svg style="fill: #999;color:#999" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="list-377408" width="20px" height="20px" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none"><path d="M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z" fill="currentColor"></path></svg><svg style="fill: #999;color:#999" class="arrow-unsorted-368013" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="10px" height="10px" viewBox="0 0 24 24" version="1.2" baseProfile="tiny"><path d="M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z"/></svg></span></span></span></a></span></div> <nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#Background_Ethereum_kids_who_grew_up_on-chain" >Background: Ethereum kids who grew up on-chain</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#The_pivot_nobody_planned" >The pivot nobody planned</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#The_problem_you_cant_predict_what_compression_breaks" >The problem: you can't predict what compression breaks</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#What_miners_do_on_SN65" >What miners do on SN65</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#Why_this_needs_Bittensor" >Why this needs Bittensor</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#Proof_benchmarks_and_the_collaboration_angle" >Proof, benchmarks, and the collaboration angle</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#Revenue_the_alpha_token_and_shipping" >Revenue, the alpha token, and shipping</a></li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class="ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-8" href="https://taodaily.io/meet-mentor-the-tpn-co-founder-who-turned-a-vpn-into-a-llm-compression-subnet/#Whats_next" >What's next</a></li></ul></nav></div> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><span class="ez-toc-section" id="Background_Ethereum_kids_who_grew_up_on-chain"></span>Background: Ethereum kids who grew up on-chain<span class="ez-toc-section-end"></span></h2> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Mentor is a programmer with a background in biology and AI. He and his three co-founders came up through the Ethereum ecosystem, starting young, they were students at the time, and spent their formative years inside what was then the Bitcoin and Ethereum world.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Peep at Mentor&#8217;s LinkedIn <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mentorpalokaj?utm_source=share_via&amp;utm_content=profile&amp;utm_medium=member_android">here</a>.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">That early gave them something a lot of subnet builders don&#8217;t have: a deep, lived familiarity with multiple blockchains. Two of the co-founders, Mentor and <a href="https://x.com/0xDutchmikel">Mikel</a>, are brothers who&#8217;d always intended to work together. Bittensor became the place to do it.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>&#8220;We have the benefit of having backgrounds in both Ethereum and the Polkadot ecosystem, on both the technical and the financial sides.&#8221;</em></p> </blockquote> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">They fell down the Bittensor rabbit hole about two and a half years ago when they decided they wanted to build together and went looking for the right place to start.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><span class="ez-toc-section" id="The_pivot_nobody_planned"></span>The pivot nobody planned<span class="ez-toc-section-end"></span></h2> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="395" src="https://taodaily.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-177-1024x395.png" alt="" class="wp-image-20806" srcset="https://taodaily.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-177-1024x395.png 1024w, https://taodaily.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-177-300x116.png 300w, https://taodaily.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-177-768x297.png 768w, https://taodaily.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-177.png 1207w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Taofu <a href="https://x.com/taofuxyz/status/1933121898780528864?s=20">experiment</a></figcaption></figure> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Here&#8217;s where the TPN story gets interesting. The subnet wasn&#8217;t supposed to be a VPN at all.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The team&#8217;s original product was <strong>Taofu</strong>, a fundraising platform that tokenized the owner&#8217;s share of subnets and let those tokenized shares be sold. To demo it, they spun up their own subnet, and because Mentor had a background in VPNs, they made it a VPN subnet. The fundraising platform never found product-market fit. The demo subnet, ironically, did.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p class="wp-block-paragraph"><em>&#8220;We did not specifically plan for having a VPN subnet. It was more of a demo for our previous product.&#8221;</em></p> </blockquote> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Then, a couple of weeks before this interview, the subnet came close to deregistration. That brush with the edge turned into a strategic reset. The team ha