I'm shafu (Sharif Elfouly). founding engineer at Merit Systems. previously machine learning engineer. built Smart Contracts securing $1B+.

find me on twitter, github, linkedin, shafu0x@gmail.com

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work

Merit Systems - founding engineer (2025-present, NYC)
Venice AI - smart contract engineer
DYAD - smart contract engineer
SMARTeFunding / eProgramming - co-founder (Germany)
EnBW Energie - ML engineer (Karlsruhe)
vialytics - ML engineer (Stuttgart)
IOT GmbH - SAP developer (Gelsenkirchen)

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talks & podcasts

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Push & Pop - my show on smart contract deep-dives
youtube.com/@shafu0x

61+ episodes. protocol internals: Ekubo, Maple, Merit, Sablier V2, and more.

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open source

awesome-smart-contracts - the best smart contracts in one place
x402scan - x402 ecosystem explorer
evm-from-scratch-book - build the EVM from scratch — evm-from-scratch.app
MicroStable - most simple design of a stablecoin
vehicle-speed-estimation - vehicle speed from video using deep learning
huff-stacker - auto-generate stack comments for Huff macros

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press

"The Smart Contract Engineer Building Open Source's Financial Future" — Inverse (2025)
"Why Tokenization Isn't a Tech Problem" — Village Voice (2025)
"Code That Holds Millions: Philosophy for Smart Contracts That Survive" — DevX (2025)

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education

University of Tübingen - Master, Machine Learning (2018-2019, dropped out)
Westfälische Hochschule - B.Sc., Computer Science (2014-2017)