Just chiming in that this is, in fact, Sarang. I invited him to apply a few weeks ago.
Hire mathematician (and computational physicist) to join res[...]
SarangNoether posted this 6 years ago
The What
Hi there! You should hire me, Sarang Noether, as a mathematical and cryptographic researcher to keep Monero stable and help it grow long term. I have a strong background in cryptography, data modeling, computational physics, and theoretical mathematics, as well as experience working with the Monero team. My good friend Surae Noether (now identified as masked mathematician Brandon Goodell) of the Monero Research Lab (MRL) team encouraged me to come on board as a full-time researcher.
The Who
Back in the day, I worked on interesting problems for MRL as it was starting to blossom as an integral part of the Monero project. Our team worked pseudonymously and analyzed existing constructions within the Monero standards while working out future improvements and analysis. You may remember me from IRC or the MRL papers. I completed separate M.S. degrees in mathematics and physics, and am set to defend my Ph.D. thesis in computational physics shortly.
My research background blends the dark side of mathematics with the messy side of material science. I use a lot of different numerical and simulation techniques to study how materials degrade, which involves huge data sets and plenty of custom analysis. My analysis is done using custom code in C++ and Python, but I have experiencing coding in ASP, C, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and other languages. To make a long story longer and toot my own horn a little: I am very good at applying rigorous mathematical and statistical analysis to big and ugly data. Before graduate school, I worked for the United States government (at the Naval Observatory in Washington) on the atomic clocks that power the GPS system, which involved a whole lotta time series analysis and more clock math than you can shake a wristwatch at. Ask me about leap seconds if you're bored sometime. I also developed and manage the cloud data infrastructure that powers the operational analysis tools for a good chunk of the bikeshare systems in the United States. If you've ever rented a bike in this country, there's a good chance it used code that I wrote.
On the side, I teach. I run cryptology courses for the Duke University Talent Identification Program and Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth in the United States and overseas, where I introduce gifted students to the awesome and terrifying world of ciphers. I've even given lectures on Monero and some of its notable constructions like ring signatures in my classes. Aside from this course, I write and deliver courses on algorithm design and scientific computing. I use these courses as an opportunity to stay sharp on the cutting edge of modern cryptography and hone my skills as a technical communicator.
The Why
Why should you support me? I have a history of work with Monero's development and a sharp eye for implementations of mathematical algorithms. Monero has a lot of talented community members specialized in fields like mathematics, applied cryptography, and computer science. What's rarer, though, is someone who has a strong background in all of them. I can look at a construction and proof of security and compare it to what's actually in code. Surae and I consult frequently on issues that the community brings up, new proposals for Monero's future, and independent reviews of existing code. We've caught some less-than-ideal implementations of primitives recently, like nonstandard input concatenation hashes that aren't provably secure and should probably go away. The recent research roadmap (say that five times fast) posted by Surae to the forums is ambitious, and rightly so. Monero has come a long way, but its growth means a larger footprint to keep an eye on, and more exciting developments to thoroughly and formally investigate.
The Proposal
I propose the community hire me for 467 XMR for a three-month period (starting from the full funding date) to conduct applied and theoretical research that falls in line with the priorities set forth in the research roadmap. Big-ticket items that are the target of my focus are:
- Thorough analysis of ring signature proposals and signature bloat. We've seen a lot of recent activity in this area that needs attention. The current goal is to hit reliable sublinear signatures without a trusted setup.
- Investiation of efficient "future-proofing" proposals. We are interested in nailing down some bilinear pairing constructions, zero-knowledge schemes, threshold signatures, and the like. A broader, but related, goal is to gain a complete understanding of what a post-quantum Monero looks like.
- Community consensus projects. We get papers and proposals submitted all the time that don't necessarily fit neatly into our bulleted lists of research goals, but that deserve attention. When the community agrees that a new attack or construction needs expert eyes, that becomes a focal point.
