What is the delegate’s identity and background?
I have a very technical background, primarily working on distributed systems and machine learning across the different big tech companies. I came into crypto towards the end of 2021 and have been entrenched in this space since. In 2022, I took a brief stab at building a venture based start-up in crypto but for many reasons it did not work out – as part of this, I’ve written and deployed a solana program on mainnet (the mint for the voxel monke play items).
My twitter handle is 0xjaypeg. These days I am a market participant, an avid reader, and enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts.
I have written various threads such as ELI5 Solana’s PoH algorithm and my experience developing on Solana.
Has the delegate historically contributed to the Jito Network?
Outside of being an active staker, I was the first person to coin Jito as Flashbots + Lido, back in August of 2023. I also covered the Jito airdrop saga in detail.
Has the delegate historically been involved in protocol governance?
Aside from reading through various governance forums, I have not.
Is the delegate committed to helping the Jito Network and Solana succeed? Explain.
Absolutely. I believe we are still early in the stages of Solana as an ecosystem, and I have the capability to add value to both Jito and the Solana network. Back in August of 2023, I also put out a thesis on Solana - the emphasis was around the fact that Solana was overlooked and that the technical capability and the strength of the community will carry its success. We have come a long way since then, but I think we are still early. I would love to be part of the path in scaling out both the Jito network and Solana into the next magnitude of users.
Candidate views
How should JitoSOL validator delegation balance performance (yield) versus decentralization goals?
Incentive structure matters a lot, and I think this question requires a more nuanced view on what we are optimizing for.
The current super minority (the smallest # of individual validators that control > 33% of stake) is currently 21. There is very little client diversity (although this will change soon with firedancer). Jito has introduced “MEV” and a stakenet. Are we adequately decentralized? Drilling into what this means concretely is important.
The other question I would pose is - why is there an inverse relationship between performance (yield) and decentralization? If we lower yield by 5 BPS, how would it change “decentralization”? Would the super minority decrease? Or would it increase?
It’s important to comb through the data before coming to conclusions - it is unclear to me why decentralization needs to come at the cost of sacrificing performance (yield). Through this exercise, I also believe we would learn much more about the incentive design that would enable us to have the best of both worlds.
What should be the priorities for JTO liquidity mining and DAO token grants?
Similar to my answer to the question above, I would ask - what are the goals for Jito as a protocol? IMO, the goal is to maximize revenue in a sustainable, long term focused manner.
In order to achieve this goal, it is important that Solana continue to gain more and more adoption. In order words, JTO needs to help grow the pie. But this is probably too high level, to take it back to JTO liquidity mining and DAO token grants - these should effectively enable governance.