Chia Network Names New Head of Developer Relations

Paul Ford will be responsible for launching the Chialisp Developer Program.

By James Rubin

Sep 1, 2021 at 3:38 a.m. UTC

Updated Sep 1, 2021 at 8:38 p.m. UTC

Chia Network's Paul Ford (Photo: Aaron B. Hockley)

James Rubin

James Rubin is CoinDesk's U.S. news editor based on the West Coast.

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Chia Network, the energy-efficient, smart transaction platform created by BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen, has hired Paul Ford as its vice president of developer relations.

Ford, who will report directly to Chia President and COO Gene Hoffman, will be responsible for kick-starting the Chialisp Developer Program (CLDP), intended to provide developers with the training, education and other experiences to build projects on the Chia blockchain platform. (Lisp refers to a group of programming languages.)
In addition, Ford will also be part of an executive review team for Chia’s Cultivation Grant Program, which provides financial help to developers working on projects that can expand the Chia ecosystem.
“The future of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology centers around giving programmers access to the tools to build things,” Ford said, adding that he was confident Chialisp could be “the foundation of technologies that will eventually make cryptocurrencies easier to use than cash.”
Ford, who has held different senior leadership roles over the past 20 years, was until recently chief marketing officer for Storj, the decentralized cloud storage service.
Hoffman told CoinDesk that Ford was “steeped in the developer community,” adding that “he’s got that technology background and authenticity that you can bring to a group of developers and have a conversation about how you go from a couple of guys coding to a venture-funded startup to a dominant piece of the ecosystem.”

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