Milestones for the ambitious research roadmap put forth by Surae are necessarily fluid and must adapt to the community's needs, but you should expect the following:
- Executive summaries and whitepapers. These are best done collaboratively, and likely will be. We've done an excellent job of putting out thorough research bulletins, but the bar of technical expertise needed for a complete understanding is sometimes set a little too high. I want to see a bigger focus on general, but factually complete, summaries that are suitable for less-technical audiences within the community.
- Community engagement. Expect my attention on IRC and the subreddit, where the action takes place. I like the idea of designated "office hours" dedicated to technical questions.
- Researcher collaboration. One of the biggest reasons that I am interested in this transition to full-time research is a desire to increase Monero's research footprint collaboratively. Surae and I have a history of productive mathematical work together, both within Monero and without. Internal conversations don't always happen in public, but are a major part of research in any field. Of course, at the end of the three-month period, the community should review my work and recommend (either for or against) a renewal of the proposal.
What do I want to accomplish? I want to grow the MRL program as a full-time member of the team. Monero succeeds when its community has complete trust in both the underlying mathematics and its implementation, and hiring strong researchers demonstrates to the world that Monero is serious, stable, and here for the long haul. The roadmaps include ambitious but reasonable plans to reduce blockchain bloat, continue to check under the rug for existing implementation issues, study constructions like ring signature mix-ins, and ensure Monero will remain safe and reliable in a post-quantum world. I've enjoyed consulting for MRL already, both in the past as a part-time paid researcher and more recently as a volunteer. But the team and community benefit from mathematicians who can devote their full attention to the project. The community's recent show of support to Surae was a good move that confirmed the community places a high value on strong research. The best time to hire a team of mathematicians was at Monero's birth (hindsight, amirite?), but the next best time is now.
Edit: The proposal section was heavily updated to incorporate concerns and suggestions from the community.
Edit edit: The amount was adjusted to 467 XMR to reflect a smoothing of the recent price fluctuations, after discussions in #monero-ffs.
Absolutely! This is great news :D
"complete trust in both the underlying mathematics and its implementation" This!!
I would be more than happy to donate a fixed amount every month to keep competent people with good intentions working on the Monero project. It's very important to add the financial variable here because I, at least, don't expect people working for free in a project when everyone have bills to pay.
I like this proposal and thus approve it. However, I have a small remark with respect to the rate. More specifically, why is the rate almost twice as high as Surae's rate? In addition, it's also significantly higher than what top coders / contributors like MoneroMooo and anonimal asked for. In my opinion, the rate is, relatively speaking, a bit too high.
I believe Sarang will add considerable value to the project. His skills are impressive, and we need him in our MRL to keep our project set apart and bleeding edge crypto. I personally will contribute, but I'm getting beat up in this bear market. Many of the monero I've purchased at a significantly higher price than where we are now.
This is awesome, though I have a question. Would you be willing to start early, if this is funded early? That is, the August - October period would be the period you're paid for; but it would probably make a lot of us more comfortable about this pay rate if you would make yourself available in advance of your FFS work to assimilate and catch up. This proposal is quite a bit more than what Surae asks for, so perhaps it would be like a gesture of good faith that you make a community presence and assist Surae in his MRL endeavors. And then when August 1 comes, you'll already have picked up a head of steam.
It's well known that moneromooo took a (surprisingly) extremely low rate for a person of his ability. I believe he said part of the reason for that is that he already had received a good chunk of XMR in the past from the community, which I'm sure has provided a cushion of sorts. But he's a very special case. I honestly think it was somewhat unfortunate he asked for such a low rate, not primarily because he could easily justify getting paid 3-5x more, but because his rate therefore cannot be used as a benchmark for anyone else. Where he asked for something like $30-40/hr (I don't recall the exact numbers), a senior developer of his ability (even completely ignoring the extreme speciality of his domain), in a contractual/consulting rather than employment setting, would normally be paid at a very minimum about $100/hr. And that's low for someone like moneromooo. I've seen brash and inexperienced intermediate devs ask for more simply because they think they know how to code in a production setting because they've got a CS degree. I've had some senior devs who were excellent self-managers, who had experienced many things in legit production settings, charge upwards of $200-250/hr. Excellent specialists sometimes go higher, upwards of $400-500/hr, believe it or not. And it's actually often justified, because of the high value produced by their output for their customer. Their work is used to produce a return of multiple times the cost – otherwise it can't really be justified. In fact, one silly metric used to approximate this is that for the acquisition of a team by another company (not talking about any IP, brand equity, products, traction etc), one should multiply the number of engineers on the team by $1M. (This of course is based on the assumption that you only hire solid people.)
