Delegate Proposal - 0xNallok / Lode Ventures

Potential delegator,

My name is Kollan House, known by 0xNallok and 0xTuti. I’m posting this here because I’d like to be your delegate.

Background

I started with cryptocurrency in 2008 when I read the Bitcoin white paper and entered the industry in 2014 professionally. I was attracted to cryptocurrency originally as internet money as the idea seemed to match naturally with my experience in technology. The internet needed a currency, and the solutions proposed by Satoshi were very eye opening. I founded a management consultancy business out of Baltimore (2014) and we began to hit the conference circuit for crypto. The first conference was Bitcoin in the Beltway in DC.

Some other highlights:

  • Used to mine BTC in Java Applets in Firefox.

  • Currently admin (and operate one) validators.

  • Run RPCs.

  • Ran liquidators and market making (on Solana).

  • Ran MM on CEX trading stables in 2020 with over 2B in volume using Hummingbot.

  • I’ve survived Mt. Gox, BitMEX, Bitfinex, Wonderland, Terra Luna, Mango and FTX events.

  • Researched some wash trading on a few exchanges with my non-profit (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yKpLZlFgB4XUhhtcAMAhH0TiyrpgQ-Xl/view?usp=drive_link).

There’s not much I haven’t done / touched (not extremely deep in many places, but willing to learn).

Currently I’m engaged as a general partner with my own limited partnership which generates revenues from proprietary trading. I’ve recently joined Toa Capital Partners as their head of DeFi. I’m a co-founder of Lode Ventures which has the Sentries NFT, The Lode validator and soon something else. Really I just try to provide as much support as I can to anyone operating within cryptocurrency.

My specific areas of interest are: Economics, Decentralization, Governance, Crypto First Principles, Integration, Onboarding the next 100M users, Getting Governments to use crypto for Licensure and Titling.

Socials

https://github.com/R-K-H

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kollan/

https://twitter.com/0xTuti

Contributions to Jito Network

Certainly impassioned for on-chain governance and supported Jito in the early days by running the software (we were surely not the first, but one of the original handful of validators running Jito Solana, Brian can correct me if I’m wrong). We also helped to support onboard validators to Jito Solana. Try my best to support Jito and are currently engaged within the Security Council for the Jito Foundation.

Contributions to Protocol Governance

While governance isn’t a singular effort, its emergence requires the actions of a few to stir results. Michael from Laine and Chris from Chainflow were certainly the catalyst for Validator Governance of Solana, a group of us who participated in an initial on chain vote as validators are experimenting with the governance of Solana.

Participating in Block 0 before 2023 Breakpoint in Amsterdam with other validators discussing the why, what and how for these votes. Ensuring I have participation within the validator community as well as participating in conversations expressing (hopefully) valuable information / perspective. This network succeeds as long as the hardware and software works at its base so existing there is important for me.

Commitment to Success

We all grow together and succeed together, we’re only as good as the weakest link. Education and providing support is something incredibly important to me. You’ll find me in Solana Tech supporting new validators and RPC operators. I’m communicative with many individuals across the space in an effort to support their efforts from business, operations, development, management and anything in between. I only learned and am where I am today because people were very gracious with their time, therefore I see it as a necessity to pay it forward.

Regarding Jito, there is no other product or service which exists within the crypto ecosystem constructed the way Jito has been. There are individual pieces, but not in aggregate. Therefore the effort required to ensure understanding and communication each with their own unique users and topics of relevance. I’d also like to see things like StakeNet continue to be produced and launched for the betterment of crypto and the Solana community. I’d see my commitment to understand, consume, convey and relay this detailed information relevant for impact to stakeholders and ensure my opinion is expressed clearly and (sigh) concisely.

Perspectives on Governance

Yield vs Other Initiatives

Delegation criteria and objectives are certainly up front and center when it comes to managing any size pool, performance but also the responsibility to the health of the ecosystem are paramount. The balance of performance and decentralization will likely be one expressed broadly through deposits (stakeholders) into the pool as a lagging indicator.

Personally, I believe the objective and result is decentralization metrics ensuring reliability and redundancy - so there exists a likely result where “sufficiently decentralized” is a criteria threshold (Ds). Then expansion if allocation of stake into the pool increases (A). This would effectively balance on geographically (G), providers (for data centers and connectivity) (Pl, Pc), stake allocation % (S) and network performance (N).

So I’m fairly sure we could come up with some scoring metric which can be controlled and tweaked depending on back pressure and demand. This can also be forward looking for long term goals such as incentivizing locations where expanding reliability or geo dispersion is deemed important. You have a large carrot and stick with this criteria.

Regarding yield (Y) I feel the target should be >X% of the average of all stake performance (top X% of validators) as well as excluding those known to run modifications which negatively impact the performance of Solana (see vote lagging and https://stakeview.app/poor.html).

These measures I believe would offer a competitive yield while still pushing a decentralization agenda (as well as incentivize performant operators to take risk).

Allocation of JTO Awards, Rewards and Mechanisms

Leveraging the JTO token for rewards and awards is something which should be leveraged to increase / facilitate the development and adoption of technologies. The foundation (and governance) has the opportunity to incentivize things where a traditional business may normally not pursue. That however doesn’t mean you can’t treat the mechanisms as a $ cost value for $ value created.

If you could hire a marketing agency for $40,000 a month, rewarding $400,000 worth may not be something which is economically sound. I believe treating these things with value in mind helps influence and bring the expectations of the crypto ecosystems back in line with reality.

Liquidity awards should be focused within the ecosystems which have open source software, have active use and a great case for supporting a wider economic play within the space. It should be facilitating liquidity for users in an effort to provide as low price impact to intent as possible.

DAO grants should focus on the support of the broader ecosystem in which Jito exists. This could be tooling with respect to governance, validator management and control, economics research, general research, MEV tooling, reporting and data collection on Solana, and many many more. I’m keen to hear what other people might imagine the role of Jito Foundation should be and what initiatives may be worth exploring.

Goals with Governance

Develop systems and processes to ensure we enable future participants to be enabled to succeed. I’d like to see things come online through the initiatives set out through the Foundation ensuring a better experience for those interacting with Solana.

High level and some personal goals of mine within this role:

  • To help shape governance in a way which is reproducible for all.
  • To learn from various stakeholders and ensure their voices are considered and heard.
  • To push the boundaries of what can be accomplished on chain.
  • To ensure safety and security are significant considerations with all stakeholders.
  • To grow myself, expand my capabilities in communication skills and expression.

Solana delegation address: GxHbdbN36AG4XKqkpf4AsBF3WFa193wWHYGkfXHGZM28

27 Likes

Watching you on Sentries team for more than 1 year, I am sure you will have the best interest of the ecosystem as a delegate here as well.

5 Likes

As a Sentries holder from mint, I’ve been impressed with your understanding of the Solana ecosystem and dedication to the end user. I am in support of you as a Delegate. Cheers.

5 Likes

I’ve known you since minting a Sentry back in the day and since then you’ve been approachable, helpful and highly knowledgeable in all things blockchain/web3. You have my support.

4 Likes