From Lockdown Lightbulb to Agentic Advertising Revolution

Right, let's talk about something we've been meaning to share for ages. The proper story. Not the sanitised press release version, but the actual journey of how Alkimi went from a COVID-era conversation between two mates to delivering 25+ million impressions daily and becoming blockchain's most demanding real-world use case.

Because if you're going to understand where we're headed, you need to know where we've been.

The Lockdown Revelation (Summer 2020)

Picture this: It's summer 2020. The world's gone mental, everyone's locked indoors, and Ben Putley and Adam Chorley are doing what most of us were doing—obsessing over DeFi and wondering if traditional industries would ever make sense again.

But here's the thing about Ben and Adam: they weren't just retail crypto investors having a punt on yield farming. They were programmatic advertising veterans who'd spent years watching nearly half of every advertising dollar disappear into an opaque mess of intermediaries, hidden fees, and outright fraud.

The numbers were absolutely mental. Nearly 49% of the $750+ billion digital advertising industry was being wasted through inefficient legacy technologies. Traditional exchanges were charging up to 37% in fees whilst only 5% of ad spend was actually auditable. Meanwhile, $140 billion was vanishing annually to fraud.

Then they saw Uniswap. Automated market makers. Peer-to-peer trading without intermediaries. Transparent, efficient, fair. The lightbulb moment hit like a freight train: what if programmatic advertising auctions worked like this?

Most people would have had that thought and moved on to the next shiny DeFi protocol. But Ben and Adam had spent over a decade each in the programmatic trenches. They knew exactly how broken the system was, and more importantly, they understood how to fix it.

Building the Foundation (2021-2022)

By early 2021, they'd convinced Chandru Narayana to join their seemingly impossible mission. Chandru wasn't some fresh-faced developer—he was a proper technical veteran with 20 years of software development experience who'd just finished building Virgin Media's targeted advertising platform.

Their mission sounded absolutely bonkers: create the world's first decentralised advertising exchange. The challenges were brutal. Traditional blockchain infrastructure couldn't handle billions of real-time bidding transactions that needed to complete in under 100 milliseconds. The advertising industry was deeply allergic to anything that smelled remotely like crypto. And somehow, they needed to process millions of $2-$3 transactions profitably.

They started with Constellation Network's DAG architecture because it offered feeless transactions and infinite scalability. The ADS token launched, they secured their first major exchange listing on KuCoin, and began building the boring but essential infrastructure that could actually handle enterprise-scale operations.

The Pragmatic Pivot (2022-2023)

Here's where most blockchain startups would have stubbornly stuck to their original technology choices. Not this lot. When they realised the current architecture couldn't deliver what they needed for enterprise adoption, they made the hard decision that separated them from the pack: migrate to Ethereum with a custom Layer 2 solution.

Migration meant rebuilding significant portions of their platform and essentially admitting that their initial technology choice hadn't worked out. But the team's pragmatic approach was becoming their superpower. They weren't married to any particular blockchain technology—they were married to solving real problems for real businesses.

The momentum was building in ways that mattered. In September 2022, they closed $1.8 million in seed funding. By October 2023, they'd achieved B Corporation certification with a score of 83.6, compared to the median of 50.9. This wasn't just a badge—it was proof they were building a business designed to benefit all stakeholders.

Going Live: The Ultimate Test (December 2023)

December 19th, 2023, was the day everything changed. The world's first decentralised advertising exchange went live for real advertisers spending real money to reach real audiences.

The results were immediately clear. Transactions completed in milliseconds rather than the hours or days typical of traditional programmatic settlement. Fees had been slashed from the industry standard of 37% down to just 3-8%. Every single transaction was completely auditable on the blockchain.

But here's what made this genuinely special: they weren't processing a few high-value transactions like most blockchain applications. They were handling millions of micro-transactions worth $2-$3 each, the ultimate stress test for any blockchain infrastructure.

