Podcast Summary: The Digital Executive
Episode Title: Jeff Mahony: Fixing Blockchain for Real-World Use | Ep 1164
Podcast: The Digital Executive by Coruzant Technologies
Guest: Jeff Mahony, Founder & Chief Architect of Wright
Date: December 5, 2025
Host: Brian Thomas
Duration: ~22 minutes
Overview:
This episode features Jeff Mahony, a veteran entrepreneur and the chief architect behind Wright, a purpose-built layer one blockchain. The discussion explores why current blockchains have struggled to meet institutional and regulatory demands, and how Wright’s novel design addresses these pitfalls. Jeff offers a candid critique of hype in emerging tech, identifies the technical and compliance gaps plaguing blockchain platforms, and shares his vision for the future of enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Spotting Real Innovation vs. Hype in Emerging Tech
[01:46 - 03:58]
- Core Insight: Successful innovation solves real, current problems without requiring widespread behavioral changes.
- Many in tech attempt to solve “Stone’s future problems” or force new behaviors, leading to failure.
- Quote:
- “Changing people’s behaviors is tremendously difficult and incredibly cost inefficient... So when you’re looking at solutions... I’m trying to see if there’s a real-world setting today that doesn’t require the participants... to change their behaviors.”
— Jeff Mahony [02:04]
- “Changing people’s behaviors is tremendously difficult and incredibly cost inefficient... So when you’re looking at solutions... I’m trying to see if there’s a real-world setting today that doesn’t require the participants... to change their behaviors.”
- Patterns of Failure:
- Solutions requiring new behaviors
- Overly broad ambitions (“solution for all problems”)
- Focusing on hypothetical future needs
- Experienced innovators focus on narrow, meaningful problems at the root cause, not just symptoms.
2. Why Build a New Layer One Blockchain?
[04:49 - 10:19]
- Biggest Gaps in Existing Blockchains:
- Current platforms are largely academic, not practical for business or government needs.
- Speed: Existing blockchains can process only a few transactions per second (e.g., Bitcoin/Ethereum), while real-world applications (like Visa/Mastercard) require thousands, often with millisecond-level finality.
- Hardware Footprint:
- Heavy, expensive rigs are impractical.
- Most users have only typical smartphones or small-scale devices.
- Compliance & Security:
- Regulatory requirements are ignored or added as afterthoughts.
- Proper architecture for compliance and enterprise-level security must be embedded from the start.
- Memorable Moment:
- “Nobody’s running $20 million rigs in their backyards... Not only does the throw [credit] too big, processing power requirements of some of these consensus models are too large for real-world utility.”
— Jeff Mahony [07:47]
- “Nobody’s running $20 million rigs in their backyards... Not only does the throw [credit] too big, processing power requirements of some of these consensus models are too large for real-world utility.”
3. Wright’s Technical Breakthroughs: Balancing Scalability and Security
[11:08 - 16:30]
- Eliminates Auction-Based Transaction Selection:
- Traditional blockchains prioritize transactions by gas fees—unacceptable for government or enterprise reliability.
- Innovative Consensus: "Proof of Majority"
- All nodes participate, not just those with most power or stake.
- Ensures true network consensus and removes single-point processing bias.
- True Parallelism:
- Multi-state execution with many nodes working at once—enabling both high throughput and trust.
- Native Zero-Knowledge Proof Support & Efficient Indexing:
- Allows validation of data truth without reading entire chains, making large-scale operations feasible.
- Quote:
- “Proof of work, proof of stake… you talked about proof of majority, which in your words is really the true state or consensus on the blockchain, which I thought was interesting.”
— Brian Thomas, recapping [16:20]
- “Proof of work, proof of stake… you talked about proof of majority, which in your words is really the true state or consensus on the blockchain, which I thought was interesting.”
- Key Design Focus:
- Every component, from consensus to cryptography, designed to meet regulatory and institutional needs from the ground up.
4. The Future: Enterprise & Government-Scale Blockchain Infrastructure
[17:19 - 21:03]
- Phased Evolution Ahead:
- Pilots to Production:
- Nations will move from small-scale pilots to full production, encompassing millions or billions of users.
- Cross-Border Compliance:
- Different countries have varying regulations—future blockchains must navigate multiple legal frameworks for interoperability.
- Solution requires technical advances and international policy alignment.
- True Interoperability:
- Beyond value/data bridges (current weak points for hacks), blockchains must develop universal protocols and smart contract languages.
- Pilots to Production:
- Quote:
- “You’re going to have a blockchain requirements that differ from country to country. And what are you going to do with your blockchain that is cross border... with completely different regulatory frameworks? How will that be addressed? And that’s something that’s going to come next.”
— Jeff Mahony [18:17]
- “You’re going to have a blockchain requirements that differ from country to country. And what are you going to do with your blockchain that is cross border... with completely different regulatory frameworks? How will that be addressed? And that’s something that’s going to come next.”
- Smart contracts should become portable and functional across blockchains without translation gaps.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- “Successful innovation solves real, current problems without requiring users to change their behavior.” — Jeff Mahony [02:04]
- “Nobody’s running $20 million rigs in their backyards... Not only does the throw [credit] too big, processing power requirements of some of these consensus models are too large for real-world utility.” — Jeff Mahony [07:47]
- “You can have the speed of parallelism, you can have the understanding that multiple sources are validating the truth, not a single source at any given moment.” — Jeff Mahony [15:42]
- “If I were hacking a system, I wait for you to put value onto a bridge and then I would corrupt that value before it got to the next chain. So... interoperability is something that doesn’t actually happen today.” — Jeff Mahony [20:34]
Key Timestamps
- 01:46–03:58: Separating real innovation from hype in emerging tech
- 04:49–10:19: Why Wright needed a new layer one; core gaps in existing blockchains
- 11:08–16:30: Technical solutions for throughput & compliance; Proof of Majority & parallelism
- 17:19–21:03: The roadmap for compliant, scalable blockchain: pilots, cross-border compliance, interoperability
Tone & Takeaways
Jeff Mahony delivers his insights with a pragmatic, experienced tone, emphasizing real-world impact and institutional needs. He’s critical of hype and “academic” blockchain approaches, insisting that success comes from serving genuine, urgent use cases with robust technical and compliance foundations. Listeners come away with both a critique of today’s blockchain landscape and concrete details about how Wright aims to deliver the reliability, speed, and security needed for the future of global digital services.