Why I Am A Hush Core Developer
I have been making web applications for 20(!) years now. I started with making credit card processing CGI scripts in Perl in 1997. We have come a long way.
The web and Perl have treated me so well, but I find that web apps feel boring to me. Mostly websites these days are run by internet marketers trying to sell you penis pills or tell you how to “live free” by strapping into the horrific and sick Facebook Ads ecosystem. When I started, the web was free, like the Wild West. It has become so centralized by greedy and sick people who want nothing more than to drive a new SUV every few months and live in a McMansion in a gated community. The web I knew is almost dead, but I see a glimmer of hope.
That hope is The Blockchain. Bitcoin and the currently almost 1000 cryptocurrenices that have spawned from it enable so many amazing things, in a completely decentralized manner. It is the Wild West on The Blockchain, and the future of web apps are to be blockchain-enabled, to interact with the vast decentralized ecosystems of new cryptocoins, digital currencies and applications powered by these new coins.
I have been involved, mining and learning about Bitcion since 2011, when it was only $0.30 USD, and it is hovering around $5000 USD lately. I have known about many of the other "altcoins" for years, but never paid them any attention. But when the big Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash fork happened, I dove deep into understanding what was going on, and happened to stumble upon Hush, a fork of the very respectable Zcash cryptocoin. Zcash and Hush just "make sense" and fix so many issues with the underlying Bitcoin for various use cases. For instance, all transaction amounts in Bitcoin are public, so you can search for all transactions of say, 1.238045 BTC and see who makes transactions of that amount. It is a metadata leak, among many many other things.
Zcash, Hush and cryptocoins based on zkSNARKs technology are the future, and I do not see anything else out there remotely as interesting as the future of money in our society. You are cordially invited to our Slack(UPDATE: Discord is used now) which currently has over 1100 friendly people. I recommend the #developers, #mining and #exchanges channels if any of those sound interesting. Be well!