Membership Request

# Membership Request 

Hi, I am Kian Paimani, known as @kianenigma. I have been working on Polkadot/Kusama through Parity since February 2019 and I can categorize my main contributions to Polkadot's ecosystem as follows: 

1. Maintaining and developing the staking sub-system.
2. General FRAME development, especially testing and quality assurance. 
3. Polkadot-native side-projects. 
4. Education 

> My first contribution to Polkadot is also indeed related to staking: paritytech/substrate#1915

### Staking system

I joke as the Polkadot staking to be both my blessing and my curse over the years. I started working on it since the first days that I joined this ecosystem and the work [is ongoing ever since](https://github.com/orgs/paritytech/projects/33/views/9). In the past, I focused on making sure that the staking system is secure and to some extent scalable. More recently, I coordinated the (imminent) launch of Nomination Pools. Nowadays I also put an extra effort on making sure that this sub-system of Polkadot is *sustainable*, through code refactor and educating other core developers. 

Lastly, I have been the main author of the [Polkadot staking newsletter](https://gist.github.com/kianenigma/aa835946455b9a3f167821b9d05ba376), which is my main attempt at making the entire complexity and development of this part of the protocol transparent to the end-users.

I expect myself to contribute *directly* to the staking system for at least another ~12, if not more, and afterwards having the role of an advisor. 

Some notable contributions: 

- paritytech/substrate#4517
- paritytech/substrate#7910
- paritytech/substrate#6242
- paritytech/substrate#9415
- paritytech/polkadot#3141
- paritytech/substrate#11212
- paritytech/substrate#12129

### FRAME 

Historically, I have contributed a variety of domains in FRAME, namely: 

- Early version of the weight system paritytech/substrate#3816 paritytech/substrate#3157
- Early version of the transaction fee system
- Primitive arithmetic types paritytech/substrate#3456
- Council election pallet paritytech/substrate#3364

Many of which were, admittedly, a PoC at most, if not considered "poor". I am happy that nowadays many of the above have been refactored and are being maintained by new domain experts. 

These days, I put most of my FRAME focus on testing and quality assurance. Through my work in the staking system, I have had to deal with the high sensitivity and liveness requirement of protocol development first hand (I believe I had to do among the [very first storage migrations](paritytech/substrate#3948) in Kusama) and consequently I felt the need to make better testing facilities, all of which have been formulated in https://forum.polkadot.network/t/testing-complex-frame-pallets-discussion-tools/356. Some relevant PRs:

- paritytech/substrate#8038
- paritytech/substrate#9788
- paritytech/substrate#10174

Regardless of wearing the staking hat, I plan to remain a direct contributor to FRAME, namely because I consider it to be an important requirements of successfully delivering more features to Polkadot's ecosystem. 

### Polkadot-Native Side Projects

I have started multiple small, mostly non-RUST projects in the polkadot ecosystem that I am very happy about, and I plan to continue doing so. I have not yet found the time to make a "polished product" out of any of these, but I hope that I can help foster our community such that someday a team will do so. I consider my role, for the time being, to *put ideas out there* through these side projects. 

- https://github.com/substrate-portfolio/polkadot-portfolio/
- https://github.com/kianenigma/polkadot-basic-notification/
- https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-scripts/
- https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-debug-kit/

### Education 

Lastly, aside from having had a number of educational talks over the years (all of which [are listed](https://hello.kianenigma.nl/talks/) in my personal website), I am a big enthusiast of the newly formed Polkadot Blockchain Academy. I have [been an instructor](https://singular.app/collectibles/statemine/16/2) in the first cohort, and continue to contribute for as long and as much as I can, whilst still attending to the former 3 duties. 

---

With all of that being said and done, I consider myself at the beginning of the path to Dan 4, but happy to start at a lower one as well.

README.md

@@ -5,3 +5,4 @@ The account/rank pairs which the Technical Committee should introduce.
 | Github Username | Kusama Account ID | Rank |
 | --- | --- | --- |
 | `gavofyork` | `FcxNWVy5RESDsErjwyZmPCW6Z8Y3fbfLzmou34YZTrbcraL` | 7 |
+| `kianenigma` | `HL8bEp8YicBdrUmJocCAWVLKUaR2dd1y6jnD934pbre3un1` | 4 |