{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Lev Dubinets","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/","description":"Recent content on Lev Dubinets","generator":"Hugo","language":"en-us","lastBuildDate":"Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000","item":[{"title":"Shimmer: Live Diagrams for Your Meetings","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/shimmer-launch\/","pubDate":"Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/shimmer-launch\/","description":"

I built Shimmer<\/a>, a tool that listens to your meetings and generates diagrams in real-time.<\/p>\n

It uses on-device speech recognition (Whisper or Voxtral Mini via WebGPU) to transcribe your meeting, then runs a 3-step LLM pipeline (also running in-browser with Qwen 3.5) to continuously generate and evolve Mermaid diagrams as the conversation unfolds. No audio or data leaves your browser by default, but you can plug in OpenAI or Anthropic API keys for higher quality LLM outputs.<\/p>"},{"title":"Slacklinker Launch","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/slacklinker-launch\/","pubDate":"Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/slacklinker-launch\/","description":"

I launched Slacklinker<\/a>. It’s a Slack app that automatically creates backlinks between messages.<\/p>\n

The problem is simple: you paste a link to a Slack message in another channel, and the original message has no idea it was referenced. The conversation branches and the context is lost. Slacklinker fixes this by automatically adding a backlink on the original message, so you can always navigate both directions.<\/p>\n

\"Slacklinker\n
Slacklinker automatically adds backlinks to referenced messages<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n

If you work at a company that lives in Slack, you know how often important threads get buried. Someone links to a decision from three months ago in a new channel, and the people in the original thread never see the follow-up. Slacklinker makes these connections visible.<\/p>"},{"title":"GroupSync Launch","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/groupsync-launch\/","pubDate":"Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/groupsync-launch\/","description":"

Today I’m publicly launching GroupSync<\/a>, the first app from Dub Apps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I work at a remote-first company, and I frequently have to update a Slack group such as @engineers alongside a Google Group. I wanted to keep my Slack and Gmail groups in sync automatically.<\/p>\n

GroupSync automatically syncs your groups between Google and Slack.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"GroupSync\n<\/figure>\n\n

For example, you could tag @support-team in Slack and be confident that all of the same people that receive emails to support-team@yourcompany.com<\/a> get tagged.<\/p>"},{"title":"Mercury IO Credit Card","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/mercury-io-credit-card\/","pubDate":"Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/mercury-io-credit-card\/","description":"

Today we’re launching IO<\/a>, Mercury’s corporate credit card.<\/p>\n

I led this project internally, coordinating across multiple teams to integrate with card networks and build out the product experience. It took 25 engineers over six months. The result is an extremely easy to use credit card product with 1.5% cashback, the lowest qualifying deposit of any startup card ($50k), and deep integration with the Mercury dashboard so you manage your banking and credit from one place.<\/p>"},{"title":"How to find the owner of a Handshake domain name","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/how-to-find-the-owner-of-a-handshake-domain-name\/","pubDate":"Mon, 27 Jul 2020 07:47:12 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/how-to-find-the-owner-of-a-handshake-domain-name\/","description":"

Handshake<\/a> (HNS) is a decentralized naming protocol billed as an alternative to DNS. Much like with regular DNS, it is pretty hard to find the owner of a particular HNS domain name. In fact, because the native payment method is a cryptocurrency, and theres nothing like whois<\/code> available for HNS, it is usually much harder. You can try HNS Explorers such as ShakeScan<\/a> or HNScan<\/a>, but you’re unlikely to find any way to contact the owner there.<\/p>"},{"title":"Stablecoins Talk","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/stablecoins-talk\/","pubDate":"Fri, 17 Apr 2020 04:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/stablecoins-talk\/","description":"

I recently gave a guest lecture for an Emerging Technologies class at the University of Washington iSchool Master’s program (UW IMT 598). The class is focused on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and my topic was an overview of stablecoins and a deeper dive into MakerDAO and Dai.<\/p>\n

The video is embedded below and my slides are available at https:\/\/dubinets.io\/static\/stablecoins<\/a><\/p>\n

