The goal of this forum post is to provide governance participants the ability to ask questions to candidates of the Developer Advisory Board.
As a candidate, please comment on this forum post below after you’ve self-nominated following the process outlined in the Season 8 Election Information post. Please comment a link to your self-nomination in Atlas.
As a voter, please feel free to ask questions to any and all candidates in this thread.
Hey all! wbnns here 
I’m a former core team member at Base, where I helped launch testnet and mainnet, and have served on the Developer Advisory Board in Seasons 6 & 7. These days, I’m building independently, focused on apps, public goods, and Superchain infrastructure.
I’d like to self-nominate for the opportunity to serve again in Season 8 & 9. With Superchain momentum growing and interoperability accelerating, I think this is a pivotal time to be involved and help shape what comes next.
Dropping my self-nomination details below:
Optimist Profile
@wbnns
Note: It looks like there’s currently a bug on Atlas where Farcaster profiles aren’t syncing properly… mine still shows me as part of the Base core team. Just wanted to confirm that I’ve left and am now working independently.
Relevant Contributions
Conflict of Interest
Confirming I have no conflicts of interest.
Excited for what’s ahead and would be grateful for the chance to keep building alongside you all while serving for another season on the Developer Advisory Board. 
Thanks @wbnns, happy to see you back. I see the application process is a little different (create a self-nomination on Atlas, then link it here?). Meanwhile, at the risk of further complicating things, I’m going to write to @maxwell and request the following application template:
[link]
Indicate your interest in the DAB’s new primary function (assessing protocol upgrades), and consider expressing interest in any of the secondary responsibilities from the charter.
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain?
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation?
Heya @wildmolasses! Cheers and thanks so much. Sure thing, here’s a supplemental write-up based on the updated template you mentioned:
Indicate your interest in the DAB’s new primary function (assessing protocol upgrades), and consider expressing interest in any of the secondary responsibilities from the charter.
Super interested. 
I was already involved in this function last season on the DAB, and while on the Base core team I also supported protocol upgrade work more broadly. That included internal upgrade reviews, ecosystem coordination, builder-facing comms, doc updates, and helping ensure node operators were aware of changes to avoid downstream issues.
For secondary responsibilities, I’d love to continue leading in the area of Collective Advisory. It was great working together with the Grants Council last season and running Developer Office Hours to support both protocol alignment and builder success. There’s still a lot more work to do, and I’d be glad to keep contributing.
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
I’ve been working full time in the space as a developer for many years, with hands-on experience in L2 infrastructure, the EVM, bridging, and protocol operations.
At Base, I helped launch testnet and mainnet and supported core infra through multiple OP Stack upgrade cycles. I’m comfortable navigating low-level changes, evaluating technical tradeoffs, and spotting where risk can propagate.
I’m also the editor of Mastering Ethereum, and I’ve spent years translating complex technical systems into clear, accurate explanations, especially around EVM internals and protocol architecture.
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
I’ve contributed extensively and am committed to achieving the Superchain vision, scalability and most recently, interoperability, both as part of the Base core team and now independently. I care about what’s being built, why it matters, and how it fits into the Collective’s broader mission.
I’m comfortable assessing proposals from both technical and strategic perspectives, especially where they intersect with public goods, decentralization, or developer experience.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes, I’m confident in my ability to communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences. I’ve done a lot of dev onboarding, grant reviews, public documentation, and protocol education.
I take impartiality seriously. I don’t have any current org affiliations that would bias decisions, and I’m comfortable doing deep, independent diligence and speaking up when something doesn’t align with Collective goals.
Affiliate of an OP Chain?
No.
Affiliate of an organization with a long-term development grant?
No.
I’ve been in crypto for more than 6 years as of now. Currently I am a security researcher at Cantina.
I’ve been involved into Optimism ecosystem for a long time: I’ve built the first decentralized NFT marketplace on Optimism called Optimarket. I’ve been helping many projects to deploy and build on Optimism.
I’ve audited Optimism stack in many instances:
Layer 2 audit for Optimism Prestate Update
I’m proficient in EVM, OP Stack, and Rust. I’m also a security researcher with many years of experience. Part of my portfolio can be seen here:
Cantina Profile
I’ve contributed to Op vision from the beginning, by helping various teams release their products on OP. I’ve also been part of Grants Council Season 6 as well, where i’ve tried to streamline the process of giving Audit Grants to the projects.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
I’ve been in this field for a long time, and there’s nothing I care about more than being fair to everyone and making every decision without bias. I have no issue diligently making decisions that are fair to the board.
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain?
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation?
I am the builder of Soldeer (which received grants) and i’m also part of Cantina which was an audit provider in the previous Seasons.
I’ve been part of the last 2 DABs, and a signer on Milestone and Metrics multisig disbursing grants to successful Mission and audit applicants. I would like continue contributing for Season 8 and 9.
A brief intro:
Indicate your interest in the DAB’s new primary function (assessing protocol upgrades), and consider expressing interest in any of the secondary responsibilities from the charter.
Interested! As part of DAB last 2 seasons, I’ve been doing this by reviewing the upgrades and docs.
