Gonçalo Pestana
Rust Core Engineer at hashmatter
Liechtenstein
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolGonçalo Pestana is a Rust Core Engineer with 12 years of experience building privacy-preserving, peer-to-peer and cryptographic systems, currently advancing resilient infrastructure at hashmatter from Liechtenstein. He blends systems engineering with applied cryptography and has driven privacy-first adtech and antifraud work at Brave, plus R&D on metadata-resistant P2P primitives like p3lib. A prolific backend contributor to prominent open-source blockchain projects (notably Substrate and the Polkadot SDK) and to time-series tooling like Kapacitor, he focuses on core runtime logic, staking mechanics and reliable replay/storage semantics. Gonçalo’s background spans high-scale data pipelines, cloud-native operations and security audits, and he pairs academic rigor (top-of-class BSc, Aalto masters) with practical product delivery. An ex-competitive athlete turned team leader, he brings a disciplined, research-driven approach to building “unstoppable software.”
12 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Master's Double Degree Student, CS, security and mobile computing, Master's Double Degree Student, CS, security and mobile computing at Aalto UniversityBachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Network Communications engineering, Final grade: 16.2/20 - Merit student (second best in class), Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Network Communications engineering, Final grade: 16.2/20 - Merit student (second best in class) at Instituto Superior Técnico
Stackoverflow
365reputation
39kreached
2answers
11questions
Github Skills (27)
substrate10
time-series10
kapacitor10
polkadot-js10
go10
staking10
blockchain10
rust10
backend10
polkadot10
api-design9
apidoc9
storage9
api9
data-structures8
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
paritytech/polkadot-sdk
Aug 2023 - Dec 2024
The Parity Polkadot Blockchain SDK
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:349 reviews, 122 PRs, 451 pushes in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Gonçalo's commits focus on enhancing the staking functionality within the Polkadot SDK. They implemented features to store and manage staking data on-chain, improved the efficiency of retrieving voters, and optimized the logic for unbonding and slashing. These changes involved modifications to core pallet logic, storage structures, and weight calculations. The user also contributed to integrating EPM (Election Provider Multi-Phase) with the staking pallet.
blockchaincumuluspolkadotsubstrate
paritytech/substrate
Oct 2022 - Jan 2023
Substrate: The platform for blockchain innovators
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:242 reviews, 86 commits, 40 PRs in 2 months
Contributions summary:Gonçalo made several contributions to the `substrate` blockchain platform. These contributions focused on the staking pallet, including storing the `min-active-bond` on-chain, implementing automatic `withdraw_unbonded` upon `unbond`, and improving runtime APIs for staking and nomination pools. They also improved the EPM and staking events, and addressed some integration issues, demonstrating a focus on core blockchain functionality and runtime logic.
substraterustblockchainparitypolkadot
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