Background
Name: Ian
Position I am applying for: Council member
TG: @seriousian
Twitter: @icpossibilities
Affiliations: I currently work with Serious People, SushiSwap, Bond Protocol, Steer Finance, ICHI
Why You
Why would You be the best candidate for this position?
- I am applying for the Council Member position because I genuinely think it would be valuable to have one person on the council that is also fulfilling the duties of an Application Advisor. That being said, my team is also applying for the Application Advisor position and if you disagree with the need for there to be representative crossover then please pass on me here and only vote for us there.
- Reasons I can add value to the council:
- I have been heavily involved in contributing to the building of the STIP and LTIPP through my role as CEO at Serious People, offering up several ideas and frameworks that have already been implemented.
- Thanks to years of developing and refining an analysis metric that we at SP call ROE (Return on Emissions), I feel well equipped to compare emission methods of projects in a fair and unbiased way.
- Therefore, I will enforce high ROE standards
- I have a deep understanding of liquidity, both CEX and DEX, due to my years of experience working directly with exchanges within the Defi space
- I have a heavy background in traditional finance and have been in crypto for 7+ years, working at various start ups and DAOs
- Disruption Joe can attest to my tenure in crypto as I was once a frequenter of his crypto meetups in 2017
- It is paramount that there is consistency throughout the entire process. One thing I have learned over working in many similar groups and situations is how easy it is to underestimate how much time is wasted and frustration caused due to information asymmetry. Having a few strategic players that span larger than just their individual working group is vital, with this we would have myself and Matt, which sounds reasonable for a project of this size.
- It will be comforting to projects knowing that there is a link between the Council and the Advisors. This ensures the applicants that the advice they are being given will ultimately ladder up into precisely what the Council is looking for. Matt is going to be involved in regards to ensuring application viability, but he has to span a much larger surface area and this is worth having overlap on.
- I am well spoken and have always been able to explain complex topics in such a way that they are easily understood. It is always important to have a strong communicator on a Council like this to ensure that we are being well received and understood by applicants, delegates, etc.
- I take notes on everything and will take meeting minutes. This means I can easily keep both groups informed on each other - which, in a decentralized environment, is crucial. When people miss meetings they can check the notes and stay caught up. At the end of the day disorganization is the bane of efficiency, and I am incredibly good at keeping things moving forward and keeping them organized
- Arbitrum also needs to fund research to make the DAO’s spending more efficient and be able to accurately gather data to assess the efficacy of the program. There is a 200k ARB allocation earmarked for this specific purpose in this proposal. Serious People is leading the charge on how we can go about gathering that research (and hopefully helping with the liquidity area) and what questions we need to be answering. We plan to continue on this front as we are huge data nerds, so it would be beneficial if I got to be a part of the entire end-to-end process
- I would be in a great position to interlink with Matt and essentially be a key support character. This is going to be a large program and a lot of work to pull off successfully - we need to think strategically about battle placement when working in a decentralized environment, even more so with new teams and a ton of moving pieces
What do you think a good incentive application looks like?
- Thankfully I can let my team’s work speak for itself here. We have been actively involved in shaping this program and working to improve the LTIPP.
- See the work by Serious People and team posted on the forum.
- We have come up with the initial framework for KPI’s, using a metric I helped invent called ‘Return on Emissions’ (ROE )
- We rewrote the application to streamline it to draw out important data for underwriting the projects tokenomics (something we do very well at serious people, come talk to us if you are curious , while also gathering details on how they actually plan to achieve a high ROE on the money Arbitrum would give to them. We need to ensure this spend is not wasted. Personally I think a lot of money was wasted in the STIP program - ROE makes this brutally apparent. We want people on the council that deeply understand this and are going to be stewards of ensuring high ROE spends, or honestly not emitting funds. Putting me on the council will ensure
- We also revamped the entire scope of the advisory role
- We also are leading the charge in driving the research and development portion of this program.
- At the end of the day its pretty fucking simple though. We need to be striving to generate more value than what we spend. And using emissions on worthless programs like farming needs to stop. Our industry needs to be built on sustainable financial tooling with realistic returns that works for all stakeholders. A good application shows how they plan to bring back more value than what they spend.
What are your goals for this program?
- Drive projects to do things that bring tangible value to the ecosystem, as stressed above
- Maintain consistency as the scribe, and help maintain organization
- Support Matt in his role as Project Manager
- Drive meetings and ensure everyone is engaged, active and involved
- Enforce robust standards for ROE, working tirelessly to get the highest return for the DAO