ENGINEERING / RESEARCH / BUILDING

Samir Idris

Building across distributed systems, blockchain and computational biology.

github.com/scisamir AbujaA little further down

01 / About

An engineer's mind. A scientist's curiosity.

I build software with a systems mindset and a researcher's curiosity.

I'm Samir Idris (@scisamir), a software engineer, blockchain engineer and co-founder of Lucent Labs. My work spans smart contracts, distributed applications, frontend engineering and the infrastructure that brings them together, including Cardano development with Aiken and Plutus.

My foundation is in the life sciences. I graduated with First Class Honours in Botany from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, as the department's best graduating student. Today, I'm exploring how software, AI and computational biology can inform one another.

View my curriculum vitae

Portrait of Samir Idris — BASED IN ABUJA

BUILDING: Software & distributed systems
EXPLORING: AI & computational biology
FOUNDATION: First Class B.Sc. Botany

02 / Experience

Built through doing.

Engineering, product and community. From protocol internals to the interfaces people use.

2024 / PresentCURRENT

Lucent Labs

Co-founder & Blockchain Developer

Co-founded and helped shape product and engineering direction.
Developed Cardano smart contracts using Aiken, MeshJS and Lucid.
Built decentralized applications and protocol infrastructure.
Contributed to architecture discussions and code reviews.

Contributed to HydraStake, a privacy-preserving liquid staking protocol on Midnight. 1st place, DeFi Track, Midnight London Summit Hackathon 2025.
Contributed to FundAGoal. 1st place, Midnight Track, African Blockchain Championship Hackathon.

Cardano / Aiken / MeshJS / Lucid / Midnight / TypeScript

2025 / PresentCURRENT

Metera

Blockchain Developer

Developed frontend features and integrations for the Cardano ecosystem.
Built and maintained ecosystem tools, index dashboards and analytics.
Worked across Next.js, TypeScript, tRPC, Tailwind CSS and Shadcn UI.

Next.js / TypeScript / tRPC / Tailwind CSS

2026 / PresentCURRENT

Intersect

Product Committee Member

Contributed to product and community initiatives within the Cardano ecosystem.

Product / Ecosystem / Community

2025

UCSC Sandbox Hackathon

Mentor

Mentored participants through technical challenges and received a Contributor Award.

Mentorship / Developer Education

03 / Technical stack

The tools behind the work.

From user interfaces to protocol logic and the infrastructure in between.

Languages

TypeScript
JavaScript
Python
Rust
Solidity
Compact

Frontend

React
Next.js
Tailwind CSS
Shadcn UI

Blockchain & protocols

Cardano
Aiken
Plutus
MeshJS
Lucid
Midnight
EVM
Nervos CKB
Foundry
Base
wagmi
viem

Backend & data

Node.js
Flask
SQLAlchemy
tRPC
Redis
MySQL

Infrastructure & delivery

AWS
Docker
Kubernetes
Nginx
CI/CD
CircleCI
CloudFormation
Ansible
Prometheus

Engineering workflow

Git
GitHub
Linux
Bash
Smart contract testing
Privacy & zero-knowledge

04 / Selected projects & major contributions

Engineering, in practice.

Protocols, products, infrastructure and research. A selection of the work I've built or contributed to.

Major protocol contribution

Minswap DEX

Refactored smart contracts to Plutus V3, integrated CIP-113 support, and contributed to protocol improvements and modernization.

FOCUSPlutus V3 migration and CIP-113 compatibility.

Cardano
Aiken
MeshJS
TypeScript
DEX

Explore Minswap DEX

Minswap DEX trading interface on Cardano

Zero-interest Cardano protocol

Statera Protocol

Zero-interest collateral protocol on Cardano featuring collateral management, position NFTs, batching, and pool architecture.

FOCUSCollateral state, position NFTs and batched protocol operations.

Cardano
Aiken
Lucid
MeshJS
Protocol Design

Explore Statera Protocol

Ecosystem analytics

Metera Indexes

Dashboard and tooling for index management and ecosystem analytics.

FOCUSIndex management workflows and ecosystem data visibility.

Next.js
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS
Shadcn UI

Explore Metera Indexes

Metera Indexes dashboard showing Cardano index portfolios

Multi-platform staking protocol

Lava

A multi-platform staking protocol designed to provide seamless staking experiences across blockchain ecosystems, with modular infrastructure for integrations.

FOCUSModular staking infrastructure across blockchain ecosystems.