The Journey of Sovryn Mutant, Franklin Richards

26 Jul 2021

Hi Guys,

My name is Shebin John, a.k.a. Franklin Richards. I am one of the Developers at Sovryn, bringing the coolest tech in the decentralized ecosystem to you.

I joined Sovryn in December last year. Ororo, our beloved CTO, conducted my interview; then and there I knew that she is one of the most brilliant minds working in Sovryn and I couldn’t wait to join this amazing project.

Becoming a Mutant!

My first few days were like any normal dev job, setting up the new things to get ready for work etc, along with one tradition we at Sovryn do: choose our Pseudonym.

I initially wanted to select NightCrawler, which was one of my favorite characters in X-Men growing up, sadly that was taken. Then I thought of being the Wolverine! Again, that was taken too. Though the person with that character, James Howlett a.k.a Wolverine became a dependable friend, so it was a win-win.

Then I tried to find a character that I thought would be powerful but at the same time in its infancy (which might have helped me to justify my oops moments in the future! Luckily I didn’t have any major ones, thus I thought to select Franklin Richards. Basically a kid, but nonetheless powerful (Oh, my parents would be proud :D)

As the most difficult part of the job was over, now it was time for the simple stuff. Before coming to Sovryn, I worked as a Developer and Auditor and thus Ororo suggested checking the Governance for Review. I was lucky to find a medium-level threat, along with some low-level ones and made suggestions for optimization. You can find all our audits here.

And with that first piece of work finished, I have become a Sovryn Mutant!

During my time at Sovryn, I completed the following:

• Completed the Audit of Governance, CSOV Token, CrowdSale (Genesis Sale), Staking, Vesting Optimization, Bitocracy 2.0 (Governance), ETH-Aggregator, and other Smart Contracts.
• Completed the development of the Development Fund, Escrow, LockedSOV, Origins, and other Smart Contracts.
• Completed the testing of Governance, Development Fund, Escrow, LockedSOV, Origins, and other Smart Contracts.
• Development Fund Contract which is used for Development Fund and Adoption Fund, which holds more than 45 Million SOV, amounting to $1.8 Billion at the all-time high of SOV Price.
• Completed the Setup of CI work and created a PR (100th PR of Sovryn Smart Contract Repo).
• Checking out different test environments: Truffle, Hardhat & OpenZeppelin and provided a detailed analysis of the different test environments and my subjective suggestion. We went with Hardhat.
• Started looking up about Arbitrum and sent my first impression on Arbitrum to Ororo.
• Many Repo’s were set up in Discord Github Notifications.
• Reviewed SIP008, SIP0014, SIP0015 & SIP0024, and suggested changes where necessary.
• Created the SIP006, SIP008, SIP0017 & SIP0019 data and script to create the proposal.
• Checking at the reports from Immunefi as part of the Bug Bounty.
• Started working in the Hiring Team to hire new Senior Solidity Developers. Reviewing Resume, Checking Test Task Results, and Taking Interviews of potential candidates. We are still looking for more people, have a look here.
• Reviewed many candidates’ resumes for Sovryn in the Senior Solidity Developer position and took interviews with the potential candidates.
• Mentored one of the team members and had Weekly Mentorship meetings.
• Created a blog post with a development update, and shared it with the team for review: Sovryn Development Update - February 2021
• Managing Circle Of Order.
• Setting up the Support Ticket Service for Sovryn using Freshdesk along with a basic introductory class for the team.
• Listed eSOV in Kleros
• Cleaned up contract interaction scripts and created a new one only for SIP-related scripts.
• Helped integrating SOV in Gitcoin.
• Uniswap Pool Creation Script and listing eSOV in Uniswap!
• Creation of V1 Pools: MoC/WRBTC, XUSD/WRBTC, and BNB/WRBTC.
• Creation of ETH Multisig.
• Created the NPM Package for Origins.

In between starting with an Audit, to slowly moving forward with my role, somewhere along the way, I became a Senior Solidity Developer. An exciting time indeed. Though it was not a given position, the transition was evident to me based on the work handled by me and the types of questions I got to answer.

And finally, maturing to a Team Lead

Somewhere between the above stunts, I took a small vacation during the Holy Week to relax with my family. Sadly, along with me, 3 more developers took a vacation. By the time I got back, the team had decided that there was the need for someone to lead the circle of order and help coach the newer devs. I was asked if I would be willing to take on the extra responsibility.

