My work at Alephium
Senior Software Engineer & Frontend Lead, Core Team · Nov 2021 - Present · Remote, Switzerland
My journey with Alephium started in early 2021 in an unexpected way. I had discovered the project through Polto, who had met Alephium's founder, Cheng, at a conference. Curious, I joined their Telegram group. Not long after, Cheng reached out to me directly. They were looking for someone to help rebuild their marketing website, and I offered my consulting services to help them get it off the ground.
The team liked my work and the collaboration was so smooth that what started as a freelance gig quickly turned into a permanent position on the core team.
Since then, my role has grown tremendously. I'm now the core maintainer and frontend lead for Alephium's entire user-facing surface - every frontend users touch. I co-built the React Native mobile wallet from scratch, took over as core maintainer of the Electron desktop wallet and the blockchain explorer, and own everything from the marketing site to the token bridge and the Powfi DeFi platform.
Because we build self-custody wallets for an open-source layer-1 blockchain, security sits at the center of that remit - from hardening in-memory secret handling to authentication, encrypted storage, code signing, and supply-chain hygiene.
What that ownership has meant, in numbers:
Impact by the numbers
User-facing products owned
Peak monthly active users
Critical security incidents
Mobile production releases
Fewer backend requests
Faster cross-platform delivery
Smaller web3 SDK bundle
Frontend lead & core maintainer
1 · Ownership Map
Products I own
DRI for the codebase, end-to-end
- Mobile wallet (React Native / Expo) Owner & Core Maintainer
- Desktop wallet (Electron) Owner & Core Maintainer
- Explorer (React) Owner & Core Maintainer
- alephium.org website Owner & Core Maintainer
- Bridge UI + published React widget Owner & Core Maintainer
- Powfi frontend (Next.js) Owner & Core Maintainer
- Frontend monorepo + shared packages Owner & Core Maintainer
Role & Leadership
How I operate
- Frontend lead Direct the frontend effort; mentor the team's other contributors; review code across the wallets, Powfi SDK/frontend, and @alephium/web3
- Cross-team frontend liaison Backend, blockchain/protocol, design, marketing
Domains I own
The go-to across every product
Security & Auth
Secrets handling, encrypted storage, in-memory secret hygiene, audits, supply-chain. Biometrics, fund password, auth-flow design.
Releases & CI/CD
Code signing, EAS → TestFlight/Play Console, signed desktop releases, explorer deploy CI.
Architecture & Performance
State management, caching, data-fetching, persistence. The person who profiles and fixes performance issues.
Quality & Standards
Testing infra, lint/CI gates, PR conventions. Open-source stewardship (issue triage + community PRs).
Integrations & Data
Internal/External SDKs (WalletConnect, Ledger). Analytics (PostHog/Fathom) + error tracking (Sentry).
Product Operations
Frontend technical roadmap, release planning. Localization (i18n Crowdin pipeline). Production incident response.
2 · Initiatives & Impact
Bounded projects I led.
Built & launched the mobile wallet - co-built it; shipped to the App Store + Google Play on 31 Oct 2023; 49 production releases since.
Consolidated the apps into a monorepo - pnpm + Turborepo; extracted shared logic into internal packages → ~40% faster cross-platform delivery at ~80% logic parity.
Re-architected async state - React state → Redux Toolkit → TanStack Query (+ SWR on Powfi)
Performance program - re-architected both wallets' async layer so backend load scales with wallet activity, not wallet size: up to 228× fewer backend requests on relaunch and ~10× on cold start, rate-limit errors eliminated, while main-thread load dropped below the old Redux baseline and balances paint instantly instead of trickling in for ~40 seconds. Documented in a 5-part TanStack Query case study; also: React Native cold-start.
Hardened in-memory secret handling - moved mnemonics/keys into a wipeable keyring and patched an upstream BIP39 library to close a plaintext recovery-phrase leak found via runtime memory inspection. 0 critical incidents.
Designed the mobile auth flows - researched result- vs event-based approaches, backed by competitor analysis (MetaMask, Rainbow, Ledger, Uniswap), decision docs, then implemented (biometrics + fund password).
Rebuilt the token-bridge UI (Next.js) and extracted it into a publicly published, reusable React widget (consumed by the Bridge UI + Powfi, open for public use).
Led the Powfi DeFi frontend - rewrote it from an open-source codebase to Alephium brand & UX (Next.js); SWR; CLMM DEX + staking integration; directed a cross-team roadmap and liaised with marketing.
Migrated @alephium/sdk to ESM - code splitting, tree shaking, dual export, shrinking the web3 SDK by 88%; also contributed to the core @alephium/web3 SDK.
Integrated the shared Powfi SDK across products - wired it into both the Powfi app and the mobile wallet (staking); contributed cleanup.
Built alephium.org - Figma → responsive, accessible, Web-Vitals-optimized; integrated a git-backed CMS so non-technical editors can publish; migrated the blog off Medium.
Shepherded recurring major framework upgrades - React 19 + React Compiler, Expo / React Native SDK majors, Electron majors.
"Mr. Trichopoulos distinguished himself through exceptional technical expertise, outstanding architectural judgement and a remarkable sense of ownership. [...] His broad expertise across frontend engineering, software architecture, security, infrastructure and release engineering made him one of the company's most accomplished and trusted engineers. [...] We recommend him without reservation for any senior engineering or technical leadership position."
3 · Capabilities Delivered
The feature catalog.
📱 Mobile Wallet
- Secure wallet creation/recovery
- Biometrics (Face ID / fingerprint) & fund password
- Watch-only wallets
- In-app dApp browser bridge (injected-JS WebView↔RN messaging)
- WalletConnect & NFTs
- Address discovery & groups
- Scanning animated QR codes for import
- Fiat on-ramp (Banxa, Onramper)
- Staking (via Powfi SDK)
- Anti-exfiltration hardening (screen-capture prevention, auto-lock, background blur)
💻 Desktop Wallet
- Ledger hardware-wallet support
- Secure on-chain transaction flows
- Secure wallet export via animated QR code
- WalletConnect & NFTs
- Auto-update (electron-updater)
- alephium:// deep-link handler
- Code signing (Windows + macOS)
🌐 Cross-App
- Encrypted storage & secrets management
- Error-report sanitization
- Persistence architecture (MMKV / AsyncStorage, React Query cache + storage migrations)
- Real-time data polling
- Analytics (PostHog + Fathom) & Error tracking (Sentry)
- Testing infra (Vitest / Jest / MSW, Testing Library, coverage gates)
- i18n / Crowdin pipeline & Accessibility
- CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions; Windows / Ubuntu / macOS matrix)
- Versioning & releases (changesets)