Crypto Teams & Individuals

Tiago Alves Dulce Developer Q&A

In this Q&A, we’re joined by Decred Politeia developer Tiago Alves Dulce. For those interested in their work and contributions, these can be found on GitHub – https://github.com/tiagoalvesdulce.

For those not familiar, Politeia is the open-source platform that Decred’s governance proposal system and Decred’s contractor management system runs on. It's a client-server web application, where the server is built around a versioned data store that is episodically timestamped onto the Decred blockchain.

Let’s start by learning a little about Tiago’s background, Interests, hobbies, and how they became a developer?

Tiago: I studied Computer Engineer in Brazil and graduated back in 2018. My first experience with code was on my freshman year, and I was amazed with the things I could build with it. But it was only during a student exchange program in the US in 2015/2016 that I started focusing on Software Development using C++. Later on, I decided to focus on frontend development using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which I continue to do today on Politeia. I’m also passionate about gaming, game dev and sports.

How did you become interested in cryptocurrencies, and what was the catalyst for diving in deeper?

Tiago: When I came back from my exchange program in the middle of 2016 I shared an apartment with two other old Decred contributors – Victor (vctt94) and Fernando (fernandoabolafio) – and two other friends. Victor was pretty passionate about cryptocurrencies and used to pitch it to us all the time. Fernando and I were still skeptical about it. At the end of 2017, Victor started contributing to Decred, and we decided to take a look into it. We liked what we saw. It was a good opportunity to contribute to a cool open-source project, and we started doing it at the beginning of 2018. As time went by, I researched more and more about the project and got pretty passionate about it.

Phoenix: I hear this a lot and even in my own Decred journey I have experienced a similar impact from the project. On the surface it seems like many other projects, but as you go deeper you start to realise unlike others it’s not just lip service, the technology has actually been built, and it works.

Out of interest, how do you feel Decred differs from other projects and from your perspective, how is the project being moved forward?

Tiago: Governance. I think it’s the only crypto project that is doing it the right way. I’m currently working on Decred governance system by helping to move the politeiagui to a plugin architecture, so we can build cool things with it besides Politeia and the contractor Management System (CMS).

Phoenix: I think the idea of moving Politeia to a web framework with a plugin architecture is very intriguing. I’m uncertain if it’s fully possible now or in the future, but I quite like the idea of being able to use the Politeia framework as a crypto version of a content management system. The user functionality plugins like comments, User authentication, User identity and the DCR payments plugin for member access make this a pretty rounded package.

How do you see this new plug-in architecture playing a role in Decred’s governance system or the growth of the project?

Tiago: As soon as we get politeia’s plugin architecture ready, we can use it to build off-chain applications with blockchain anchoring for different use cases. We think that in the future, people will be able to scaffold a “politeia-like” application and customize it with multiple plugins.

What would you like to see Decred work on next, and how might you be able to help with this?

Tiago: I think we have many cool projects going on. The DEX is pretty nice, lightning network is promising… I’m very excited to finish the politeia architecture migration and see what can be built with it.

Phoenix: Agreed, Decred DEX (DCRDEX) is the technology that I’m most hyped about at the moment. But when you start to think about these three technologies combining, things start to get really exciting! But that’s a discussion for another day.

In your opinion, what are the three things every cryptocurrency should include?

Tiago: Good governance, be expensive to attack and be sustainable.

Finally, is there anything else you would like to add that could give the community a better understanding of your work or your ethos?

Tiago: I like to work on new things and experiment with new APIs. That’s how I created https://twitter.com/dcrtimestampbot.

I’ve been speaking with the CoinShuffle bot owner about take over the project, and a proposal to continue this work is currently up on Politeia for discussion and voting.