Grants Council Reviewer Nominations: Season 4

šŸ› Token House Governance Elections
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Council Reviewer Self-Nomination Template

Please keep your answers as concise as possible while conveying all relevant information.

Council sub-committee: Growth

If you are a delegate, please provide the link to your delegate commitment: Commitment

If you are a delegate, please indicate what % of votable supply is delegated to you: (voting power can be referenced here) 7.88% is delegated to the SNX Ambassadors.

If you are a delegate, please indicate your voting participation rate in OP governance to date: (You may link to your profile on Karma , if applicable. If not, you can divide the number of Optimism votes under your Snapshot profile by 87, which is the number of Token House votes through Season 2, and add a possible 2 votes from Agora.) The original SNXAmbassador wallet faced multisig issues from the start, and the new OPSNXAmbassador wallet was created after a few rounds of voting. In my opinion, it wouldnā€™t be helpful to judge participation based on this.

Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale youā€™ve shared: OPSNXAmbassador Snapshot + SNXAmbassador Snapshot + Voting Rational for Shadow Committee

Please outline any other contributions to the Optimism ecosystem to date: I was elected to the Grants Council for Growth Experiments in the prior epoch and have helped guide projects through this new process. I also discuss this later on.

Do you have a technical background? If so, please elaborate: I do not have direct technical experience, though I rely on the expertise of members of the SNXAmbassadors who have solidity, sql, and other development experience.

In my role as a Synthetix Core Contributor, I explain complex technical matters and core mechanisms of the protocol. So even without ā€˜technical experienceā€™ I feel Iā€™m still able to hold my own.

Have you previously served on a Token House Council or committee? If so, please specify which: Yes I have, I served on the Shadow Committee (recognized by Optimism) and the Grants Council for Growth Experiments.

Please demonstrate any experience you believe is relevant to this role:

  • I am a former Optimism Grants Council for Growth Experiments member, and have helped guide projects through the new Grants process. Iā€™ve worked alongside great grants council members, and have used my deep knowledge of DeFi, and my understanding of whatā€™s necessary for Optimism to grow to provide valuable feedback and approve projects thatā€™ll help grow Optimism.

  • I am currently a Core Contributor for Synthetix, where I primarily focus on Communications, Marketing, and Partnerships. I have had the opportunity to take on various projects and initiatives, such as supporting SNXā€™s international presence (SNX Country Leads) and community marketing (SNX 300), and helping new protocols build on top of Synthetix as part of partnership efforts.

  • I was also recently re-elected as one of the five SNX Ambassadors. The SNX Ambassadors are an elected council that represents Synthetix through governance across the ecosystem and works on partnerships/business development alongside CCs and other councils.

  • I have collaborated with many protocols across Optimism to support their growth, a prime example being Synthetix Spartan Spaces on Twitter, which I host as an SNX Ambassador. This platform promotes great protocols across both Optimism and ETH mainnet and helps them explain their protocols to users. These efforts have led to many successful partnerships and integrations for Synthetix and other ecosystem partners.

  • I have the ability to concisely communicate complex technical topics in a way that is easily understood by end users.

  • Extensive knowledge of the DeFi landscape and what it takes to support a protocol in various aspects.

  • I have been a DeFi user since the early days of the space. Before the days of complex gov tokens and during the great times of yearn and curve being used together being the most interesting use-case

Please demonstrate expertise relevant to your Council sub-committee: (if applicable)

I have a pulse on the Optimism ecosystem and have worked extensively with protocols onboarding to Optimism, helping them navigate the process of growth on Optimism. I have firsthand experience of onboarding new users into the ecosystem and supporting them with a great product and ongoing incentives to keep them engaged in the long term. Based on this experience, I believe I am a strong candidate to serve on the Optimism Growth Experiments Committee, with the goal of driving growth for Optimism in the long term.

Please describe your philosophy on what makes a good Governance Fund grant:

  • Great product / usecase for the protocol within Optimism and the greater DeFi ecosystem

  • A clear path to non-incentivized growth - We should not incentivize projects for the sake of incentivization, this should always be a temporary measure.

  • Clear KPIā€™s

  • Milestones tied to token amounts to release grants.

  • Quality team (on all facets - devs, community, marketing, etc)

  • Healthy Treasury which reduces the chance of OP token misuse

  • Potential contingency plan / alternate path to distributing governance fund grant

  • Path to protocol decentralization / Governance structure

What types of grant applications do you think will help achieve Intent #2?

Intent #2 is extremely important, and we should always try to incentivize the core areas of DeFi that still arenā€™t decentralized. The following are types of projects I beleive should be incentivized:

  • Scalable Decentralized Stablecoins
  • Scalable Decentralized BTC / other wrapped assets
  • Decentralized Bridging
  • Decentralized Oracles
  • Cross Chain Messaging (Read & Write)
  • Interoperability / Infrastructure tools for the OP Stack (ties in with above)
  • OP Stack alternative incentives

Thereā€™s many types of applications in this list, but all of them cover either core areas of DeFi that havenā€™t been explored, havenā€™t been properly decentralized, or will help to grow a core area of focus for Optimism for the future. Iā€™m excited about all of these (and much more) and think this greatly fits within #2 - Innovating on Novel Applications. Iā€™d like to make clear that thereā€™s no way this covers all of the novel applications, Iā€™d argue that most novel applications havenā€™t even been thought of yet!

Please disclose any anticipated conflicts of interest: I am an elected member of the SNX Ambassadors and a Core Contributor at Synthetix.

Please verify that you agree to abide by the Code of Conduct : Yes

Please verify that you understand KYC will be required to receive Council rewards at the end of Season 4: Yes

Please verify that you are able to commit ~20 hours / week to reviewing grant applications and other Council operations: Yes

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