Northwest Nodes is a blockchain infrastructure company headquartered in the United Arab Emirates. We run systems that are expected to work, which already separates us from a surprising amount of this industry.
Who we are
Northwest Nodes was founded in Canada in 2021 and moved its operations to Dubai in 2022. The company was founded by us: Zale, who is Canadian (not by choice), and Eric, who is Dutch (which explains certain things).
We met in 2016, long before this company existed, which is probably why we skipped the usual startup rituals and went straight to building things that work. We also argued constantly and called each other names, which turned out to be a surprisingly efficient filter for bad ideas. It also tends to produce a better operating model than trust falls and value statements. In 2022, we participated in the Chainlink Oracle Olympics and won. In an industry full of self-description, an actual result was refreshing.
Today we run Chainlink DON infrastructure, validator systems, and RPC infrastructure across 70+ blockchain networks. The company stayed small on purpose. More people usually means more meetings, more delay, and more people explaining why nothing is their fault. We had no use for any of that. Instead, we automated aggressively. A lot of Ansible. A deeply unnecessary amount, some might say. And AI agents, because they are still less exhausting than most corporate workflow. It works suspiciously well.
That is the whole story... more or less. Two operators, one company, and very little tolerance for bullshit.
Mission statement
Most companies our size spend time defining vision, values, and internal alignment.
We run infrastructure.
The mission is in the SLA.
The vision is sleeping through the night.
The values are whatever keeps the systems online.
Everything else is decoration.
Corporate values
We never saw the appeal of building a company where five people need to agree that a fire is, in fact, a fire. Two people is enough. If something breaks, it gets fixed.
Everything that can be automated is automated. The rest is handled directly. Our entire company fits in our pockets, which turns out to be faster than having a headquarters, a management layer, and the usual architectural interest in avoiding responsibility.
Problems are expensive and, of course, we prefer not having them. We run in-house autonomous machine learning trading systems on this infrastructure. So, if something breaks, we do not get to hide behind account management.
Operating standards
The best infrastructure is invisible. No surprises, no noise, no grown adults performing urgency to disguise the fact that they built something badly. Just systems that operate as expected, which remains a strangely ambitious standard in this industry.
We have very little patience for operational pageantry. A well-run system does not need a heroic narrative, an incident opera, or a leadership essay about resilience. It needs competent people, clear ownership, and fewer idiots touching production.
The organisations we work with are selective for obvious reasons. Failure gets expensive very quickly. We continue to be selected because competence costs less than mistakes, even if some people insist on learning that through financial pain.