Pirates Parley
Pirates Parley
June 25, 2026·1:00:14

The web janitor of the Solana Foundation on agents, AEO and building on Solana

Harkle, an ecosystem engineer at the Solana Foundation, joins Pirates Parley to talk about the websites that run Solana, making the web agent-ready, and a years-old argument with Steve about RPC pricing that shaped how Triton charges today. Harkle calls himself the web janitor of the Solana Foundation. He runs solana.com, payments.org and pay.sh, came into crypto through NFTs, and spent years building for the New Zealand government before Solana pulled him in. They cover:

Why he calls himself the web janitor of the Solana Foundation Buying his first Bitcoin in 2014 through a Second Life in-game currency Making solana.com agent-ready and ranking for AEO, the agent version of SEO Solana holding around 30% of agent mindshare across the big LLMs The argument with Steve about RPC pricing that flipped his whole thesis Why expensive RPC made him realise Solana was a B2B chain, not P2P Triton's pay-as-you-go model and pay.sh endpoints for agents Two years of 100% Solana uptime since February 2024 Whether the Solana Foundation should work itself out of a job Automating a content pipeline so a Google doc becomes a published page Why he hasn't hand-written a line of code since early 2025 His one rule for getting Foundation support: build a good product

Triton One: triton.one/pricing Solana: solana.com/data • pay.sh Harkle: x.com/harkl_

S(
Steve (Happy Pirate)

The web janitor of the Solana Foundation on agents, AEO and building on Solana

0:000:00

Share this episode

Subscribe & Listen

More from Pirates Parley

Coffee on Solana: from a $20 mint to the Miami Heat | Pirates Parley E24
1:01:43
July 16, 2026

Coffee on Solana: from a $20 mint to the Miami Heat | Pirates Parley E24

The Raposa Coffee crew joins Pirates Parley to break down how a $20 NFT mint at the bottom of the bear market turned into the specialty coffee brand of the Solana ecosystem, now pouring at Miami Heat and Marlins games. They cover: Selling out the 10k Kups collection in April 2023 85% of Solana Pay transactions at Breakpoint 2023 from one booth Three years with basically zero marketing spend The unfair advantage of building a brand on Solana Record sales in their first six Marlins games The on-chain loyalty app, badge marketplace and Kups burns Jungles vs cosmics, and Raposa's biggest fumble 00:00 - Welcome and intros 4:49 - Chapter one: from NFT mint to coffee brand 9:04 - Becoming the ecosystem's coffee staple 15:35 - The crypto coffee brand question 17:56 - The unfair advantage 21:25 - Miami Heat and Marlins 27:25 - Why Solana 43:44 - The on-chain loyalty app 53:26 - Jungles vs cosmics 54:56 - Raposa's biggest fumble 59:38 - What's next

Building an Ecosystem Interface: How Solflare has kept it's successful course
57:29
July 10, 2026

Building an Ecosystem Interface: How Solflare has kept it's successful course

Vidor, co-founder of Solflare, joins Pirates Parley to tell about how Solflare started it's successful endeavor, being the Solana Ecosystem interface, and what it means to give people the tools for self-custody.

Inside mtnDAO: from a 6-bed Airbnb to Solana's hacker house
56:48
July 2, 2026

Inside mtnDAO: from a 6-bed Airbnb to Solana's hacker house

Barrett, co-founder of mtnDAO, joins Pirates Parley to tell the story of Solana's most notorious hacker house: how it went from 25 people crammed in a 6-bedroom Airbnb to a month-long builder summit that has produced 30 hackathon winners and over $30 million in raises. Barrett got into Solana almost by accident. He was building a pre-IPO markets company on Ethereum, found it too slow, and an Ethereum dev who didn't like him pushed him toward Solana out of spite. He and Edgar Pavlovsky started mtnDAO in Salt Lake City in 2021. In this episode: How an Ethereum dev pushed Barrett into Solana out of spite, and it became a golden match The first mtnDAO, 25 people sleeping across 6 bedrooms in an Airbnb 200 applications for the second one, and how it went biannual 30 global hackathon winners and $30M+ raised by alumni What makes a hacker house work: community and a first-in, last-out culture The tweet that captures it: work 14 hours, leave at 8 pm, feel like you left at lunch Why mtnDAO runs a month instead of the Foundation's flash-in-the-pan model The first production Solana Pay, and Metaplex's core standard, both born at mtnDAO Salt Lake as an outdoor Mecca, and the work-hard get-outside culture The one hard rule, and why there isn't really a DAO The 10th edition, August 1, free to attend Triton One: triton.one/pricing mtnDAO: x.com/mtndao