Delegate Questionaire
A. Delegation Address: 7a58221a151be65c9371e8cb56daeb810823681f9fc056daa54470c52e5887fe
B. Forum Username: PiVortex (Owen)
C. Twitter Username: ThePiVortex
D. Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-hassall/
E. Targeting Voting Participation: I intend and hope to participate in all votes except for where I have a clear conflict of interest.
F. History of Interactions with NEAR Protocol:
I first started learning about NEAR when building our project betVEX in February 2023 on and off. We decided to build on NEAR because, at the time, it offered the best in terms of native account abstraction and meta-transactions. While learning about developing on NEAR I was asking many questions on Discord. Later when I had a good enough understanding of NEAR I gave back by answering questions myself. The team at DevHub noticed this and it was decided that I would become a paid Developer Relations Contributor. Over the last year and a half, I was working in DevRel doing a great many things including:
- Answering technical questions.
- Building and fixing code examples.
- Writing and fixing documentation.
- Fostering technical communities.
- Creating developer-facing content.
- Representing NEAR at hackathons around the world.
- Giving close technical support to a few projects.
After recently coming joint first in the REDACTED hackathon which provided some cash and exposure I decided to leave my role as a DevRel to pursue building betVEX on top of NEAR full time. I maintain many great relationships with many contributors and communities across the ecosystem.
G. History of Governance Participation (in NEAR or other ecosystems):
As part of my role as a DevRel with DevHub, I assisted with analysing proposals and giving attestations as to whether I think the proposal should / shouldn’t be supported.
I did not interact much with the NDC voting system but did vote for the representatives at the start.
2023-2024 I was also the President of the University of Leeds Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Society where together with the other four members of the committee made decisions for the society.
H. Top 3 Priorities for the NEAR Ecosystem:
- Supporting blockchain ecosystem fundamentals including DeFi primitives, wallets, and infrastructure (explorers, oracles, etc.).
- Supporting early to mid-stage startups with reasonable potential to increase either transactions, volume or awareness to get them to raise VC capital whilst limiting wasted funding. Projects can be in any domain (consumer apps, gaming, AI, etc.) as long as they look to increase one of the three aforementioned metrics.
- The construction of reasonably lightweight committees with limited politics that make decisions in certain areas. These committees would be made up of members who can sufficiently prove that they have the skills and experience to make decisions in these areas. Committees would also include a working group which is a person or a couple that triages proposals, covers ops and does outbound to get the partners and integrations that are needed (some active BD not just passive). Communication between committees and current ecosystem entities will be essential to concretely decide on scope thus reducing wasted overlap and funding of similar proposals.
I. Reasoning for any past votes in the NEAR Ecosystem:
I cannot remember whether I voted in the NDC governance system.
I remember voting for three people (at least) as representatives, those being (Frol, Cameron D and Guillermo) as I had personally seen large contributions, passion for NEAR and great knowledge from each of them. I did not vote for some individuals who were my “friends” because I did not agree with their views or did not believe they had the knowledge or skills to carry out such a task.
J. Conflicts of Interest:
I am a Co-Founder of the project betVEX which is building on top of NEAR.
I hold tokens for several projects on top of NEAR (Aurora, BlackDragon, Ref, etc.) but these are all each under a current value of $1000.
I am friendly with many communities and individuals within the ecosystem.
I promise as a delegate to withdraw myself from any votes with a clear conflict of interest, keep personal motivations out of any votes and disclose any future conflicts of interest.
K. Hypothetical Delegate Scenario:
- I would need to know what protocol metrics are looking to be increased, by what factor increase they expect, a detailed plan of how they will increase these metrics, what incentives will be offered, the cost of the proposal, the team carrying out the proposal.
The main metrics would be the “protocol metrics” stated in the proposal. Ultimately proposals come down to cost vs likely outcome. I would look for mainly prolonged increased transaction count on DeFi apps, awareness of NEAR and its DeFi apps, liquidity increase and volume through the DeFi apps against cost.
Whether I would support this proposal would come down to how much long-term impact the proposal is likely to have on increasing DeFi activity, volume and liquidity in the ecosystem, how much it’s going to cost and whether the team has the skills to carry out whatever needs to be done.
- What are the exact goals of the subcommittee, how will the committee operate, who are the members of the committee, how much is it going to cost each month to run the committee, how will the committee market NEAR, is a committee needed for this and how will the committee interface with other existing overlapping ecosystem nodes?
