Security Council Elections - L2BEAT voting rationale thread

Security Council Security Council Elections
1

The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

As L2BEAT, we have decided to spread our voting power to 5 nominees, ensuring 3 of them qualify for the next stage, and signalling our strong support for 2 of them in the process. On a high-level, the 4 aspects that helped us drive our decision were:

  • Strong technical knowledge
    • It’s imperative for each member of the security council to be able to independently verify what they’re signing, but to also understand the underlying technology and code. We are willing to support also members that bring other skills like deep knowledge of legal implications that add significant value to the security council.
  • Reputation at stake
    • While we respect the wish for some members of the community to remain anonymous, we believe that members of the security council should have their identities known, so that if they misbehave or fail to act on time, they risk slashing their public reputation. We are willing to make an exception only for well known anons with exceptional reputation.
  • No connection to OffChain Labs or Arbitrum Foundation
    • We wanted to limit the support for individuals or entities that are related to the original founding team (OffChain Labs and Arbitrum Foundation) as we believe that Security Council should serve as a third party guardian that protects the users of the protocol.
  • Location
    • Security council members should be spread around the world to cover most timezones and various jurisdictions as that would help with reaction speed in case of emergency, and would mitigate the risk of legal implications.

With that in mind, we voted for the following nominees:

Philipp Jovanovic - Associate Professor in Information Technology at University College London (UK)

  • Philipp has a very strong technical background and with 12+ years of experience in cybersecurity. He’s involved in various projects in his capacity as a cybersecurity consultant and he’s experienced in cryptography, distributed systems security, privacy-enhancing technologies, cryptocurrencies among other fields.

Haroon.eth - PhD on Crypto Analytics & Security (UK)

  • Haroon also has a very strong technical background and he has professional experience in blockchain security and analytics. He has published numerous academic articles and research on blockchain and security and he’s also on the technical committee of the IC3.

Emiliano Bonassi - Tech at Conduit (Italy)

  • Emiliano comes from a researcher background with strong technical knowledge and experience in web3 security since 2020. He has been supporting and leading various war rooms, discovering security issues on Yearn and Synthetix.

And while we don’t have enough voting power to also help qualify the following 2, we’ve voted for them as well to indicate our strong support.

Caleb Lau - Software Developer at Etherscan (Malaysia)

  • Like with the other nominees, Caleb has a very strong technical background, and he also has the experience of being on the security council as a member of the previous cohort.

Paul Imseih - Founder and Principal of Daimon Legal (Australia)

  • In our opinion, Paul would make for a great addition to the council despite not having as strong technical knowledge as other nominees. Paul has provided legal advice and had leadership roles during cybersecurity incidents in the past which would make him a good fit for covering the legal aspect of any actions of the security council.
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Thank you for explaining your rational. Very very informative post.

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Our voting rationale for round 1 can be found above.

For round 2, we stuck to assessing nominees based on the 4 aspects that originally helped drive our decision (strength of technical knowledge, reputation at stake, unaffiliated with OffChain Labs or Arbitrum Foundation, and location).

We decided to spread our voting power across 6 nominees and support all of our choices instead of choosing to propel 1 or 2 individuals into the council by putting our full weight behind them.

With that in mind, and after a thorough internal assessment and discussion, we selected the following nominees to vote for:

Philipp Jovanovic - Associate Professor in Information Technology at University College London (UK)

  • Philipp has a very strong technical background and with 12+ years of experience in cybersecurity. He’s involved in various projects in his capacity as a cybersecurity consultant and he’s experienced in cryptography, distributed systems security, privacy-enhancing technologies, cryptocurrencies among other fields. Philipp was also among the nominees we voted for during Round 1.

Haroon.eth - PhD on Crypto Analytics & Security (UK)

  • Haroon also has a very strong technical background and he has professional experience in blockchain security and analytics. He has published numerous academic articles and research on blockchain and security and he’s also on the technical committee of the IC3. Haroon was also among the nominees we voted for during Round 1.

Emiliano Bonassi - Tech at Conduit (Italy)

  • Emiliano comes from a researcher background with strong technical knowledge and experience in web3 security since 2020. He has been supporting and leading various war rooms, discovering security issues on Yearn and Synthetix. Emiliano was also among the nominees we voted for during Round 1.

