I left ASAPP in December 2021 to "explore": Rust, complex systems, crypto. After ~4 months of study, podcasts, conversations, toy projects, Twitter, meetups, conferences, and general experimentation, I've now re-entered the workforce; I now work in crypto!

Per our brave new remote world and the breadth of my technical interests, I recently started two new jobs in this zany new space: building credit scoring models at Cred Protocol and simulations of complex systems at Block Science. The former is my primary gig.

Cred Protocol

Cred aims to enable under-collateralized, capital efficient borrowing of cryptocurrencies by quantifying wallet risk. In other words, much like FICO's "300-850," we're building a credit score. From a technical stance, credit scoring implies systems and algorithms to quantify risk—of tens of millions of crypto wallets—in near real-time. Per my longstanding interests in building systems and statistical products, my current energy to build from the ground up, and the chance to explore a world of new data, new players, new algorithms, new rules—I jumped at the opportunity to join Cred as one of its first few hires. We're currently about ~10 people.

Block Science

Ten years ago, I wrote an undergraduate thesis about the simulation of iterated Prisoner's Dilemma games on the surface of a geodesic dome. This work has remained of abiding fascination ever since. Last year, I realized that crypto offers a perfect "arena" for the simulation of similar "complex systems": a blockchain gives a graph data structure indexed by time—with copious amounts of structured, public data to boot! In other words, simulating the behavior of systems built on blockchains, e.g. a lending-and-borrowing protocol like Aave, then aligning simulated results with empirical results, is a highly tractable, useful, and interesting line of work.

Block Science is a leader in doing exactly this. As a visiting contributor, I build, analyze, and communicate simulations of "cryptoeconomic" systems for a variety of partners. Block Science is comprised of ~30 talented and diverse members—with backgrounds spanning economics, social science, natural science, behavioral science, multi-agent systems, and more.

Join us

Both companies are hiring. If you're interested in what we do, do reach out!

Will