I believe @jcrtp is still a nominee, no? I would love for Joe to have the opportunity to post his statement as well, considering his interest in the GMC.
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Without further ado, here I go:
Alignment Statement
The vast majority of my crypto holdings are in ETH, rETH, or RPL, so like others, I have significant financial alignment with the protocol and with ETH as a whole. What brought me to Ethereum and Rocket Pool in the first place was that the community values of both ecosystems were strongly aligned with my own. I see Ethereum as a fount of potential to improve upon existing systems that many of us find lacking today, and not all of them financial in nature. I invest time and money into protocols like Ethereum and Rocket Pool because they give me hope for things to come, and the Rocket Pool community has proven this hope justified again and again with the amazing contributions members have made that have gone largely unrewarded thus far, hence my desire to be a part of GMC and help change that where I can.
Conflict statement
I have no current conflicts with the Rocket Pool ecosystem, I’m 100% in! However, if for some reason Rocket Pool were to stop upholding the values around decentralization and permissionlessness that brought me here in the first place, I might have conflicting views, as an example I will strongly support self-limiting or other proposed methods to reduce centralization risk if Rocket Pool grew to be a significant part of the staking landscape, like Lido is today.
Identity statement
I am willing to dox myself if need be, my identity isn’t exactly hidden. As Ken would say, my “fiat mining” job involves testing large electrical system reliability from a performance and engineering level. I perform this job as a senior technical expert, and partly manage a company that performs testing and engineering services. People might have read my “manhole fire” thread awhile back when I had to respond to an emergency; I’ve got plenty more pictures of damaged electrical systems if people are interested. That said, I’m a relative noob when it comes to Linux or smart contracts, and many here are far more qualified than myself when it comes to anything crypto related.
I do think the meetings and communication skills necessary to coordinate many different companies and their brilliant engineers, who all think they are the “smartest guy in the room”, under high stress, short time-frame conditions may help me bring something to the table with the GMC.
Contribution statement
Other than all the time I’ve spent in #trading, I also try to help new people when I can, of course our amazing rocket scientists usually beat me to it and do a better job. I also created the forum post that saw patches become a rocket scientist, though that would have happened eventually, without my help. I shill Rocket Pool wherever I go, including at ETHDenver this year. I have been active in the community since one of the betas, offering my thoughts when I can, and I see the GMC as a way for me to contribute more directly to a protocol where other people have been able to do far more than me on a technical level. I also have been running a node since launch as well as a testnet node since the betas, and I try to give feedback on the betas for Joe, and I have some LP’s for rETH.
Also of note: I have tried to support the community efforts by donating a small amount of my own funds to the many bot makers and dashboard creators in the past (RIP VGR), as well as the rocketeers, Rocket Fuel, etc (and I have the POAPs to back that up!), so GMC would allow me to do the same thing, but with other people’s money!
Whether or not I’m chosen to be a part of the GMC, I’m excited to see such a rockstar team lined up, and I know we’re in good hands.
6 Likes
Absolutely - just another one I missed apparently. Thanks for the catch.
1 Like
Alignment Statement
Most of my crypto holdings are in staked ETH and RPL (> 99%), creating a solid financial alignment with the RP protocol and Ethereum. I was initially introduced to Ethereum via an Epicenter Bitcoin podcast that featured Vitalik. I have since learned that Ethereum is much larger than a programmable blockchain; it is a coordination protocol of people. That makes it stand out from the numerous other L1s that have tried to follow suit.
Conflict statement
I am an active member and moderator of the Node Operator Association (NOA). I actively engage with other staking protocols by providing input and testing on their platforms. I don’t see this as a total conflict, as there may be synergetic opportunities between these protocols and RP. However, all of the other protocols are or will be competitors of RP once they launch to mainnet.
In addition, I received a small remuneration (9 RPL bi-weekly) from the RP team for hosting the RP Community Calls.
