People of OST: Abhay Kumar Singh, Lead Software Engineer

Abhay is a Lead Software Engineer. He has 9+ years experience in full stack development, developing Web based SaaS applications and involved with all facets of the software development lifecycle. He is proficient in building web applications and has led the Pepo Campaigns team. He is currently working in the protocol team at OST. He earned his degree in computer engineering from Army Institute of Technology, University of Pune.

Tell us about yourself!

I’m currently based in Pune, Maharashtra. My hometown is Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. It’s the city of Ghats and Lord Shiva. My father served in the Army for 32 years. My family moved to a new city every three years, so I went to school in various cities of India. In 2009, I completed my bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from Army Institute of Technology in Pune, India. I started my career as a backend developer at a startup called HirePlug. After receiving my bachelors degree, I had various job options to choose from. I can say that starting my career in the startup world was the best decision of my life. Seven years ago, I joined Jason, Nishith, and Sunil at TrueSparrow Systems. I have been part of the various companies and products ever since. This includes Fab, Hem, Pepo Campaigns, Pepo and OST. I have worked in different roles and responsibilities at these companies. I led a team for two years at Pepo Campaigns, an email marketing platform solution. Currently, I contribute to the protocol team as a blockchain developer. My upbringing is hugely influenced by army culture. I play different sports like squash, basketball, table tennis and I also run marathons.

What excites you about blockchain?

In 2017, I got involved in blockchain when we started talking about Pepo Coin. We all know that blockchain is transparent, immutable, and all the participants have access to the same data. It’s very difficult to modify a transaction or data on the blockchain. The blockchain space is quiet revolutionary as many large corporations have started to dabble at blockchain. It’s going to take time for mass adoption, but I think it holds the potential to make a huge difference in today’s governance framework. The idea that we’re creating an open source solution for mainstream blockchain adoption motivates me on a daily basis.

What does your role as Lead Software Engineer at OST entail?

I currently work with the OpenST protocol. I get to do core hands on development and peer code reviews. I’m fortunate to have been working closely with CTO Sunil Khedar and Chief Blockchain Strategist Benjamin Bollen. I’m involved with the overall process for project delivery, from planning projects to execution.

Initially, I started contributing to the protocol by doing peer contract reviews and writing unit and integration tests. I was part of the OpenST 0.9.0 release. While working on the OpenST protocol, I started to get a good understanding of Solidity, EVM, and the test framework here at OST. I then started contributing more towards contract development on other releases. I contributed to contracts including the Price Oracle, Airdrop and Pricer.

In OpenST 0.9.3, I contributed to merkle proof generation and verification modules, which is currently widely used in our protocol. In OpenST 0.9.4, I contributed to the TokenHolder contract and BrandedToken contracts like the gateway composer. I have also contributed to the development of the openst.js and brandedtoken.js interaction layers. I also work with the OST Platform team for the integration of OpenST protocol.

What can you tell us about the OpenST 0.10.0 Beta release?

OpenST v0.10 focuses on enabling the OST Wallet SDK for applications to enable tokens for the end-users in their app. The interaction layers can be used to relay transactions from the SDK to the chains and in general interact with the multiple contracts in the Token Economy. Users now have a Gnosis Safe multisig contract to manage multiple devices and authorize session keys in the TokenHolder contract. Using OpenST contracts, users can do different kinds of transfers based on their business logic. We have also done end to end integration testing for “Stake and Mint” and “Redeem and Unstake” of tokens. We are focusing a lot on contracts’ security by doing team reviews of each and every contract.

What do you look forward to this year?

I think this year is going to be very exciting for us as a company. We have multiple releases lined up in our road map. We’ll see a lot of developments starting with OpenST protocol 0.10.0 and partner pilots. We also have OpenST Mosaic, SDKs, Universal Wallets and many more. I’m especially looking forward to the launch of our partner pilots and how OST can help adoption of blockchain for mainstream applications.

Thank you, Abhay Kumar!

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About OST

OST powers the future of brand loyalty. Innovators use OST Platform to reward behaviours and increase engagement with Brand Currency. It’s a complete set of developer tools that any company can integrate without any in-house blockchain expertise. OST partners reach more than 300 million end-users and we will be rolling out live implementations throughout 2019. OST currently has offices in Berlin, New York, Hong Kong, and Pune, and is expanding to other markets. OST is backed by leading institutional equity investors including Tencent, Greycroft, Vectr Ventures and 500 Startups.