My Interest in the NDC Project Manager Role

Ecosystem NDC
1

Dear GWG Team,

I am excited to nominate myself for the role of Project Manager within the Governance Working Group (GWG) for the NEAR Ecosystem. With a decade of experience in strategic roles across the fintech, proptech, devtech and web3 industries, I am confident in my ability to lead and manage teams within the NDC.

As a senior leader across multiple organizations, I have a wealth of experience to bring to the table. I have nothing but respect for the NDCs innovative approach to seeding and scaling the ecosystem and its commitment to decentralized governance at its core. I am eager to contribute to the development and implementation of the NDC to ensure it will serve as a standard for all layer 1s to follow.

I have a strong track record of success as an active founder in the Near Ecosystem, including founding and scaling Antisocial Labs, a web3 development house on NEAR, growing the company from 0 to 20+ team members and revenue to £400k. Additionally, as a CRO of a web 2 devtech startup, I successfully scaled annual revenue to £1mm+, bootstrapped and grew the enterprise client base to 50%+ of FTSE 100 with a team of three in a year. During my time within fintech, i helped organise a team and created a system that distributed £250 Million in government backed loans to small businesses across the UK during the Pandemic. I also currently organize the largest women & non-binary in tech hackathon in Europe bi-annually.

I hope have been able to demonstrate my project management capabilities through my past experiences but am happy to jump on a call with anyone to discuss things in further details.

I am dedicated to working with the team to develop and implement governance structures that will benefit the entire ecosystem and have the following skills and experiences that will assist in delivering success:

  • Solid understanding of risk management processes
  • Strong leadership skills
  • Proven self-management and team-management skills
  • Capability to make decisions under pressure
  • Great social and communication skills
  • Experience with project management methodologies such as Scrum
  • Proficient in Salesforce, Hubspot, Intercom, Mailchimp, Figma, Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, Google analytics, Trello, Nifty.PM, AirTable
  • Strong understanding of customer success, vector mapping, customer segmentation and AX/UX mapping
  • Experience with revenue automation, growth and product management

My experience in the ecosystem in projects like Antisocial Ape Club and Haven Dao, serve me as a reminder that we still have a long way to go to provide the support projects within our ecosystem needs as a leading Layer 1. Having worked with many teams in the ecosystem, i am fully aware of our shortcomings and by working with in the NDC, I will be able to help shape the ecosystem that supports and nurtures all projects that drive innovation in Web3.

I am thrilled about the opportunity to work with the GWG team to help build the ecosystem support we all need to succeed.

Kind Regards,
Illuminfti

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It is a pleasure to see this post here!

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Good day!

What do you think about NFT marketplaces on Near compared with other blockchains?

Thanks!

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Greetings Dacha,

Thank you for reaching out. I must say, I am quite critical of the current state of the NEAR NFT marketplaces. In comparison to other blockchain ecosystems, NEAR seems to lag behind in terms of innovation, demand, and collaboration. While there are a few exceptions, such as Tradeport.xyz, which I would classify as an aggregator rather than a marketplace, the overall landscape of NEAR NFT marketplaces leaves much to be desired.

One marketplace that I find myself returning to is Paras, which currently holds a dominant position in the NEAR NFT ecosystem, despite the fact that our ecosystem is increasingly dwindling. The Paras team is friendly and reaches out to us for partnerships and initiatives, yet in the grand scheme of things, their contributions to the ecosystem are not as impactful as those of other marketplaces on other chains.

When we compare NEAR to other ecosystems, such as Solana and Polygon, the contrast is striking. The Magic Eden team on Solana, for instance, is proactive, friendly, and genuinely helpful, even if you decline using their launchpad. Their products are usable and drive significant volume to collection launches, and they are far more hands-on and impactful than launchpads and marketplaces within NEAR. Additionally, the standard of support for new features such as composability and nesting, as well as other innovations within the NFT ecosystem, is far superior on Solana than it is on NEAR.

On Polygon, there are a plethora of choice, with Magic Eden and OpenSea leading the pack, and other niche marketplaces following closely behind. These marketplaces drive significantly more volume than any equivalent on NEAR supporting collection sizes of 100k+ and they benefit from the active support of the Polygon Labs foundation, which is looking to actively grow and support their NFT communities. In contrast, the NEAR Foundation has effectively turned its back on the NFT ecosystem and crypto natives in favour of focusing on mainstream brands.

Even Aptos, a lesser-known chain, has better technology in regards to marketplaces like Topaz, and its foundation is far more hands-on with NFT projects in their ecosystem.

In my opinion, the biggest issue with the NEAR NFT marketplaces and NFT ecosystem as a whole is the lack of incentives for developers and creators to build in the space. The Near Foundation’s decision to support only one emerging NFT marketplace and de-fund or reduce support for all other NFT marketplaces has resulted in a severe lack of transactions and has been a misstep, you could go to the length of saying its impact has been FEW and FAR off the mark. Furthermore, there is currently no one within the Near Foundation actively looking after the NFT ecosystem.

Additionally, the low price of NEAR and reduction in the nft ecosystem from 45K active Wallets to 3 - 4k active wallets makes it difficult to use minting as a fundraising vehicle to build cool things, and on top of that there are no more grants or marketing or developer support for NFT projects from the Foundation. The original Grassroots DAOs are unlikely to cover NFTs until after version 1 of the NDC.

As a result, many of the top NFT collections on NEAR have been forced to branch out and build on other chains just to survive and drive value to their holders. Until something radically changes with the ecosystem, I fear that NEAR NFTs and NFT marketplaces will continue to be outclassed by other chains.

I’d love to see this change, and have our NFT Ecosystem reach new heights but I believe it will be a long time coming.

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Hi @Illuminfti ,
You hit on the point of NFT ecosystem issue, on NEAR.

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Appreciate it bud, been in the ecosystem for time noq and i really care about all the wonderful people building in space, dont want to see it die off.

But we need either an update from the foundation that its not their priority so we can all move on or a radical change in direction.

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