Hello and welcome to the first edition of our monthly “Meet the Team” article where we get to learn more about Luxcore team members. Luxcore has a great team that is fully dedicated to the future of this project. In 2019, we’ve added several more amazing members and they each bring their own talents and experiences to add to our diverse team. Over the next few months we will take the time to go more in depth about the faces behind Luxcore, asking questions about their backgrounds, what they are working on at Luxcore, and other questions you want to know about.

Let’s kick off our first article with our LuxGate developer, Sebastian.

Sebastian, we asked the community on Twitter who was the first person they wanted interviewed and you won the poll. Why do you think that is?

I’m not sure to be completely honest. But if I remember correctly I’ve seen someone say “All you had to say was LuxGate” so that might have something to do with it. Luxgate is super exciting and I know the community is anxious to hear more about it and the progress being made.

In your bio, it says you pursued aviation studies… can you elaborate on that?

Since I was a child, flying was very fascinating to me, that’s why I decided to start the studies. The problem was, that there was a lecture about programming. From this point on, I was more interested in improving my coding skills than learning all the aviation stuff. When I then joined the Luxcore team, I decided to quit the studies to fully focus on the web wallet and all the other stuff. Since then I haven’t started any other studies, but I am planning to spend time studying software engineering to continue with what I’ve already learned.

When you’re not working on LUX, what do you like to do? Any interests/hobbies you want to share?

Most of my free time I spend with my girlfriend, my family and friends. I also try to go to the gym 2–3 times a week to stay in shape. Besides that, I am very interested in cars. My father taught me how to drive at the age of 10 (of course not on the street!) and I also learned how to service/repair cars from him. So if there is anything wrong with my car, I am able to fix it myself instead of driving to the garage.

You’ve been with Luxcore since 2017. Could you talk a little about your history with the project?

First off, I started with the web wallet. I came up with the idea for the web wallet and the team really liked it. There were other “web wallets” at the time, but no one had a web wallet that could securely stake your coins for you 24/7. This would be a huge convenience for users. It did turn into a really big project though. The initial development took months (December 2017 to April 2018), and even now it’s not perfect. But I know a lot of users have benefited from it and love the convenience. In mid 2018 I decided to develop an explorer from scratch, because the open source explorer we were relying on had lots of problems (long indexing time and not much information). I also wanted to prove to myself that I am capable of building a better version. After building the new block explorer, I started working on Luxgate. That’s currently my main focus.

I know right now you are putting in a lot of work on Luxgate, but what other projects are you working on?

As the web wallet still throws some errors from time to time, this is also something I take care of continuously. I’m always looking at ways to improve it and make it better for the users. Besides that, I am doing some work for DFS and Luxedge, but there will be a lot more information to come down the road about those!

What is the thing you are most proud of?

Well, honestly I’m just proud of the team for sticking through the tough times. We have certainly had some challenges, but we stuck it out and things are really looking bright now. The team is a real tight-knit group. We work well together and have rallied together during the tough times to make it through. And now things look so much better for the future.

Blockchain is an exciting field and we can see many ways it will improve existing markets and create new markets. If someone wanted to get involved in blockchain/crypto, where should they start? Any specific languages?

Yeah, blockchain development is definitely an exciting field. There are a lot of opportunities out there right now and I for one thing that trend will continue. If you were just getting started and had no experience, I would say pick a programming language to start learning. Bitcoin was written in C++ and most crypto projects share that. But even if you picked something like Python (which may be easier for beginners), you would learn a lot of important concepts and could write interfaces that utilize blockchain. One cool thing is just because a particular project is written in one language (like C++), you have so many different things that utilize or interface with it that may be written in different languages or run on totally unique platforms. You might build a web application in Node.js/Ruby/Python/PHP that interfaces with a wallet. Then there are mobile applications written natively for Android or iOS. And of course Smart Contracts have their own languages altogether. The opportunities are endless. So I would say think about what kind of work you want to do, experiment with a programming language, and maybe pick a coin to start contributing on. Every little bit you do will teach you so much.

What do you think crypto will look like in 5 years?

What a tough question. Right now crypto is such a fascinating area with so much variety. Everyone is trying to fix a problem or do something better. Obviously crypto makes transferring currency far faster and cheaper than it was with traditional banking. And you can store value in easily transferable assets that are not devalued by infinite money-printing. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Blockchain can improve the way we store and transact information. Everything from supply chains, healthcare, elections, and more. Decentralization can reduce costs and improve reliability for file storage and cloud. Crypto projects today are building and experimenting with technologies that will transform so many processes in almost every industry. I expect in 5 years most businesses and governments will be utilizing blockchain applications and smart contracts for a variety of things. Almost everything will be represented digitally and be instantly transferable. If you want to invest in something or transfer the value you have in something to someone else, it will be very easy, quick, and inexpensive for you to do so.

Now for the question that’s on everyone’s mind… How’s the Luxgate beta going?

The beta testing for Luxgate is going great! The beta testers that were chosen to participate have really been amazing. We have already put out several patches that fix issues the testers have pointed out and they get to quickly try out all the new features as they are added. We hope to open up to more beta testers soon and get even more feedback. This whole beta process has been very smooth and I hope that points to a very smooth launch when we get to that stage.

I know the community really appreciates your contributions to the team and all the great stuff you are working on. Thanks for sharing with us today! Before I let you go, is there anything you’d like to add or say to the community?

The LUX community has been amazing through all the ups and downs. We have had difficult times and negative market sentiment, but it’s great to know the community has been patient and supportive while developers keep working on our core products. It really helps to keep us motivated knowing you guys are supporting us. We are all super excited to get these products and features in your hands!

We hope you enjoyed this interview and have gotten to know Sebastian a little more. For our next interview, we hope to feature Giaki (Luxcore developer). Please reply to our Twitter with any questions you have for Giaki or any suggestions for other team members you would like to hear from!

On a somewhat related note, we are sad to announce the departure of Tanguy Pruvot (tpruvot). Tpruvot was a great asset to the Luxcore team and has been a member of our community for some time. He has accomplished a lot for the crypto space and we wish him the best in his future ventures! We certainly hope and expect to see him around from time to time!

More information

Website: https://luxcore.io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LUX_COIN

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LuxcoreTeam/

Github: https://github.com/LUX-Core

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LUXCoin/

Telegram: https://t.me/LUXcoreOfficialChat

Discord: https://discord.gg/ndUg9va

Bitcointalk — https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2422372

Please feel free to leave us your feedback as we always welcome it!

- The Luxcore Team