Cost, voice share on Twitter of terms like AI and chain abstraction, relevant metrics regarding specific things they are marketing (more monthly active developers building DeFi, more volume through Ref Finance, etc.), number of views over relevant content.
The main things would be how much it’s going to cost, their exact plans and structure of the committee, and the past experience, competence and commitment of the proposed committee members.
- How much liquidity is being provided, the potential risk of providing this liquidity (is there a risk of impermanent loss?), the duration of the LP, how much are the rewards from the LP and what will be done with them, what is the exact purpose of the LP, how will this affect other liquidity providers, will someone (and who will) be overseeing the LP and what determines when the liquidity should be removed?
Amount of liquidity being provided, rewards from LP, risk factor, by how much is slippage (for example) being decreased.
Mainly the risk of providing the liquidity, how much this will affect other LPs, how desperately the DeFi protocols need liquidity and whether the liquidity is blocking the use of funds elsewhere.
L. What is your motivation for becoming a NEAR delegate?
NEAR is a blockchain and ecosystem that fundamentally love because of what I’ve contributed and how it operates. I want to help steer NEAR in a direction that increases its chances of being successful, as an endorsed delegate I will have more of an opportunity to do so. I believe I have the necessary knowledge and experience to perform the tasks of a delegate to an exceptional level. Since I am building on NEAR and my life somewhat revolves around it, its success will help lead to my own, our interests are very much aligned.
M. Anticipated Delegation Support
I currently have no agreements of delegation from any parties but look to actively seek this if accepted as an endorsed delegate. Some voting power will be provided from my own $NEAR (which is not a significant amount).
If you are interested in delegating your voting power please feel free to reach out to me on Telegram if you have any questions regarding my views and voting intentions @pivortex.
Self Assessment Criteria
- Experience: 2/2. I have good/great (not excellent) relevant experience in a range of different areas including general higher-level knowledge of NEAR tech, development on NEAR, community building, and business development. This experience I have gained over three different main roles.
Developer relations - DevHub
- Supported developers in person at hackathons, over social channels and via office hours.
- Created and fixed documentation and code examples.
- Assisted in assessing and triaging proposals.
- Managed technical communities.
Co founder - betVEX / CTO - VEX Labs
- Designed the architecture of the product.
- Implemented betting and staking contracts.
- Helped establish key aspects of the project including tokenomics and roadmap.
- Assisted in onboarding and managing contributors.
President - University of Leeds Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Society
- Reformed the inactive society by establishing a new committee and increased the membership count from 0 to over 100.
- Orchestrated and delivered technical workshops.
- Implemented internal rails for marketing and events.
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Diversity of Perspective 2/2. Whilst it’s difficult to answer this question currently due to a lack of current delegate proposals, I believe I have a diverse enough perspective for a 2/2 on this section. As shown in the previous section I have a good level of experience across the board. I have the unique perspective of both sides of the coin, building a product myself and helping others build, this allows me to know what developers need and what is too unreasonable to be provided due to finite resources. Being in my early twenties I also offer a younger perspective allowing me to give good feedback on how certain campaigns will be perceived by the younger generation and how we can onboard the next set of up-and-coming developers and founders.
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Alignment with NEAR Ecosystem: 2/2. I am building betVEX on NEAR. If NEAR is to become more widely adopted our product will benefit from the increased number of people with NEAR wallets and understanding of NEAR/blockchain as well as increased liquidity. I also have many friends and colleagues in the ecosystem who I would like to succeed and are more likely to if NEAR is to.
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Governance Engagement ½. In the past, I have been vocal about governance in the NEAR ecosystem. As part of my role as a DevRel with DevHub, I assisted with analysing proposals and giving attestations as to whether I think the proposal should / shouldn’t be supported. With the NDC I had some interaction but not loads as it was overly politicised and people who had not enough of an informed opinion to vote overly participated, which deterred my interest in engaging.
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Conflicts of Interest: 0/2. Like most who would be interested in becoming a NEAR delegate, I have involvement in the NEAR ecosystem thus conflict of interest. I am a Co-Founder of the project betVEX which is building on top of NEAR. I hold tokens for several projects on top of NEAR (Aurora, BlackDragon, Ref, etc.) but these are all each under a current value of $1000. I am friendly with many communities and individuals within the ecosystem. I promise as a delegate to withdraw myself from any votes with a clear conflict of interest. keep personal motivations out of any votes and disclose any future conflicts of interest.