Introduction

This being my first entry, I feel a slight need to introduce myself. At the time of writing this, I am 24 years old, I was born in 1998, and since I come from Maribor, Slovenia, where we’re like ten years behind the western world, I still consider myself more of a 90s baby. Having been born at the start of the fast-evolving era of technology, I literally grew up going from needing to unplug the landline phone to surf the internet to have the world’s info in the palm of my hand, so understanding the technology was never a problem for me. I’m currently finishing my Master’s Degree study at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. I’ve been in the Computer Science industry for about four years now. Still, my love and interest in technology and computer science have been keeping me company since I was ten years old - at first, having the need to play every video game released but having no money to afford it, so I had to become a pirate to get it for free, and later starting to wonder how video games are made, how the internet works, and how exactly can I write something in a simple input field and the person at the other end of the world receives my message instantly. It was all the whys and the hows until I was 14 when I first wrote a piece of code - it was a simple Python script, a console application that gave info about some PCs and hardware that was decent at the time. The information was not fetched from anywhere but was simply a hardcoded string that displayed when “navigating” to a specific section - but it was a beginning. I have also been obsessed with privacy since I remember, and I always had to have everything in control, which may be a vital factor explaining my interest in Web3 and data privacy.

Feel free to check out my Linktree for links to my professional and social profiles and my GitHub.

Ideology & Interests

Some of the people I meet in my everyday life don’t actually get why I spend time trying to contribute to Web3 and trying so hard to be an exemplary participant in it. Even some of my professors think Blockchain technology doesn’t solve any problem that hasn’t already been solved. While that might be true for the majority of “projects” out there, I believe there are still a lot of technical and social unsolved problems for which the blockchain may present a solution. Of course, I am not expecting every single thing and platform in the world to switch or use blockchain technology. It doesn’t even make sense in most cases. But, staying private, owning my data, being sure there’s no central authority that can shut me down whenever they want, and being independent and not relying on a few third parties providing me services online seems like a real treat. The thing I like about Web3 is that theoretically, no one can be censored, and no one can be excluded from participating. Give power to the people, make them somehow equal, and let’s see what happens.

A quote from a blockchain documentary I really like:

“Hold on. Satoshi turned money into code. Code is just letters and numbers, which is speech, right? So money now is speech, which is a pretty powerful idea if you think about it.”

- Torsten Hoffman, Cryptopia, 2020

Experience & Current Work

My first student job was setting up routers and TV receivers for a local ISP here in Maribor, Slovenia. Then, I started my work at Nicehash, where I first worked as an iOS Developer on Nicehash mobile app and then on a backend responsible for managing miners mining via Nicehash’s platform. After Nicehash, I worked at a company that I am not even going to mention as it doesn’t deserve any publicity and advertisement since the quality of their products and the company’s lead is trash. After that shitty company, I found out about Blockchain Lab:UM, where I currently work, and is actually my first job directly related to blockchain and Web3. I worked on a Moodle plugin for the EduCTX network. This is the product I am the proudest of in a weird, funny way because a great part of it is written in PHP, which I dislike, and my work on it has become a running gag with my colleagues.

And so we arrive at the Masca - an SSI Snap for MetaMask, our most actively developed project, and our baby. There is too much I have to tell about it, so please, if you’re interested, feel free to explore our Medium posts and check out Blockchain Lab:UM’s Linktree.

Conclusion

Joining the Mirror, my first entry briefly introduces myself, presents my ideology and interests, and gives an overview of my experience and projects I worked on and am working on. Please do not expect regular entries from me or to stick to a specific topic. This is more of a personal blog. I am willing to write when inspired and have time and something to write about.

You can still subscribe to me or collect this entry.

Written with ❤️, from me to you.