DREP Lead-Dev Eric: “Blockchain Development Requires LOGIC.” | DREP Interview Series vol. 3

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DREP family

3 min readSep 17, 2018

After hearing the stories from DREP’s co-founders Xiaolong and Momo, this time Eric Chao, DREP’s China Core Developer, steps out from behind the scene to share his blockchain coding journey. While his Chinese accent might first strike you with a nerdy first impression, Eric soon captivates you with his sophisticated work attitude and in-depth insight into blockchain development. Let’s check it out!

1. CURRENT ROLE IN DREP?

As the lead developer, I’m currently working on DREP Chain and DREP protocol.

2. BRIEF INTRO OF YOURSELF?

First heard about programming at 13, I got very interested in it and started programming by myself every day after school. At 16, I started writing program diaries on my blog and joined a lot of forum discussions.

What were you busy with when you were 16? Well, most people are usually busy with schools and relationships, but I guess Eric already had a bigger picture in his head! ;)

3. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CODING IN A BIG CORPORATE & A BLOCKCHAIN START-UP?

In big companies, you are clear on what you need to do, while in a blockchain start-up you need to learn everything on your own. It’s a lot harder, but I like it! If something we write turns out to not work out, we call it an “experiment” instead of a “failure”. It’s the mistakes we make that help me become more experienced.

If something we write turns out to not work out, we’d call it an “experiment” instead of a “failure”.
— Eric Chao, DREP Lead Developer

4. MOST ATTRACTIVE PART OF DLT & MASS ADOPTION?

What I like is that the Distributed Ledger Technology has so many user applications, one good model I’d like to mention is that we integrate the technology into existing infrastructure, instead of expecting DLT to repeat everything — which is actually a worrisome idea and not realistically achievable, he added.

5. BIGGEST CHALLENGE SO FAR?

Architecture design is the biggest challenge since there are many things to consider: logic, simplicity, and performance. What’s more, you’d need to be patient and detailed oriented.

“Sometimes the code will drive you crazy!” He ended with an exhale and smiled rather shyly to himself.

6. WHAT ARE YOU GOOD AT?

I’m good at algorithm design, and I’m a good developer.

Well, that’s pretty straightforward, Eric! But we like it ;)

7. DESCRIBE DREP IN 1 SENTENCE

DREP is a vertical public chain with a decent performance.

Previous DREP Member Interview Series:

vol.1 Xiaolong Xu, DREP Co-Founder

vol.2 Momo Chang, DREP Co-Founder

ABOUT DREP Foundation
DREP Foundation is devoted to building a performance-oriented technology infrastructure supporting high transaction capacity for an ecosystem generating valuable reputation data. Focusing on two industry pain points: lack of user adoption and low transaction throughput, DREP Foundation aims to provide highly scalable, modular blockchain architecture for deployment of a reputation protocol that any types of platforms can use.
DREP envisions a global plan to empower a wide array of platforms to have tokenized reputation ecosystem deployed on top of DREP Chain, which is secure, scalable and reputation data supportive.