币界网报道：This is a snippet from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read the full version, subscribe. Nick Manannikov just graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. Sitting in a restaurant just a stone’s throw from his new alma mater, Manannikov is a little surprised by this fact. Manannikov told me that he graduated “somehow,” but for the better part of the past year, the long-haired teenager has been building a company that runs a Solana RPC and validator. This has involved a lot of work calls and business during school, and because this is crypto, flying around for conferences, including two month-long internships at mtnDAO in Salt Lake City. While Manannikov may not be remembered for his performance in the classroom, he is leaving his high school with something that didn’t exist before — a dedicated Solana validator. Manannikov’s crypto company, Shark Labs, helped BTHS’s crypto club launch the validator, which is designed to give students “hands-on experience running a node.” The high school node oversees about 15,000 staked SOLs. Manannikov came to the U.S. as a political refugee before high school. Manannikov told me that his family was forced to flee Russia in two days after his father rejected a business request from someone associated with the government. After moving to the U.S., Manannikov combined his interest in coding with a talent for making money. He and a few friends ran bots on the Kick streaming platform to claim giveaways the app was doing to boost usage. He also dabbled in crypto, initially through NFTs and later through memecoins. After making a tidy profit from sniping a Solana NFT series called “Deez Nuts,” Manannikov decided to invest his proceeds into launching an RPC business that would later be called Shark Node. The startup was so successful that Manannikov decided to pursue the business full-time instead of attending college. He co-rented an office on Broadway, and the business was profitable, Manannikov told me. In the fall, Shark Labs decided to start running Solana validators. To launch this new business, the company needed to join the Solana Foundation Delegation Program, a program that’s like small validator grants. They narrowly missed out on connecting with the Solana Foundation at Breakpoint, but Manannikov saw that Solana Foundation Executive Director Dan Albert would be attending Solana Boston. “And I was like, shit, I guess I’m going to have to hop on a bus and go there tomorrow and try to confront him in real life and say… ‘Please reply to our Telegram message,’ ” Manannikov said. Shark Labs entered the delegation program, and now lets BTHS’s validators get delegations, too. Its validator-as-a-service model doesn’t stop at Brooklyn, either: Manannikov just announced that his company is working with 20 universities to launch dedicated Solana validators. These validators will not charge any commission fees. In crypto, Manannikov told me, “there are no limits.” “If you’re good at what you do, and you can really execute things, no one cares what your background is.” Get news in your inbox. Explore the Blockworks newsletter: The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and markets. Daily. Empire: Crypto news and analysis to kick-start your day. Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro, and policy. 0xResearch: Get Alpha directly to your inbox. Lightspeed: All about Solana. The Drop: Apps, games, memes, and more. Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.