We’re counting down the days until the Radix Olympia mainnet release on July 28th. Everyone on the Radix team has been heads-down focused on preparation activities for a smooth launch, but we managed to get some time with two key people in the dev and product team.
This “meet the team” blog series gives you a glimpse of the people making Radix a reality. In the previous post, we introduced Aftab & Yulong.
Today we are thrilled to present two masterminds who align the product and the code with the Radix vision - Matt and Josh!
Matthew Hine - Head of Product - Radix DLT
Matthew grew up in Southern California around the dawn of the Internet age, hanging out on dial-up BBSes with a cadre of geeks and proto-cyberpunks who entirely went into software development. Never missing an opportunity to be contrary, he moved to Texas and got a Mechanical Engineering degree from Rice University.
Over most of a decade spent at Texas Instruments, Matthew championed groundbreaking opto-mechanical system designs for various high-performance DLP display products, including creating TI’s automotive DLP display group that is now putting HD heads-up displays on windshields. There he also learned that his true joy and skill in engineering lay in being a technology bridge-builder: creating and communicating unimagined new product architectures using complex deep technologies, with a perspective drawn from across engineering disciplines, business, marketing, and more.
Breaking free from the corporate world, Matthew set out in search of more exciting products to build, and smaller companies to build them with, working across markets as wide-ranging as medical devices, cinema projection, head-mounted displays, 3D scanning, and hyperspectral imaging.
The implications of blockchain struck Matthew’s brain like a nam-shub, and there was no ignoring the call; this was the most important deep technology he could get his hands on, and Radix had the good stuff.
We asked Matt a little more about his role below:
My primary job is Head of Product, which means that I’m responsible for defining our product vision and strategy, and working across our teams to make those products happen. I’m here to ensure that our development team can focus on building things that we are confident will truly fulfill Radix’s potential.
And that potential nearly couldn’t be more enormous. We’re talking about a multi-year roadmap to finally create decentralized network infrastructure and development tools that are good enough for a new, more democratic, and better global financial system. My tolerance for hype is extremely low; my mission is to take the time to build what actually has the fundamentals to change how the world runs, rather than fooling ourselves that we’ve already succeeded because we got a bunch of speculators tweeting about us.
I also end up being a bit of a resident generalist because I can’t keep myself from being interested in all of the things that this technology inevitably touches – whether economics, law, community, governance, or you name it... even history and philosophy.
When I was wandering the crypto wastelands for a couple of years, looking for where I could sink some roots, Radix was so different from what I had encountered. Here was the tech that unmistakably had emerged from minds comprehending the true scope of the problem. Here were individuals with perspective on the world, rather than living in a crypto or VC bubble. Humanitarian ideals, strong ethics, and clear-eyed realism in one place! There’s no place else I’d be.
Joshua Primero - Core Developer - Radix DLT
Josh graduated from Carnegie Mellon, the top-ranking computer science school in the world, in 2010. He began his career with the research-oriented NVIDIA GPU-virtualization team, working on state-of-the-art innovation with the brightest minds in the industry.
After four years working at the top of the industry, Josh became disillusioned with technology and left it to live a mostly-tech-free, world-travel life. Josh made a living by working remotely with several startups.
After a few years of working on “brain-dead-frontend-backend-web-mobile” technology, as he calls it, Josh felt the itch to get back to “the real work.” With the rise of crypto in 2017, it became apparent what this real work would be, and Josh joined the Radix DLT team in 2018.
We asked Josh a little more about his role below:
I work on all things technical regarding the consensus (Cerberus) and the execution environment (Radix Engine). My role has ranged from scientist to architect to programmer.
As a scientist, I develop theory when necessary; Cerberus came about because of the need for a theoretical framework around sharded consensus.
As an architect, I convert theory into a usable system/data architecture. There are many pitfalls that can occur in this area and I protect Radix from making big, costly, too-late-when-you-find-out mistakes.
And lastly and most importantly, as a programmer I am on the ground with the Network team grinding on the Java core code every day, together molding the finest piece of ledger software the world has ever seen.
The crypto world is an all-or-nothing game and Radix is a dark horse and everyone on the team acts like it. To win/survive, we must make correct difficult decisions more often than not. We must mix risk-taking with conservatism, product decisions with engineering decisions, short-term vs long-term, internal vs. external effects and-so-on. It’s thrilling and I’m lucky to be part of a team willing to take on such a challenge.
If you would like to join the fight for the future of finance at Radix, check out our open positions on our careers page: https://www.radixdlt.com/careers/.