# Evidence-0001: Promotion to Rank 1

**Report Date**  
2026/04/16  

**Submitted by**  
Diego Romero  

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## Member Details

- **Matrix username:** @dimartiro:matrix.org
- **Polkadot address:** 5FZGEDktFdfGuUjYAbdSdjwt67pXf4UQHcyiW9Wk4hrYvxvY  
- **Current rank:** Candidate  
- **Date of initial induction:** 2026/04/15  
- **Date of last report:** N/A  
- **Area(s) of Expertise/Interest:** Substrate, Snowbridge, Developer Tooling, Clients (Gossamer), JAM  

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## Reporting Period

- **Start date:** 2023/03/20
- **End date:** 2026/04/16  

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## Evidence

### Protocol & Bridge Improvements (Snowbridge)

**polkadot-sdk – Snowbridge**

- [Improve inbound_queue::BenchmarkHelper to add more flexibility](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/9627)  
  **Flexibility Enhancement:** Enabled more configurable benchmarking scenarios, improving accuracy when evaluating bridge performance.

- [Add generic AggregateMessageOrigin](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/8106)  
  **Extensibility Improvement:** Generalised message origin handling, making the bridge logic more modular and easier to extend.

- [Rewards issue reported in Snowbridge V2](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/8154)  
  **Protocol Correctness:** Identified a rewards-related issue affecting incentive distribution, contributing to the robustness of the bridge design.

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### Developer Tooling – Forking Support

**Foundry Polkadot**

- [#392](https://github.com/paritytech/foundry-polkadot/pull/392), 
  [#426](https://github.com/paritytech/foundry-polkadot/pull/426), 
  [#505](https://github.com/paritytech/foundry-polkadot/pull/505), 
  [#508](https://github.com/paritytech/foundry-polkadot/pull/508)  

- Adding forking support with lazy state loading  
  **Developer Experience:** Implemented a lazy-loading backend to fetch remote state on demand, enabling local execution against real network state.

- RPC-based state retrieval integration  
  **Efficiency Improvement:** Reduced the need for full state replication by fetching storage only when required.

**Impact:**
- Enables a Foundry/Hardhat-like workflow for Substrate  
- Lowers the barrier for testing and debugging against live chains  

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### Tooling, CI & Dependency Management

**polkadot-sdk / Zepter**

- [Zepter duplicate-deps check in CI](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/9809)  
  **Build Reliability:** Prevents dependency duplication across `Cargo.toml` sections.

- [Remove unused deps](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/9235)  
  **Maintenance Improvement:** Reduces codebase complexity and potential attack surface.

- [Dedup dependencies](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/9233)  
  **Efficiency:** Improves build times and binary size consistency.

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### Professional Experience

- Currently working at **ChainSafe**, contributing to core infrastructure in the Polkadot ecosystem.  
- Part of the team behind **Gossamer**, an alternative Polkadot client implemented in Go.  
- Currently working on the **JAM (Join-Accumulate Machine)** implementation in Go.  

**Impact:**
- Contributing to client diversity in Polkadot (critical for decentralisation and resilience)  
- Working on next-generation protocol components (JAM)  

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## Summary

Contributions focused on **protocol-level improvements and developer experience**, including:

- Improving Snowbridge correctness and extensibility  
- Enabling realistic local development via forking  
- Strengthening tooling and build reliability  
- Contributing to alternative client development and future protocol evolution (Gossamer & JAM)