Note: You will probably notice that over a month has passed since the original council post. We’d like to assure you it’s not for a lack of progress! Recruiting potential council members during the dog days of summer has proven to be challenging, particularly since we were trying to attract busy, high-caliber individuals (more on that below).
This post is a follow-up on the previous Governance Council post, Governance Council.
Fortunately, with the support from the community to launch a Governance Council, we are ready to move forward with the next stage of this discussion — selecting the initial slate of Council Members!
As a reminder, Council Members will play an important role in Orca’s governance process. To do the job well, we think it’s important that Council Members share several qualities: (i) they have deep experience in crypto and are well-familiarized with Orca, (ii) they have the bandwidth to carry out their responsibilities in a timely fashion, and (iii) they have a high-integrity reputation and character. We think these qualities are the building blocks of a capable and well-rounded Council.
As every active DAO community member knows, attracting individuals with these qualities is difficult. To make the process a bit smoother for everyone, we decided to contact industry leaders that we think can best serve the interests of Orca throughout the Council’s initial 12-month term. We think each individual possesses the desired qualities, and, — and this part is critical — has expressed enthusiasm about being an Orca Council Member. We’ve included the list of these individuals a bit further below. It is important to note that the Orca community will be able to remove and replace any Council Member at any time throughout the initial term and all subsequent terms thereafter.
In addition to the aforementioned qualities, these individuals have been recommended due to their background in various crypto-related fields (e.g DAOs, DeFi, legal) that we believe collectively form a well-founded Council equipped with the tools necessary to help drive significant and strategic decisions regarding Orca’s future.
While we stand by this initial list, we want this process to be open and guided by the community. After all, the Council will be appointed by the community to serve the best interests of Orca and its stakeholders. We think community members should be able to self-nominate to serve on the initial Council term. This forum post will therefore serve as a platform for interested members to nominate themselves.
In the previous post, we also discussed adding a Secretary role to the Council following community input (thanks @Cortina!). This post may also serve as an opportunity for community members interested in this role to nominate themselves. The Secretary will serve as a liaison between the Council and Community, attending Council meetings and sharing updates with the community as a means of improving transparency and accountability.
Nominations for both Council and Secretary can be submitted as comments below, and we ask that they include the following:
- Brief background and professional experience
- Experience with Orca and Crypto in general
- Experience in Governance (e.g. participation in other protocols, roles in other DAOs)
- Unique skills that will benefit Council decision-making
- How will you represent the best interests of the Orca community?
All comments will be considered and should be reviewed by the community. The hope is for community members to both submit nominations and actively participate in assessing others, including the initial candidates below. Ultimately, the goal is for us to agree on the best possible slate of Council members to launch this program. Once we get a sense for it together, Reverie will propose a final slate of initial Council Members to the community before moving forward with a formal vote.
Finally, we’d like to note that the transition to community control of Orca contracts comes with many risks. Whether it be attacks or innocent mistakes, the community should be extremely cautious when handling proposals and appointing Council members. To that end, we believe that all Council members should be vetted as trusted individuals with alignment to Orca’s best interests.
We look forward to hearing feedback from the community on this initial list of Council candidates, and seeing new nominations from interested Orca community members! To keep the process moving, we think it makes sense to add some sort of artificial deadline for nominations. To that end, we’d strongly encourage all nominations to be submitted within the next couple of weeks, by Wednesday September 28th.
Initial Council Member Candidates
Dominic Tsang
Business Development, Solana Foundation
Leading Business Development for Solana through the Foundation for 4 years, with experience collaborating across multiple Solana partners and protocols. Previously worked across different crypto related protocols (Oasis Labs, Thunder Token).
Hart Lambur
Founder, UMA Protocol
Co-founded UMA, a decentralized financial contracts platform built to enable Universal Market Access. Hart studied computer science before working as an interest rate trader at Goldman Sachs through the financial crisis. In 2013 he co-founded Openfolio, a personal finance tracking platform that was acquired in 2017 by a financial planning firm. He now leads a team of financial contract and oracle design researchers at UMA.
Lakshman Sankar
0xParc & Personae Labs
Previously ecosystem development and R&D at the Ethereum Foundation working on Eth2.0/the merge and ZKP R&D. Currently building new identity primitives at Personae Labs.
Larry Sukernik
Founder, Reverie
Larry is the co-founder of Reverie, a DAO focused advisory firm working with different crypto protocols. Prior to Reverie, Larry led investments at Digital Currency Group for 3 years.
Chris Montagano
General Counsel, Orca
Business-focused attorney with broad experience advising management teams and boards on governance and other matters, including over 50 strategic transactions (such as IPOs and M&A deals) exceeding $10B in aggregate value.
Min Teo
Partner, Ethereal Partners
Min Teo is the Managing Partner, Ethereal Ventures & Advisor for ConsenSys Mesh. She Previously led venture investing at ConsenSys and established EV with Joe Lubin to partner with the best global crypto founders.
Michael “tmoc” Hwang
Engineer, Orca
Software engineer with 10+ years of industry experience. Previously worked on ad serving at Google, surgical robots at Verily Life Sciences, and trading platforms at Blackrock. Currently a core contributor at Orca where he helped design and implement the Whirlpools CLAMM smart contract.