I think it's important to look briefly at why rates like $100/hr can be justified in terms of expenses for a contractor. A solid 7-billable-hour day would be $700. (And few can put in a solid day of billable hours without screwing around a bit, or spending their time researching or reworking something they ought to have planned better and therefore shouldn't be charging near their full rate for.) Now let's say this rate is for a month-long project during which the contractor will be working 5 days a week. That nets out at $14k for a solid month of (140) hardcore billable programming hours during which zero messing-about was done. But already, a good 45% of that is going to go to special taxes and operation costs which consultants must pay. Then add on top that they must pay for their own medical/dental insurance. Then add onto that the fact that consultants must do their own bizdev (which in this case takes the form of building community trust, doing the FFS proposal, managing feedback, responding to requests, etc) and generally hop from project to project – which means doing completely unpaid work without any job security for who knows how long. Pretty soon you're not terribly far off from normal employee rates of around $5-6k/mo post-tax. And in terms of where all that goes, a good $2-3k/mo could immediately go to housing alone. Another $700-1k/mo could easily go to food. Then another $500 for medical insurance (since no employer). Another $500 for potential car payments and insurance. Don't forget utilities like internet and cell. Then add on top of that the fact that if he's left with no money at the end, he can't save anything for a rainy day, and working on Monero long-term is suddenly not viable anymore. (So there's also the tangential argument to be made that FFS proposals need to be a viable alternative to good employment or non-money-grabbing consulting.)
Even if we ignore the special costs to consultants (vs employees) and treat it as a simple salary, $150k/year is really not that high for a person of Sarang's (reported) very special expertise. I would venture to guess that if he really went about it the right way, he could end up making a $200-300k/yr base salary as an employee, if not more, depending on experience and ability. Of course, I don't know him personally, and I've never worked with him, so I can't say whether he actually could justify this, but my point is, it's not that crazy at all. It really depends on (a) how seriously he takes the job, (b) how ready he is to live with having to be accountable for every billable hour, and (c) how good he actually is (i.e. his output/hr and the quality of it). If he's ready to have to be accountable for his work output during every billable hour - not that this is an hourly gig! - then it's actually a good thing he charges that much, because that means we know it means he's going to pump out a lot of value over a short period of time and not make excuses. And I get the feeling he is already treating the gig like this given the places he's worked. But if he's not really operating at that level, where he plans to put every business hour into this as a fulltime job, then 700 XMR for three months is too high. So what I think could help here is if Sarang could talk a little bit about how he sees this gig, whether he's going to be putting his all into it, and whether he knows what I'm talking about in terms of value/hr – basically, diligence. Not knowing him personally and not having seen him work, I couldn't tell you that. I just wanted to provide a bit of a reality check that if he indeed operates at that level, the figure is not so crazy. In fact it would be in the community's best interest to make sure he's above the threshold of pay where he no longer has to worry about money, because it means he can worry about Monero instead. And I would say that if Sarang's rate is only able to found to be too high in relation to the rate requested by others, and not in relation to the value he's generating, then it only means we need to start paying Surae, anonimal, etc more so that they don't have to worry about money either.
Hope this is contributive.
"complete trust in both the underlying mathematics and its implementation" This is what MRL needs to produce and publish everywhere. The potential for an order of magnitude in market cap move is here. Sarang already values aspects of our project. Its time to leverage him.