Identity statement
I am fully doxed. My “fiat mining” job involves managing health and safety programs for a large public institution of higher learning. I am planning to “retire” into a second career in web3. I am in the early stages of founding a small business, NextBlock Solutions LLC, that will focus primarily on educating the next generation of Etherans. It will be composed mainly of a publicly funded component to generate a curriculum for K-12 educators to teach fundamentals of web3 to their students and a commercial program for companies to educate TradFi to DeFi.
I would bring to the GMC my experience from years of contributing to non-profit boards in developing initiatives to advance member organizations.
Contribution statement
- I have contributed to the initial draft of the RP documentation glossary.
- I have been an active Rocket Scientist for more than a year welcoming new node operators and explaining protocol concepts to potential node operators.
- I have published two research reports on LEB and Smoothing Pool risks on my GitHub (username: htimsk)
- I developed a method to secure the node wallet and password using an Aegis secure key.
- Most importantly, I also have been an RP node operator since launch and a continual testnet node since the betas.
I believe strongly that the GMC can fund and bootstrap the development of several community-performed activities that will advance the RP protocol. Already there have been tremendous contributions (scan tools, websites, POAP drops, bots, NFTs, and vlogs) and these efforts should be rewarded and expanded.
I am very excited to see such a qualified list of nominees for the GMC. I believe the committee will be highly effective in out-sourcing a significant proportion of work that will free up some dev team members to work on the “big rocks” to grow the protocol aggressively in the next 6-12 months.
Thank you, @Patches, for the nomination and @Valdorff for initiating this thread and the recent prompt to post this Alignment Statement.
8 Likes
I will try to keep this short and sweet, since most of it is already well-known.
Alignment Statement
What first attracted me to Rocket Pool in December of 2020 was the mission: making validation on the Ethereum network more accessible than the solo staking requirement permitted, while simultaneously providing a decentralized platform for people to stake without running a validator. In my mind, this was how Ethereum should have launched, because the natural alternative is what we see today: a concentrated set of centralized staking providers, and the majority of stakers delegating their ETH to those providers. To that end, I started contributing to the project in my free time - I decided to tackle the Smartnode stack and node operator experience (largely fueled by an irrational desire to make it work on a Raspberry Pi but here we are). My contributions were enough to secure me a spot on the Rocket Pool development team early last year.
I was responsible for adding features such as Nethermind / Besu / Nimbus / Teku / Lodestar support, the service config TUI, the Smoothing Pool, Smartnode support for Redstone, and so on. I also maintain our documentation and user guide site. About 100% of my liquid assets are in RPL; the rest are staked in minipools as an equal split of ETH and RPL.
Suffice it to say, my interests are strongly aligned with both decentralized staking on Ethereum, and the Rocket Pool protocol. In addition, I have first-hand knowledge of what’s on the to-do list and my own personal capabilities, so I have a very good idea of what would make for a good grant or bounty and will probably be suggesting several of them once the committee is founded, regardless of whether or not I’m on it.
Conflict Statement
All of my investments are in the protocol, and I have a quite literal stake in ensuring its growth and success. It’s my job, after all. I don’t have any conflicts here.
Identity
I’m probably pretty well known at this point, but for the sake of posterity: I’m Joe Clapis. I’m the Smartnode and RP guide maintainer. You can find my contributions here: jclapis (Joe Clapis) · GitHub
Contributions
See the alignment statement and GitHub link above.
9 Likes
Alignment Statement
I have been in ethereum and crypto in general for a bit over 2 years now. I got introduced to ethereum by mining on etheremine in the summer of 2020 - It blew my mind when i bought myself some pringles cans on amazon using my mining rewards. “wow, this works”, i thought to myself, shortly after which i dove deeper into the whole defi space. immutable smart contract, that anyone can write, deploy and interact with sounded like a magical thing. Your protocol can be exposed to millions, no, billions of dollars worth of assets, and nobody even has to know what your real name is.
