A new challenge

Goodbye Cielo. Hello Aragon.

I alluded in my last post that I had some big news to share. Well, here it is: I'm leaving Cielo after around 2 years working on the project. I've had a fantastic time working with the team. I'm super proud of what both I and the team have achieved during my time there. But it's time for a new challenge. I'm excited to announce that I'm joining Aragon as a Senior Software Engineer. I'm really looking forward to working with the team and helping to build the future of DAOs and onchain governance.

Cielo

The Good

I joined Cielo a couple of years ago now and the product has come a long way since then. I've been lucky enough to be involved essentially from ground zero. In that time, it has gone from a very simple web application that was essentially a web viewer for the telegram bot to what it is today. A fully-fledged DeFi application with an array of features and a growing user base. It was a difficult decision to leave for sure.

• Fantastic Team: I've had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people. The team is small but mighty. We've achieved a lot together, and I'm proud of what we've built.
• Great Learning Experience: I have learnt so much here. The app was originally scaffolded with create-react-app and has since moved to the latest version of NextJS, leveraging all of the latest features including SSR, server and client components, and much more.
• Great Leadership: The leadership team at Cielo is great. It's an early-stage startup, so not a lot of red tape, just the right amount of meetings, and a super flexible yet supportive environment.

The Bad

In terms of the bad, it's difficult to come up with much here, but of course, nothing is perfect. The main thing I would say here is more of a reflection of myself than Cielo. Firstly, the tech stack is wide-ranging; the frontend, as I mentioned, is React, Typescript, and NextJS, which is right up my street. However, on the backend side of things, it's a mix of Python and Go, which means I was limited to working solely on the frontend.

We explored the idea of me working across the full stack numerous times, but it never came to fruition. This was down to current company priorities factoring in the ramp-up time I would need to pick up new languages and frameworks. I totally understand this, but it's something I would have liked to have done.

Aside from that, it is difficult to think of any other things that I would consider bad.

The Ugly

The title here is a little bit dramatic and honestly The Ugly is nothing to do with Cielo at all and more to do with the industry itself. Crypto and the blockchain space is something I am very passionate about. I love the idea of decentralisation and the potential it has to change the world. However, the industry is still very much in its infancy and as such is very volatile. Many people are in the space for the wrong reasons and there are a lot of scams and rug pulls. And of course, given the nature of the Cielo application, those scams, rugs and in general just the people looking to make a quick buck are all in the token tracking space, which is firmly where Cielo sits.

Aragon

I'm super excited to be joining Aragon. Aragon are OGs in the crypto and DAO space. They have been around since the early days and have been building tools to help people create and manage DAOs for years. Getting to learn more about the project, its history, and the individual team members during the interview process has been an absolute pleasure.

The core of Aragon's mission is to empower everyone to experiment with governance at the speed of software. The recent shift has seen Aragon move back to what they do best - building tools for DAO creation and management, which is super exciting and something I cannot wait to be a part of.

My role at Aragon will also tick a lot of the boxes that I felt were missing at Cielo. I'll predominantly be working on the frontend. But, even on the frontend side, there will be lots more interaction with the blockchain. Interacting with smart contracts, The Graph, and other blockchain technologies.

Furthermore, I'll have the opportunity to work across the full stack and even get involved in some smart contract development using Solidity. This is something I've been wanting to get into for a while now, so I'm super excited about that.

As I mentioned, Aragon has been around for a while now and is further along in their journey than Cielo. This means that everything is just a little more polished and structured. Regular team offsites and things like that are already in place and something that I'm really looking forward to.

Conclusion

I'm super excited to be joining Aragon. It's a fantastic opportunity and I can't wait to get started. I'm really proud of what I've achieved at Cielo and I'm going to miss the team a lot. But it's time for a new challenge and I'm excited to see what the future holds.

I'll be keeping a close eye on Cielo and will be rooting for them to continue to be a huge success. I'm sure they will be.