Cryptocurrency developers - who are they? [Interview]



    In recent years, the financial software sector is booming. Moreover, not only near-banking systems are developing, but various alternative solutions also appear. One of the topics that caused a wide public resonance was the emergence and rapid development of cryptocurrencies. In addition to its monetary and network component, cryptocurrencies are also specialized software. Who is working on their code, and how is this done?

    The most popular cryptocurrency today is Bitcoin. However, the cryptocurrency project “Dash” (formerly “Darkcoin”) (by capitalization - Anonymous cryptocurrency No. 1) has recently become noticeable in terms of speed of innovation. The Dash team has a Russian-language developer, and I persuaded him to give an interview - especially for Habrahabr readers.

    • Hi UdjinM6. Thank you for agreeing to an interview. Let's talk about cryptocurrencies in the context of the process of developing them as software, without going into details about why they are needed and how they function.
    • Hey. Thanks for the offer, I will try to answer as accessible as possible.


    • Please tell us briefly about yourself and your activities in the “Dash” team.
    • I became interested in cryptocurrencies quite late (in 2013) and solely as a new speculative tool with a relatively simple way to enter. Then I tried and mint a little.
      By the way, both of these classes ended for me with a serious financial minus, but I began to be more interested in how all this all works, began to delve into the embedded mathematics and algorithms, as well as try different software and participate in its development as far as possible .
      Later, in mid-2014, questions to Bitcoin about his anonymity began to sound louder. This topic interested me and I drew attention to several alternatives, one of which was Darcoin. The idea and the proposed implementation seemed interesting to me, and I also liked that Darkcoin has a friendly community and developers available for comment. Now, as a team, I mainly develop an “official” wallet, but sometimes I help third-party developers to port some software written for Bitcoin to work with Dash, and just to anyone who is trying to do something based on Dash

    • How is the development of cryptocurrencies different from the development of other software?
    • I would highlight that in a fairly short time there is a huge mass of research, various materials on the topic, new ideas and furious mathematics. You need to constantly "keep your finger on the pulse." It is also worth noting that many new works on cryptography are available only in English, and taking into account the mathematics already mentioned above, understanding is quite difficult.

    • Who can become a cryptocurrency developer, what qualifications are needed for this?
    • The official client of many cryptocurrencies is written in C ++, but there are those where the main wallet is written in Python, for example. It would also be nice to have good knowledge in mathematics in general and in probability / cryptography theory in particular, but they can be gained as you dive. In my opinion, there is a good overview course at Khan Academy “Journey into cryptography” ( www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography ). Also, many materials are available in the form of various kinds of reports, presentations, etc. in free access.

    • Does your environment know what you are doing? How do you feel about this?
    • Only a few closest friends are in the know. For the rest, I am “surfing the Internet”.

    • Not drawn to return to the office for “normal” work?
    • While there is a financial reserve from the previous work, and then we'll see. I hope that we are still doing something right and Dash, as they say, will “fly up”.

    • Russian-language developer is a rare phenomenon in the crypto world ... Was it difficult to gain a reputation in the community?
    • In fact, I didn’t at all aspire to become a developer of any cryptocurrency, it was just interesting and had some experience in programming, project management, etc. At first, as a regular user, I began to ask many questions, look at the code in more detail, understand the topic, and later on I began to answer questions of other newcomers. At that time, Dash was at the release candidate stage and there were quite often forks. I tried to help as much as I could and for about a week I practically “lived” on the official forum and answered numerous questions, helped solve problems, and looked for bugs. I was very annoying and constantly tormented Evan and other developers with questions and my suggestions for solving various problems. In the end, I'm tired of everyonecommunity members began to offer to include me in the team and after a few days I received a simple message about the following content: “Not bad! Would you like to join?"

    • Is “Dash” development for you a way to make money or something else?
    • At the moment, this is a way to “benefit” by doing something interesting. Well, and of course, the hope of conquering the world, where without it.

