Joining Protocol Labs
2018-01-24 22:35
I’m pumped to announce that I’m joining Protocol Labs as a software engineer. Those following me on Twitter or looking on my GiHub activity might have already got some hints.
Short term
My main focus is currently on IPLD (InterPlanetary Linked Data). I’ll smooth things out and also work on the IPLD specs, mostly on IPLD Selectors. Those IPLD Selectors will be used to make the underlying graph more efficient to traverse (especially for IPFS). That’s a lot of buzzwords, I hope it will get clearer the more I’ll blog about this.
To get started I’ve done the JavaScript IPLD implementations for Bitcoin and Zcash. Those are the basis to make easy traversal through the Bitcoin and Zcash blockchains possible.
Longer term
In the longer term I’ll be responsible to bring IPLD to Rust. That’s especially exciting with Rust’s new WebAssembly backend. You’ll get a high performance Rust implementation, but also one that works in Browsers.
What about Noise?
Many of you probably know that I’ve been working full-time on Noise for the past 1.5 years. It shapes up nicely and is already quite usable. Of course I don’t want to see this project vanish and it won’t. At the moment I only work part-time at Protocol Labs, to also have some time for Noise. In addition to that there’s also interest within Protocol Labs to use Noise (or parts of it) for better query capabilities. So far it’s only rough ideas I mentioned briefly at the end of my talk about Noise at the [Lisbon IPFS Meetup] two weeks ago. But what’s the distributed web without search?
What about geo?
I’m also part of the OSGeo community and FOSS4G movement. So what’s the future there? I see a lot of potential in the Sneakernet. If geo-processing workflows are based around IPFS, you could use the same tools/scripts whether it is stored somewhere in the cloud, or access you local mirror/dump if your Internet connection isn’t that fast/reliable.
I expect non-realiable connectivity to be a hot topic at the FOSS4G 2018 conference in Dar es Salaam, Tansania.
Conclusion
I’m super excited. It’s a great team and I’m looking forward to push the distributed web a bit forward.
Categories: en, ProtocolLabs, IPLD, IPFS, JavaScript, Rust, geo