Starting from Scratch on Sui: Interview with Developer Relations Head Brian Hennessey-Hsieh

This article features a conversation with Brian Hennessey-Hsieh, the head of developer relations at Sui, discussing open source, decentralization, and developer success. It explores how his team supports developers in using Sui and achieving success, as well as how developers can receive official support.

Brian's Blockchain Journey

Brian has worked in the open-source field for over 20 years, from GCC and Linux to cloud computing like OpenStack. He has always been passionate about open source, believing that open collaboration and transparency are key to software development. In 2017, he joined Uber to create the open-source project office and was later invited to join Coinbase Cloud, officially starting his web3 journey. Although initially skeptical about the crypto industry, he was deeply attracted to blockchain technology. Currently, Brian serves as the head of developer relations at the Sui Foundation.

Views on the web3 industry

Brian has three perspectives on web3:

1. Work perspective: Help establish more open collaboration and governance, achieving true decentralization.

2. Technical Perspective: Sui is relatively new, but the technology is reliable. It is necessary to explain this technology and its applications to people.

3. Application Perspective: The current use cases are diverse and validate the technological value. Brian believes that web3 will become the pillar of the new internet.

Layer 1 Blockchain Developer Relations Work

Brian believes that the developer relations of L1 involve decentralization and interaction with developers, including open source, open collaboration, and open governance. It is necessary to establish principles of community interaction to ensure that the contribution process is fair and inclusive, while also ensuring the optimal choice of technology. They have drawn on many principles from the open source world.

Attract Developers to Use Web3

Brian believes that web3 should be viewed as a technology for solving problems, rather than just considering its appeal. Developers need to be taught in the right way to evaluate web3 just like they would evaluate other technologies.

How to Start Building on Sui

For mid-career professionals looking to transition to Sui development, Brian advises:

1. Understand the basic theories, including distributed systems, cryptography, and programming languages.

2. Determine the development direction: application development or core protocol development.

3. Study the codebase and try to make modifications.

4. Actively communicate with other developers and join the community.

5. Participate in activities such as Sui Builder House.

Tools to Accelerate Sui Builder Learning

Sui is developing various educational content to cater to different audiences and format needs. The Builder Houses event is also collecting feedback and making customizations. The community-developed SDK and IDE are also important, and the Sui Foundation will provide support.

Development Trends of the Sui Community

Developers are exploring new features of Sui, such as dynamic fields and programmable transaction blocks, considering how to improve existing code or create new use cases. People are delving into the potential of Sui and conducting practical tests.

Looking forward to applications developed on Sui

Brian hopes to see a solution that can fairly, transparently, and verifiably reward contributors. How to verify contributions, estimate the size of contributions, and appropriately reward them while balancing fairness and privacy will further promote the decentralization of Sui.