Shannon Wells is a strategic advisor and systems thinker with 12 years of experience bridging public policy, impact strategy and decentralized technology. She has led ecosystem growth and go-to-market efforts for blockchain-native organizations like Livepeer and Vana while advising on product and community strategy across Web3. A former senior policy leader at Canadian federal institutions and the World Economic Forum, she blends high-level stakeholder convening with hands-on technical contributions—having implemented payment channel and retrieval adaptations in prominent open-source Filecoin clients (Lotus and Venus). Shannon’s background in impact investing and brand strategy informs a pragmatic approach to building equitable, place-based digital infrastructure. She holds executive leadership training from top global schools and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Toronto. Less obvious: she pairs governance fluency with active Rust/Polkadot-era engineering curiosity, moving fluid strategy into concrete code and tests.
11 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Executive Masters in Global Leadership, World Economic Forum, Executive Masters in Global Leadership, World Economic Forum at The Wharton School, London Business School, INSEAD, Columbia University and CEIBS
Honours Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, Honours Bachelor of Arts, Political Science at Dalhousie University
Master of Arts (MA), Master of Arts (MA) at The University of British Columbia
Masters in Public Policy, School of Public Policy and Governance, Masters in Public Policy, School of Public Policy and Governance at University of Toronto
Contributions:96 commits, 87 PRs, 425 pushes in 1 year 7 months
Contributions summary:Shannon's contributions primarily involve refactoring and updating test cases within the Filecoin Full Node Implementation in Go. Their work includes updating test calls to build CID Prefixes and modifying existing tests to ensure their functionality. They also implemented code formatting across various files to maintain code quality. The user made changes related to chain head management and incorporated testing for a variety of functions, including getting payment vouchers.
Reference implementation of the Filecoin protocol, written in Go
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:12 commits, 36 PRs, 96 pushes in 7 months
Contributions summary:Shannon primarily focused on modifying the `paychmgr` and `retrievaladapter` components of the Filecoin Lotus project. Their contributions involved implementing and refining payment channel functionalities, including message handling and wait functions for fund additions and channel creation. They integrated these changes with the go-fil-markets library. Additionally, the user addressed missed return values and ensured proper unlocking to prevent potential errors within the codebase.
golangipfsfilecoinblockchainfilecoin-protocol
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