Member Request

[joepetrowski]

Hi, my name is Joe Petrowski and I have been working on Substrate and Polkadot for the last four years.

I am requesting to join the Fellowship with a rank of 4, Architect.

My primary contributions have been related to:

• Leading development of the first parachain to launch on Kusama, Statemine, and the continuation of the Common Good Parachains initiative.
• Development of integration tooling from scratch, namely Sidecar and TxWrapper.
• Documentation of Substrate and Polkadot at all levels, including FRAME reference documentation, conceptual documentation on the Developer Hub and Polkadot Wiki, integration documentation for wallets/custodians, and very high level technical explainers.
• Consistent involvement in the political direction of Polkadot as a Council member since the first election.
• Evangelism of Polkadot in public.
• Education of new people interested in Polkadot.

Select Contributions

Common Good Parachains

My current work is focused on developing common good parachains to deliver Polkadot's core functionality in a way that fully utilizes its parachain architecture.

• Wrote the first description of the Common Good Parachains concept.
• Led development of Statemine/Statemint, the first featureful parachain to launch on Kusama (via upgrading Shell, which existed to verify the functioning of the backing and inclusion protocol on the Relay Chain).
• Currently leading development of more parachains, as outlined recently.

Integration

I started working with integration tooling in 2019 with the first custodians who were supporting Kusama and planned to support Polkadot. Besides creating tooling just for the Relay Chains, I tried to design core technology that is extensible to parachains as well.

• Substrate API Sidecar: I worked with end users and came up with the need for this tool and helped design the v0 and v1 APIs.
• TxWrapper: Same.
• Integration Guide: I wrote the documentation for custodians and wallets to be able to support Kusama/Polkadot and parachains.

Long Form Articles

I have written many long-form articles aimed at the general public with the goal of explaining the Polkadot technology in the most depth possible using only natural language.

• Heise Online: "Alternatives to Crypto Mining" (German): An article describing the motivation for Proof of Stake over Work. (Level 4 requires, "At least one non-ecosystem, non-private presentation on Polkadot.")
• Four Part Series on Consensus: Link to first part, then 2, 3, and 4.
• Path of a Parachain Block: An explainer on how Polkadot validates parachain state transitions.
• Polkadot Governance: An explainer on Polkadot's governance system (prior to v2).

I have also been quoted in a few industry articles, e.g.:

• Crypto News, 2020-09-06, "Bitcoin And Ethereum Scale Slower Than Cryptoverse Grows"
• Coin Telegraph, 2021-12-30, "Can blockchain solve its oracle problem?"

Evangelism and Education

• High level presentations on Polkadot in general
  • Presentation to Milan Polytechnic
  • Unstoppability: Beyond Decentralization
  • Polkadot Decoded: Common Good Parachains
• General Web3/Polkadot philosophy and applications
  • Crypto Valley Summit panel on L0, L1, and L2
  • Instructor in the first Polkadot Blockchain Academy
  • Metaverse Summit Interview: Polkadot Roadmap and Vision
  • Interview on Cryptonites
• Technical Conference Talks
  • ETH CC: Sharded Security on Polkadot
  • ETH Denver: Path of a Parachain Block
• Technical Hands On
  • Validator setup with Will Pankiewicz
  • FRAME code walkthrough with Shawn Tabrizi
  • Transaction queue code walkthrough with Tomek Drwięga
  • Off-chain worker code walkthrough with Tomek Drwięga
• Podcasts
  • Host of Relay Chain
  • Epicenter

Other Info Requested

• Earliest non-trivial PR: Split execute_and_import_block in client into two functions paritytech/substrate#1455
• Most substantial PR: Add Collectives Parachain paritytech/cumulus#1346

[rrtti]

Ranks higher than I Dan come with a minimum time period since I Dan as well as additional specific requirements per rank. To attain the level of I Dan please review section 6.2 of the Manifesto and see the requirements there:

The Candidate should have made three clear demonstrations of protocol expertise. Possible examples of this may be: identifying and fixing a non-trivial protocol issue; being available and playing a crucial operational role for a network fix; proposing a reasonable and non-trivial protocol innovation; or doing a valuable, innovative and insightful refactoring or alteration.

Please provide specific details on the three clear demonstrations of Polkadot protocol expertise, and the Polkadot core component you primarily designed and implemented: Please note that your contributions should be part of the core development of Polkadot: we should strictly focus on polkadot/substate/cumulus repo.. If you believe you are a protocol expert and core developer, please provide details of your three earliest substantial PRs to a Polkadot core repository (Substrate, Polkadot, Cumulus) as well as a list of any significant design and development contributions to core code.

[joepetrowski]

Here are some specific demonstrations of contributions to these repos. I have also helped the network by being highly available on nights, weekends, etc. to respond to emergencies, e.g. the XCM incident on Kusama.

1. Creation of the Statemint Repo, which was merged into Cumulus and launched as the first common good parachain. (And knowing when safe to e.g. lift restrictions for XCM.)
2. Creation of the genesis Collectives parachain, within Cumulus. Including contributions to the development of the underlying Alliance pallet (started by xlc, see later commits).
3. Introduction of the SS58 registry, used by many wallets and front ends for address rendering.
4. Updating Polkadot's pallets' error types.
5. Addition of events for balances and staking needed for reconciliation and balance tracking.
6. Early documentation of FRAME pallets (then SRML), e.g. Balances, Council, and Executive.

I'd also like to add that I am well aware that my Rust skills and contributions are well below those of some other members of this Fellowship. But here I refer to Section 4.5 of the manifesto:

In the present work, our domain—and with it our problem surface—is intentionally constrained to the field of engineering core blockchain technology. Nonetheless, we are not yet at a point where we can define all judgements required by Fellowship voters in purely objective terms. Those members called upon to evaluate an individual will, to a greater or lesser extent need to make a judgement call. Pluralism, discussion and a clear framework for gathering a perspective is our antidote to the subjectivism which this otherwise creates.

4.5 goes on to list "API and Code Design", "Code Contributions", and "Social Interaction" as primary considerations in evaluation. Yes, my code contributions are lower than many others in this group, but think I have made contributions in design and social interaction commensurate with a IV Dan.

As a counter-example within the existing members, V Dan requires "At least one published long-form article about technology relevant to but not specifically concerning Polkadot." (And VI Dan, three such articles.) By this metric, I believe only @gavofyork and @rphmeier would qualify for anything above IV Dan. I think the contributions of the already-accepted members have been enormous, but their inclusion at a rank where they have not met (or included in their application) a clear requirement should include additional comment on the rationale for why they were exempt from a particular requirement.

[joepetrowski]

Changed to II Dan based on discussions and changes to the manifesto, specifically in polkadot-fellows/manifesto@5e01eef...b3e9114