Part one of a three-part interview with Joshua Chen
Joshua Chen, Blockchain Community Development Manager for Spotcoin
Alex Guba, a maintainer of City of Zion, dubbed Joshua Chen the “Crypto-Priest.” As a youth minister in Taiwan, Josh spends his days working with the youth on professional development, interpersonal skills, and community engagement in the southern city of Tainan. A former developer, Josh spent 15 years in computer and software development prior to following his call to ministry. But in 2017, an old friend came calling.
Andrew Thornhill, co-founder of Spotcoin and Josh’s friend, tugged him back into the world of developers. Thornhill and the Spotcoin team were launching a new business, backed by the NEO blockchain and smart contract. Drawn in by the adaptability and universality of NEO, an interconnected partnership emerged. Spotcoin wanted to give back to the NEO community.
Josh possessed the developer skills, interpersonal relationships, and desire to build community. He was the perfect addition to the Spotcoin team and Thornhill recruited him to the role of Community Development Manager. The role was two-fold: mentor up-and-coming developers and assist the NEO development projects.
NEO and City of Zion launched the NEO Sharp project. On May 5, 2018, City of Zion released their “April Report” that detailed the overarching goal to develop “the specification and implementation of a new standard.” Led by Alex Guba and Ashley Rolleston, the NEO Sharp project has three goals:
● To break inter dependencies in NEO to allow a plug-able modular design
● To create testing infrastructure for both specification of behavior and benchmark of modifications.
● To develop an initial fully compatible version and experiment one new experimental high-performance module for each component.
Josh joined on behalf of Spotcoin, with six other contributors, to work on the project. Below is the first part of a three-part series with Joshua Chen on NEO Sharp, his role, and the hope for the future.
Spotcoin: Tell us a bit about working with City of Zion and the NEO team.
Joshua Chen: I work with a project called NEO Sharp. Basically, it’s an implementation of the NEO Blockchain. The core functionally for the NEO Blockchain in C#. You download it and use it to run a node.
The original NEO guys wrote the program in C#, Erik Zhang and Da Hongfei. A lot of the documentation was in Chinese which made it difficult for English speaking programmers to get started and understand the documentation. An organization called City of Zion was organically created to help out. They started translating some of the documentation and helping fix bugs on the NEO side of things. NEO the organization noticed and decided they wanted to work with CoZ as an open-sourced, independent development branch. They sponsor and support CoZ to build out the tools and the NEO Ecosystem. So, NEO Sharp is one of the CoZ projects we have been working on.
SC: Spotcoin asked you to work on the project?
Spotcoin asked me to work with NEO to give back to the ecosystem that Spotcoin is a part of. All part of being a good neighbor. Spotcoin is launching their ICO on NEO, so we wanted to give back to NEO and help with development. Spotcoin gave me the choice to pick, so I picked NEO Sharp.
SC: Tell me about NEO Sharp.
JC: We are excited about NEO Sharp. It’s going to re-implement, re-work, and optimize a lot of different things. We are pulling things apart. It’s a remodel, if you will. It wasn’t bad. As we are moving forward, the ecosystem has changed. Sometimes, we just need to have something that is much more developer friendly. Much more test friendly.
SC: Why did you choose the NEO Sharp project?
JC: I chose the project because I used to be a developer and C# was relatively easy for me to comprehend given my background in Java development. I worked in the industry from 1995 until 2009. I did a lot of development and architecture for startup companies. Back in the dotcom boom I worked with a startup called Go2Call, a competitor to Skype. I helped develop their billing and admin systems in the background. I loved it.
I love design and how can we design things to work better. I’m a big believer in not just initial cost of software development but making it maintainable. Let’s build to something so that it is easy to change, because things are going to change!
SC: That’s what you are working on with NEO Sharp?
JC: We are doing a refactoring. NEO made a formal announcement about it in their April proof of working document on Medium about what they want to do with neo-sharp We are refactoring the application so that it’s more modular and it will be easier to swap components in and out to expand and add features. It’s like if you are building a house. You don’t just have one solid plumbing pipe to the bathroom, you put stubs and T-Sections and access points along the way for expansion. As the house gets remodeled, what seemed to be good now needs more access points, additions, bigger pipes, etc, etc.
SC: How has it been to work with the NEO Community?
JC: The draw of NEO has been the community. I come from a corporate background, so getting into open-sourced projects was a very different environment for me. When you are getting into a different environment, it’s like being the new kid at school. You’re in fifth grade, you know math, you know science, you know history. But now you’re in a different school. It’s different lockers, different grading systems. You don’t know anybody. And there’s the intimidation. I’m thinking ‘I don’t know if they will accept me.’
