roneil

Audius | Backend Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA | ONSITE | Full Time

Audius is a decentralized, community-owned, and artist-controlled music-sharing protocol. Audius provides a blockchain-based alternative to SoundCloud to help artists monetize their work and distribute it directly to fans. The company building Audius has been backed by General Catalyst, KPCB, Lightspeed, and Pantera. And we launched last week! For more about the project, see audius.co and audius.org

We are seeking backend engineers to help architect and build the Audius protocol. You are a collaborative, team player that enjoys working on small teams and solving big problems. You are open to experimenting to come up with novel innovative solutions, have the tenacity and drive to solve problems, and don’t give up easily.

Key Responsibilities * Design, architect and build the Audius protocol * Develop the set of services that run on the decentralized Audius ecosystem

Skills and Experience * 3+ years of software engineering experience * At least 1 year of experience building web services using Python, Go, or NodeJS * Experience building distributed systems on platforms such as Docker or Kubernetes * Great interpersonal and communication skills within a small team

Bonus Points * Experience working with a start-up * Previous experience with Blockchain * Interest in music

If interested, email us! careers+hn@audius.co

We documented this here: https://audiusproject.github.io/hedgehog-docs/#security-cons...

This is why we recommend that you audit all 3rd-party Javascript in your app for accesses to localstorage, and avoid sourcing 3rd-party javascript from uncontrolled origins (the code could be switched out from under you if it is not baked into your application)

The post message model is an interesting one - we looked into designing Hedgehog in that way, but decided it ultimately did not help solve this issue and created unnecessary complexity. If you include Javascript from libraries or other origins on your page, eg. Google Analytics, that Javascript could still post-message into your iframe.

Perhaps we are wrong here though! Is FinneyFor open-source? Would love to see how this is implemented.

Sorry to hear that - I've had good experiences in the past at Hackathons and other developer-focused events rather than general "crypto" or "blockchain" events.

Good luck!

Hi there! Unfortunately I haven't found any high-quality online communities of crypto builders - most of my connections to other folks building are offline / irl. Would encourage you to attend local developer groups to get to know others in the space!

There are tons of helpful resources online though, as lots of folks write tutorials and other things. Googling most problems you face will yield good results.

Yes - their work on key exchange is super cool https://keybase.io/docs/crypto/key-exchange

We did not want to require use of Keybase to use our dapp Audius, though I could see it making a lot of sense to offer a keybase integration as a potential option.

FWIW, Audius still supports Metamask too - web3 is all about giving users choice from our perspective.

Very similar from a meta-transaction standpoint, but ours is simple and centralized (albeit trustless due to the tx signing model). This is much cooler!

Probably late summer / early Fall! Want to make sure the developer experience is high-quality at time of open-sourcing, but we're testing now / onboarding artists in a private beta.

True - was answering the general case of password change, eg. some folks like to rotate passwords every so often in the absence of a known leak or breach.

In the case of a compromised password the entire wallet should be abandoned.

Very cool! Let us know if there's any way we can help

We haven't seen that before, looks cool! The approach may be similar, but we packaged Hedgehog as a standalone / documented library to be consumed directly by developers. In looking briefly I wasn't able to ascertain how the private key is stored / propagated between devices in his model so it's hard to comment more precisely.

The approach we've taken at Audius on initial funding is to avoid funding the wallet entirely - we use EIP-712 signatures combined with a trustless transaction relay service that pays gas / submits EIP-712 signed transactions on-chain on behalf of users. In this way, the user wallet never holds any tokens but is still used to secure access to their account. We'll be open-sourcing our contracts and infrastructure code soon, but here's a good public example of this model in action: https://github.com/hellobloom/core/tree/master/contracts

That said, other folks may decide to use Hedgehog differently - perhaps you integrate with something like Wyre (https://www.sendwyre.com/) to help users fund their wallet client-side without knowing that crypto is there.

Right now Hedgehog is specific to the Ethereum account model (eg. POA network and others use this too), but there's no reason the approach couldn't be extended to work with other chains.

