David Knott is a back-end software engineer with nine years of experience specializing in blockchain, smart contracts, and Python-based EVM tooling. He has contributed significantly to high-profile open-source projects like Vyper, OpenZeppelin, and py-evm, implementing core contract logic, ECC backends, and security-driven refactors. Comfortable across low-level crypto, data structures, and testing, he has built RootChain contracts, UTXO/transaction primitives, and logging/external-call features for language runtimes. Based in the Greater Denver Area, he pairs a pragmatic engineering mindset with strong documentation and testing discipline to deliver auditable, secure systems. An avid outdoorsman whose international trekking and leadership experiences inform his calm, resourceful approach, he brings both technical rigor and steady team stewardship to challenging projects.
9 years of coding experience
St Olaf College
Back End Web Development, Web Development, Back End Web Development, Web Development at Turing School of Software & Design
OmiseGO's research implementation of Minimal Viable Plasma
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Blockchain Engineer
Contributions:106 commits, 45 PRs, 40 pushes in 4 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the core smart contract logic, including implementing critical components for a Plasma MVP implementation. They developed a `RootChain` smart contract using Viper, handling block submission and deposit functionalities. The user also created and tested essential classes like `Utxo`, `Transaction`, and `FixedMerkle` within the project, along with creating supporting libraries for cryptography and data structures.
Contributions:361 commits, 271 PRs, 189 pushes in 7 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the development of the Vyper programming language, focusing on the implementation and testing of core language features. Their work included creating and improving documentation for the language. Furthermore, they added functionality, specifically relating to logging events and external contract calls, as well as implementing more features and ensuring correct unit and integration tests were made.
evmsmart-contractsvyperpythonethereum
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