Between the Blocks: Doug Beardsley
Welcome to Kadena’s Personnel Series, where we showcase some of the most brilliant and talented minds behind Kadena! Since its inception in 2016, Kadena has continuously pushed the boundaries of innovation, being the only Layer 1 Proof-of-Work blockchain that has solved the Blockchain Trilemma. Kadena’s extraordinary achievements would not be possible without the hard work, visions and talent of its team members.
Today, we will be taking a deep dive with Doug Beardsley, Director of Engineering at Kadena and Technical Advisor of Kadena Eco. Doug has been with Kadena since 2018 and has become an integral part of our community. Doug also hosts Kadena Eco Office Hours on Twitter Spaces, where he provides the most recent updates and developments at Kadena!
We will be exploring a more personal side of Doug, including his interests, passions, and his vision for the future.
How did you get into the world of web3 and crypto?
I started writing software at a young age and have been working in software professionally for close to 20 years. I have worked in defense, cyber security, finance, and tech industries, writing both backend and frontend systems.
Who introduced you to Kadena?
I first met one of the Kadena founders in the New York City functional programming community via the meetup and conference events that I had organized. We kept in touch over the years and eventually Kadena was looking for engineers at a time that coincided with me being available.
Can you highlight your journey through Kadena and what you’ve learned?
I never could have predicted the path that I would take starting out as an engineer and eventually transitioning into the role of Director of Engineering. All along the way, the journey has been fascinating; there was a huge amount of new learnings and new problems to solve, with the problems spanning from getting up to speed with the basics of how blockchains work to pushing forward the state of the art through the development of safer transaction patterns, better use of multi-sig, etc. There is always something new to learn.
How has Kadena evolved outside of your expectations over the last few years?
Kadena has evolved tremendously. It’s really fun to work in a small startup environment where you have to evolve yourself continuously to meet the changing needs of the business and the industry.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I couldn’t possibly say. The Kadena team is by far the best group of people I’ve ever worked with and I really can’t imagine anything else topping this. In the coming years, I would like to see Kadena continue to push forward the state-of-the-art in the blockchain industry and make genuine advances in worldwide payment and finance infrastructure with a seamless end-user experience and ability to scale to meet global demand.
What other fun and interesting things do you do when you aren’t creating magic codes?
In my spare time I do a lot of rock climbing and more generally exploring a variety of movement skills.
What advice would you give to developers looking to build/work in Web3?
The best way to learn is by getting your hands dirty and building things. Work on projects that seem too big for you and aggressively seek out people with more experience who you can learn from.
We hope that you enjoyed getting to know Doug on a more personal level. Be sure to keep up with Doug by following his Twitter and Github!