Omer Goldberg - CEO at Chaos Labs (USA)

  • Omer has extensive experience in security, having worked in that area as a software engineer and a tech lead at Instagram and Facebook, prior to founding Chaos Labs. He has very strong technical knowledge and has worked with various projects in the space, including Aave, Curve, Compound, GMX, Uniswap and more.

Weibo Wang (Nolan) - Chief security researcher at Numen Cyber Labs (Singapore),

  • Nolan comes from a research background with 12 years of experience in network security and vulnerability research. He has strong technical background and he has a demonstrated ability of finding vulnerabilities both in web2 as well as in web3.

Ali Atlia - Founder & Product Lead at yAcademy | yAudit (Canada)

  • Ali has a very strong technical background and has spend the past 3 years focusing on security and rollups with a lot of experience in smart contracts and zk auditing. He’s also been involved with Ethereum R&D since 2019 and has experience with opsec and war rooms.
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Note: I just realized I haven’t shared our rationale for Security Council elections during nominations phase, here I share just for sake of completeness. I will follow with rationale for the candidate elections in the next post.

The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two. For the security council elections we did consult our research team to make sure that our choices reflect the understanding and

As with the last elections for the Security Council, on a high level, the 4 aspects that helped us drive our decision were:

  • Strong technical knowledge
    • It’s imperative for each member of the security council to be able to independently verify what they’re signing, but to also understand the underlying technology and code. We are willing to support also members who bring other skills like deep knowledge of legal implications that add significant value to the Security Council.
  • Reputation at stake
    • While we respect the wish for some members of the community to remain anonymous, we believe that members of the security council should have their identities known, so that if they misbehave or fail to act on time, they risk slashing their public reputation. We are willing to make an exception only for well-known anons with exceptional reputations.
  • No connection to OffChain Labs or Arbitrum Foundation
    • We wanted to limit the support for individuals or entities that are related to the original founding team (OffChain Labs and Arbitrum Foundation) as we believe that the Security Council should serve as a third-party guardian that protects the users of the protocol.
  • Location
    • Security Council members should be spread around the world to cover most time zones and various jurisdictions as that would help with reaction speed in case of emergency, and would mitigate the risk of legal implications.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to cast our vote for the following nominees,:

Bartek.eth

Bartek is one of the co-founders of L2BEAT and a prominent figure in the L2 ecosystem, having worked with virtually all L2s, including Arbitrum, since before their main net launch. He was also part of the past Security Council cohorts.

Alizk.eth

Ali comes from a strong technical and security-oriented background. He was also among our picks for the previous cohort of the Security Council.

jdetychey

Jerome has a big track record building in Ethereum ecosystem, including running one of the biggest crypto conferences, and brings in a lot of experience from his tenure in similar roles.

Justin Leroux

Justin brings strong technical knowledge and security experience.

The following nominees were already qualified by the time we cast our vote so we couldn’t vote for them, but we wanted to signal our support here instead.

Emiliano Bonassi

Emiliano comes from a researcher background with strong technical knowledge and experience in web3 security since 2020 and he was one of our picks for the last cohort as well.

Open Zeppelin

Open Zeppelin is an industry-leading blockchain security firm with extensive experience and expertise in the space.

Yoav.eth

Yoav has been a Security Council member since its formation and comes from a security and research background.

Certora

Certora is a formal verification tool and smart contract audit firm. They have strong technical experience and make for a good candidate.

Fred

Fred is a long-time contributor to Arbitrum, being the former tech lead at Offchain Labs and the current tech lead for the Arbitrum Foundation. He’s very familiar with Arbitrum’s codebase and has a lot of experience with cyber security. Although associated with the Foundation, Fred is going independent in April.

Zellic

Zellic is another top-tier security firm that has extensive technical knowledge and experience. They’re also a founding member of the Security Alliance (SEAL) with a 24/7 emergency hotline for help with incident response, vulnerability disclosure, and other security concerns which makes them a perfect fit.