Secondary responsibility: Collective Advisory. I have been providing technical feedback on Grant applications and this secondary responsibility well extends my work so far.
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
I have been a developer and auditor across the blockchain stack: EVM contracts, bridgers, infra and ZK.
I’ve reviewed OP stack upgrades as part of the DAB, hence I feel comfortable in doing this in future too.
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
As someone involved with Optimism ecosystem for a year, I have contributed in reviewing audit grant applications, mission grant applications, mentoring OP and Ethereum focused hackathons.
I care about this ecosystem and will be up to asset technical proposals and grants.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes.
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain? No
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation? No
Hi everyone! I’m Richie, aka devtooligan.
I was on the Developer Advisory Board for Season 6. It was a great experience but I also knew there were a lot of other people who wanted to participate on the board so I did not run for Season 7 in hopes that others may join.
For the upcoming Season 8 and 9, Ed and Maxwell both reached out to me and explained there was a lot of important work to do and that my experience with security and AI over the past year would prove valuable. So I am here to self-nominate - I would be honored to serve and help in any way I can if elected. Actually, I am open to help even if not elected.
A brief intro:
Security researcher: I’ve worked with Trail of Bits, Certora, and Spearbit mainly focused on EVM DeFi projects. I’ve audited several OP projects and earlier this year was part of the team that reviewed incident response improvements to the dispute game and portal system components, including updates to anchor state handling, game validation, and bond distribution mechanisms.
AI Tool Developer: Over the last year I have pivoted to AI+Security. The last 6 months I have greatly reduced my audit load and been locked-in developing AI powered security tools. Many of them will be open-sourced over the coming months and available to the OP dev community.
Offbeat Blog: I run a blog which is really a community that engages in unique and interesting discussions around blockchain security focused on EVM and specifically Optimism. Technical examples use Optimism when relevant and all rewards from promotions are paid on Optimism Mainnet.
Indicate your interest in the DAB’s new primary function (assessing protocol upgrades), and consider expressing interest in any of the secondary responsibilities from the charter.
Yes I am interested in the primary function, assessing protocol upgrades, I performed this function as part of DAB Season 6.
As for secondary responsibilities, Developer Adoption Grants and Collective Advisory, I am eager to assist with this as well. I have already had some preliminary discussions with Ed on how we can use AI to streamline and improve the processes. I also performed such functions as part of DAB Season 6.
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
Yes, I am comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack - and have proven my ability to do so previously as part of DAB season 6.
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
I have been a fan and early supporter of the Optimism ecosystem from the beginning (Maurelian fanboy). I am directly responsible for introductions which led to hiring some of the most cracked devs on the team (all Huffoors I might add🦾).
From my experience as part of DAB season 6, I have extensive experience reviewing audit grant applications and mission grant applications. I’ve also advised applicants on their grant applications and am happy to do this for anyone who asks.
As mentioned above, I was part of the audit team that reviewed Optimism’s incident response improvements earlier this year and performed audits on various projects in the ecosystem over the years.
Personally, I use Optimism for all of my personal and experimental projects.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes I am and have shown this ability and willingness previously on Season 6.
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain? No
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation? No
I think that’s it, Claude says “ship it”
This is a strong nomination that should resonate with technical voters while showing you’re not just technically capable but also forward-thinking about improving DAB processes.
Ship it!
Optimist Profile
Intro
My path in crypto started more than decade ago with my first big Ethereum event - transition from Olympic to Frontier. 
I’ve spent most of my time looking into the way how the protocols work being part of R’n’D groups around. I’ve been writing Solidity since day 1 and later moved to building node sidecars, payment channels and later bridges. I’m following Optimism quite close since project Cannon was announced and generally quite excited about the Superchain cross-chain initiative and generally would love to push this forward.
Technical Expertise
My current role in ChainSafe is Head of Protocol Engineering. I’m helping to make Lodestar, Forest, Gossamer, and others including helping OP build rust implementation of op-supervisor. We were involved with OP stack before by building rs-cannon and by using Cannon as an inspiration for the zipline project that used same MIPS-based interpreter and challenge game mechanism to prove Casper finality. So, I’m confident that I posses enough expertise to participate in technical discussions and evaluate technical aspects.
Strategy
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
As mentioned above, I was involved into OP ecosystem for couple of years already and quite excited about the Superchain initiative. I’m quite excited to have a chance to be part of the group that assess technical proposals and grant’s alignment.
Impartiality & Comms
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes
Conflicts of Interest
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain?
No
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation?
Yes, ChainSafe currently is involved with development of the rust op-supervisor implementation.
[edit] spell correction
Hi Optimists!
I’ve applied for the Security Council role on a couple of occasions, but have not had the pleasure to participate in any of the seasons yet:
Quick summary (more details in the link above):
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
I’ve built, published, and deployed projects that require deep understanding across every part of the stack: Created novel smart contracts that safely held millions in value; Vipnode which extended the low-level node gossip protocol; WhatsABI which analyzes EVM bytecode; and even scored a $50k security bounty against Optimism-Cannon.
I enjoy gaining deep understanding in complex technical topics, and feel comfortable serving in this role.
