About Me

About the man

So you instinctively click “About” links too, huh? This stalker-friendly page got you covered

Welcome. I’m Siddhant† Not to be confused with Siddhartha (which was Lord Buddha’s princely name which means ‘achieved one’s goals’). Ironically, it was his name prior to renunciation. There are numerous Siddhant Shrivastavas on LinkedIn alone. Tip: You know which one is the real me by messaging me in parseltongue or showing a fascination for head mounted displays…. / सिद्धांत/ Sid / sidcode! It’s Sanskrit for tenet / principle / code. My D&D alignment is neutral good, it is described here.

Therefore, this site is called SidCodex. It’s also an esoteric easter egg. Those who know, know.

Like me, this section is a SID - System In Development †(from the codename for Debian’s unstable bleeding-edge release SID which comes from the character in Toy Story - a movie series which continues to colour the lives of every 90s kid).….

About the man’s myriad meanders / many meaningful missions

Hobbies, and course of life go here. It’s funny how Curriculum Vitae is the latter’s Latin lexicon listing. Work and life are considered separate things which need to be balanced. Yet all that the CV has is what we accomplish in the ~8-hour workday with no regard for the rest of the sweet 16. Here I’ll cover my actual Curriculum Vitae, not the fancy flimflam feigned for fame.

All arbitrage artistry, raison d’etre, ikigai, comparative advantage, optimistic nihilism - everything goes here:

Web3 journey so far:

• First foray: introduced to build on IPFS in 2016 and stumbled upon Juan Benet ¹ (accidentally). Read the annotated Bitcoin paper too but did not grok the social consequences fully until much later.
• Academic: researching smart contracts, memes, communities, and NFTs via IC3, Cornell University.
• DAOs: GitcoinDAO, Token Engineering Commons, SuperTeam, Algovera, ScienceFund, Verses
• GitcoinDAO: started in Moonshot Collective, helped on the ultimate DAO workers report, tech coordinator for MMM (memes, merch, marketing), a librarian at the Public Goods workstream. Public Goods are good.
• Governauts: researching reward systems for the next wave of DAO coordination on a governauts scholarship with Token Engineering Commons.
• Projects: Silent Auth, DeSchool, contributor to memes.party, Declaration of Interdependence of Cyberspace
• Hackathons: won the first prize and popularity prize at the Singapore Blockchain Innovation Challenge in December 2021 for cross-chain community authentication for DAOs, won the Balaji Srinivasan prize at the Solana India hackathon last week in September 2021, a special prize at HackZurich 2021, and the overall prize at National Blockchain Challenge in 2019 in Singapore. The real prize in all of these are my friends whom I got to spend those hours with, and the new friends I made subsequently!

Tech / (Computer) Science:

• Security: cyber-physical security for national critical infrastructures at the iTrust Centre for Research in Cyber Security, Singapore University of Technology and Design
• Space: satellite image processing and remote sensing for the Indian Space Research Organization. My first foray into free and open source software.
• Distributed Systems: and Engineering at Goldman Sachs
• Robotics: Worked extensively with mobile robot teams and rovers via Google Summer of Code, Italian Mars Society and Python Software Foundation. Blog link
• Extended Reality: designing explainable security and smart cities for policymakers through VR/AR/MR.
• Papers and Patents: despite their pitfalls, centralized institutions have assembled our knowledge graph reasonably OK so far for getting one’s ideas out there

Economics, Policy:

• Cyber-physical security: actively involved in organizing global and local cyber-physical security exercises- like NATO’s Locked Shields and Critical Infrastructure Security Showdown.
• Startup life: Chief strategy/storytelling officer of Silence Labs. We’ve made authentication invisible while increasing security. Coming soon to web3.
• Pseudonymous work: editor of the sequel to a top Bitcoin and economics book that you may have most likely read.
• Banking: learned a lot about global Investment Management, Banking, Markets at my first job as a strategic analyst at Goldman Sachs.
• Consulting: advising policymakers and companies who’re building the future of society.

Community:

• Complexity Weekend | Facilitator and eusocial participAnt.
• DesignSG | founder and co-admin for a community of 2050+ designers.
• CryptoTechSG | founder and co-admin for a local community of crypto practitioners. Fun fact: I made Vitalik give a shoutout to the community in one his AMAs.
• Better.sg | volunteering as a project co-lead and builder in multiple projects listed here on non-verbal accessibility, safety, and multicultural issues via gaming and interactive fiction.
• Other Singapore-based groups: ProductSG, GatherSG, Creative Technologists
• India-based groups: Climbing (Bangalore Climbing Initiatives) and Skating (Bengaluru Skaters)

Culture:

• Poetry: expressing computing culture by translating classical Urdu/Hindi poetry to English at CodeShayari. Selected works.
• Design: MIT Media Lab design innovation workshop. I designed Smart Textiles.
• Storytelling: bringing stories to code and pull requests (pseudonymoyus stealth project, to be released soon)
• Humanities: involved in multiple communities studying forgotten/current/emerging cultures (around the world in cyber-physical spaces)

Personal:

• Physical Culture: amateur bodybuilding, strength training, calisthenics, martial arts (Kalaripayattu), and all ten foundational domains of fitness
• Longevity: training/nutrition/sleep geek before it was cool
• Food: Love everything and anything about the form and function of food of all kinds
• Generalist: very putty-like | interested in many things
• Sports: climbing, skating, football, frisbee, dragon boating, swimming
• Dance: enthusiast (about music in general)
• Filmmaking and combining hobbies- like this one

Upbringing:

• 90s kid
• a torchbearer of the relay generation, the last one to be proficient with both analog and digital worlds
• mixed culture kid (genotypically and phenotypically)
• moved around quite a bit in different geographies across continents - coast, desert, valley, mountain, wetland, island
• used to sing as a kid in the Christmas choir and Indian Classical Music. Then life happened. Now it is a plan for later.

Socials:

• @sidcode on Twitter
• @sidcode on LinkedIn
• sidcode#1729 on Discord

All the social networks which I’m gradually giving up on before they give themselves up. Once bitten, twice shy. Looking at you, G+

Thanks for reading! If you’ve read this far, ping me and I’ll send you a POAP ;) Fin