Here's the key section of code that makes this Ethereum-specific: https://github.com/AudiusProject/hedgehog/blob/master/src/au...

You could replace the use of 'ethereumjs-wallet/hdkey' with any other chain wallet library if it is compatible with the BIP-39 style HDWallet structure. Bitcoin and many other blockchains have compatible libraries that could be substituted easily!

Great question - see my response to "atomical" in this thread for more detail, but short answer is no. Thanks for checking out Hedgehog!

Thanks for checking out Hedgehog!

This was documented only indirectly - we should add a specific note / example for this. The model here is that the ethereumjs-wallet object returned by Hedgehog (eg. by getWallet https://audiusproject.github.io/hedgehog-docs/#getwallet ) follows this API https://github.com/ethereumjs/ethereumjs-wallet which, when used in tandem with this package https://github.com/ethereumjs/ethereumjs-tx can do everything a normal Ethereum wallet would.

You can! This would re-encrypt your locally decrypted wallet seed using the new credential and store it under the newly generated lookup key

There has! This could be a great approach - eg. a network of folks committed to supporting users in this manner could operate IPFS nodes that re-pin the encrypted keys.

We are also thinking about offline ways to share the key such that the centralized side is not required - eg. a QR code displayed on one device and scanned by another to propagate the wallet. This creates a problem if a user loses all of their devices though.

The existing issues with ETH are why we currently use POA network for the Audius private beta. POA network has its own set of issues, but the 1) fast transaction confirmation time, 2) low fees, and 3) lack of congestion make it a great testbed for us.

FWIW, Hedgehog works with any web3-compliant API, in our case core.poa.network but could be any other one of developer's choosing eg. Infura

Thanks for checking out Hedgehog!

There is not - this is the biggest deficiency of Hedgehog today. Without centralized custody of keys, it's not possible to have someone prove their ownership of a given key to a centralized party in order to unlock it. The key is encrypted, so the application provider nor anyone else can decrypt it without the user's username/password combination. This tradeoff is both a good thing and a bad thing in our view.

That said, there is a mechanism for changing your password if you are already signed in.

We are considering some mechanisms for fallbacks, eg using a threshold cryptosystem with multiple private keys and a 1 or 2 of n requirement, such that if a user forgets the way to generate one of the n keys they may still remember a way to generate the other(s). If you're curious, more on these schemes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_cryptosystem

We feel these tradeoffs make sense to enable more mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, but they are tradeoffs; for certain types of applications the cost of losing control of an account is too high for this approach to make sense.

Hey all - I'm Roneil, one of the cofounders of Audius. We built Hedgehog to solve a specific pain point we faced - how can we get non crypto-native / non-technical users to sign up for a decentralized app? Current onboarding flows using Metamask and other alternatives were too cumbersome, time-consuming, and restrictive for our needs. We needed a way to generate a wallet on behalf of a user without them even knowing crypto was operating behind the scenes.

Hedgehog lives in your front end Javascript code. A user enters a username (or email) and password, which is used to secure a set of encrypted auth artifacts that are generated client-side and stored in the browser’s localStorage / on your (the application developer's) server. In this way, the encrypted auth artifacts can be retrieved and consumed on secondary devices without centralizing custody and control of the private key.

If the centralized server hosting the keys goes down, users can continue to access their wallet on the devices they already have. If the centralized server is compromised or operated by bad actors, the resources required to decrypt a stored auth artifact would be immense. However - this is why we recommend using Hedgehog only in low-to-no financial value use cases.

This approach is not without tradeoffs - but for the right use-cases we believe this will provide a needed alternative.

Happy to answer any questions you all have!

KPCB Edge (Seed initiative at Kleiner Perkins) | Developer in Residence | San Francisco, CA | Temporary (3-6 months) | Onsite

Hey HN!

We're KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins' seed-stage initiative, and we're looking for a full-stack software engineer to join us for a few months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that's starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There's a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

To tell you more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we're investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge (Seed initiative at Kleiner Perkins) | Designer | San Francisco, CA | Temporary (7-9 months) | Onsite

Hey HN!

We're KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins' seed-stage initiative, and we're looking for a designer to join us for 9 months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that's starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There's a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

To tell you more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we're investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to ruby@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge (Seed initiative at Kleiner Perkins) | Full-stack Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Temporary (7-9 months) | On Site

Hey HN!

We’re KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins’ seed-stage initiative, and we’re looking for a full-stack software engineer with React experience to join us for 9 months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some data-heavy projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that’s starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There’s a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

To tell you a bit more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we’re investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge (Seed initiative at Kleiner Perkins) | Full-stack Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Temporary (9 months) | On Site

Hey HN!

We’re KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins’ seed-stage initiative, and we’re looking for a full-stack software engineer with React experience to join us for 9 months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some data-heavy projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that’s starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There’s a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

To tell you a bit more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we’re investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge (Seed initiative at Kleiner Perkins) | Full-stack Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Temporary (9 months) | On Site

Hey HN!

We’re KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins’ seed-stage initiative, and we’re looking for a full-stack software engineer with React experience to join us for 9 months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some data-heavy projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that’s starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There’s a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

To tell you a bit more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we’re investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge (Seed initiative at Kleiner Perkins) | Backend Software Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Temporary (9 months) | On Site

Hey HN!

We’re KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins’ seed-stage initiative, and we’re looking for a backend-focused software engineer to join us for 9 months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some data-heavy projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that’s starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There’s a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

To tell you a bit more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we’re investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge | Developer in Residence | San Francisco, CA | Temporary | On Site

Hey HN!

We’re KPCB Edge, Kleiner Perkins’ seed-stage initiative, and we’re looking for a developer in residence to join us for a few months in our San Francisco office. The role would be a great opportunity to work on some React (and React native) projects with us and figure out what your next move might be, whether that’s starting a company, joining a company, or something else entirely. There’s a bit more info up here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles (you can ignore the iOS requirement—we’ve been experimenting with React Native to target mobile and had great results so far).

To tell you a bit more about us, we spend half our time investing and half our time building products to try to solve common problems faced by the founders we’re investing in (happy to explain this further directly). Everyone in the partnership is technical, and we ship code for the aforementioned products ourselves. More about our current team here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/team and our portfolio: https://www.kpcbedge.com/portfolio (includes 3 YC companies)

Reach out to rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if interested!

KPCB Edge, a team focused on seed stage investments at KPCB, is looking to hire for two roles: (1) a short-term contractor to work on an iOS project and (2) our next Developer in Residence.

These are both temporary roles (3-4 months for residency, ~3-4 weeks contracting work).

More info here: https://www.kpcbedge.com/roles

Please contact rrumburg@kpcbedge.com if you're interested in learning more!

~220,000 kudos atm, is there something wrong with his site?

Chrome wouldn't let me get through to your site through your link because of certificate issues but it works fine over an insecure connection; for the lazy here's the non-HTTPS link: http://www.downtofax.com/

Definitely an interesting/hilarious idea (and I love your testimonials section), but I have to ask, has anyone actually given you a fax number yet? I don't think I know a single person that still owns a fax machine

I have to agree with what's been said here. I too am majoring in CS, but I'm majoring in CS because I love the field, not because of what I believe may happen in the future to make my skills useful. The fact that you say you don't know if you like CS is fairly alarming if you're choosing to study it and pursue a career related to it.

You're better off doing what you enjoy the most; you can find work related to pretty much any major if you look hard enough and you'll enjoy doing that work much more than you would anything else (especially something chosen for its earning potential or future usefulness). From a practical standpoint, if you do what gives you the most joy you'll naturally be more willing to put in the time necessary to become accomplished in your chosen field, making your chances at success and (more importantly) happiness far more likely.

Yea, you're right, it would be hard to motivate oneself to learn all these things.

Meeting new people and learning more of what I want are two of the big reasons I'm going to college, so its nice to see that someone who's been there already still values the same things.