    • What tools do you use in your work?
    • Since the client is written under Qt, accordingly, most of the time is spent in Qt Creator. The rest is all on the command line - git, vim, etc.

    • What is the relationship between the members of the “Dash” team?
    • Nothing special - they are all normal, adequate guys from different corners of the Earth. We all do one thing, while everyone does the part that he considers interesting for himself, does what he can, how he can and when he can (time zones and problems in “real” life make themselves felt). Of course, we try to synchronize and combine efforts in every way. We use both the forum and Slack for these purposes. After the release of version 0.12, there are plans for some formalization of the release process, individual team members are already preparing for this.

    • I saw that you were mentioned in the list of those who participated in the appearance of the latest version of Bitcoin. Do you manage to lead other projects besides “Dash”?
    • Honestly, my contribution there was meager and I was very surprised to see my nickname on the list. As for other projects - I previously participated in NOMP a bit ( github.com/zone117x/node-open-mining-portal ), a couple of months ago I added a Russian interface for WalletGenerator.net (https://github.com/MichaelMure/WalletGenerator.net ) Ported several repositories for working with Dash, for example, github.com/bitpay/insight-api from BitPay.

    • Have you ever thought about launching your own cryptocurrency? How real is this at all?
    • To start cryptocurrency in the understanding of many means, as a rule, copy Bitcoin or its successful fork, “improve” parameters and, voila, a new currency. It is not difficult to make such a “currency”, but without development, and sometimes just basic support and bug fixes, it will live for just a couple of months, after which the miners will merge it on the exchanges and as a result there will be only a certain number of naive “lucky” with reserves that nobody needs coins. There are already several hundred of such “currencies”. I have no desire to stand on the same level with their developers, as there are no reasons why I cannot implement any ideas within the framework of Dash.

    • Dash is currently testing a decentralized financing system. Is it aimed at supporting existing developers or attracting new ones?
    • In fact, it is aimed not at supporting any developers, but at implementing projects that support Dash and are able to move Dash further. The main idea here is as follows. Open-source projects find it very difficult to exist in the absence of funding. Many try to live off donations; others live on grants or under the wing of a corporation. Each of these methods has its drawbacks. But we want to build a system that will finance itself. One of the powerful ideas embedded in bitcoin - tokens that miners produce have a certain value. This is precisely the part of this value created within the system that we plan to use and direct to support and develop the system itself, instead of looking for this financing “outside”. There are no restrictions on the system

    • Let's say some programmer or even a team wants to offer (for money) their skills to the “Dash” project. How exactly should they act?
    • The first thing I would advise you to do is visit our dashtalk.org forum, create a topic and try to convince the community that a) a worthwhile idea b) you are able to implement it. This part, it seems to me, is the main one, since in any case you will need the support of the community (or rather the masternode owners) in order to receive financing. And to help you figure out your wallet and what commands you need to execute in order to send your proposal to the network to participate in voting and receive remuneration, you will always be prompted. Nevertheless, if this part is interesting, then the draft documentation can be viewed on GitHub github.com/dashpay/dash/blob/master/doc/masternode-budget.md

    • What would you recommend to Russian-speaking programmers who want to try themselves in the field of cryptocurrencies?
    • Try. To get started, you don’t have to buy Bitcoins or Dash, risk real money and spend it in the development process. There are test networks, where you can get coins for free and experiment without risking losing everything if something suddenly goes wrong.

    • Thanks for the interview and parting words.
    • And thank you.


    An overview of “Dash” can be found in this short video.


    More information about “Dash” can be found on the official website and in my blog .

    If you have any questions for UdjinM6 - you can ask them directly at the official forum ( Russian-language section ). He goes there regularly and answers.

    If you want to dive into the technical details about the work of “Dash” and know the language - you can do this in practice - join the open source work on GitHub or openly test the new version of the wallet program .

    Interesting? Want me to get another interview with UdjinM6?
    Write your questions in the comments!

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