Optimum: The Origin Story, Team, and What They're Building Optimum didn't come out of nowhere. The project grew from academic research at MIT, where Professor Muriel Médard spent years developing Random Linear Network Coding — a smarter way to send data across networks. When the team saw how badly blockchain infrastructure needed this technology, the path became clear. The founders bring serious credentials. Muriel Médard is ranked #1 globally in network coding and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Co-founder Dr. Kishori Konwar is a former MIT postdoc and ex-scientist at Meta. Kent Lin, the third co-founder, previously worked as a Partner at a $4B VC fund and founded the McKinsey Crypto DAO. The backing is strong. Optimum raised $11M in a seed round, with investors including Alchemy Ventures, Animoca Ventures, Jump Crypto, Spartan, 1kx, and many others. The advisor list includes names from Polygon, Solana, Pyth, and Wormhole. What does Optimum offer? Two core products. First — mump2p, a protocol that plugs into existing validator nodes and dramatically speeds up how blocks and transactions travel across the network. Second — DeRAM, a decentralized RAM layer coming soon, designed to give apps real-time access to blockchain data for use cases like trading, gaming, and AI. The combination of MIT-grade research, a proven team, and real institutional backing makes Optimum one of the more credible infrastructure bets in Web3 right now. @get_optimum