Hi All,
My name is Brian Avello and I am a director with the Optimism Foundation’s board. Like Abbey, I wanted to take a few moments, and give some background on me, my earlier work and how I found myself in this amazing position with incredible colleagues!
About me :
Prior to joining the Optimism Foundation’s board, I was the General Counsel for the Maker Foundation, the entity responsible for launching multi-collateral Dai, and bootstrapping MakerDAO’s self-sustaining governance. While with Maker, I was responsible for everything legal and regulatory, and worked with my colleagues to dissolve the Foundation in late 2021, returning MakerDAO to its present fully decentralized state. I now am a partner with the UDHC, an investment fund focused on infrastructure investments connecting DeFi and TradFi. Before joining Maker, I was a practicing attorney for approximately ten years, and have represented various funds, founders, companies and investors in the blockchain space since early 2016.
I was drawn to the industry by following some of the most intelligent people I have ever met (early Maker founders and contributors) and then stayed while having the pleasure of working for years with others cut from that same cloth (former Maker Foundation team). I owe them all a debt of gratitude.
My reasons for joining the Optimism Foundation board:
I felt my time “re-decentralizing” MakerDAO laid the groundwork for where the DAO is now and that I could put this experience to good use by assisting the Optimism team through a similar journey. I’m truly honored and humbled to be on the board and have the chance to support Jing and Ben’s vision alongside Eva and Abbey.
My view on the Optimistic Vision:
The Optimistic Collective, particularly the bicameral legislature that will govern it, is an interesting next step in general governance for our industry. I hope and believe it represents a better functioning model over the oligarchic structures of some “governance 1.0/pure token weighted voting” DAOs and protects the Collective from state capture by any particular group (as I have seen in other DAOs).
My view on the first three articles of the Working Constitution:
This is a working constitution : A viable DAO governance model is a case-by-case specific matter where each project may have different needs. Not trying to lock in structures from the first go is wise, as things that work in theory may not fit with how a community evolves. Best to start flexible and then harden the governance core over the first two to three years of community governance.
OP Citizens and OP Holders will equally coexist within the Collective : The more evenly we divide power among citizens and holders, the better, in my opinion. Incenting long-term involvement here, rather than fly-by-night capital, ensures that the Collective survives not for five years but one hundred years.
The Optimism Foundation will be a steward of the Optimism Collective and its early governance model : Like the Maker Foundation, the Optimism Foundation’s role is to bootstrap and shepherd governance before gradually moving to irrelevance and dissolution. Having been deeply involved in the former, I’m happy to apply my experience in the latter.
My Web3 interests (non-Optimism related, of course)
Maker; DeFi protocols focused on bridging DeFi and TradFi like Maple Finance, Tokemak, Element, Sense Finance, Jet, Lido and Dapi, to name a few; Web 3 data analytics providers like Token Flow; TradFi-to-DeFi projects, like Oasis Pro Markets; and community operated NFT infrastructure, like Superrare.
Languages I speak and write:
I speak and write Spanish and Portuguese.
My favorite Web3 projects:
After Optimism…Maker, Superrare, Tokemak, Lido, Maple, Token Flow and Oasis.app.
Very happy to be on this voyage with you.
Brian