The Rocket Pool team consists of a highly skilled and experienced group of managers and developers:
Founder & CTO
David Rugendyke
David has over 18 years commercial experience as a senior developer with a computer science background and started designing Rocket Pool in late 2016. He is currently committed to developing Rocket Pool full time as the chief technology officer.
General Manager
Darren Langley
Darren has over 18 years commercial experience, he has managed and mentored development teams, designed application architecture, and delivered exciting digital products for government, financial services, blockchain services, and more.
Senior Solidity Engineer
Kane Wallmann
Kane has over 15 years experience in web and application development. In 2017, the Ethereum revolution caught his attention and he has been developing smart contracts and their supporting infrastructure ever since. He also makes pizza!
Senior Blockchain Engineer
Nick Doherty
Nick has over 15 years experience engineering high-level technical solutions in the advertising, e-commerce and finance sectors. With previous quant experience in traditional markets, he is now targeting these skills towards the blockchain.
Senior Blockchain Engineer
Joe Clapis
Joe has over 11 years experience as a software systems engineer and has worked on systems ranging from spacecraft simulators to quantum computers to blockchain apps. He is an avid problem solver and enjoys creating solutions to challenging problems.
Marketing & Community Manager
Maverick (Nick Ashley)
Nick earned his callsign ‘Maverick’ from a background in aviation marketing, in addition to flying light aircraft as a hobby. After bringing years of globe-spanning consulting expertise to the blockchain world, it will be put to good use helping to take Rocket Pool to new heights.
Ecosystem Lead
Grant
Grant has recently joined the team to seek out/expand/monitor/engage with the greater Ethereum ecosystem and to help drive growth and maintain dedicated relationships. He has been in the cryptocurrency scene since around 2014.
Development
Fornax
Fornax is a recent addition from within the Rocket Pool community. Brought in to help with golang and Smartnode development, along with other tasks, he is a well respected community member bringing vast Ethereum expertise to the core team.
Junior Development
Thomas Pan
Tpan came to Rocket Pool from Nethermind where he was a security smart contract intern and worked on zero knowledge proofs and bots for monitoring smart contracts.
The team is always evolving and it is important to note that many members of the larger RP community actively help in development, bug searches and general protocol improvements. Sometimes in a voluntary way and sometimes via the grants and bounties system operated by the protocol DAO1.
Rocket Pool has been at the cutting edge of decentralized Ethereum staking (and LST2 creation) and the core team is constantly taking measures to pass power, such as roadmap development and business incentives, from their hands into the DAO's. As technology and time allow, all aspects of ownership, including such things as hiring devs, will move into the DAO's domain.
1 A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a loose standard in which members of the community control aspects of an organization. More information on the DAOs of Rocket Pool come in later lessons.
2 LSTs (Liquid Staking Tokens) are tokens that represent rights to rewards on other staked tokens. More on LSTs follows in later lessons.
End of lesson 2