But one of the things that has really surprised me and one of the reasons I’m excited about NEO is the community. They have been super helpful. Alex Guba has been helping me through some of the basics. For me, it was a little embarrassing. I’ve been working in development for a long time but it comes down to the basic things like how do I check things in and out? How do they work here? He sat with me through a lot of it. Patiently explaining things. He and Ashley Rolleston, the owner of the project, really helped show me around the project. I felt like I know what was going on. It’s very different from other projects where you come in and do just a part.
SC: Not just doing your piece, but you’re a part of a larger whole.
JC: Yeah. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve come away with as I’m working on this whole project. We are looking at how we develop something new using brand new, leading edge technology like REDIS Streams. There isn’t even an C# implementation out yet. We are all trying to figure out how we do it. It helps to be able to talk about it. I don’t feel like I’m the lone guy. It’s not transactional. It is more relational. The relationships and community keep me coming back and keeps me asking “what I can do and how can I make this work?”
SC: It keeps you grounded and connected to the community.
JC: Yeah. It’s looking toward the future. Right now, NEO Sharp is going to be the new implementation of NEO. It will be the new reference. NEO is also ported to other languages like python. They’re trying to do Java. But C# has been the grand-daddy language. This is where it’s been built and it’s the focus. And it’s a fairly high-profile project in that sense.
SC: So the goal is to work toward the direction of the future. We need it to be adaptable, operable…
JC: Testable. Developer-friendly. A natural evolution we are moving toward.
Interested in more Spotcoin?
Join our Telegram community: Spotcoin Team, Spotcoin News, and Spotcoin Bounty.
Take a look at our complete ICO offering here.
Read our Whitepaper here, for more details.
Visit spotcoin.com, where we make digital currencies work for everyone.
Residents and citizens of the United States are prohibited from taking part in the SPOT Airdrop and the SPOT public sale. Residents and citizens of China and South Korea are prohibited from taking part in the SPOT public sales. However, certified accredited U.S. investors can take part in the SPOT private sale. Chinese and South Korean investors can participate in the private sale when paying with digital currencies, after signing the SAFT form and completing the KYC /AML process. Any investment in digital currencies comes at a risk. No one should invest money that he or she can’t afford to lose.
Great interview!
It's good to have some insights in NEO community and how it has effect in Spotcoin project.
This community seams to be awesome, and the help provided to the different projects give it greater value.
NEO has everything to dethrone Ethereum, and Spotcoin will be there to help.
Neo projects always have a strong support and community. Not last to say they are always profitable). So hope Spot team will do the best for crypto, for community and for themselves.
i join, guys!
A great project with a promising direction. I am very glad to participate in the ICO, as I see the great success of this project.#spotcoin
Amazing interview. Planning and concepts is very good.Great opportunity to us to grab some tokens.Thank u spotcoin community team
If 'crypto priest' has as said all this things, what more confirmation do people need to know that Spotcoin is a great project. No one should miss this great opportunity.
This is just awesome
Changing is constant,Be preparing for it always bonus.#Spotcoin`s future will be awesome
In this project it is cool idea and timely needed thing.It is consists with environmentally friendly $3.25M facility utilizing hydroelectric power, and its total mining operations are scalable up to 25MW.New Facility will house 4,500 GPU miners with additional capacity to host 4,500 units.
How much different security measures from others? describe any?
Don't miss the unique chance to join the very promising project. This is the brilliant project which will make you the rich. This will make a revolution in the field of Blockchain Crypto.
What an interesting interview. I am happy that Spotcoin has chosen the most suitable person as the blockchain community development manager. When I read this interview I realized that Joshua knows about NEO sharp very well. I am looking forward to the next two parts of the interview.
Great interview, Joshua i a skilled developer and will help for spotcoin growth. Congrats
It was a really nice interview. I learned a lot. I hope everyone has learned. Joshua Chen is wonderful. Spotcoin has very good employees.
When reading the article it shows that the Joshua Chen, who is a Blockchain Community Development Manager have more experience in the field. That will be a reason for the huge success gained so far.
nice conversations,learn alot from this great guy.
Who shouldnt be attracted to spotcoin with its majestic hybrid platform built by selfless , determined , responsible and competent team. Making everything possible to place spot coin on the top in cryptocurrency
Congratulations for the article! I did not know NEO Sharp and I think having a simpler and easier to test structure is a plus for us developers.
Really enjoyed reading this, it is amazing the spirit of the NEO community. I like how they see that advancing a project in one area helps the entire community.