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
I have participated as a guest in the Optimism ecosystem across multiple facets: As a RetroPGF grant recipient in Round 3 and latest season, as a guest voter in Season 5, as a security researcher for the Cannon bounty, as an independent researcher during work sessions with the Optimism development team.
While I have not experienced a standing role from inside the Optimism governance ecosystem, I have enjoyed participating in the ecosystem in the many other ways and hope to do more.
I am a big believer in a permissive open source future and that we will go further if we go together, and have high hopes that Optimism and the Superchain will succeed at bringing a better future for Ethereum and public goods like open source.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes. I write a fair bit about technical topics (e.g. see recent posts here).
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain?
No.
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation?
No long-term development grants, but I have received some seasonal retroactive grants.
I wanted to take the time to suggest @m4rio.eth as one of the nominees selected to work on the audit grants program.
Two seasons ago I had the pleasure of being onboarded by @m4rio.eth and shown the rubrics before calibrating my rating approach to be consistent with him and the rest of the team.
The positive impact we were able to have last season was largely seeded by the groundwork laid in previous seasons.
It would be great to see @m4rio.eth selected among the nominees to work on this next season and pick up where he left off last time around 
I shared a note above to make a recommendation for the audit grants portion of the program but would be remiss if I didn’t comment on several others
@wildmolasses did an incredible job leading the DAB last season and would be perfect to continue
@wbnns has been a member for multiple seasons and the DAB is better off having his expertise included. Easy yes to continue
@blockdev brings a strong background and was an active participant in previous seasons including accepting invites to represent the DAB as a hackathon mentor (over and above the DAB core requirement)
@devtooligan brings a great energy to any team he’s involved in and his return to the DAB will be positive for OP and fellow DAB members
@shazow is always free with his advice on technical topics and someone who’s opinion I trust. It’s never surprising to see a critically important repo with his handle as the maintainer. Huge level up adding him to the team
I’m sure others would make great candidates as well but the above are profiles I’ve had the chance to directly see in action and can confirm they’d be perfect additions to the DAB
I am the maintainer of solady.org, an FOSS Solidity repository widely-used across the Ethereum and Optimism ecosystem.
Currently, most of my professional work involves ithaca.xyz and clusters.xyz.
I sometimes go by my other alias: optimizoor.
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
My main expertise is in scaling the EVM on the application layer via efficient Solidity library code.
Here is a more comprehensive list of my work:
Through my experience in authoring ERCs and maintaining widely used Soilidity FOSS libraries, I recognize the importance of great standards and proposals: for adoption, interoperability, scalability, safety, user experience, etc.
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
I am extremely grateful for the Superchain and deeply care about its future.
As such, I would like provide my services to review proposals and grants.
I am not a master of everything, so I will also consult with the best subject matter experts to make more informed decisions when applicable.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes
To the best of my knowledge:
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain? No
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation? No
My current employers (e.g. ithaca) may deal with core development that affects the OP stack. But my job scope is limited to Solidity related projects.
Heya Optimists !
I am Odysseas, have been around for a little while, probably you have seen me as an early
smol contributor to Foundry or as a protocol engineer at Nomad.
I have wore many hats in the past, from product, to devrel and protocol engineer. Thus, it made sense to attempt becoming a founder with Phylax.
Solving security is close to my heart, as I do really believe that unless we do that, mainstream adoption will not come for our industry.
You can find me on X or GitHub.
How’s your expertise in smart contract development, protocol architecture, and blockchain security? Do you have EVM experience? Are you comfortable evaluating the technical quality and security posture of the OP Stack?
My main expertise is around developer tooling, a longtime passion of mine, protocol design and these days security. I have given various talks on the above issues and feel comfortable saying that I have one or two good ideas.
At Phylax, we implemented one of the first Rollup-Boost network extensions, related to security, so I have been studying the OP Stack for the better part of the year.
My experiences have given me a good insight into what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to tooling, what a “good” devex is and finally how to evaluate a protocol design in terms of complexity and tradeoffs.
I feel honored to be able to contribute to the OP Collective, as it has been one of the easiest and well documented stacks that exist.
How’s your understanding of the Optimism ecosystem, the Superchain vision, and the current developer landscape? Are you willing to assess how technical proposals and grants align with the Collective’s strategic goals?
The Superchain is an attempt to horizontally scale throughput by enabling all OP rollups to interop and behave like a single unified “non-coherent” blockchain, similar to patterns that emerged in Cosmos and Polkadot.
I find it fascinating to contribute in making that a reality and creating a superstructure that is able to provide so much value, that chains want to tap into it. A system where the collective value is much larger than any single blockchain network, making interop a strategic priority and not an engineering ever-green project.
Are you confident in your ability to act with objectivity and to communicate complex technical concepts clearly? Are you willing to perform thorough, independent diligence and contribute constructively to board deliberations?
Yes, I have written various technical pieces in the past, architected designs for Phylax systems (as also published our whitepaper). I also feel comfortable with public speaking, having given over a dozen of talks over various technical subjects.
Are you an affiliate of an OP Chain?
No.
Are you an affiliate on an organization that has a long-term development grant with the Foundation?
No grants whatsoever.
