It is with sadness that we have to inform the community that warptangent, one of the most prolific Monero contributors, has passed away. His family reached out to us to let us know, as we had not heard from him since he had taken ill at the beginning of March.
warptangent's first commit to the Monero project was in November, 2014, and his contributions touched many areas of the codebase. He was is known for squashing bug after bug, and adding new functionality to the mnemonic seed system and wallet storage system. Perhaps his most seminal work, however, will be the effort he put into improving BlockchainDB and the BDB and LMDB implementations. He was solely responsible for introducing the blockchain_import and blockchain_export tools, and his work on performance improvements to the blockchain storage subsystem were advanced enough that Howard "hyc" Chu has been able to pick them up and continue the effort.
And, too, it is important to note that he put all of this effort in with no regard for remuneration, with no forum funding system proposal, all of his own volition. He was an excellent software engineer, and a bright and talented individual.
He will be sorely missed by all who interacted with him, and our sincere condolences go to his family.