Hello fellow Steemians and PIVians! Welcome to our "PIVX Steemit Original: Meet a PIVian interview series".
At PIVX, we're all about our community and with our Meet a PIVian interview series we want to put PIVians in the spotlight. Make sure to check in often for a new one!
This time we interviewed one of our developers! A PIVian known as “marsmensch”.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Florian and I am living in Munich/Bavaria. I’m 38 but I am told you wouldn't be able to tell. :P
A big passion of mine is obviously everything crypto related, Linux and kernel tweaking. For example, I worked on specialized Linux configurations for ASIC miners in the past.
I love tinkering with hardware, my retro console collection, having a great whisky at the end of a long day and a good run through parks all around the world.
What is your screen name, avatar and how did you get them?
My screen name is usually "marsmensch" when I want people to know that I’m around. The name is an allusion to "Marvin the Martian" with a German twist. Since I’m an old school gamer who loves all pixel stuff from the first games I use Arnoid the Annihilator as my avatar. More info on Arnoid can be found here
When and why did you become a developer?
My family has a long history related to information technology. My father and his best friend started building computers as soon as they became available to the average Joe. In fact, they always had the newest gear and I profited from that. As soon as I was able to hold a keyboard, at around age 5, I coded my first program. It was a text-based adventure written in GW-Basic and running on an IBM XT.
What is your expertise?
I used to code in Assembly, C, PHP, Python and many other languages. Nowadays I mostly work on the planning/architecture side of things and help new developers and students to get started. I don't prefer a specific language and I can use anything that will get the job done.
What was the first project you worked on?
I worked as a developer, development lead and as a software architect. A significant position in that space was working as "Lead Developer" for the Linux Distribution of the City of Munich with responsibilities to lead a team of 9 developers, training the governmental staff and give talks all around the world. I attribute much of my current experience around leadership, stress resistance and corporate structures to these 8 years. My key takeaway: I learned to say "no".
Is there something specific about the way you like to develop?
I am told my code is very easy to read and well structured. Even my shell scripts have a main function.
When you work on other people’s code, what is something that you immediately notice?
I have a talent to spot vulnerabilities and enjoy exploiting them. That helped a lot when my main focus was IT-Security and audits of software/networks in penetration tests as part of my daily routine. The moment of inner peace after successfully finishing a remote code execution exploit is still one of my favorites.
What is the best environment for you to work in?
Give me a lot of coffee, cheesecake and a decent computer and I’m happy.
Let’s say you have the chance to meet yourself when you first became a developer. What advice would you give yourself?
Work and computers aren't everything. Sometimes going home early to start refreshed the next day is the better option.
When and why did you get into cryptocurrency?
In 2013 I began to develop a big interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and the potential for new applications in different industries (Supply chain, real estate, B2B, etc.). My expert Linux skills helped a lot to get things going fast back then when everything was still pre-alpha level quality and the concept brand new. My initial interest grew after a friend told me about a new form of "open source money".
When and why did you get into PIVX?
Usually, people know about me because of my technical knowledge around masternodes that I acquired in 2015/2016. That helped me to see the potential of that technology, when almost nobody else did back then. During a long research night on https://bitcointalk.org/, reading thread after thread, I arrived at the DNET (that's what PIVX was called back then) thread. Their planned switch from PoW to PoS seemed to be an interesting scenario to follow, especially since the project also had masternodes. Luckily, nobody within crypto cared that much about masternodes back then and I had plenty of time to research all fundamentals about the coin economics and development team. I installed and ran one of the first masternodes on the mainnet.
What is your favorite thing about PIVX?
The focus on privacy and 100% fungibility of coins, making use of different established and new technologies.
What have you worked on for PIVX?
I mostly see myself as an external advisor and I try to help wherever I can. My main focus nowadays is not code. I still build PIVX from source at least on a weekly basis for testing and I support the testing team by hosting parts of the infrastructure.
We recently released the Bug Bounty Program. How did this come to be?