Raf Solari

Raf brings over 15 years of software engineer experience and he’s the CTO of Tally, which is the backbone of Arbitrum’s on-chain governance. Raf is very familiar with Arbitrum, its DAO, the smart contracts, and the security model.

Disclaimer

Keep in mind that these are our picks for the first phase of the Security Council elections, and we might change or consolidate our voting power during the second phase where the member election takes place.

5

The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.

After voting in the nominee selection phase, we’ve decided to cast our vote in the following way during the election phase:

Bartek

Bartek, L2BEAT co-founder, has strong technical knowledge, and extensive experience with many L2s, including Arbitrum, and was also a part of the previous cohort which makes him familiar with the duties and the process of the Security Council.

Fred

Fred was the previous tech lead at Arbitrum Foundation and was the tech lead at Offchain Labs before that, which makes him intimately familiar with Arbitrum’s tech and therefore a perfect canditate for the Security Council. He’s now a technical advisor to Arbitrum

Yoav.eth

Yoav has been a Security Council member since its formation and comes from a security and research background. We believe that his technical expertise and extensive knowledge of Arbitrum mechanisms will be a significant addition to the Security Council.

Emiliano Bonassi

Emiliano comes from a researcher background with strong technical knowledge and experience in web3 security since 2020 and he was one of our picks for the last cohort as well.

Alizk.eth

Ali comes from a strong technical and security-oriented background. He was also among our picks for the previous cohort of the Security Council.

OpenZeppelin

Open Zeppelin is an industry-leading blockchain security firm with extensive experience and expertise in the space.

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The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.

As with the previous elections’ nomination period, we selected the applicants we voted for based on the following high-level criteria:

  • Strong technical knowledge
    • It’s imperative for each member of the security council to be able to independently verify what they’re signing and understand the underlying technology and code. We are willing to support members who bring other skills, like deep knowledge of legal implications, that add significant value to the security council.
  • Reputation at stake
    • While we respect the wish for some community members to remain anonymous, we believe that members of the security council should have their identities known so that if they misbehave or fail to act on time, they risk slashing their public reputation. We are willing to make an exception only for well-known anons with exceptional reputations.
  • No connection to OffChain Labs or Arbitrum Foundation
    • We wanted to limit the support for individuals or entities that are related to the original founding team (OffChain Labs and Arbitrum Foundation) as we believe that the Security Council should serve as a third-party guardian that protects the users of the protocol.
  • Location
    • Security Council members should be spread around the world to cover most time zones and various jurisdictions as that would help with reaction speed in case of emergency and would mitigate the risk of legal implications.

With that in mind, we voted in favor of the following nominees, even though some did not qualify for the elections eventually.

  • Bayge
  • Caleb
  • Chuygarcia.eth
  • Code4rena
  • Cyfrin
  • Dedaub
  • Hacken
  • Wakeup Labs
  • Immunefi
  • Guardian Team
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The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.

After voting in the nominee selection phase, we’ve decided to equally split our voting power among the following nominees (in no particular order) during the election phase:

Immunefi

Immunefi is a very well-known, established, and respected security firm, which we felt is a great fit for the Security Council. They bring strong technical knowledge and a security-oriented mindset, which are much-needed qualities.

Dennison Bertram

As the CEO of Tally, Dennison not only has a strong technical understanding but is also very familiar with Arbitrum and its stakeholders. He’s plugged in with the community and he has a very solid understanding of the governance infrastructure.

Consensys Dilligence

Conesnsys is another security firm that we were comfortable supporting, knowing they possess the necessary skill set to be an effective member of the Security Council.

Dedaub

Dedaub, another well-known security firm, has previously worked with the DAO in the context of ADPC and the experience of working with them has been a pleasant one. Like other security firms, we believe they have the relevant skillset to fulfill their role as a member of the Security Council.

Caleb

Caleb comes from a very strong technical background and brings a lot of smart contract knowledge, having worked as an engineer at Etherscan. He has also served as a member of the Security Council in the previous cohort so he’s familiar with the whole process.

Halborn

Last but not least, Halborn is the 4th security firm that applied and passed the nominee election phase and for which we voted in favor. Similarly to the other security firms, we’re confident in Halborn’s ability to carry out the responsibilities of the Security Council.