Loci is made up of an extraordinary team. We wouldn’t be where we are today without all of the brilliant people supporting this project. Considering the fast pace of the blockchain industry, a forward-thinking team that can readily analyze and overcome hurdles is necessary in order to bring our ideas to life. Today, I want to introduce you all to our Director of Technology, Eric Ross. His role at Loci is to oversee the technological decisions, activities and staff. Eric joined our team this past March, and since then, we have made significant upgrades to our patent research platform, InnVenn, released a new white paper and are launching a token sale on December 8.

The US Patent and Trademark Office makes inventors jump through a lot of hoops to earn rights to their intellectual property. My vision for DIY patent research is to take the hoops out of the patent process. The idea behind Loci was developed after I went through my own patent process following the traditional system; a process that took me 10 years to secure rights to my invention.

Currently the US Patent and Trademark Office works off of a relatively dated system. There is no way to tell if someone submitted a very similar patent file 5 minutes before your company. It can take months to hear back from a representative, who then will tell you that someone beat you to the patent by 5 minutes. And then the patent process starts all over again. This is not to say that the US Patent and Trademark Office does it all wrong, but we feel there are ways that the process can be improved.

Loci wants to do things in a simpler way. We want to make it easier for entrepreneurs to secure intellectual rights to their ideas. Loci makes this possible through the use of blockchain technology. This is where Eric’s ingenuity comes in. He is responsible for creating and maintaining company roadmaps and hitting the developmental milestones along the way. Loci’s technological advances are largely due to his management of the development team.

Our goal is to create a safe and secure platform for Loci to launch our DIY patent research platform, InnVenn, and the upcoming token sale from. Security is of our utmost concern and we are taking the necessary steps to mitigate any unwanted side-effects.

We recently took part in a voluntary smart contract audit, which was conducted by a former ConsenSys employee, Dave Hoover. He is highly knowledgeable and extremely well-versed in the wild west that is blockchain technology. The audit came back favorable thanks to the dedication of our development team and Eric’s meticulous attention to detail and security. Dave mentions in the report summary that, “smart contract security, particularly re-entracy, was clearly at the top of the authors’ minds during the development of these contracts.” There were no critical flaws in the coding. He only had a few minor suggestions, which have already been implemented to further protect Loci users.

With several ICO scams coming to light in this modern day gold rush, we are hyper-aware that the space is full of skepticism. At Loci, we take security very seriously. We want to provide a platform for inventors that is intuitive and user-friendly, but most of all we want to protect user’s information. I am very happy to be a part of a team that is dedicated to being a leader within cyber-security and DIY patent research and earned such a positive review.

Eric comes to us with over a decade of experience in software development before making his transition to consulting and management technical projects. His passion is driving teams forward using technology to solve problems in front of us, which has proven to be an amazing fit for our company. He holds a B.S. in applied physics/computers from Grove City College, but specializes in blockchain technology development and cryptocurrency. He is married with two young daughters and says this job is the most exciting is his career. I hope we can keep it that way!

If Eric’s work interests you, take a look at our whitepaper, here.