NEO community is always helpful. It's a reason for me to follow SpotCoin.
28 The highly innovative concept would make the project succeed , of course, with the effort of project leaders to promote it to clients/investors - the people.
Everything is unpredictable in our life. That's how a call from an old friend can change a life. :)
Very interesting person.
"Crypto-Priest" ??? ))) God works in mysterious ways....
Joshua Chen is an intelligent, profound person with an interesting destiny. He will cope with any project.
Very interesting article "specification and implementation of the new standard" led by Alex Guba and Ashley Rollston. The NEO Sharp project has three goals. It sounds all very much and I advise everyone to read it. There is a lot of useful information about the development of the Blockchain system where Spotcoin has one of the main roles of this whole project!
The @spotcoin project has very strong team with very clear vision. I belive on this project, Because of team. All team members are industry experts. NEO NEP5 platfrom will givce extra power to this project . all the best team. Join with revalution now.
ow good interview His comments will be reviewed by the investors and will be given their support for the project
Joshua Chen is a very talented developer who is work hard to success the project. All team members of the project are very talented. So the project will be grown up.
This is outstanding, motivating and inspiring. The future of crypto space is evergreen all thanks to brilliant minds like Chen, and the host of others.
This is the team spirit of NEO community. We don't see this elsewhere. Experienced yet humble guy. He's willing to learn anything new.
An interview that anyone interested in the NEO community should read. I got great information. Spotcoin has the capacity to be the best of the NEO community. I understand this any moment.
One of biggest ICO journey.We were in start of the SpotCoin project.Every thing is professional n SpotCoin team.Waiting for good news
Thanks for sharing the vision, Joshua! Great concept and vastly experienced team will move the project on the stage.
Wonderful interview. It was informative and inspiring. Joshua is a talentend developer and has so much potential. Really looking forward this spotcoin achieveing its vision.
Honestly the Headline of the article is really lovely. And having read through gotta say his knowledge of the cryptocurrency industry is really breathtaking. Neo Sharpe also seems really intresting, think iam gonna go and read up some more on that
wow, great article. It is amazing the spirit of the NEO community Great concept with well-experienced development team. never miss this chance. I can recommend this project to my friends. this project has great future.
Reliability and success - this is what this project expects. Invest? Definitely yes!
What a really nice guy Joshua Chen the “Crypto-Priest" is. Loved reading this article and learning that he was youth minister in Taiwan - really wonderful. Uplifting, insightful interview and I look forward read the next part.
Just super interview. Joshua, thank you very much. Read all with incredible interest
Great interview.I learned so many things about the Spotcoin project.They have masssive team behind.We are very excited to join with the project.
That was an informative interview with Joshua Chen and i liked it. He sounds more confident.. He indeed know what hes doing. The best part was when he said. "We are refactoring the application so that it’s more modular and it will be easier to swap components in and out to expand and add features" cant wait to see the end result of this house :)
It's great to have a few experiences in NEO people group and how it has impact in Spotcoin venture.
This people group creases to be marvelous, and the assistance gave to the diverse undertakings give it more prominent esteem.
NEO has everything to depose Ethereum, and Spotcoin will be there to help.
I'm very happy to join with you sir. great Concept with Great development team. Neo projects always have a very good support. Thank you for this Article.
I'm very excited to see the NEO sharp and it will be a new experience for all. it's great to have a spotcoin Blockchain community manager on the NEO sharp project.
Openness of your company, a good impetus for investors to invest! Your project will definitely be successful
Perspective project with a good future. This company will have a great success, contributions to it will only increase revenues.
Perspective project with a good future. This company will have a great success, contributions to it will only increase revenues.
The project is just a Super, the guys are working for glory. Good luck. This is an amazing project. And all around the world, one way or another will someday use this product. You made a smart move by applying blockchain technology to this industry. We wish this project always success and benefit for us!!!. @Spotcoin #Spotcoin
Excellent platform with its own design! With its help, users will be able to implement many tasks. A sufficiently high-quality project, worthy of attention. I advise!
Good project and nice vision. There is lot of potential in the market this ico is targeting. I went through the white paper, this is a smart project with most needed innovative approach of solving business problems. It opens the whole new dimension for understanding how big the blockchain world is.
Yes seems Spotcoin has interested concept and especially it is NEO base. I hope to invest because this is one of high rating ico in icobench ( 4.6 ) and this type of news will be confirm future value of this type of ICO .
when you give away something good you will always get back good things. as a NEO and spotcoin member happy to see a that kind of understand between two projects. congrats Mr Joshua Chen. glad to have you in spotcoin team.