In 2012-2013, I led the development of an open-source project called "Colored Coins", which defined a protocol for user-issued fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain. In fact, this was the first protocol of its kind; before colored coins, the only fungible tokens on a blockchain were the native tokens (e.g., BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain). How did I become the lead dev? It was simple: I thought it was a cool project and relatively easy to implement. In August 2012, I stumbled upon an article about colored coins while browsing a Bitcoin forum. At that point, it was merely a theoretical concept. Intrigued by the idea, I believed that it could be implemented in a few weeks and might be a nice addition to my CV. Back then, the world of "crypto" was less about money and more about exploring the possibilities of decentralized, peer-to-peer networks. The project started with just a few people discussing it on a mailing list. The first implementation I created the first