Carl Dong
Founder at Obscura VPN
New York, New York, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top School
Top expert inCryptocurrency Systems Development
Carl Dong is a founder and systems-focused software engineer with 11 years of experience building secure, low-level infrastructure and privacy tools from New York. A UC Berkeley computer science alumnus and former Bitcoin Core contributor (among the top five while active), he has deep expertise in Bitcoin and UNIX systems engineering and has spoken at MIT DCI and Bitcoin 2023. Carl’s open-source footprint spans core cryptocurrency projects—Bitcoin Core, Zcash, Litecoin, Rust-Bitcoin—and build/dependency work that made cross-platform forks and releases more robust. He founded Obscura VPN to deliver provably privacy-preserving VPN services and runs a consulting practice that blends security, build engineering, and backend systems. Notably, his contributions often target authentication, deterministic builds, and build-system portability—practical improvements that quietly keep critical crypto infrastructure maintainable.
11 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Computer Science, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) Computer Science at University of California, BerkeleyStudent, Student at Choate Rosemary Hall
English, Chinese
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (38)
dependency-management10
bip3210
git10
gnu-make10
docker10
c-language10
python10
testing10
bitcoin10
build-system10
data-serialization10
cmake10
bitcoins10
makefile10
dockers10
Programming languages (22)
Github contributions (5)
peercoin/peercoin
Aug 2018 - Dec 2021
Reference implementation of the Peercoin protocol.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:385 commits in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Carl made a series of contributions focused on improving the security and stability of the Peercoin protocol. They fixed a vulnerability in RPC authentication, addressed a deprecation issue in tests, and modified test scripts to align with expected behaviour, indicating a focus on testing and robustness. Additionally, the user improved the robustness of the build process with deterministic builds.
proof-of-stakeblockchaindecentralizedminablecryptocurrency
bitcoin/bitcoin
Jul 2017 - Jul 2022
Bitcoin Core integration/staging tree
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:403 reviews, 511 commits, 155 PRs in 5 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Carl's contributions focused on maintaining the core codebase of Bitcoin Core, implementing patches to resolve build and operational issues. They addressed bugs by removing unused variables and refactoring code for better maintainability. They also improved the robustness and security of the system by making code changes associated with authentication and the addition of checks.
cryptographyp2pc-plus-pluscryptocurrencybitcoin-core
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