Nix<\/a> is an extremely powerful package manager that uses a declarative functional programming language to describe dependencies. It stores all packages and build outputs in the nix store located at \/nix<\/code>. This makes it slightly tricky to install on macOS 10.15 (Catalina), because the new read only system volume<\/a> would prevent creating or writing to \/nix<\/code>. A common workaround is to create a separate writable APFS volume and mount it at \/nix<\/code>.<\/p>"},{"title":"Joining Mercury","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/joining-mercury\/","pubDate":"Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/joining-mercury\/","description":"

I’m joining Mercury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mercury is building a banking stack for startups. Not a bank in the traditional sense \u2014 there’s no building with a safe and people in suits. It’s a banking product: FDIC-insured accounts, APIs, a dashboard with real financial analytics, and a team that actually thinks about the experience of managing money as a founder. Mercury launched publicly<\/a> in April and signed up 1,500 companies in their first month. We just closed a $20M Series A<\/a> led by CRV with a16z also participating.<\/p>"},{"title":"Burner Machine","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/burner-machine\/","pubDate":"Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/burner-machine\/","description":"

We just launched Burner Machine<\/a> at San Francisco Blockchain Week 2019<\/a>. It’s a web app that lets you launch anonymous, self-terminating virtual machines and pay with cryptocurrency. No signup, no identity, no credit card. Choose a machine type, pick a location, send some ETH (or DAI, USDC, etc.), and you get a cloud VM for three hours for about a dollar.<\/p>\n

\"Burner\n
Launch anonymous burner desktops anywhere in the world<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n

The problem we’re trying to solve: the cloud is controlled by three companies (AWS, Azure, GCP), and you can’t use any of them without handing over your identity. We wanted to build something where the payment itself is the authentication. You send crypto to an ephemeral wallet generated in your browser \u2014 when the transaction confirms, the machine spins up. No MetaMask required, though you can use it if you want.<\/p>"},{"title":"ZCash Shielded Transaction Censorship","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/zcash-shielded-transaction-censorship\/","pubDate":"Wed, 29 May 2019 19:30:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/zcash-shielded-transaction-censorship\/","description":"

In ZCash, privacy is opt-in, which unfortunately makes it possible to censor private transactions. Addresses beginning with a ‘z’ contain coins whose history is shielded by a zero knowledge proof. In this post, a ‘shielded transaction’ is one where a z-address is either an input or output. The ZCash Foundation defines<\/a> these transactions as ‘shielding’, ‘deshielding’, and ‘private’<\/p>\n

I noticed that shielded transactions aren’t being mined in the very next block even if there is plenty of time for the transactions to propagate. ZCash blocks are not even close to full and there are empty blocks being mined while shielded transactions are sitting unconfirmed. I took a closer look and noticed a pattern.<\/p>"},{"title":"Projects","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/projects\/","pubDate":"Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/projects\/","description":"

Shimmer<\/a><\/h2>\n

2026<\/p>\n

Real-time meeting diagrams powered by WebGPU. Transcribes your meetings on-device and generates evolving Mermaid diagrams as the conversation unfolds.<\/p>\n

Links: Website<\/a> Blog Post<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n
\n

Slacklinker<\/a><\/h2>\n

2024<\/p>\n

A Slack app that automatically creates backlinks between messages. When someone links to a message, the original gets a backlink so you can navigate both directions.<\/p>\n

Links: Website<\/a> Blog Post<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n
\n

GroupSync<\/a><\/h2>\n

2024<\/p>\n

Automatically syncs your groups between Google and Slack. Keep @engineers in Slack and engineers@company.com<\/a> in Google Groups in sync without manual updates.<\/p>"},{"title":"Work","link":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/work\/","pubDate":"Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/dubinets.io\/work\/","description":"

Mercury<\/h2>\n

Head of Banking Engineering at Mercury<\/a>. I joined in 2019<\/a> when we were a small team that had just closed our Series A. Now I’m responsible for an organization of 50+ engineers building Mercury’s banking platform and payment processing infrastructure. We manage and move billions of dollars with automated systems at scale.<\/p>\n

In practice that means my teams own the systems that open accounts, move money (wires, ACH, checks, cards, book transfers), manage ledgers, integrate with bank partners and card networks, and keep everything compliant and reliable at scale. If you send or receive money through Mercury, it touches something we built.<\/p>"}]}}