Keagan Mcclelland
Denver, Colorado, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKeagan Mcclelland is a software engineer with 11 years of experience focused on cryptography, distributed systems, and the emerging trustware space, blending academic rigor with hands-on protocol engineering. He has driven core Lightning Network development—working on channel management, state synchronization, and quiescence protocols for lnd—and has contributed to advanced functional-programming tooling like Polysemy. As a co-founder of Start9 Labs and staff/ protocol engineer roles at Lightning Labs and Alpen Labs, he pairs low-level systems work (x86, C/C++, Rust, Haskell) with practical DevOps and security improvements such as ECDSA certificate migration and SSL automation. Keagan’s background includes applied research in data security and reverse engineering for high-assurance environments, reflecting a rare mix of offensive insight and defensive engineering. Based in Denver, he’s driven by making systems more honest and interoperable—aptly summarized on GitHub with the maxim "We are all Satoshi."
11 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
High School, High School at Niwot High SchoolMission San Jose High SchoolBachelor of Science in CS Computer Science, Bachelor of Science in CS Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
English, Spanish
Stackoverflow
65reputation
556reached
1answer
3questions
Github Skills (32)
lightning-network10
channel10
type-system10
go10
monads10
openssl10
state-machine10
cryptography10
blockchain10
management10
nginx10
haskell10
software-design9
back-end-development9
devops9
Programming languages (27)
Github contributions (5)
Start9Labs/start-os
Nov 2020 - Jun 2022
Open source Linux distro optimized for self-hosting
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:8 releases, 248 reviews, 316 commits in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Keagan's commits primarily focused on the back-end aspects of the project, including system configuration and SSL certificate management. Their work involved implementing SSL certificate renewal mechanisms, replacing RSA with ECDSA for derivative certificates, and making improvements to the system's startup sequence. The user also contributed to the project's infrastructure by fixing issues with the nginx configuration and improving wifi initialization. These changes collectively enhanced the security and functionality of the system.
privacy-enhancing-technologiesbrowserrustp2pbitcoin-node
lightningnetwork/lnd
Feb 2019 - Feb 2025
Lightning Network Daemon ⚡️
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:959 reviews, 72 PRs, 6 pushes in 6 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Keagan primarily contributed to the core logic of the Lightning Network Daemon (LND) project, specifically focusing on channel management and state synchronization. Their work included refining the quiescence protocol implementation, which involved adding new state machines for protocol flow, handling incoming and outgoing channel closures, and updating the logic to reflect new transaction types. Additionally, the user made changes to the update log and commitment state, demonstrating a focus on the internal data structures that are core to LND's functionality.
cryptographypaymentsprotocoldaemonlightning
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