The Circle of What?

Let’s back up a bit. Before going to Vacation, there was a discussion on dividing the team into smaller modules, because our short stand-ups have turned to be, let’s say not so short anymore.

Thus, we decided to divide development into different parts:

• The Circle of Light: Frontend Team
• The Circle of Shadow: Backend Team
• The Circle of Chaos: R&D Team
• And finally, The Circle of Order: Production & Maintenance Team

In this way, it was easy for each team to focus on what they intended to do, and then the Team Leads could discuss and bridge between each team. A novel idea indeed.

So, coming back to the story, when this was asked to me, for a second I was like, WHAAAATTTT??? (In my head, obviously).

One of my favourite quotes is:

Thus, I found my composure and said to the Team, I would love to give this opportunity a try.

Even before taking the title, I had so much respect for Ororo, not just based on the technical skills she had, but also on how she managed all these things, and still could be super amazing.

And after taking this title, as I have mentioned to some of my other co-workers, she has her GOD Mode ON always. It surprises me every time, how she manages the time.

Due to some personal reasons, I had to spend some time away from the online world, meaning I would not be able to work full time so I asked the Team about stepping down and moving towards a different path. This resulted in my moving from Team Lead, to Lead Developer.

And here comes the Lead Dev of Origins

A while ago, I was working on the Origins Platform. Ororo mentioned that we would be having the launchpad sale in about 2 weeks and asked me to make a custom contract for the same. But I wanted to make a smart contract such that it takes the least effort in the future for more sales, which is one of the visions of Sovryn, but time was a hurdle.

Lucky or not, I was able to create the smart contracts on time efficiently. To make sure there were no bugs, improvements were made based on the external audit and my own automated testing. With the help of Circle of Light, we were also able to work on the Frontend and it was ready on time.

Due to the market sentiment, the decision from the first project, Babelfish was to postpone the sale, but the system was ready on time and now is in a stage where we can make incremental changes. Now the origins platform can have sales with multiple options, all of which are audited, tested extensively and have clear documentation.

In between, I had to take the reign of the Circle of Order again, due to the vacation of the new Circle of Order Team Lead, Tyrone, another close ally.

The Goodbye

Now it is time for me to leave this awesome team and transform to the next phase of my career.

I cannot stress enough that this is one of the best teams I have ever worked with. I had some great mentors and co-workers and I will always look forward to seeing how the project progresses in the future.

With an awesome team like this, I have no doubt we will see Sovryn being one of the top Defi Projects not just in 2021, but for years to come.

In this team, I saw the passion for breaking the mould and pushing the limits. I have seen people working passionately before, but this team has proved that there is even a stage beyond that. I must say a good reason for that is because of the main leads of the Sovryn Team.

I want to sincerely thank each and everyone in the team for helping me in all ways and apologize for each time I bugged you with something or other. Especially:

• Ororo - I know I have bugged her the most. I don’t know how she managed to keep her calm every time I disturbed her. One of the best in the whole world. And as I say to most people, she has her GOD MODE always ON while coding.
• James - He is second on my highest bugged person after Ororo. Definitely an Omega Level developer.
• Tyrone - He was one of my team members in Circle of Order and I definitely knew he had the potential to Lead, and I am happy he has proved me right.
• Salina - Awesome person to talk to, trust me you will feel calm and composed. Bugged her a lot with scheduling interviews for potential candidates.

And a special mention to:

• Cowsant, Rahne & Stan - My handpicked hand cannons (you thought I was going to say roses? Noooo…) They make one hell of a dev team, who eliminated any problem in front of them. I am proud to see their contributions to Sovryn.
• Victor, tzu, and Tiltom - For the support they gave me when it came to Design and Frontend related issues.

There are many others in the team I have worked with, but the above are the people I have interacted with the most. But all in all, I want to say a massive THANK YOU to the entire team and thank you to The Gimp for helping me communicate this here.

I am sad to leave the X-Men Persona behind, but that’s life. To move to the next chapter, you have to turn the page. Anyone who wants to catch up with me in the normal, boring world, feel free to send me a request on Linkedin and, as always:

Stay Sovryn!

P.S. This is not a final goodbye, I will be contributing to Sovryn from time to time, hopefully in the upcoming Helping Hands Project.