Meet the Team: Introducing Denali Marsh- Smart Contract Engineer at Coral Protocol
Coral Protocol is excited to announce an incredible new member to our growing team who has been with us for a few months now!
Denali Marsh comes to us with real-life blockchain experience having written smart contracts while attending the University of San Francisco pursuing his degree in Computer Science.
It’s rare to come across an individual who has gone to school for engineering specific to blockchain technology, but Denali is one of those unicorns. And of all the thousands of companies in the crypto/ blockchain space offering him positions, he chose to work with us!
We’re flattered and have been thoroughly appreciating all that he’s brought to the table already.
In a Q + A with Denali, we talked about how he got into blockchain.
“My first exposure to cryptocurrency was through a friend in the Computer Science department at the University of San Francisco who was an early investor in Ethereum. The cryptocurrency and blockchain hype spread on campus like wildfire during the price run-up of June-July 2017 and quite a few of us got into the blockchain scene professionally. San Francisco and Silicon Valley have been at the forefront of blockchain industry, so there was a lot of potential for us to learn the technology and find interesting ways to apply the fundamental concepts. So, mostly, it was right place right time.”
Fun Fact #1: The same friend who got him into crypto at USF is now the CTO of Dispatch Labs, another company at the HERE collective space where Coral Protocol operates out of!
Continuing on with our Q+ A… how did you get into blockchain programming (smart contracts)?
“My first professional experience with smart contracts was through Flow Immersive on a project to create immutable proof of provenance chains for digital content, specifically data-rich virtual reality scenes. I wrote a series of Solidity smart contracts to store information about the virtual reality scenes and deployed them to the Ethereum blockchain.”
What did you learn from the experience?
“I learned a lot about the shortcomings of putting data on-chain (it’s expensive and slow) and from there began to explore smart contract optimization and security. On-chain operations require the expenditure of gas, which can quickly run up costs, so optimization and efficiency are very important. Secure smart contracts aren’t just desirable, they’re mandatory — a single flaw can compromise an entire cryptocurrency.”
“I wanted to write efficient, secure smart contracts, so I dove deep into Solidity and the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), which runs smart contracts on the blockchain. I spent a lot of time playing with the opcodes involved in smart contract compilation and execution on the EVM and studied a bunch of public audit reports done by top-tier auditing firms like Zeppelin and New Alchemy.”
Fun Fact #2: Denali is a certified smart contract security auditor on Solidified and Bounty One, two decentralized auditing platforms which aim to streamline the auditing process!
How did you move from school into the blockchain industry professionally?
“As I began to get more involved in the blockchain scene, I started attending Meetups and hackathons in the Bay area. My first was a small Nebulas hackathon (another platform for smart contract development), where I had a blast! Inspired by my experience, I applied for the DoraHacks Blockchain for Future Hackathon and had a great time making friends and programming all night with people who were excited about the same technologies I’d been working with. My team worked with the Bodhi Prediction Network on the QTUM blockchain and added some smart contracts to their infrastructure. It was pretty hacked together and technically wasn’t operational by the 8 am deadline (hey it’s a hackathon!) but Bodhi liked the concept and selected our project for their sponsor prize.
From there, I ended up attending the ABC Blockchain Awakens Hackathon Sponsored by Binance Labs which was way more professional than the other two. I showed up late without a team and they almost didn’t let me in, but somehow I talked my way through security and onto a team working on a really innovative project to optimize the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Since we were actually building a blockchain instead of writing smart contracts to be executed on the blockchain, I was totally out of my element — but once again I learned a lot. *That’s what’s so cool about hackathons, you meet so many people with different expertise and talents (and you get to take home the free pillows they give out at night!)”
Fun Fact #3: Denali’s apartment is mostly just a place to store his branded blockchain hackathon pillows. (He opts to spend a lot of time at the office because he loves what he does!)
What made you so excited about working at Coral Protocol?
“Lack of public trust in blockchain transactions is the primary issue limiting real world use of blockchain technologies. Coral Protocol’s vision of active blockchain security for transactions will accelerate adoption of blockchain technologies by increasing trust for all parties in the ecosystem.”
Why are you so passionate about blockchain?
“Blockchain technologies will change the world. In terms of technological innovation, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg.
“This tweet the other day from CZ, the founder of Binance, sums up my thoughts pretty well.”
Fun Fact #4: Denali is named after Denali National Park in Alaska.
Fun Fact #5: Denali has technological aptitude in his DNA. Both his dad and his two brothers are also software developers!
Needless to say, we’re glad he kept with the family tradition :)
You can look forward to future Medium posts authored by Denali himself on smart contracts and more!
