Council sub-committee: Growth Experiments
If you are a delegate, please provide the link to your delegate commitment: Delegate Commitments - #44 by solarcurve
If you are a delegate, please indicate what % of votable supply is delegated to you: (voting power can be referenced here ) 0.55% at time of writing
If you are a delegate, please indicate your voting participation rate in OP governance to date: https://optimism.karmahq.xyz/profile/balancermaxi.eth#votinghistory 100% voting participation rate
Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale you’ve shared: Snapshot I’ve shared some reasoning in various proposal threads. I’d encourage anyone interested in my rationale to browse my forum activity here.
Please outline any other contributions to the Optimism ecosystem to date: I’m largely responsible for getting BeethovenX & Balancer on Optimism early last summer. Optimism was the first network where boosted pools made up the majority of platform TVL (boosted pools deposit most tokens someone to earn extra yield for LP’s, e.g. Aave). Beyond this, I’ve been a fairly active delegate and participant in the Shadow Committee last season. Overall I believe Optimism has a very promising future and even if not elected to a position here, I’ll continue working behind the scenes as much as I can.
Do you have a technical background? If so, please elaborate: I have taken some coding courses several years ago. I’m certainly not a developer now days but I have a strong understanding of technical concepts. I would not be someone who could do a code review or similar.
Did you serve on a committee in Season 2? If so, please specify which: The Shadow Committee!
Please demonstrate any experience you believe is relevant to this role: I’ve served in the Balancer DAO since its inception. I spent a few months on Balancer’s Grants team. I am a prominent participant in Balancer’s governance process (and actually designed most of it). Additionally, I lead a team called the Balancer Maxis which works for the Balancer DAO in various capacities including on-chain ops and business development.
Please demonstrate expertise relevant to your Council sub-committee: I believe I have a very strong understanding of how incentive mechanisms work in DeFi (and in general). The year is 2023 so we should ensure Optimism does not spend funds on sub-optimal incentive schemes. I’m very open to novel approaches if any are brought forward. At the same time, there are many proposals Optimism has funded which will lead to zero lasting benefit.
Please describe your philosophy on what makes a good Governance Fund grant: The most important factor is a reasonable likelihood of a long term benefit to Optimism. Printing OP can make anything look good while the printer is on. The critical question is does any benefit persist after the printing ends? If not, do not print.
A simple philosophy but I believe a very important one. The act of spending OP on things that will not generate long term value can in fact make it harder for real value to rise to the surface, since it must compete with artificial short term incentives. The more we can level the playing field and let those products/projects which can stand on their own without incentives rise to the surface the quicker Optimism can grow in my view.
What types of grant applications would you like to see or what RFPs would you create? Optimism needs additional second and third level projects which can build on top of the base level primitives like DEX’s and lending markets (where we have sufficient liquidity already).
In other words, more and better use cases for why users should come to Optimism and take advantage of our strong DEX & lending market liquidity. Leveraged vaults is one recent example of Notional Finance making good use of Balancer liquidity.
Please disclose any anticipated conflicts of interest: I contribute to Balancer DAO and have a good relationship with the BeethovenX team. I would abstain from voting on grant proposals from direct competitors (other DEXes).
Please verify that you agree to abide by the delegate code of conduct : Yes
Please verify that you understand KYC will be required to receive Council rewards at the end of Season 3: Yes
Please verify that you are able to commit 12 hours / week to reviewing grant applications and other Council operations: Yes