Hello everyone, I’d like to submit my interest in joining the oDAO to the community and the existing members.
Rather than submitting my interest privately, I believe it’s best to “apply” publicly so this can be a starting point for future discussions on oDAO member qualifications. Therefore, I’m formatting this as a Q&A – if you have any other questions you think oDAO members should answer, please post them!
What is your history of involvement with Rocket Pool?
While I was following the project for a while, I “officially” joined the community in early 2021 to participate in the protocol’s final beta testing. I’ve been a node operator since launch and even made a (minor) contribution to the documentation. Most of my contributions, however, are to tokenomics research and governance initiatives. I pushed for the reintroduction of RPIPs and authored most of the existing ones, including RPIP-4 (snapshot voting). And, of course, everyone from #trading will recognize me, too.
On the professional side, I am the founder of Bamboo Financial Technologies, which will soon be launching a Rocket Pool-based investment fund as our flagship product. Also, as a founding member and admin of the Node Operator Association, I’m working with the community to create an open and decentralized staking group to certify reliable node operators and connect them to new opportunities.
What do you see as the oDAO’s role in the protocol?
I’ve written extensively about the oDAO in this post and in Part 4 of my RP Research Series.
As the protocol is designed today, the oDAO is a critical security feature which must act conservatively and carefully. I support any sufficiently safe changes to the protocol which can reduce the oDAO’s role, as it is a centralizing force, but I expect the oDAO will continue to be a crucial element of RP for some time.
I believe we should be explicit about the duties of the oDAO and consider design changes which support this specificity: dividing compensation into security/incentive-alignment payments (ETH or RPL) and gas-reimbursement payments (in ETH).
What are your priorities for Rocket Pool?
I generally agree with the core development team’s technical priorities as of today – i.e. SaaS tooling, design changes to increase capital efficiency, and preparing for withdrawals.
As I mentioned in this article, a more dynamic inflation model would serve the protocol better and I support R&D for this realm.
In the long run, I believe we should research methods for further hardening our decentralized network model, including ways to reduce/eliminate oDAO involvement and empower the pDAO further. That said, we need to be extremely careful here, as these changes introduce security questions which must first be thoroughly understood and solved.
Finally, I support the continuing evolution and formalization of DAO governance. A healthy future for RP requires an empowered and engaged community.
How do you secure your node and keys?
I self-host my existing RP node and would do so for an oDAO node as well. In addition to physical security, I am currently using Ken’s excellent suggestion of a hardware-based secure key, but I plan to transition to the preferred software-based method after I finish my own audits of the software + processes involved.
Can you disclose your identity publicly for the purpose of accountability?
Yes! My name is Mike Leach, and you can see my professional history here: linkedin.com/in/leachmike