Dan Hughes is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Radix DLT, a layer 1 distributed ledger technology. He is an experienced software and technology developer and is also a co-founder and CTO of Surematics. ^[1]

Early Life

Dan Hughes was born into a working-class family in Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom. He gained interest in computer systems and programming when he was around 4 years old, watching his father assemble computers at home. As he got older, he maintained his passion for computers and coding, teaching himself the skills required to land a game developer job, without going to college. ^[2][3]

“Ive always been a builder what ever it is just like to build things, sometimes take things apart and build them better”

“Although at school most boys were interested in soccer and hanging out, I developed a deep interest in computer coding that has stayed with me throughout my life.”

Career

Dan Hughes has had an extensive career in technology, spanning over two decades. He began his career as a Senior Developer at Software Creations in November 1996 and worked there until April 1998. During this time, he worked on a number of projects, being as an assistant leader on the PlayStation SKU of Premier League All-Stars, an EA football title. ^[4]

From April 1998 to October 2000, Dan worked at Camel 28 Ltd as Director of Technology. Camel 28 Ltd was a company that developed entertainment and games for PC and console platforms. He then went on to work at Barcrest from October 2000 to July 2003 as a Senior Developer, Architect, and Team Leader. At Barcrest, he led the development of 2nd Generation video gambling machines, handling architecture design, software development, and 3D technology. ^[4]

From August 2003 to April 2005, Dan worked at CSP Mobile GmbH as a Freelance Consultant, Development & Team Management, where he played a major part in growing the company from a small, 5-strong mobile development company to a world-leading provider of mobile content with over 80 employees. During this time, he worked on over 30 titles across multiple mobile SKUs including BREW and J2ME. ^[4]

Dan then went on to found KDB Technology Ltd in July 2005, where he served as the Owner and Founder until November 2012. KDB Technology brought new and emerging mobile technologies to the market. ^[4]

In November 2016, Dan co-founded Surematics, where he served as the Co-Founder and CTO. Surematics provides insurance brokers with tools to improve efficiency and reduce administration. ^[4]

Radix

During his time at KDB Technology, he stumbled across Bitcoin in late 2011, which drew his attention to blockchain technology. ^[5]

“I was very curious how Satoshi had put the final piece of the puzzle together for a truly decentralized permissionless system”

Dan wanted to understand the technology behind Bitcoin which led him to download the Satoshi White Paper and spent a lot of time playing around with the code. ^[5]

“Being the nerd that I am the first thing that I did was take it to pieces to understand exactly how it works, understand every line of code, to understand and get a full picture of what Bitcoin was, what it can do, what it cant do"

Deep diving into the infrastructure and the foundation of Bitcoin gave him a good understanding of the economics of Bitcoin, quickly realizing “the revolution it could spawn and how disruptive this technology could be”. However, he understood that there were limitations to the technology. Dan ended up with a shortlist of problems that needed to be solved for Bitcoin to reach its full potential and began building a blockchain from scratch, which became Radix. ^[3]

In March 2013, Dan founded Radix DLT Ltd, where he served as the Founder, CEO, and CTO until September 2017, after which he remained the Founder and CTO. In July 2021, Radix's public mainnet was finally launched after four years of active development and testing since the project's announcement in September 2017. ^[3][6]