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rotki year in review - 2022

31 Dec 2022

Introduction

rotki is the opensource portfolio tracker and accounting tool that protects your privacy. It started in 2017 as a small CLI tool to cater for my own portfolio tracking and tax reporting needs as a technical crypto user in Germany. Since then it has grown a lot and into its own project with thousands of users, 100 code contributors and a dedicated and passionate userbase.

Year in review

This post is a look back in the year that passed, recounting what we did at rotki since the start of 2022. We are gonna look at both what happened in the app and the code, but also how did the team itself grow and evolve. I (Lefteris), am writing here using the first person as this is my personal outlook on how rotki grew this year.

January

We released two rotki patch releases. 1.23.1 and 1.23.2

Also Luki Centuri, the frontend developer who had just joined us at the end of the previous year completed his first month. Our team was finally more than just 3 people!

February

In February we released another patch release, 1.23.3

And our team kept working dilligently toward making 1.24.0.

March

In March we released yet another patch release, 1.23.4, making 1.23.xx release series the longest patch release series of 2022.

Also we had our first non-tech hire! Celina joined our team.

Celina has handled all non-developer related tasks such as HR, accounting, all organizational matters and even a bit of communications!

April

April was a really interesting month as we had two new hires who were onboarded to the backend team.

The first was Isaac.

Isaac is a developer from Nigeria who joined the backend team and has so far helped us with various issues on the backend.

The second was Alexey.

Alexey was our youngest hire, an enthusiastic 18yo developer from Russia who has since helped us with various rotki backend matters.

And the team kept on grinding towards the long awaited 1.24.0 release while at the same time trying to onboard the new hires.

May

At the end of May we finally managed to release v1.24.0.

That was the biggest release we have ever made (and I hope to not do it again) and contained among others:

June

In June we released a quick patch release to fix bugs found in 1.24.0

And we also kept grinding and coding towards 1.25.0 and trying to learn how to work as a bigger backend team now that we have had Isaac and Alexey.

July

July was quite a busy month!

EthBarcelona

It started with a trip to Barcelona for EthBarcelona where we presented about rotki and the benefits of opensource software.

It was a very moving moment for me as it was the first time I met with Yabir in real life.

We have been working with Yabir since 2021 and getting to see him in the flesh after one and a half year was amazing.

What’s more we got to meet Viktor (left)!

Viktor used to work with rotki for a few months from the end of 2020 until Q2 2021! He is a native of Barcelona and after rotki, he stayed in the crypto field so it was really cool to meet him too in real life!

v1.25.0

After Barcelona we released v1.25.0.

It was a French-themed release as we were also heading to Paris for EthCC.

Among others it contained support for:

EthCC

In July we also travelled to Paris for EthCC where we presented about rotki’s progress and how opensource is a core of what we do.

EthCC is a very important conference for us as it is in EthCC 2019 that I first presented about rotki to an audience.

Both Yabir and Kelsos travelled to Paris for EthCC so this was the first time those two managed to meet in person.

Another really cool meeting in EthCC was meeting with the first user in the wild, jimjim.eth, who used the rotki dappnode package at his home and connected and used it from his mobile phone! rotki mobile was already a reality!

v1.25.1

We closed this very busy month with a patch release, 1.25.1, that fixed bugs our users saw with 1.25.0.

Fun fact is that this release was implemented while we were trying to figure out our hotels and flights. That trip to Paris was cursed. Both flights to/from Paris were delayed/canceled and our hotels/airbnbs all presented problems :D

August

In August, recovering from the busy month of July, we released 1.25.2 that fixed yet more issues and added improvements on top of 1.25.1.

What’s more the team kept working dilligently towards our next big milestone, 1.26.0.

September

September was also a busy month! Most of the team travelled to Berlin, for the Berlin blokchain week.

Dappcon

We presented at dappcon about rotki and what its strengths are but also what the challenges with making an opensource application are, especially related to funding.

Dappcon was an amazing experience for us as it was the very first time the biggest part of the team was in the same place. We met Alexey in real life for the first time after working together for almost 5 months!

From left to right: Kelsos, Yabir, Lefteris, Celina, Alexey.

EthBerlin

We also participated in ETHBerlin 3!

We hacked on various rotki related things and had some workshops.

Also took this chance to enjoy team lunches together, including with Celina :)

Finally we bonded together through the entire event and even met external rotki contributors, like Pablo pictured here on the left.

v1.25.3

In September we also released rotki v1.25.3, a bugfix release that was building on top of 1.25.2 adding lots of improvements but also fixing bugs our users found.

October

October was also a very busy month. Including a major release and the trip to Bogota, for Devcon.

Bogota - EthBogota

Kelsos, Alexey and I flew to Bogota, Colombia to participate in a few events there. First was the EthBogota hackathon

There we met many like-minded hackers, hacked on rotki related issues and tried to get more people involved with rotki. Hackathons are a great place to find new contributors and to shill an opensource project.

Bogota - Schelling point

After that there was an one day event called schelling point, where I participated in a panel

There we discussed about how opensource is a public good, what the challenges are but also what are the benefits. As usual the problem of sustainably funding opensource came up.

Bogota - Devcon

And finally we had our first ethereum devcon in 3 years. It was a very long time since Japan when the last devcon happened.

There I (Lefteris) presented about the modular opensource transaction decoding system we have in rotki and how this can be generalized and used by other applications.

Kelsos also presented about rotki in general, its architecture, our progress and about how opensource is core to what we do.

All in all it was an amazing experience. We met many like-minded people, many rotki users and external contributors and got re-affirmation that what we are building is useful. What’s more we got lots of feedback on things that could improve and have adjusted our future planning accordingly.

Bogota - Team building

Since we were on the other side of the world and we are a remote team, we took this chance to do some team building events. Mostly hikes and sightseeing so we can experience a different location together and create team bonds that will hopefully last for long. In the pictures below first is Lake Guatavita where the legend of El Dorado comes from and second is La Chorrera, the tallest watterfal in Colombia.

v1.26.0

Right after coming back from Colombia, we released our latest major release for which we have been working since August, 1.26.0.

This included among others:

November

November was a hands down and working month. The team was working on 3 things.

And we also released 1.26.1, a release that fixed bugs seen since 1.26.0.

December

And finally we come to the last month of the year that has not even ended yet.

The team had a lot of deserved time off for the holidays but also worked hard on putting out minor improvements and bug fixes while also working on the upcoming v1.27.0 release.

In December we released two patch releases.

1.26.2 which among many other things replaced the default open ethereum nodes with modern ones which are faster and as such provided a big performance improvement for our ethereum users.

1.26.3 which fixed a lot of bugs our users saw and also provided minor improvements in the user experience.

In general the team is laser focused, as we go in the new year to release 1.27.0 which will, among other things, bring full Optimism support

Closing

Looking back at 2022 we did a lot more than I expected we would. Achieved so much but also spent time growing. I think, it’s the year rotki “grew up”. Growing from 3 devs to 6 devs and 1 non-technical person is not a small feat! Neither was it easy. I hope we can continue to build rotki into the tool that you guys want and have a lot of happy users and contributors. Here is to a more productive, more succesful and happier new year 2023!

That’s all!

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