Smart Contracts Engineer

About Buttonwood and PRL

​Prometheus Research Labs (PRL) is the team building Buttonwood’s web3 bond market. Buttonwood is a growing ecosystem of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

web3 bond market:

Bonds–defined as liquidation-free, tradable, fungible debt–were a turning point in world history. Bonds not only carried gold into reserve currency status, they were the fuel for era-defining financial innovations like banking companies.

Bonds today are orders of magnitude larger than equities, nonetheless they present some unique challenges in the web3 space. First, most of DeFi consists of margin leverage, while bonds require liquidation-free instruments. Second, as in TradFi, deep liquidity exists for equity-like assets (such as permanent governance tokens), but standard liquidity provision does not exist for bonds.

Our goals thus are to develop an open protocol for composing bonds, to develop protocols useful for primary and secondary markets (price discovery and liquidity), and to educate potential users on how to use the above contracts.

Growing DeFi ecosystem:

Buttonwood is more than just bonds. It is a growing DeFi ecosystem. While most of DeFi claims to be money legos, most DeFi protocols are fundamentally vertically integrated products with an API. In the case of Buttonwood, our core contracts have proven to be true money legos.

Today most of Buttonwood’s TVL comes from ecosystem projects. Foremost is SPOT, an inflation-resistant token issued by Ampleforth. Dynamically convertible bonds are being designed by the HourGlass team. An “optimization” and lending platform is being built by a Beanstalk- and Olympus-backed team, while we are in discussions with many others.

The Buttonwood Foundation is backed by True Ventures, Framework Ventures, BlockTower Capital, NfX, Bitfinex/Tether, Mechanism Capital, Bixin, Founders Collective, and numerous DeFi founders (including from Coingecko, Balancer, Cozy, Syndicate, and many more).

About you

Great PRL engineers are self-driven, passionate, innovative, and have an affinity for thoroughly designing and thinking through complex systems.

As a smart contract engineer, you will help us build foundational smart contracts that will power the next generation of DeFi applications.

You are incredibly curious in general, and passionate about DeFi specifically. You are excited to think about what DeFi can do and are not shy about new products and approaches.

Last but not least, we are a small team. You have a track record of improving how you work in teams, including working on clarity, frequency of communication, and helping others. You value robustness, minimalism, and speed in your code.

Responsibilities

  • Produce high quality, performant, and well-tested Solidity code
  • Research and drive high-level decisions about smart contract systems and architecture
  • Specify, implement, test, and review smart contract systems in Solidity
  • Write specs and review PRs from teammates
  • Work with teammates to thoroughly think through edge-cases and possible attack vectors
  • Work with the team to design, deploy, and maintain highly usable user experiences
  • Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in Ethereum and DeFi \

Job Requirements

  • Experience writing and deploying high-quality, well-tested Solidity
    • Knowledge of the EVM, blockchain technology, DeFi protocols, and Web3 ecosystem
    • High-level understanding of algorithms and architecture
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills
  • Strong sense of ownership
  • Able to operate autonomously and transparently
  • Consistently able to deliver reliably within deadlines
  • Can rapidly iterate designs based on feedback
  • Interest or experience in open, decentralized, permissionless technologies, and the intersection of contemporary technology, economics, finance and governance.

Bonus:

  • Strong experience with dApp development experience (GraphQL/Apollo, Ethers, Metamask, etc.)
  • Experience writing modular, reusable component libraries
  • Strong engagement with team members and active desire to contribute to vision
  • Enjoys interacting and building rapport with community
  • General knowledge and experience within the DeFi ecosystem: Active user of dApps, member of DAOs, etc.
  • General understanding of finance and tokenomics.
  • Academic Degree in Computer Science or related discipline (Math/Stats/Physics/etc.)

Benefits

  • Competitive Salary (TBD based on experience)
  • Token Incentive Plan (TBD based on experience)
  • Comprehensive Insurance, flexible hours, unlimited vacation
  • Fully remote (negotiable–California/Bay Area preferred)

How to apply

Please send an email to matthew @ prl.one with 100% of the following if you wish to be considered for this role:

  1. Resume / CV
  2. Git repo link
  3. LinkedIn or Twitter URL (or another profile)
  4. A short response to the following questions:
    • When would you be ready to start?
    • What is your experience with Web3 and/or DeFi?
    • What is your experience writing smart contracts?
    • What is your experience with working with remote development teams?
    • Would you consider yourself deadline oriented?
    • What is your favorite Web3 protocol or Fintech application and why?
    • Would you be interested in relocating to California?

Resources:

  1. Github: https://github.com/buttonwood-protocol
  2. Website: https://www.button.finance/
  3. Jobs: www.prl.one/jobs

We look forward to hearing from you!