Sovryn Voices: Chatting with Product Manager John Light

Sovryn has many fascinating folks who are involved with the protocol. John Light, aka @lightcoin, is Product Manager at Sovryn. Most recently he has become a ZK-Rollup Research Fellow with the Human Rights Foundation and StarkWare. You can also catch him on podcasts such as the Crypto Conversation.

What makes a Sovryn like him tick? Read on to find out. 

 I’ve been a professional Bitcoiner for close to a decade in diverse roles as a startup founder, early employee, and advisor, mainly in product or marketing. The kinds of projects I have started or worked on include bitcoin finance and exchanges, node and ATM manufacturers, p2p marketplaces, decentralized identity and governance. Sovryn is a logical progression of this path, combining and building on a lot of concepts from the previous projects that I worked on.

I am a product manager, working with the product team to help ensure we are working on the “right” problems. Our current goal as a product team is to ship products and features that are most likely to get us to product-market fit.

The two projects that are top-of-mind for me are the Zero private beta and what I’m calling “Bitocracy 3.0”. Most Sovryns by now probably know that Zero is a 0% interest decentralized borrowing protocol. Bitocracy 3.0 is an initiative to further decentralize Sovryn governance.

I’m assisting with several other projects as well, such as helping out with the limit orders release, the MYNT bonding curve app, bridge updates, and other lower-level infrastructure and governance improvements.

This is a project I’m really excited and honored to have been chosen to work on. HRF and StarkWare (with support from CMS Holdings) are sponsoring the production of an industry report to answer several questions regarding the feasibility and value of ZK-Rollups built directly on bitcoin. I’ll be doing research and interviewing industry experts to better understand the current state of the art of ZK-Rollup tech, its possibilities and limitations, and how bitcoin can possibly benefit from this technology. At the end of the fellowship, I’ll have a written report to share my findings.

I have a diverse set of hobbies that I spend more or less time on depending on my mood or the weather. Here in the Free State of New Hampshire we actually have four seasons, unlike where I used to live in San Francisco, where the weather was pretty much the same 60-70 degrees year-round, so at least my outdoor hobbies vary throughout the year.

Music is a big part of my life, so I like discovering new music, going to concerts, and playing instruments (mainly guitar). It’s been tough during the pandemic not going to concerts (even tougher for the musicians) but there’s been a lot of good music released and lots of time for practicing guitar.

I read and write about anarchist and libertarian philosophy and praxis. This has been another big part of my life and is closely tied to my work with bitcoin. I see bitcoin as a powerful tool for giving people monetary and financial freedom, and an important parallel institution and alternative to fiat money.

During warmer months I spend time with friends and family outdoors skateboarding, going for walks or hikes, having fun on the water. During colder months I’ll go snowboarding or do more indoor activities like play board games or video games and watch movies.

I also make time for doing nothing at all, just relax, meditate, reflect, nap. This is important to maintain balance with the more active part of my life.

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