0xMilton - Grants Council Self-Nomination
Council sub-committee: Builder
If you are a delegate, please provide the link to your delegate commitment:
I’m not a delegate
If you are a delegate, please indicate what % of votable supply is delegated to you:
I’m not a delegate
If you are a delegate, please indicate your voting participation rate in OP governance to date:
I’m not a delegate
Please link to your voting history and any voting rationale you’ve shared:
I’m not a delegate
Please outline any other contributions to the Optimism ecosystem to date:
My first relationship with the Optimism ecosystem was by receiving an OP airdrop last year (from contributions done in the Ethereum ecosystem) which I then delegated for some time.
Afterwards I collaborated from WakeUp Labs (sofware development company of which I am co-founder). Our developer-oriented Platform is compatible with the Optimism blockchain and helps web2 developers to easily onboard to web3 with no prior blockchain development knowledge. We also collaborated from WakeUp with the OP ecosystem by giving developers workshops, both online and IRL, together with DeFi Latam.
Finally, we were awarded a grant from the Grants Council to develop RFG1 (WIP), and also applied to a couple of others.
I am happy to continue contributing to the Optimism ecosystem as I believe it has a well organized DAO and governance systems at the same time I believe in L2 and upper layers to escalate and optimize blockchains for them to be used by more people and businesses while maintaining decentralization, that is a differential feature for these networks.
Do you have a technical background? If so, please elaborate:
Yes I do. I am a graduated Informatics Engineer who has been working professionally on software projects for the past 17 years. I have been through all roles in software development: I coded in the University, been project manager, product manager, architect, CTO with delivery focused skills.
Worked first on different big corporations, always in the IT department. Then, I’ve been CTO, for 5 years, at a mobile gaming development startup.
After that I got into the blockchain rabbit hole and jumped to start working on this technology. First worked as CTO of a Decentralized Identity non for profit project. Then worked as Product Owner at Rootstock blockchain (EVM bitcoin side chain) leading developers teams to build different blockchain products such as: Identity, DeFi, Name Services, NFT, Multisig, among others.
Last year I co-founded WakeUp Labs with the mission to help developers and businesses to easily onboard to web3 development.
Regarding blockchain tech, I first got into it when reading Bitcoin’s whitepaper more than 7 years ago. Since then I never stopped learning about this technology. Read also about Solidity and Ethereum at that moment. The same year I deployed my first testnet smart contract and built an Ethereum GPU Mining rig.
Have you previously served on a Token House Council or committee? If so, please specify which:
No I have not. But it was really enlightening for me to write full Builder proposals for the Optimism Grants council in my role at WakeUp Labs and to have the opportunity to be evaluated and to receive substantial feedback from the council.
Please demonstrate any experience you believe is relevant to this role:
The majority of my career has been working with software development teams, leading them to accomplish the organization’s results. Always searching to gather the best teams and aiming for the best product quality, documentation and testing. That expertise I think is important in order to distinguish between good and poor teams, proposals and projects. To avoid those that would not be suitable for the Optimism Collective.
When I worked for the Decentralized Identity project with IDB Lab and Bitcoin NGO, as it was a non for profit project, all of the vendors had to be selected with impartial mechanisms very similar to the rubrics used by the OP Grants Council.
Also, this year I was a judge at Ethereum Argentina Buildathon where I had to impartially analyze different web3 projects and assign them points in different categories to determine if they were to be awarded or not. For that task I had to analyze their pitches, source code, project decks and documentation, so as to do honest and thoughtful reviews.
Please demonstrate expertise relevant to your Council sub-committee: (if applicable)
I am a builder, that’s what I like doing. I have been building software products for the past 17 years, and specifically blockchain products for the past 6+ years. So I understand what is needed for a project to be successful and to fulfill its scope expectations.
Also, everything I mentioned in my answers above is relevant to this sub-committee. But, specifically, I would like to reinforce the point that in recent months I have been on the other side of the counter: I’ve written and submitted a couple of Builder and RFG Proposals for my company, in the Charmverse app. So I got a good understanding of what is expected for builders to get a grant. All the required steps and details needed for a good proposal to be submitted and have chances to be approved.
Please describe your philosophy on what makes a good Governance Fund grant:
For starters, it should aim to meet any of the goals of Season 5 Intents for the Optimism Collective.
It also should have:
- A detailed and clear written proposal
- A clear goal for the proposal
- An explanation on how the goal will achieved and how it will meet Season 5 Intents
- A clear scope for the project
- Detailed roadmap and milestones
- Explain how the deliveries will be verified
- Details of the team’s track record both inside and outside the OP ecosystem.
When development starts:
- The team should do frequent progress communication
- The council should control, measure and support the grantees during the development process
What types of Mission Requests do you think will help achieve the Season 5 Intents?
To Improve the Consumer Experience and Grow the Superchain I believe that Mission Requests to simplify the end-user web3 onboarding are a must. For example:
- Social login wallets: mobile app template and plugins
- Gamified, with progressive complexity, security and decentralization
- Tools to totally abstract end-users from the “gas” concept (anything, not just account abstraction).
- Plugins to connect traditional on-ramps to crypto wallets
- UX & UI:
- Web dapp templates: for next, react and other frameworks
- Beautiful web dapp UI components library
- Native mobile wallet templates: react native and others
- Gaming:
- Create Unity plugins for Optimism
- Create Steam plugins for Optimism
- Create Google Play and App Store plugins for Optimism
For the Progress Towards Technical Decentralization:
- Create more UIs to understand state of decentralization
- Create simple tools to add more eyes to the sequencer
For the Improve Governance Accessibility Intent:
- Identity and Privacy:
- Self-sovereign identity (SSI) tooling to be used by people and institutions
- Maybe an abstraction of the Attestation Station
- Add ZK for on-chain identities and respect PII privacy
- Verified identities without having to disclose any private information
- Self-sovereign identity (SSI) tooling to be used by people and institutions
Please disclose any anticipated conflicts of interest:
I am co-founder of WakeUp Labs. If a vote related to it were needed from my side, I would abstain from voting in that case, unless the Council requests otherwise. Whatever is better for the Council and OP Ecosystem.
Please verify that you agree to abide by the Code of Conduct 5:
Yes, I agree.
Please verify that you understand KYC will be required to receive Council rewards at the end of Season 5:
Yes, I understand.
Please verify that you are able to commit ~20 hours / week to reviewing grant applications and other Council operations:
Yes, I am able.