[Massa Special Interview Series] Aurelien , Rust developer at Massa Labs

Hi Aurelien, tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, and what is your history?

Hello, I’m 22 and I come from France. I’m in last year of a master degree in Computer Science. I discovered Rust 3 years ago during an internship in a little startup in France. I discovered crypto in late 2020 and started to use my developer experience to understand the basics of the main projects. I started making some hackathons in summer 2021 during school break. I made my last internship in an other crypto company called Covalent.

When you were a kid, what did you want to grow up and be ? What were your dreams and aspirations ?

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut (like a lot of children). At the age of 13 I went to a french video games convention (PGW) and a computer science was there I really liked them and seen this time I wanted to make this school. I didn’t start coding before this school but I followed this “dream” and now I’m here 🙂

How did you discover Massa Labs, and what got you interested?

I discovered Massa because someone contacted me on LinkedIn to work here. It’s not the best story but it’s real. I started to look at the project and found it really interesting. I made an interview with Damir and when he talked to me about the goals and features of Massa it match a lot of things that miss in other blockchains so I knew that I needed to work here.

What is your current role in Massa, and what challenges do you face?

My current position is Rust developer in the core of Massa. I’m implementing new features designed by Damir and the others founders. We also make a lot of work to optimize the node each testnet, that’s why you see the tx/s increase each month. We also fix the bugs and manage the open source contributions from the community. You can see all of our work and participate on GitHub, you are all welcome and we can help you to contribute.

What do you like the most about Massa?

In the company I like the team spirit and everyone in the company is very friendly. In the product, I like the innovations. As far as I know, nobody in the market has the features we propose with the scalability, security and decentralisation we provide.

How do you see the Massa ecosystem 5 years from now ? What is Massa`s most interesting part ?

I think Massa will survive in 5 years because it has very good fundamentals. The research paper is very complete. We always focus on our philosophy like decentralisation and innovation that’s why I think the project will continue. We are here to stay in long term.

Setting Massa aside for a moment, what do you do in your free time? Do you have any hobbies?

Coding is a real passion for me. Otherwise, I play a lot the games of Riot Games such as League of Legends. I also love the food so I often go the restaurant.

What are your goals in life?

My material goals are : a house with my wife, a great electric car and maybe a pool in my garden. Also, I want to travel a lot and make big journey to countries with different cultures.

What is your favorite food, favorite movie, and favorite rock song?

My favorite french food are the Croziflette (Pasta with cheese and sausage from the Alps) and lentils of my father. I really enjoy the Thai and Japanese cuisine I love the Pad thai, Ramen and Tonkatsu. In movies I really like the Pixar ones like Soul or Inside out. I also really liked the korean movie Parasite.

Anything you would like to say to the community?

I would like to thanks the community for being so kind and comprehensive with us it’s the case in every project especially in crypto. Also as a developer I would like to give a special thanks to the people that build on Massa and help the others setting up the node on Discord and Telegram. I hope you will continue to follow us 🙂

Aurelien on Twitter