Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the fifth episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It’s for devs, by devs.
Today's guest is T.J. Littlejohn, the founder of MtnPay, which won 1st Prize in the Payments Track of the recent Riptide Hackathon.
01:30 - Origin Story and Background
05:12 - MntDAO
08:42 - Building with Solana
12:04 - MntPay
13:25 - The APIs
15:43 - Winning at Riptide
17:37 - From starting in Solana to winning
20:41 - Starting to build in Solana
23:38 - Improving onboarding on Solana
25:26 - The Developer ecosystem
27:07 - Missing Tooling
29:30 - Advice for newcomers
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Chase (00:29):
Hey everybody and welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana Ecosystem. Today we have with us, TJ LittleJohn. He is the founder of mtnPay, winner of the most recent Solana Hackathon Payments Track for Riptide. TJ, how's it going, man?
TJ (00:55):
Dude, it's going good. We're stoked to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Chase (01:00):
Yeah, man. You and I basically met, I feel like a few months ago when you were building some stuff for iOS. Basically some IDL stuff with Anchor and we were talking about potentially getting you some work going on and then next thing you know, a couple of things happen and here we are. But before we dive too much into that, let's hear a little introduction. I know a lot of people probably don't know a ton about you. Where'd you start your journey and how'd you end up here, building in the Solana Ecosystem?
TJ (01:31):
Yeah. Wow. For sure. Abridged version. So, I'm from Florida originally born and raised. Grew up in South Florida, went to school in Tallahassee, Florida State Granoles. Originally I was a big Math guy. Always wanted to do pure Math and trying to see how I could make a career out of that. Finance was an option. And so I was exploring that and someone told me I should learn to code. So, I started learning to code, from that found Hackathons, from that found iOS development. And just down the rabbit hole there. At a hackathon, I ended up securing an internship at Apple, which turned into a job. And then I spent four years there doing research and development and experience prototyping. And then about a year ago I decided I was done with that and I wanted to be in startups. And so I left, joined a startup. Five months after that I found Solana through some friends and I just noticed the point in time we were at. And I was just stoked. And so I quit and I just immediately started building.
Chase (02:36):
Wow. So you don't have a CS degree, you're self-taught programmer and landed an internship at Apple dealing on the development side of things?
TJ (02:44):
No, I do have a CS degree.
Chase (02:46):
Oh, you do?
TJ (02:46):
So, I did both. I did Math and CS, but the CS portion to me was the less in