I already mentioned my passion about anything security related and my professional background doing security audits. With the growing adoption (and value) of PIVX, a dedicated security program and reporting process to handle security related events is mandatory. Issues like the discovered Zerocoin vulnerability in November 2017 have the potential to put user’s funds at risk. When PIVX found out about the vulnerability the team made sure to act on it as soon as possible. A blog post was written to inform the community while work was already being done on the background to patch the vulnerability. Meanwhile other projects using the same code were informed by PIVX as well, even providing information on how they could patch it themselves.
To address these types of problems that may occur, I have been talking to members of the PIVX team over the past few months. After an initial chat with the founder "s3v3nh4cks", the team committed to do everything it can to improve even more on reducing the overall risk in case of newly reported vulnerabilities and I happily joined that effort.
The Bug Bounty Program is a great result of that effort which will surely improve the quality of our code. You can read more about the Bug Bounty Program here.
After a successful private launch, the HackerOne Bug Bounty Program has been made publicly available and it can be found here.
Why is the Bug Bounty Program so important?
Our proposal is meant to act as the foundation for planning and getting a process for professional & effective vulnerability handling established as soon as possible. The main arguments for an externally accessible bug bounty program are:
- External bug hunters have a different view. There can never be too many eyes involved in reviewing a codebase for security bugs.
- There is no such thing as perfect code. We need reviews to occur at regular intervals to make sure the codebase is as solid as can be.
- Privacy is our top priority and this should be reflected in all areas of our work. The risk of damage to our reputation and other losses in case of a (severe) vulnerability cannot be overestimated.
- Many big companies have run bug bounty programs for years with proven success. This includes only a few blockchain projects. As one of the legit projects around for multiple years, it's our obligation to deliver excellence in all areas of our work.
Being part of the team, you know all about the latest and greatest that is being worked on. What is it that you’re most excited about? Could you perhaps share something that no one else knows about?
Unfortunately, I am lacking the time to contribute as an official developer. The feature I’m most excited about is the foundation the team & community built with the Zerocoin layer. I would love to be able to lock my masternode collateral in zPIV at some point in time.
What is your favorite color?
I love blue. It reminds me of the ocean and sky during hiking tours.
Do you have a crypto dream?
Banking for the unbanked is something I absolutely support. Seeing current levels of unemployment and inflation in many parts of the world I see Bitcoin, PIVX and other technologies built and run in a decentralized manner as a way to include more people that actually want to contribute but can't easily right now. One of my favorite recent examples is Gitcoin, a fantastic combination of open source and cryptocurrency. I have zero doubt that this work model will be widely used in the future. Bitcoin will replace gold as the new reserve standard.
Last question: Do you have a prediction for PIVX at the end of this year and can you elaborate on that?
The last thing a crypto community and project should bother about is price. If a team continues to deliver quality work over the course of multiple years, price will follow sooner or later with big swings in both directions.
One of the most important aspects we as a community must work on is to continuously re-evaluate our governance model and incentivize all members of the network for active participation. Right now, this is not always the case with only a part of masternodes voting and no option for non-masternode holders to vote at all.
Developer appreciation is another critical issue to keep in mind. We as users (including myself) tend to forget that these guys are sometimes working day and night to keep the network alive, look into heavy user problems that our support teams can't answer and imagine the next hot feature at the same time. In my opinion, the developers deserve a success premium for their Zerocoin work. I could go on for ages. Maybe in another article? ;-)
Keep it purple!
Would you like to have a chat with marsmensch? Would you like to know more about PIVX? Join our Discord! (you can find the link below)
If you would like to help support our development team, and allow for further innovation in the cryptocurrency and privacy space, you can do so by sending PIV to: “DSzLW3wQ7776Zy7nZbrSRe2qPViJRviuJE”. Any contribution is greatly appreciated.
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ALL PIVX community members, feel free to RESTEEM this article! Let’s keep spreading the word of our amazing community focused privacy centric global cryptocurrency.
Keep it purple people!