CEO Insights Magazine

In today’s era of digitalization, where data security remains one of the major concerns, blockchain turns out to be a savior. A blockchain is a decentralized and distributed database system where information is stored digitally. Blockchains allow the recording and distribution of digital data. However, it’s nearly impossible to modify the data on a blockchain, which is why it is one of the best alternatives to the traditional database system. The usage of crypto currencies, NFTs, and smart contracts has further paved the way for blockchain solutions in the global market.

Dipendra Singh, Chief Technology Officer of NEST, has an exemplary feat in blockchain. After starting his career in cyber security, Dipendra Singh later moved into cyber forensics before finally being introduced to blockchain. During one of his freelance assignments, he got to know about NEST and loved the idea of working in an organization that is actively solving realworld problems. Later he joined NEST as the Chief Architect and worked his way up to become the Chief Technology Officer of the organization. A passionate individual with a deep interest in blockchain technologies, Dipendra wants blockchain & NFTs to be considered more than just collectibles, and instead for people to be able to use them to solve real world issues in the future.

In an exclusive interview with CEOInsights, Dipendra shares the current market position of NEST, some of the major challenges he has faced throughout his career and much more:

How would you define NEST as an organization and its current position in the market?
A nextgen, user led and confidential blockchain infrastructure platform. NEST as an organization is a fun place to work. My major fear of getting into the IT corporate structure was working on the same stuff repeatedly. However, at NEST, you get thrown a multitude of challenges. We have always been working on something new and never get bored with the work we do. Charles, our Founder & CEO is a visionary. We had NFTs four years before even the term (Non-Fungible Token) NFT was introduced by the main media. We have always been working on cutting-edge technologies. Coming to market position, we are building some of the most leading-edge upcoming solutions. Many times people don’t yet even realize they will need them.

Elaborate about the technology

framework built within the company’s solutions. What are the latest technologies you are planning to adopt?
When it comes to technology, we are spread across multiple systems. We have our web application, mobile application, desktop application, and even a CLI application. Our mobile application is a hybrid one. We majorly use Angular for the front end. Coming to the backend, we mostly use Node.js, Python. We use a wide range of technology for the database system, such as Mongo DB, Apache Cassandra, Redis, and many more. Each of these technologies serves its purpose.

We are into distributed systems and are building an extremely potent and high availability, distributed storage service that will be somehow similar to Google Drive but with genuine encrypted privacy and user accessibility. User privacy, from the device first and then into all networks or transactions, is extremely important to us. If the user uploads something to our infrastructure or ecosystem, even a developer or anyone at NEST doesn’t have the ability to read that data or access those files. So that is how we structure everything privacy wise at NEST.

Could you reflect on some of the toughest challenges you have encountered in your journey so far? How did you overcome them, and what did you learn from them?
I have faced many challenges throughout the journey. One of those challenges has been implementing an end-to-end encryption methodology on the web application. Developing a mobile application is pretty easy as the storage takes place mostly on the mobile. However, you can’t trust the web. I had to do a lot of brainstorming, and it took around 45 days for us to come up with a proper implementation for our web-based application. Our web-based application is based on end-to-end encryption, which was also the hardest part to implement. We are using PGP and a combination of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography in our web based application, making it a hybrid crypto network, which is also one of the toughest solutions to implement. I can even count on the fingers of one hand the number of solution providers that can achieve end-to-end encryption on a web application.

Another major challenge was to create a distributed network of DLT enhanced servers for user file storage. As part of the requirement, our target was to make the cloud space storage and CDN networks so robust that even if hackers attempt to crack it, it will be impossible for anyone to break the encryption and extract or view the original data. We like to call it quantum proof encryption. Meaning even a quantum computer should find it impossible to decryptand access original information, as none of the pieces of the file live on the same server. They are all distributed across servers around the world and you need to have an access to all the servers, which are not even physical, under your control all the time to even think about achieving it. So these were the two major challenges I have faced, which also took some time to develop.


Going forward, what are the changes in market behavior that you anticipate, and what are the opportunities that you foresee?
I think the market has been interesting for NFTs until now in a lot of ways. People have been using NFTs as collectibles and stuff, which paved the way. For the next step, NFTs should be used as part of realworld smart contracts, where they should be able to integrate real world scenarios with real world problems. For instance, NFTs can be helpful in many ways in case an artist wants to copyright his songs, keep the ownership and royalty, and earn from that. So I think a revolution is going to take place in the market in the future, where people will realize that the blockchain & NFTs(better described as data-as-an-asset) can do a lot more than just acting as collectibles for solving real world problems, such as copyright ownership, payments, royalties, and many more.

Dipendra Singh, Chief Technology Officer, NEST
Dipendra Singh is an accomplished software professional with extensive experience in Cyber Security and Cyber Forensics. Later, he moved into blockchain web & app development and is currently working as the Chief Technology Officer for the leading blockchain infrastructure platform, NEST. A passionate individual with a strong desire to revolutionize the blockchain industry, challenges, and real-world scenario based issues excites Dipendra. He loves to work on end-to-end encryption and as part of his future roadmap, and wants to use blockchain & NFTs to solve real world issues.

•Hobbies:Cooking, playing video games, traveling, learning new things
•Favorite Cuisine:Indian
•Favorite Book:Books of Gulzar
•Favorite Travel Destination: London