I am also answering @maverick’s call for community applications to the oDAO! I’ll use The Wander Format™ as a starting point.
TL;DR I am a highly active Rocket Pool community member, run multiple minipools, have a technical background, take responsibility seriously, and believe in the decentralized future in which Rocket Pool plays a vital role.
What is your history of involvement with Rocket Pool?
My first crypto buy was ETH on April 6th, 2021. My first message in the Rocket Pool Discord community was on April 15th, 2021. In the time since, I have contributed 16,614 low-quality Discord messages (an average of 35 per day!). My crypto holdings are 70% minipools and RPL, and 30% ETH. Rocket Pool and its community are and always will be where I got my start in crypto. They are where my crypto education comes from, and they are the project and community that I am most aligned with by a very large margin!
My primary contributions to date:
- Educating the broader Ethereum community about and promoting Rocket Pool regularly (example)
- Initiating the most popular discussion in the DAO forum, the Bankless proposal
- Promoting Rocket Pool within the RP-aligned EVMavericks community, driving interest in SaaS (NOA), helping raise $20k from EthStaker donations and matching toward building an Rocket Pool Node Operator onboarding content (currently under construction)
- Creating and collecting Rocket Pool POAPs!
- Operating multiple minipools with self-hosted hardware and minority clients to promote a decentralized future
What do you see as the oDAO’s role in the protocol?
Not to oversimplify, but I view the oDAO’s job as what’s on the tin–to ensure, through governance, that the network of oDAO members is healthy and effective in fulfilling their duties as trusted oracles and custodians of the Rocket Pool protocol (e.g. smart contract upgrades). The security of the network has to be the top priority at all times.
This means that, emphatically, it is the job of every oDAO member to stay informed about Rocket Pool’s evolution and to actively participate in oDAO governance. As an oDAO member, I would hold myself accountable to informed participation and ask the community to hold me accountable to it as well.
What are your priorities for Rocket Pool?
I deeply believe that taking a measured, strategically-thoughtful approach to addressing a fundamental market need is how you end up with a great product. The beacon chain has not yet merged and we are already flirting with the existential threat of centralizing forces. Meanwhile, Rocket Pool represents years of investment in a foundational solution that could help the entire Ethereum community mitigate this risk. Rocket Pool as it exists today, and to a greater extent as the current roadmap illustrates, represents a path forward, if only we can scale.
What I want for Rocket Pool right now is simple: the maximum amount of scale possible that maintains the integrity of the protocol, the capability of the development team, engagement from the community, and alignment with Ethereum’s purpose as the decentralized network that humanity can build the future on top of. Simple, but not easy.
How do you secure your node and keys?
I am following all of the best practices outlined in the Node Operator guide. My keys are backed up on steel and kept in a safe place. I am running my node in a tightly-controlled VM. While my technical knowledge of crypto is still developing, I am a senior engineer in the Web2 world with confidence in my ability to securely manage any nodes I operate.
Can you disclose your identity publicly for the purpose of accountability?
I am semi-doxxed and would be willing to fully dox myself to the team for consideration, and if accepted to the oDAO, to the community.