In this edition of RCON3 Interview series, we catch up on the progress and promise of the RChain project with none other than Medha Parlikar – Program Manager, Pyrofex/RChain – a woman whose management experience and world-class leadership continues to push the entire operation forward.
Pyrofex partnership: the journey to build RChain
Medha has experience working with software services technology since 1999, back in the early days of the internet. She was approached by good friend Nash Foster, CEO and founder of Pyrofex, with the proposition of taking up a senior management role on the newly aligned RChain partnership.
Technology brings about a better and brighter future. It can be a bumpy ride getting there, but the consumer wins. Everybody wins. It transforms society, it transforms the way people live in a very positive way.
Perseverance paying off
RChain treads uncharted territories on multiple axes, namely: improving upon the pain points of a groundbreaking technology (blockchain), and doing so as a cooperative organization. As a tremendously busy 2018 nears its end, Medha reflected on how aggressive the timelines have been for a project of this magnitude, with goals of pioneering blockchain technology.
From the perspective of driving the core technology, a particular point of pride for Medha has been delivering on promises by getting features completed and delivered within these demanding conditions.
Testnet launch at RCon3 is certainly a high point worth celebrating, but the work doesn’t stop now. The roadmap has several ambitious milestones RChain aims to achieve. The RHOC/REV transfer, establishing a strong validator community, onboarding fresh talent to work with the new smart contract language rholang, and of course, empowering companies with the information and resources necessary to transition from proof of concept to viable businesses on the RChain platform.
Medha and the team are prepared to take everything head-on and in stride. RChain publicly airs weekly debriefs on YouTube and discloses a considerable amount of workflow via JIRA, Github, Discord, and web content such as this post.
RChain mainnet deployment is slated to take place during the first quarter of 2019. Medha anticipates that adoption of RChain for prospective smart contract developers will be slow and steady- something she perceives as a good thing. Incremental adoption gives developers time to see how the blockchain is performing, which will allow larger projects to start building on the RChain platform more readily towards the 12-month time frame post-main net release. At this point, a more robust set of static check and behavioral type check tools will exist to ensure quality control going forward.
RChain’s vision: Correct by construction
The RChain project is diligently committed to building a correct by construction platform from the ground up. It is of the utmost importance that developers, validators, businesses, and consumers have faith in the secureness of RChain while they interact on the blockchain. Medha believes that trust in code, on each level of the RChain project is crucial for operational success.
You cannot build the world’s financial models on top of a system that is prone to bugs, people will not have confidence in it.
To ensure these goals are met, the RChain roadmap, which as of RCon3 in early September has launched test net, plans to have a Mercury main network release early in 2019, followed by a subsequential Venus release with an entire suite of new features.
Venus release expectations:
- Static type checker.
- Behavioral type checker: a feature that will enable developers to make sure their rholang smart contracts are indeed performing what they are intended to do.
Correct by construction philosophy is all about building a strong foundation that can securely uphold the RChain platform, provide a high level of confidence to all parties onboard, and maintain the sanctity of transactions and records on the blockchain for years to come.
A call to developers in the space
For Medha, the hallmark of a good developer in the blockchain space today is one who is entreprenueral. An individual who is willing to read software documentation, learn about a space as a whole, identify opportunities, and execute plans to succeed.
Blockchain entrepreneurs are more than self-starters; they seek out need-gaps and relentlessly pursue solutions. Other than contributing to RChain’s core, Medha believes that there also exists an enormous opporunity to build on top of the revolutionary platform and truly harness its potential.
Some of the aspects Medha believes are well worth research and development surrounding RChain:
- Developer tools
- Web3 equivalent infrastructure
- Validator software
There’s a lot of opportunity beyond just DApps, to build tools that leverage the RChain platform and support applications attached to RChain.
RChain’s Vision: https://youtu.be/aIZHmyu2s9Y