I'm Nikhil Ranjan, CTO & co-founder of Polkassembly, previously at Parity and Astar. I write Rust for Substrate runtimes, on-chain exchange logic, and systems like VelociDB.
Open source, systems-heavy, mostly Rust.
A binary-native browser written in Rust that fetches and executes WebAssembly modules directly — no HTML, no JavaScript. Capability-based sandbox built on Wasmtime, Tokio and egui, with strict zero-IO defaults.
RustWasmtime
Tokioegui
WASIA production-grade embedded database engine in Rust, inspired by SQLite but built for modern hardware. MVCC, async I/O on io_uring, lock-free data structures, SIMD vectorization and NVMe-aware storage.
RustMVCCio_uringSIMDB-TreeOn-chain stableswap execution: a swap updates per-asset liquidity and liabilities, and the price comes from the pool's coverage ratio. Deposits are single-sided, so a withdrawal returns the same asset.
The flagship governance platform for Polkadot & Kusama. On-chain proposal browsing, discussion, delegation and direct voting. Tracked 1,700+ referenda, $300M+ in treasury decisions and 250K+ participants across 50+ networks.
Next.js
TypeScript
Polkadot.js
SubstrateRustAn AI governance agent for Polkadot OpenGov. GPT-4-driven proposal analysis, automated voting with 6× conviction, and delegation flows — applying agentic AI to on-chain decision making at protocol scale.
TypeScript
OpenAIPolkadot.jsOpenGovLong-form essays on systems, browsers, databases and AI, published on X.
A personal account of building VelociDB — a modern embedded database engine in Rust — and what the hard edges of storage engines, concurrency, and systems design teach you about engineering judgment.
A comprehensive walkthrough of Oxide's architecture and SDK: immediate-mode rendering, capability-based sandboxing, GPU compute, WebRTC, media playback, and patterns for building real applications without HTML, CSS, or a DOM.
A manifesto on why HTML is the wrong abstraction for the modern internet, and how Oxide — a binary-first browser that runs WebAssembly instead of HTML — rethinks application delivery from the ground up with capability-based security.
An analysis of whether fully autonomous AI systems can execute the entire scientific lifecycle — from hypothesis generation and experimentation to manuscript authoring and peer review — supported by knowledge graphs and semantic novelty detection.
Arguing that human-readable languages are the CISC of the AI era, this paper proposes Neural-RISC: a machine-native programming language designed for LLM compilation, with token-vocabulary alignment, graph-native execution, and logit-masking for type safety.
A comprehensive architectural blueprint for a modern embedded database engine in Rust, covering MVCC concurrency, io_uring async I/O, PMEM integration, SIMD vectorized execution, and CRDT-based distributed synchronization.
Technical guides on Rust, ink! and Motoko, available on Kindle.
Ownership, async, and idiomatic DSA for mid-to-staff hiring loops — with 183 runnable practice problems and a companion site at acetherustinterview.com.
The definitive guide to decentralized application engineering on the Internet Computer — identity, tokenomics, async messaging safety, orthogonal persistence, and a full dapp build.
Building production-ready smart contracts with Rust on polkadot-sdk chains — from fundamentals and ERC-20 patterns through testing, debugging, and deployment.
Cryptoeconomic protocols, decentralized systems and supply chain security.
Six years in the ecosystem, from core protocol to governance.
From core protocol work at Parity to founding the ecosystem's flagship governance platform.
A decade across founding teams, high-scale platforms and core blockchain infrastructure.
Founded and architected Polkadot's flagship governance platform. Built Rust and Substrate backends for proposal and account state, validator coordination, delegated voting, and transaction submission. Shipped inscription tokens on Polkadot & Avail, EVM deployments on Kusama, and AI agents for OpenGov. Grew the open-source org from 1 to 20 engineers.
Developed the parachain runtime and governance logic in Rust and Substrate. Worked on astar.js, astar apps, astar base, and astar portal, and on the gas estimation API and faucet. Worked with ArthSwap on their AMM: constant-product pools, swap execution, and liquidity accounting.
Supported Rust and Motoko developers building on ICP — DeFi primitives, ledger mechanics, secure canister deployments. Ran the Developer Partner & Grants program and authored governance proposals (including reducing minimum dissolve delays) that directly impacted a $6B+ ecosystem.
Core contributions to the launch of Polkadot & Kusama. Implemented the governance pallet's state transitions — proposals, referenda, voting, and scheduled enactment — plus validator lifecycle and staking flows for account-state updates in Rust/Substrate.
Built the used-car marketplace serving emerging markets across Latin America, Africa and Asia. Stack: Node.js, React, MySQL, Elasticsearch.
Built m.tokopedia.com (Tokopedia Lite) — winner of Google's Best PWA award. Founding engineer for the India team; helped set up hiring and dev infrastructure. Stack: Go, Node.js, React.
Founding engineer on India's leading P2P payment system & superapp. Built Node.js microservices that scaled to 100M+ users with caching, load balancing and minimal downtime.
Deep in Rust and systems, with range up to product UI.
RustTypeScript
JavaScript
Go
Node.js
Motoko
SoliditySubstratePolkadot SDK
KusamaICP
EVMAMMStableswapWebAssemblyPolkadot.jsNext.js
React
ExpressTokioWasmtimeegui
PostgreSQL
MySQL
Redis
Elasticsearch
RabbitMQ
AWS
NginxOpenAI / GPT-4
Stable DiffusionComfyUIAgent orchestrationLocal LLM inferenceOpen to collaborating on Rust, systems, and Polkadot ecosystem projects. The fastest way to reach me is email or X.
