Who passed away amongst Monero core devs? You had a dev older than me?
warptangent was a talented coder and active Monero developer but not "core team" member and certainly not a forum personality (I think he may have posted once or twice). I'm pretty sure he was younger than you. Out of respect for his family's privacy I would rather not go into further details about his death (and I also don't know that much)
Announcement was here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/4c9wh8/a_fond_goodbye_to_our_friend_and_contributor/He and I shared the affliction of illness, but apparently his was sudden decline and mine chronic.
I don't use a DB in my coin design, as that is horrible for performance.