A. Delegation Address: slimedragon.near
B. Forum Username: @slimedrgn
C. Twitter Username: x.com
D. Website (optional):
E. Target Voting Participation: 100% (excluding proposals where I’d have conflicts of interest)
F. History of Interactions with NEAR Protocol: I have been working on NEAR full-time for the entirety of 2024, building DeFi and infrastructure products such as Telegram: Contact @BettearBot with thousands of users, made an impact on core ecosystem projects, and now I’m focused on ecosystem growth, finding new projects and helping founders find users, connections, market fit. I believe my tools are solely responsible for the April meme season, and it’s hard to imagine the current season without my Telegram bots
G. History of Governance Participation (in NEAR or other ecosystems): None
H. Top 3 Priorities for the NEAR Ecosystem:
- Solid ecosystem of essential DeFi projects (DEX, lending, wallet, block explorer, meme launchpad, trading bot, yield farming)
- Marketing, adoption (real, not bots), to enable the projects on NEAR to be self-sustainable
- Innovations that benefit users or create interesting mechanics, reasons why 1 billion of average mainstream audience should want to join NEAR (like Polymarket or Pump)
I. Reasoning for any past votes in the NEAR Ecosystem: Never participated in NEAR governance
J. Conflicts of Interest: I’m involved in quite a few early-stage projects on NEAR, so there may be conflicts of interest with some proposals, but I don’t have a direct or indirect conflict of interest with House of Stake
K. Answer Hypothetical Delegate Scenario:
Prompt: The NEAR ecosystem is evaluating opportunities to stimulate onchain activity. In this hypothetical scenario, there are three different proposals for the Foundation to consider:
A proposal to allocate incentives to DeFi protocol users to benefit protocol metrics.
A proposal to establish a subcommittee to market the NEAR Protocol to developers and users.
A proposal to establish a Protocol-Owned Liquidity position by the House of Stake on major DeFi protocols in the ecosystem.
What additional information would you need from the proposers to make an informed decision?
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For 1: What metrics the proposal is targeting, how much would the metrics increase, estimated cost-to-benefit ratio. If I can’t find similar incentives in the past, would also ask about if there are any examples of similar incentives on other chains, and what was the outcome
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For 2: Who will be the members of this subcommittee, their experience or examples of contribution to NEAR, and how they’re going to evaluate proposals / reports, what will be the key metrics, etc. If they’re coming from other ecosystems, have no past contributions to NEAR, or no incentive, there’s a chance of having the same problem as NDC. Otherwise, I’d be happy to try it out and see the results, if it’s targeted at many smaller incentives rather than a few bigger ones. Larger proposals should go directly through the main House of Stake
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For 3: The position risk level, comparison with other potential opportunities of use of these funds, what positive / negative impact will this position inflict on users (e.g. decrease borrow APY or swap slippage, but decrease APY for other liquidity providers)
What key metrics would you evaluate to support or reject the proposals?
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For 1: Depending on the type of the protocol: TVL, volume, number of unique users, and expected growth of these metrics after the proposal is passed
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For 2: If it’s continuous funding: Number of new users, their median DeFi volume, TVL, interactions with different ecosystem dapps (not just one app), and cost per user acquisition. If it’s the first period, they probably don’t have any numbers to show
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For 3: How much liquidity does this protocol / pair / vault already have, liquidity utilization ratio. If this liquidity is really needed, I’ll probably also see some complaints from users on twitter and in telegram groups
How would you ultimately support and vote for these different proposals?
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For 1: To vote positively, I need the protocol to have good UX that can leave good impression on the new users from other blockchains, good cost-to-benefit ratio, and of course make sure that the protocol is audited, its team is capable of improving it and is aligned with my vision
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For 2: For the first proposal, I will support if I know and trust the people who will run the subcommittee, if they’re long-term contributors. Will also have some technical requirements such as transparency and ease of applying. After the first period, will see based on the metrics, the way proposals are evaluated, and the community sentiment on it
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For 3: I’d support only if there is a big reason to do so, because 1) most of the time, liquidity rewards will be decreased because of that, 2) protocol-owned positions will set a precedent and protocols will strive for self-sustainability less. Also, major DeFi protocols don’t urgently need additional liquidity at the moment. But if, for example, near-intents right now doesn’t have much liquidity, but is arguably the fastest / easiest bridging solution, I’d support this
L. What is your motivation for becoming a NEAR delegate?
- Currently, my biggest source of revenue is trading fees from my Telegram bot, so I’m interested in having a bigger ecosystem that is more appealing to users
- I have been building NEAR tooling for 10 months, most of which is currently free, but I’ll be able to sell it if the addressable market of NEAR users gets bigger
- “Endorsed Delegate” badge on the forum and in House of Stake UI
- I feel like the NEAR community is a bit underrepresented, NEAR Foundation has made a few decisions that are not understood by most people. Since I’m actively participating in conversations of many communities, I can notice things that fly under institutions’ radars
- I have a good idea of what would be appreciated by users (at least, by the communities that I’m in), can evaluate technical viability of complex technical projects, and spot projects that overcomplicate things to make them look smart or propose to do a simple thing in a complicated way
- I want more people to make the right choice with a blockchain that is built to scale from the start, and provides so many UX features that most chains even now don’t have
A. Experience: 2/2, I have strong blockchain and NEAR Protocol development experience, though no experience of participating in government
B. Diversity of Perspective: 1/2, my main fields of interest are ecosystem growth, DeFi, and marketing, which are common, but I also represent the memecoin community
C. Alignment with NEAR Ecosystem: 2/2, I’m an active builder
D. Governance Engagement: 0/2, no track record of participation in on-chain governance
E. Conflicts of Interest 2/2, no conflict of interest with the House of Stake