People of OST — Gulshan Vasnani, Blockchain Engineer
Gulshan Vasnani is passionate about learning and understanding new technologies. He has more than three years of experience as a full-stack developer in technologies like Java, Hibernate, JavaScript, Knockout.js, CSS, Sass, Ant, and Jenkins. His interests include playing cricket, watching movies, and listening to music.
Tell us about yourself!
I was born and raised in Mumbai, India. I completed my bachelor’s degree in computer engineering at Mumbai University in 2014. I started my career in November 2014 at Oracle Financial Services(OFSS) as an Application Developer. At OFSS,I worked on banking applications. I joined OST as a Blockchain Engineer in May 2018.
What excites you about blockchain?
I used to attend hackathons and blockchain meetups that were held in Mumbai. That is where I developed an interest in blockchain. What excites me about blockchain is its ability to combine the security of cryptographic storage and the transmission of encoded data with peer-to-peer networking to create a shared database, which ultimately means it removes the middlemen from the system. Blockchain has unique uses in various industries. As we know, the blockchain has an immutable property which creates permanent entries of all the events that have happened right from the start on the blockchain. The data on the blockchain is also tamper-proof.
What does your role as blockchain engineer at OST entail?
I’m in OST’s protocol team working under chief blockchain strategist Benjamin Bollen. My role is to program secure and robust smart contracts to enable companies and developers to build token economies on Ethereum. I work with OpenST and Brand Token contracts. While developing contracts we work on various Ethereum standards called EIPs. I have worked on integrating the EIP-1077 standards into contracts. I have also contributed to interaction layer majorly towards openst.js and brandedtoken.js. We continuously learn best practices for writing secure smart contracts. One of the biggest challenges for blockchain is scalability, so we are trying to solve that challenge for mainstream applications.
EIP-1077 is used to write an executable transaction. It lets users sign messages to show the intent of execution, but allows a third party relayer to execute them. This is an emerging pattern being used in many projects.
What do you look forward to for OST in the following months?
In the coming months, I’m looking forward to the launch of our partner pilots and how OST can help the adoption of blockchain for mainstream applications. I’m also looking forward to more exciting work at OST.
Thank you, Gulshan!
Be sure to check out last week’s interview with OST director engineering Deepesh Kumar Nath. Subscribe to our YouTube channel or listen to the audio format anywhere you listen to podcasts, including iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. We’re also now available on Alexa! Simply add “OST LIVE” to your flash briefing.
About OST
OST blockchain infrastructure empowers new economies for mainstream businesses and emerging DApps. OST leads development of the OpenST Protocol, a framework for tokenizing businesses. In September 2018 OST introduced the OpenST Mosaic Protocol for running meta-blockchains to scale Ethereum applications to billions of users. OST KIT is a full-stack suite of developer tools, APIs, and SDKs for managing blockchain economies. OST partners reach more than 300 million end-users. OST has offices in Berlin, New York, Hong Kong, and Pune. OST is backed by leading institutional equity investors including Tencent, Greycroft, Vectr Ventures, and 500 Startups.
