Sat next to a guy at the gate in Dubai who looked like he was on his way to inspect a boiler.

Short-sleeve dress shirt. Pocket protector. Reading a Tom Clancy novel in paperback.
Figured he was a mid-level manager at a logistics firm or maybe a high school principal.

We got talking. I mentioned I love farming DeFi yield

He didn't ask "WAGMI?" or "What's the APY?"

He just chewed his gum.

"I made $9 million last year selling a PDF to DeFi protocols."

I laughed. "Sure. An NFT?"

"No," he said. "A PDF. A checklist."

This guy is 64. Spent 35 years as a Fire Marshal for high-rise buildings in Chicago.

His entire career was checking exits, testing alarms, and yelling at people for blocking hallways.

Retired at 60.

"My grandson got rug-pulled on some food-coin. Lost his college fund. I looked at the 'post-mortem' the team wrote."

He shook his head.

"It was pathetic. They blamed the code. In my line of work, if a building burns down, you don't blame the fire. You blame the lack of sprinklers."

So he wrote a document.

Not a smart contract audit. Not a ZK-proof.
A 20-page "Emergency Response Drill."
It details exactly what the team must do in the first 60 minutes of a hack.

minute 1: Who kills the frontend UI.

minute 5: The exact tweet to send
(templates included).

minute 10: Who calls the exchanges to blacklist the wallet.

minute 15: Who wakes up the multisig signers.

"I called it 'The Fire Drill'. I put it on a Gumroad page."

For 6 months, zero sales.

"The DeFi kids told me 'code is law'. They said they had audits."

Then the "Summer of Exploits" hit in 2024.

Three billion-dollar protocols drained. The founders panicked, went silent for 4 hours, and got sued by the SEC for negligence.

Suddenly, "code is law" wasn't saving them from prison.

A major L2 protocol founder DM'd him.

Bought the PDF.

Price: $75,000.

"I charge them $75k for the file. And another $50k to run a live drill on Zoom where I scream at them until they stop freezing up."

First year: $200k.

Last year: $9.2 million.

He has every major DeFi protocol on a retainer now.

I asked about his marketing.

"I don't market. When a protocol gets hacked, I send the founder an email that says: 'Next time, be ready.' They usually wire the money within the hour."

No token?

"Why would I want a token? It fluctuates. I like cash."

No DAO?

"I spent 30 years dealing with committees. They let buildings burn. I deal with the one guy who has the keys."

No AI agents?

"AI doesn't know how to calm down a 22-year-old dev who just lost $100 million of other people's money. I do."

This 64-year-old retired Fire Marshal is making more value from DeFi than some VCs.

No yield farming. No leverage. No governance forum.

Just basic, boring safety procedures for people playing with matches.

Before he boarded, he gave me advice I didn't ask for:

"You guys spend millions auditing the smart contracts, but zero dollars auditing the humans. The code usually works fine. It's the panic that bankrupts you. Stop building faster ships and start buying lifeboats."

He walked onto the plane.

Probably went to highlight safety violations in the in-flight docs.