Written by Túlio Braga (CTO at Swapy Network)

Swapy Network is in constant development since the first quarter of 2017. Since then, the technical team has grow from two to 5 talented professionals. Currently, the team is composed by one CTO, one UX/UI Designer, two DApp Developers and one Solidity Developer. With the mission of providing Universal Access to Credit, the team has built a culture that embraces the open source and decentralization movement. In this article you will meet all the technical team members, one by one.

Hardworking. The word that describes the entire life of Túlio Braga (Computer Engineer), the technical leader behind Swapy Network. Being from Brazil, one of the main emerging economies in the world, he has struggled to get access to high-quality education and to become a software developer, something that he had decided to pursue since he was a child. Nevertheless, he brought his passionate and hardworking spirit into life as one of his main leadership characteristics when developing Swapy Network product and team competencies.

Getting to know Bitcoin firsthand in 2012, Túlio acquired a deep knowledge about blockchain between 2014 and 2015, when he was studying abroad in the United States (fully-funded scholarship provided by the Brazilian Government). That time he also took a MOOC from Princeton University at Coursera and summer innovation course at Stanford University which were very helpful in his formation. Back in Brazil by the end of 2015, he first learned about Ethereum in a lecture given by Aaron Van Ammers at BH-TEC Talks meetup. The decentralization enabled the “world computer” boiled his mind. After years learning the topic, the deep knowledge developed by Túlio has been very important during the planning, development, testing, and auditing of Swapy Network and its DApps.

“It has been very exciting to lead a team towards Universal Access to Credit. What we are doing is great, can impact billions! Nothing would be possible without an open-minded team, open to sharing knowledge, open-source lovers, who have the passion to help others for a more sustainable world” — Túlio Braga

In 2015 Ed, Túlio and Plinio conceived the idea of a network in which individuals and organizations in the financial industry would collaborate to reduce the fees, enhance financial inclusion worldwide, and increase the efficiency of the financial market. Since then, that initial idea has grown, giving birth to Swapy Network.

Plinio (UX/UI Designer) developed the branding, user experience, and interfaces of Swapy Network, and has been responsible for all design of the company. With the constant concern of allowing even ordinary people to use Swapy without friction, he is continuously improving the products. Also passionate about solving the problem of access to credit, Plinio demonstrates a high level of commitment to the project.

“When designing for blockchain is important to emphasize that everything the users do is permanent. The challenge resides in how to communicate it visually in the most efficient way. In a field with particular terminology, and specific nuances like blockchain, the details are vital to assure a consistent and easily understandable user experience.” — Plinio Braga

When Adriel joined the team back in May 2017 as a Junior Developer, he had never heard about Ethereum before. Since Túlio was already teaching himself the technologies related to blockchain, he provided Adriel with the steps to learn too. Demonstrating his incredible learning skills, Adriel rapidly got the needed knowledge to develop decentralized applications in Ethereum and became an important member of the team. Currently, Adriel is responsible for code the Swapy Exchange new interfaces designed by Plinio.

“Working at Swapy has made me realize the great power of the blockchain community. The blockchain brings loads of people together to solve real-world problems. I’m glad that Swapy is solving the access to credit problem and even more glad to be part of it!” — Adriel Santos

Because of the lack of Ethereum developers available for employment, the strategy Tulio, Plinio, and Adriel adopted to select more developers for their team was to reward the candidates with an Ethereum Udemy MOOC course together with a Solidity challenge to solve. Having more than 8 years of software development experience, the connections Túlio made during his career were also helpful. After hearing recommendations and evaluating the completion of the challenge, Icaro Harry and Luís Philipe also joined the Swapy dev team in September 2017.

Since the first day, Luís showed his interest in Smart Contracts development, focusing his self-learning in Solidity and the EVM. He was responsible for implementing the Swapy Exchange protocol and is currently responsible for implementing the contracts and API to communicate to IPFS in order to establish the Swapy Financial ID, a self-sovereign identity. Similarly to the rest of the team, Luís hardworking led him to became aficionado in Smart Contracts development best practices and security guidelines, having read many threads about the topic. One example is the guide provided by ConsenSys.

“I’m glad to participate in the blockchain revolution working at Swapy Network. Great things are being made by our hands.” — Luis Philipe

Being a more experienced Javascript developer, Ícaro quickly became a reference in the ecosystem as a decentralized application developer. He was key in complex implementations, such as the integration of Metamask into desktop applications using Electron (Muon). He was also responsible for prototyping the Swapy Financial ID (self-sovereign identity) using the uPort platform. More recently, he solved the challenge of integrating the Crypto-js library with the CRNA (Create React Native App) — article explaining the solution will come soon.

“Swapy is revolutionizing the access to credit worldwide through open source software and blockchain technology. I’m glad to be part of this dream” — Ícaro Harry

The team statistics

Below see the statistics of Swapy dev team from the official Github. The numbers were extracted from https://github.com/swapynetwork.

Total of commit on master: 856 commits

Over 250 commits on side branches

Total of deletions on master: 75305 lines of code

Total of additions on master: 863292 lines of code

Total repositories: 16 repositories

Total stars: 84 stars distributed among all repositories

Most starred repository: swapy-exchange-protocol

Most engaging repository: electron-metamask-boilerplate

Swapy Exchange Alpha v0.0.3 is available at https://www.swapy.network/download. The alpha was first released in October 2017 and is in intense development. The team expect to release an alpha version of Swapy Financial ID yet this month.

Learn more about Swapy Network: