Vaibhav Saini

I am an IIT(Indian Institute of Technology) Delhi drop-out and Co-Founder at TowardsBlockchain, an MIT Cambridge Innovation Center incubated startup. I was a sophomore, pursuing B.Tech in Engineering Physics. I have been working with different startups on different projects (including Android, Web, Machine Learning and Distributed Technology) since 2017.

I am interested in integrated applications of Machine Learning, IOT and Blockchain. I have been looking into different consensus algorithms of different blockchains such as Ethereum, Quorum, EOS, Komodo, ByteBall, Stratis, Stellar, Nano(Raiblocks), HashGraph; and analysing their drawbacks and benefits. I have also started prominent Open source projects like:

IpfsCloud (ipfscloud.store): Uber for data and computation power economy. With about 10k users in a month, it’s one of the fastest growing open source projects in decentralized storage and computing domain. (Github: https://github.com/cluster-labs/ipfscloud-web)

Cluster Labs(clusterlabs.io): An open ecosystem, providing apps, infrastructure, and tools enabling decentralization. It aims to bring the Internet 3.0, in a frictionless way to the world. Cluster Labs proudly hosts a number of opensource projects(Github: github.com/cluster-labs/).

Apart from that, I am an active writer on Medium. I have written a number of articles on Ethereum, consensus algorithms, smart contract platforms, IPFS and much more. One of my articles(https://hackernoon.com/consensuspedia-an-encyclopedia-of-29-consensus-algorithms-e9c4b4b7d08f) has been cited in a course on blockchain taught at Princeton University.

I am also an active OpenSource Contributor(mainly IPFS, Ethereum & Quorum). I have also consulted blockchain projects and also helped students from universities like UCL in their thesis and research papers.

Also, I have been invited to IIIT Hyderabad for giving a talk on "Radical Vision of Blockchain".

What are you good at?

• Hacking stuff and creating cool things from existing stuff.

What drives you?

• I am dead passionate about working on things that can bring a change. As a founder of an 18 months startup, having a strong reason is really necessary to keep things driving in the long run. Not everything you build must have a reason to exist, but when I am committed to something it always solves a real-world problem.

What’s the most complex project you have worked on?
There are a few things that I am proud of. Here are some of them:

• Projects under Cluster Labs
• A patent on a document format(still in process of patenting, so can reveal much)

What did you learn?
There are a few things that I learned which are applicable to not just development, but life in general:

• Things change. Rather than resisting it, embrace it.
• Be patient. When working on projects that have real value, and encounter a problem, DON'T abandon it. The solution is what adds real value to it.
• There is a world outside your computer ;)