The advertising industry took notice, but not through breathless headlines about revolutionary disruption. Instead, there were quiet conversations in programmatic trading floors where people who understood the economics were asking the right questions: How are they making this profitable? Can this actually scale?

The catch, it turned out, was that there wasn't one. Just better infrastructure applied to a broken industry by people who understood both sides of the equation.

Scaling the Vision (2024)

By Q4 2024, the platform had processed 907 million transactions with 1,228 active validators earning real yields from real business activity. They'd generated over $200,000 in fee revenue whilst maintaining their commitment to transparency and efficiency.

But something bigger was happening behind the scenes. Alkimi was evolving from a decentralised exchange into something unprecedented: a comprehensive agentic advertising platform powered by artificial intelligence. AI-integrated agents could optimise campaigns in real-time, whilst intelligent supply-side platforms helped publishers maximise revenue through automated yield optimisation that worked 24/7.

The transformation was profound. They'd started as a blockchain company trying to fix advertising, and they'd become an advertising company that happened to use blockchain infrastructure because it was the best tool for the job.

The Sui Revolution (July 2025)

Then came the announcement that changed everything: complete move to Sui blockchain. The requirements had become genuinely mental by industry standards. They needed to process over 10 million transactions daily, each requiring sub-second finality for real-time bidding auctions. Every transaction needed to be profitable despite maximum values of $2-3, which meant network fees had to be virtually zero.

Traditional blockchain infrastructure simply cannot handle these requirements. Ethereum's gas fees would make micro-transactions impossible. Bitcoin's confirmation times would break real-time bidding.

Sui could handle all of it. Object-centric architecture perfect for advertising assets. Parallel execution for millions of concurrent transactions. The Move programming language offered the security needed for handling enterprise advertising budgets.

For Sui, Alkimi represented the ultimate validation of their technology stack. For Alkimi, it meant they could finally build the platform they'd been envisioning since those first conversations during lockdown.

The Economics That Actually Matter

Traditional advertising economics are absolutely broken. Intermediary fees consume 37-49% of every advertising pound. Publishers receive less than 50% of what advertisers pay. Meanwhile, $140 billion disappears annually to fraud, and only 5% of ad spend is actually auditable.

Alkimi's model flips all of that. Platform fees run 3-8% total. Publishers receive 92-97% of what advertisers spend. Fraud gets detected and prevented in real-time. And 100% of spending is auditable on-chain.

This creates genuine network effects rather than artificial scarcity. Nautilus means increased security, which drives higher transaction volume. Higher volume generates better training data for AI algorithms, which improves performance and attracts more adoption.

What This Actually Means For You

If you're an agency veteran who's spent years explaining why programmatic advertising is simultaneously essential and frustrating, Alkimi represents the alternative you've been waiting for. Real transparency where you can show clients exactly where their money goes.

For programmatic experts, Alkimi's architecture matches or exceeds anything you're currently using whilst providing complete auditability. Every bid request, every auction decision, every fee allocation; all visible on-chain.

If you're a Web3 enthusiast waiting for blockchain technology to prove real-world utility, Alkimi demonstrates what happens when experienced industry professionals use blockchain infrastructure to solve genuine business problems.

Final Thoughts

Alkimi's growth story isn't about crypto enthusiasts disrupting advertising. It's about advertising industry veterans using blockchain infrastructure to fix problems they understand intimately because they've been fighting them for decades.

The journey from COVID-era insight to 10+ million daily transactions proves that blockchain technology is ready for real-world enterprise deployment. Not the speculative world where transaction fees don't matter, but the actual, demanding, profitable world of enterprise operations where performance matters more than ideology.

Building better advertising infrastructure that happens to use blockchain technology produces sustainable competitive advantages that don't depend on market speculation. When your platform reduces costs by 80-90% whilst providing 100% transparency and real-time fraud prevention, adoption follows naturally because the business case is obvious.

This is what blockchain adoption looks like when it's driven by business necessity rather than technological possibility. It's not about the future of advertising, it's about building advertising infrastructure that works better today than anything that came before it.