Bitcoin's Second-Ever Developer Is Back

Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the first coder to work alongside bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Martti 'Sirius' Malmi, is joining a team of developers launching a new cryptocurrency called AXE. The project, which is combining Malmi's Identifi online reputation system with decentralized database system GUN, is taking on the long-desired mission of decentralizing the Web.

An amateur college developer in 2009, Malmi played a crucial role in bitcoin's early days as the only active developer working alongside Satoshi - and even striking up a bit of a friendship.

A couple years in, Malmi followed Satoshi's lead and left the project, thinking bitcoin didn't really need him anymore.

"Most of the giant online businesses, such as Google, Facebook, eBay or Airbnb are basically centralized indexes - searchable lists of stuff. If we want to disrupt them, we need decentralized indexing."

GUN, which is known for using simple stick-figure comics to explain how its tech works, scored a $1.5 million round led by Draper Associates earlier this year, and has already built a decentralized Reddit and YouTube.

"You could use your Identifi web of trust to filter out spam, trolls and other kinds of unwanted content without resorting to centralized censorship. That is useful for decentralized social media."

To be truly decentralized, ERA needs people from around the world running the database systems - which is where the new crypto token comes in.

Although Malmi is about to head a new cryptocurrency project, he's still skeptical of the promise of blockchain tech as it's been advertised recently.

"The missing piece was a decentralized database that could handle CryptoKitties scale traffic," Nadal said, pointing to the blockchain-based cat app that earlier this year clogged the ethereum network to the point users were having trouble using other decentralized apps on the network.

Martti Malmi image from ERA. The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.