After buying my first ETH once i turned 18 (I’m a good boy) and lurking on the daily r/ethfinance thread, there was talk about this “Rocket Pool” Token - allegedly it was very cheap, the future of ethereum and the most important facts of them all: it has a rocket in its name. I bought a few RPL on hotbit with the little ETH i had and started lurking in the server. I then started to understand how everything works, participated in the beta testnet and became hooked on #trading after RPL pumped from $4 to $18. Now here i am, almost 2 years later, still checking and chatting in #trading almost every day c:
There is no way i would’ve been here for so long if i had no real alignment with the goals of Rocket Pool and Ethereum. While making money is fun, the real reason I am still here is because having decentralized, permissionless staking on ethereum is an important thing for me, and Rocket Pool is the only project actually doing this.
Conflict statement
Here is a list of things that could potentially be of consideration:
- I am probably eligible for a grant with my Rocket Watch Discord Bot. I obviously would suspend any input as a committee member, should such a grant be up for consideration.
- Peteris was kind enough to sponsor me a dedicated server for Rocket Watch, which allowed me to operate my own nodes. Since he will probably apply for a grant for rocketscan.io, I will make sure to act as neutral as possible and will refrain from applying any personal bias.
- I have worked under bifly, the creators of beaconcha.in, for a while. Should bitfly or any subsidiary entity apply for a grant, I will make sure to act as neutral as possible and will refrain from applying any personal bias.
- I have received a bit of funding by worthalter and superphiz, but this should not really be an issue as they were unrelated to any actual contributions i have done.
Besides that, I do not hold any (meanigful) investments in any competing chain or protocol - this can be confirmed by checking 0xinvis.eth and vault.0xinvis.eth - nor do i participate in any of them.
Identity statement
I live in Vienna, Austria, and am ~19.83 years old. Got into programing because my brother works as a software developer, run Arch Linux on my pc, and love anything that has to do with digital logic. I’m currently still attending school, but am going to be starting my thesis relatively soon, so hopefully for not much longer. I would prefer to keep stuff like my name & face private if possible, as I don’t see how it would add anything to my online personality.
Github: InvisibleSymbol · GitHub
Discord: InvisibleSymbol#2788
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Invisible_Symbol/
Contribution statement
- I have put hundreds of hours into Rocket Watch, an open source discord bot that tracks Rocket Pool events and generates some very useful statistics. In total the bot has sent over 30k events, and has generated thousands of charts.
- I have touched the smartnode once to implement beaconcha.in node metrics for bitfly.
- I generally hang out in the discord server alot and usually am quite up-to-date with anything related to ethereum or rocket pool. I have over 85k messages to confirm this
- I am quite knowledgeable of what can or can’t be done using smart contracts, and also have a rough understanding of how the rocket pool contracts function. I have used this to help people in the community and/or clarify why some ideas just aren’t feasible.
i’m not late, you are c:
8 Likes
I’m not really sure if I can bring much value to the GMC, and even considered saying no, but 3 people have pinged me now so I guess I’ll fill out the form:
Alignment statement:
I’m a Node Operator myself, and the overwhelming majority of my crypto holdings are in ETH, rETH and RPL.
Conflict statement:
I’m not involved with any other LSD provider, nor do I have any other conflicts of interest.
My only large non-Ethereum position is BTC stuck in mtgox, which I’ll be able to sell for ETH soon™.
Identity statement:
I’m pseudonymous and not intending to doxx myself at this point in time.
On Discord, I’m [object Object]#4490 and my public wallet is objectobject.eth.
I can confirm I’ve once met Ramana.
Contribution statement:
- Thousands of messages helping Node Operators in and outside of #support
- Rescued 4 minipools from being dissolved
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GMC nominees: Please do not modify your statements any more.
Voters:
- Please use the statements above to help guide your voting
- If you have questions for the nominees, please ask in GMC Membership & pDAO Treasurer Selection
- Note that modified posts show that they were modified (pencil icon at the top right) and you can click in to see what was modified and when
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Apologies everyone, I’m going to have to withdraw my nomination, I have recently had a personal issue and we’ll be quite on/off for a couple of weeks. Thanks again for opportunity anyway and wish you all the best of luck!
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A GMC member left soon after the end of the vote. There’s an ongoing discussion to simply add the next highest vote getter rather than initiate a new vote to fill the missing slot.
See the discussion and weigh in: