Team Spotlight Series: Meet João Gonçalves, Head of Development

Welcome to another issue of the Team Spotlight series at LayerX 🚀

In this series, we delve into the stories, experiences, and perspectives of the incredible people that make LayerX. Today, we get to chat with João Gonçalves (Mosh Mage), Head of Development at LayerX.

We'll uncover his secrets to balancing feature planning, his love for LayerX's 'controlled anarchy' culture, and how he manages to stay ahead in the wild world of web3 development. 

Spoiler: it involves a lot of community lurking and a sprinkle of Skyrim-inspired hiking.

What’s a day in the life of a web3 Developer at LayerX?

My day starts with coffee and some nature watching, it helps me ground myself for the day ahead; I use this time to mentally plan what will be done and what will be left.

From there, I hit the social websites: I'm looking for new information, standards that were updated, or simply new developments on our space.

When breakfast is finished, It's time for code reviewing: I get my eyes on what our team did the previous day and make the necessary comments, helping and fleshing out is something I bask in.
Now I'm ready for some keyboard pounding: features were planned and they need to be done, polished, documented, and released.

By the end of the day I lurk our communities, I don't interact that much but I take time to measure what the community thinks and how they feel about the project.

What do you appreciate most about LayerX's culture?

It's no secret that LayerX has the flattest structure around, voices are not only heard but augmented and everyone can pitch in. It's not uncommon to see features pop up on our platforms that came from someone as new as the new joinee. I like that, it's like a controlled anarchy brewed with love and care.

What are the main challenges of working in web3?

Compatibility. I cannot stress how this word weighs on our minds when thinking about new features, our projects, and web3 in general. The ability to support as many people as possible in whatever systems is, and should always be, the north for crypto adoption.

What factors or considerations are unique to web3 developments?

Interoperability. It's a sister to compatibility, and without it, we would not be where we are: achieving it might very well be the opus of every project and without it, it feels like the project is missing a leg and has a patch on the eye.

What tips would you give to a developer starting their web3 journey?

Use dappkit. @taikai/dappkit makes the whole process so much easier than using normal web3js and/or etherjs: it still lacks some features but we aim to complete it to the rest of the standards of all our projects.

What are your favorite web3 projects and why?

BEPRO ;D

But wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't give a wink to the Monero guys: privacy and open-source are two statutes I can watch all day.

In your opinion, what are the key opportunities and challenges for web3 development in the future?

I will have to go back to interoperability; this time with the real world: crypto cannot be just trading, services and real-world connectivity must also be a target, while checks and balances are needed: trading alone will not make this technology go forward. 

How do you like to spend time outside of work?

At heart, I'm a gamer. And an old gamer at that: turn-based games delight me. Lately, however, nature has been a good escape from the computer: hiking icy mountains has been growing on me (and it helps that it looks like I'm on real-world Skyrim), since I'm originally from a beach country, seeing iced mountains and hills has been making me awe loudly.