trained as a mining engineer. now i mine MEV.

at iit kharagpur i was a mining and safety engineer with a cs minor. mining-safety class was the most useful course i took, and it has nothing to do with mines.

the framework — hazard, exposure, vulnerability, consequence — was about figuring out which way a tunnel could kill you. but it's also the cleanest mental model i've found for smart-contract risk.

hazard: what bad thing could happen. exposure: what's exposed to it. vulnerability: what's defended. consequence: what loss if it happens.

every contract i read, i fill those four boxes. it forces me to ask: what's the worst case, and have we defended the right thing?

the worst accidents are compound failures — three separate small things going wrong together. that's also true of smart-contract exploits.

i used to be embarrassed by the mining degree. now it's the most useful thing on my cv that nobody else has.