Nodari Chkuaselidze

nodar.chkuaselidze@gmail.com | github.com/nodech | linkedin.com/in/nodari-chkuaselidze-95a829b1

Senior backend and protocol engineer with 15+ years of experience building and maintaining production blockchain infrastructure, full nodes, wallets, database layers, and native Node.js bindings. Core maintainer of hsd and contributor across the bcoin ecosystem, with deep experience in JavaScript/Node.js, C/N-API, Go, consensus systems, peer-to-peer networking, and recent Rust development.

Professional Experience

hsd / Namebase | Protocol Developer

Sep 2022 - Dec 2025 | Remote

• Core developer for hsd, the JavaScript/Node.js full node and wallet for the Handshake decentralized naming protocol, used by the Handshake network. Released and maintained hsd v5 through v8, owning work across consensus, wallet, migrations, networking, dependencies, soft forks and release coordination.
• Reworked wallet transaction history, unconfirmed transaction APIs, and coin selection around database-backed indexes, reducing memory-heavy wallet operations by eliminating large in-memory history and coin-set loads.
• Fixed wallet correctness and availability issues discovered during production upgrades, including DoS vectors, reorg accounting invariants, chain-state handling bugs, and auction-state failures that could block wallet startup or transaction creation.
• Implemented controlled node and wallet rescans with parallel scanning, lifecycle events, and operational controls, eliminating rescan deadlocks and improving recovery reliability during production maintenance.
• Led production migration of Namebase’s forked node stack from hsd v2 to v8, preserving custom protocol, wallet, and infrastructure behavior while adopting multiple years of upstream changes.
• Extended Namebase-specific infrastructure with hsd-proxy work in Go, adding partial batch support, health checks, transaction invalidation behavior, and production timeout handling.
• Built nurkel, Node.js C/N-API bindings for the C liburkel library, plus liburkel-test, a deterministic randomized differential test suite validating compatibility across C liburkel, JS urkel, and nurkel.
• Maintained and modernized bdb, a diverged LevelDOWN fork (LevelDB N-API bindings), fixing native binding segfaults and memory leaks, adding async iterator support, improving multi-byte/buffer key handling, and strengthening tests, benchmarks, and type/lint tooling.
• Open source work: Handshake pull requests and shared bcoin ecosystem dependencies.

hsd / Handshake | Protocol Developer

Jun 2021 - Jun 2022 | Remote

• Maintained hsd, the JavaScript/Node.js full node implementation for the Handshake decentralized naming protocol, with wallet, mempool, storage, and peer-to-peer networking components.
• Designed and implemented the chain and wallet database migration system for chaindb and walletdb, including migration flags, version tracking, and result reporting.
• Backported the bcoin FileBlock store into hsd, moving block data from LevelDB into append-only flat files with migration and re-index support.
• Defined and documented release process, branching strategy, and versioned release notes for a long-lived open source protocol implementation.
• Contributed to the final urkel v1.0.0 release, including cleanup and root cache recovery work.
• Open source work: Handshake pull requests and shared bcoin ecosystem dependencies used by hsd.

Bcoin / Purse.io | Protocol Developer

Jul 2017 - May 2020 | Remote

• Maintained bcoin, a JavaScript/Node.js Bitcoin full node and wallet implementation, with protocol fixes, dependency maintenance, and node/wallet tooling.
• Created bmultisig, a multisig payment proposal and hardware signing system for Bitcoin wallets.
• Built bledger, a Ledger hardware wallet API implementation using APDU, including support through a unified busb abstraction over node-hid, node-usb, browser U2F, WebUSB, and WebAuthn transports.
• Created bsigner, a unified signing interface wrapping the in-house Ledger implementation and vendored Trezor support.
• Forked and maintained bcash, the bcoin-based Bitcoin Cash implementation.
• Open source work: bcoin ecosystem.

ConsiderItDone / Evablockchain | Blockchain Development and Research

Aug 2016 - Aug 2017 | Remote

• Built blockchain application prototypes and tooling around Tendermint ABCI and Ethermint.
• Evaluated protocol and application designs for identity, privacy, medical records, smart contracts, exchanges, and capital markets use cases.

Securifi | Software Engineer

Feb 2015 - Aug 2016 | Remote

• Developed Securifi cloud backend services, internal tools, and shared libraries primarily in Go and Node.js.

Freelance / Contract | Web and Node.js Development

2008 - 2014

• Built and maintained web applications, Node.js backends, realtime scrapers, data generation systems, PHP applications, CMS tooling, and game-related SQL automation.
• Delivered projects for clients and products including Uprise, AllTheRooms, ManufacturedHomes, Sportify, PinPoint.Ge, Megaportal, and Georgian Ministry of Finance integrations.

Megasoft | Web Developer

Dec 2010 - Nov 2011

• Developed PHP-based web applications and backend features.

Technical Skills

Languages: JavaScript, Node.js, C, Go, Rust, SQL

Systems: Bitcoin, Handshake, blockchain infrastructure, consensus systems, peer-to-peer networking, wallets

Storage and Infrastructure: LevelDB, Postgres, native bindings, C/N-API, Git, CI

Education

B.S. Computer Science | Tbilisi State University | 2010 - 2015 Tbilisi, Georgia