Alexander Popiak
Freelance Substrate Engineer
Berlin, Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlexander Popiak is a Freelance Substrate Engineer based in Berlin with 11 years of software development experience and a Master's from Hasso Plattner Institute. He is a Rust enthusiast who has contributed backend runtime work to flagship Polkadot and Substrate projects, including enhancements to council/election pallets, XCM integration, and preparing Statemine as a parachain. At Parity he helped design and ship core components like Statemint/Statemine and the Chainlink oracle pallet, and as a freelancer he implements production XCM solutions, oracles and collator reward systems for projects such as HydraDx and Basilisk. Known for deep storage and weight-calculation improvements, he combines pragmatic runtime engineering with thorough code reviews and migration expertise. Notably, his work spans both protocol-level node/runtime changes and practical parachain integrations that directly impact interoperable asset handling.
12 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), IT Systems Engineering, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), IT Systems Engineering at Hasso Plattner Institute
Stackoverflow
444reputation
3kreached
7answers
1question
Github Skills (27)
substrate10
storage10
data-storage10
file-storage10
polkadot-js10
staking10
blockchain10
nodejs10
para10
rust10
polkadot10
par10
nodes10
cm10
clientside9
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
paritytech/cumulus
Apr 2021 - Dec 2021
Write Parachains on Substrate
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 release, 165 reviews, 109 commits in 7 months
Contributions summary:Alexander primarily worked on preparing the `cumulus` repository for a Statemine release, including setting the default Para ID, adding and adjusting chain specifications, and generating genesis values. They implemented and modified core logic, including updating dependencies, and adding a `FungiblesAdapter` to handle asset transactions via XCM, demonstrating a focus on parachain functionality. The user also contributed to the introduction of transaction priority and the corresponding runtime updates and version bumps.
substrate
paritytech/substrate
Feb 2020 - Dec 2022
Substrate: The platform for blockchain innovators
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:265 reviews, 55 commits, 44 PRs in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Alexander primarily contributed to the Substrate blockchain platform, focusing on code changes related to storage management, including the `contains_key` function and data structures. They refactored code by renaming and updating existing functions. Their work involved modifications to test files within the `frame/staking` and `frame/democracy` directories, and also included changes to the `frame/support/src/storage/mod.rs` file to improve existing storage functionality.
blockchainsubstrateparitypolkadotnode
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